Kanzaki surviving acqua

Kanzaki was unable to make a proper retort, and could only swing her sword as forcefully as possible, delivering another strong hit.

Acqua had already vanished.

Kanzaki sensed Acqua's existence not through sight, but through presence. He was in the air, having jumped roughly twenty meters. It was not something an ordinary person could do, leaping into the air like a rocket. Acqua, nothing more than a dot in the sky, had the satellite of The Power of God, the Moon, directly behind him.

In the most strict sense, that was not true. It was just a display in the sky formed by the planetarium's image display.

Acqua did a half turn near the ceiling and stepped onto the artificial sky.

"Ugh!"

Kanzaki wanted to immediately close the distance between them, but the damage she had just taken, coupled with the burden she was placing on her body, slowed her movements. During the temporary lull, Kanzaki felt a cold presence pressing down on all sides. What she was feeling was the boundary of life and death only fighters in the midst of furious battle could feel. The huge wave bearing down upon continued to flow through the entire battlefield.

And as for Acqua, who was above her...

"——The Divine Mother shall remove all evil."

In response to Acqua's low voice, the glowing orb behind him gained an explosion-like brightness.

The planetarium screen was wrecked due to overload, and sparks flew to and from every direction, like an unknown countdown was activating countless hidden explosive devices. The real Moon, hidden in the sky far above them, was unable to shine its light in their battlefield, yet an intangible layer of intensive protection could still be felt. An ordinary magician was incapable of such a feat but for Acqua of the Back, member of God's Right Seat who was also a Saint, such a feat was easily manageable.

He was using the Divine Mother's Mercy to perform a miracle.

This is...!

Kanzaki easily deduced the mace surrounded by a bluish-white glow currently possessed a tremendous amount of energy.

"In depicting this power called the Truth of God, LET YOUR MERCY RISE TO THE HEAVENS!"

The moment Acqua roared, he stomped onto the ceiling and quickly descended upon her. Having already been damaged beyond its limits, the fake sky was completely destroyed with this final blow, and the blue silhouette above them became the darkest of blacks once again.

A vertical drop.

A giant mace bore down.

What followed was not a strike, a stab, a shot, an explosion, a break, a split, or even simply a crushing blow.

It was just ordinary pressure.

The sudden charge from above had more than enough destructive power to shatter everything in its path, giving the impression of an asteroid crashing into the Earth.

The world vanished.

Even the sight and sound of the Earth buckling from beneath disappeared.

With the harbinger of this unstoppable blow at the center, everything within a one-hundred meter radius of the fourth level of Academy City's District 22 collapsed. Acqua's falling impact caused the steel and concrete floor to collapse into dust and leave a massive hole in its wake, a floor with the same hardness as those used in safety shelters.

The world around them collapsed, everything within one-hundred meters falling to the 5th level.

The booms and tremors and dust exploded and scattered everywhere.

The sound of destruction echoed throughout the area.

The water streams and turbine generator were cut off, and the water began to flow downward like a waterfall.

Amidst the shattered aftermath, Kanzaki Kaori lay where she had fallen to the ground.

She had blocked the attack itself using the Shichiten Shichitou, but the ground beneath her feet was ill-suited to withstanding such impact.

Having endured such an unstoppable pressure and falling more than twenty meters, Kanzaki lay atop a pile of concrete, looking up.

She was thoroughly covered in wounds, and even though it was not a direct hit, the force of Acqua's most recent blow corroded her body through her weapon. Trapped between the massive mace in Acqua's hands and the artificial ground beneath her, regardless of whether it was her arms, legs, or torso, a reddish-black liquid gushed out of Kanzaki's body.

Even this one of less than twenty Saints was now in such a pitiful state.