Gunmage-Chapter 264: A shifting tide

Everyone was left with their mouths hanging at the aftermath.

"H–How is she still alive?"

Lugh heard Lirienne mutter in disbelief.

Everyone present mirrored her shock. When Lyra had first begun to use her hair as a weapon, they had initially assumed it to be some advanced form of force control.

But when that hair began to expand—significantly and impossibly—they knew at once that it couldn’t be.

This was magic. A magic they had never seen before. One that had no known record, no historical precedent.

Which meant only one thing.

Like Lugh, she was awakened.

Setting aside how impossibly rare—no, confusing—that fact alone was, the real shock had come from what happened afterward.

High above the chamber, in one of the private viewing balconies overlooking the vast arena, Selaphiel stood with narrowed eyes, muttering quietly to herself.

"The perfect shield."

Then, she turned slightly toward Zhou.

"Did you know about this?"

"No, I did not"

Yhe taller elf replied, her gaze never once drifting away from Lyra’s figure.

Selaphiel’s voice remained quiet but firm.

"You know you can’t afford to let her go, right?"

Zhou’s lips pressed into a thin line.

"You don’t have to tell me that."

...

Down below, Lugh exhaled slowly, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. For a moment, he had genuinely believed things were going to spiral out of control.

His fears weren’t unfounded—the spell her father cast had managed to burn through several layers of Lyra’s hair. That, in itself, said a great deal.

The only person Lugh could remember having damaged it that much was the Knight in rusted armor, the one they’d fought on the Dark Island.

"As expected"

The patriarch said.

It seemed to Lugh that he had anticipated her survival, but not that she would remain largely unscathed.

In reality, though, Lyra was far from unscathed.

The blood she had wiped from her lips wasn’t superficial—Lugh would wager she had suffered various degrees of internal damage.

Her father, for all his calm, wasn’t in much better shape either. Her earlier act of slamming him violently against the stone wall had left its mark.

From the way he now staggered unsteadily, it was painfully obvious.

And yet, the next phase of the duel was already beginning. The atmosphere bristled with anticipation. Everyone held their breath. What had once seemed like a clear outcome was now a toss-up.

The patriarch took a step back, his hands clasped before him. Around him, motes of glowing blue light began to drift like snowflakes.

From each mote, a shadow unfurled—voids giving birth to wraiths. He was still leaning on the quantity over quality approach.

Lyra didn’t seem fazed.

She cast a quick glance at the approaching figures, her gaze panning across the battlefield—a war-torn ground still flickering with blue ghostflame.

Without moving her body, she swept her voluminous auburn hair across the floor, letting sections of it catch fire as it passed through the lingering flames.

Then she swung.

The ignited strands lashed at the oncoming wraiths with sudden fury. All the while, Lyra herself remained still—head forward, spine straight—as her dangerous, writhing mass of hair danced and struck with lethal precision.

The attacks passed through the incorporeal bodies without resistance—but the fire did not.

Shrieks of pain echoed through the arena as several of the wraiths ignited, their ghostly forms dissolving into nothingness.

Lyra smirked.

Then her hair whipped into a blurring frenzy, twisting and slashing with blustering speed. She left behind a trail of vanishing enemies, their death cries drowned beneath the roar of her hair and the crackle of spectral fire.

But her eyes were elsewhere.

She looked past the distractions, locking onto her father. He had his hands to the ground, murmuring the last lines of an incantation.

...the Immovable, the Mighty—

The floor beneath him erupted.

Chunks of stone blasted into the air, some crushed to powder mid-flight, while the rest circled a forming vortex. They began to bind and twist, assembling a hulking figure forged entirely from rock.

A ten-meter-tall golem, sheathed in stone armor, rose with slow menace. It barely fit within the grand dimensions of the hall.

Lyra struck first.

Her hair lashed out in a barrage of vicious strikes. Each hit echoed like a whip crack, sending tremors through the walls. Parts of the giant crumbled under the force—but just as quickly, they reformed.

She shifted tactics. Her hair snaked forward, tightening around the creature, seeking to bind it completely.

The stone titan moved in response, extending all four of its arms to grasp entire sections of her seemingly indestructible hair.

Lyra pulled hard.

There was a sharp snap—a sound like a taut belt being yanked straight. She pulled again, with all the force she could muster.

Nothing.

The golem did not budge. It was rooted, unmoving—immovable.

And in that instant, Lyra understood: she had been outplayed.

The invincibility of her hair had been turned against her. She was tethered. Immobilized.

She sensed movement closing in fast. With her strongest weapon restrained, they were attempting to overwhelm her in close quarters.

Her lips shaped silent explosions, and flames engulfed the incoming wraiths. But her father was already too close.

She extended the rest of her hair, letting it surge forth in massive volume like a cascading river. The parts still held by the golem now hung limply, like ropes caught in its grasp.

At the very least, they wouldn’t impede her own movement.

Yet the ends remained caught, still preventing large-scale attacks.

The rest of her hair flowed between her and the patriarch, acting as a makeshift barricade.

He leapt.

With practiced grace, he descended into the eye of the storm, landing before her and engaging her directly in hand-to-hand combat.

They fought amid a living minefield of auburn, each strand a hazard. The battlefield itself seemed to betray the patriarch—hair would trip him, tug at his ankles, raise barriers in his path.

And Lyra—veteran soldier, trained and merciless—took full advantage.

Her fists found their mark—chest, liver, face—again and again. She dominated the exchange.

It looked like the duel would end there and then.

But her father drew an ornate dagger, and with a sudden clap, summoned another ghost. This one didn’t attack her.

Instead, it surged forward—straight into him.

Lyra’s eyes narrowed. Her entire posture shifted as she tried to interpret what she had just seen, but there wasn’t time to dwell on it.

In the very next breath, the patriarch lunged at her with renewed confidence—and a completely alien footwork. His stance, his balance, his rhythm—everything about his fighting style had changed.

He moved like a different person entirely. His strikes were no longer instinctual—they were refined, cold, and perfectly measured.

More efficient.

More elaborate.

More lethal.

Even with the overwhelming advantage of terrain, Lyra suddenly found herself on the back foot. It felt like sparring against a man who had spent his entire life perfecting the blade.

The shift in skill was so extreme, so abrupt, it left her momentarily unbalanced—not just physically, but mentally.

She tried to adjust. Pivoted back.

One strike nearly tore through her tendons—but she slipped just in time, suffering a brutal laceration instead. One of many now dotting her form.

Like sinking into a swamp, she could feel the inevitability.

If she didn’t escape this pressure—if she didn’t break free in the next heartbeat—defeat was certain.

She gritted her teeth, blood trailing from her wounds as her mind flickered—

—to the priestess.

To Xhi.

The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l