"Ugh!"
Caught off guard by the sudden attack, Darius, head of the Enzworth Family, shuddered violently. He gritted his teeth and let out a muffled groan, then lowered his head to look at the curved dagger plunged into his kidney, his face filled with disbelief.
This was... Rule Breaker!
"Bzzz!"
At the same time, amid Darius's confusion and terror, the fixed light patterns floating around him twisted and shattered.
"Crack..."
Accompanied by the sound of fine porcelain breaking, cracks like shattered pottery spread across the gloomy, haggard face of the middle-aged man. It crumbled away, revealing the true face of a pale, delicate boy. His tall body rapidly shrank back to its original form, and he toppled backward.
However, before the frail boy who had suddenly fainted could hit the ground, a pair of encircling arms gently gathered him into an embrace.
Angelica then bent down slightly. Though her face remained cold and blank, her movements were incomparably gentle. She carefully pulled out the Rule Breaker manifested from the Gate of Babylon, then took out a Magic Potion and poured it into the boy's mouth, stopping the bleeding and healing his flesh.
Only after the cool-tempered female Heroic King confirmed that the boy was unharmed did she gently lay him down in relief. Even her expression, frozen for countless years, seemed to loosen somewhat.
"Bang!"
While Angelica was taking action, Beatrice, who had launched a fierce attack in coordination with her teammate's ambush, leaped high into the air. Her forward-swinging steel right arm caught Mjöllnir as it whistled back through the air. Looking at the smoke filling the center of the temple, she frowned deeply and spat onto the ground without a shred of decorum, her face full of displeasure.
"Tch, missed again!"
Above the temple, the surging Aether Tide