Chapter 156 : A Released Hell and the Ice Queen's Laughter

Esdeath's possessive, cold words echoed across the plain of ice she had just created. "Now, it's time for you to come home."

Before me, the army of horrific ice dragons roared without a sound and charged forward. Razor-sharp ice claws, frozen jaws ready to crush steel, all of it was aimed at me. I knew I had reached the end of my game. I had successfully lured her to the center of the island, to the kill zone we had planned. I had pressed the emergency button on my costume, sending a silent signal to Endeavor. Now, all I could do was survive for the next few seconds.

With the last remnants of my strength, I manifested Incursio again in its full form. The pain that tore through my body now felt like a distant echo, drowned out by pure adrenaline and survival instinct. I didn't have the energy to create my weapon. I could only be a shield.

I planted my feet on the icy ground, crossing both my arms in front of my chest as the first ice dragon slammed into me. The impact felt like being hit by a freight train. I was thrown backward, the armor on my arms creaking under the pressure. Before I could recover, a second dragon attacked from the side, its claws scraping against my chest plate with a piercing screech. Then a third, and a fourth. I was surrounded, bombarded by ice attacks from all directions. I could only parry, block, and endure, each impact draining my already depleted energy and sending new cracks throughout my armor.

Esdeath watched from her throne with an amused smile. She was enjoying this show. She was enjoying seeing this desperate resistance. "Look at you," she said, her voice carrying clearly amidst the roaring ice storm. "So much resistance. So much misplaced spirit. That's what I like about you, just as I liked it in him." She looked at me as if I were a work of art she was shaping. "I will break that spirit, crush it to dust, and then I will rebuild it in my own image. You will be my strongest general. My partner."

A giant ice hand formed from the ground and gripped me, lifting me into the air. I struggled, but its grip was too strong. I could feel my armor beginning to crack under the immense pressure. This was the end. I had failed. My signal... did it even get through?

In the volcanic cave on the other side of the island, a small red light flashed on the device Endeavor was holding. The signal had arrived.

His face, usually filled with anger and impatience, now twisted into a savage, joyful grin. He had been waiting. He had been holding back his greatest power. And now, the time had come. "Finally," he growled.

He no longer held back. He unleashed all his power. The fire that had just been smoldering all over his body now exploded into a white-blue inferno. The entire cave where he was hiding began to melt around him, rock turning to magma. With a roar that would rival any dragon's, he shot out of the side of the volcano, no longer as a hero, but as a man-made sun. He flew high into the sky, positioning himself directly above the center of the island. Directly above us.

He saw the scene below him: a volcanic landscape that had been transformed into an ice kingdom, and in its center, an arrogant ice woman about to claim her victory.

"You may be a queen in your world," Endeavor roared at the empty sky. "But here, I am the king!"

He took a deep breath, gathering every particle of heat and energy in his body. This was no longer Prominence Burn. This was something more. Something he would only use if the world were on the brink of destruction. His true ultimate move. Prominence Nova.

He released it.

It wasn't a torrent of fire. It was an explosion. A blinding, omnidirectional wave of heat and light that exploded from his body, spreading across the entire island in the blink of an eye.

At the U.A. underground command center, all the screens showing thermal data from the island turned completely white. "OFF THE CHARTS! ALL THERMAL SENSORS ARE BEYOND THEIR LIMITS!" a panicked technician yelled.

"My god..." Ryukyu whispered, staring at the blinding white screen in horror and awe. She couldn't imagine the level of power required to do that.

On a high-speed motorboat racing across the ocean, Akame saw it. The sky above the horizon in front of her suddenly lit up, as if a second sun had risen in the middle of the night. A devastating heatwave hit her boat even from dozens of kilometers away, making the water around her boil. She gripped the hilt of Murasame tightly. She knew that wasn't Esdeath's power. It was something else. Something just as terrifying.

For Esdeath, the arrival of hell was sudden and without warning. In a split second, her world of ice vanished. The giant ice hand gripping me vaporized into steam. Her army of ice dragons melted into pools of water that immediately boiled. Her palace and throne were destroyed into nothingness. The entire island, in an instant, turned from a man-made arctic pole into the surface of a star.

She was surprised, but only for a moment. Her incredible combat instincts took over. She roared in anger as the Demon's Extract within her worked overtime, creating an incredibly dense, multi-layered sphere of ice around her, an Absolute Zero shield to protect her from the unimaginable heat.

And she laughed. In the middle of the fiery hell created by her enemy, inside her rapidly melting ice cage, Esdeath laughed with joy. "INCREDIBLE!" she roared, her voice echoing even amidst the roar of the fire. "SO THIS IS YOUR TRUMP CARD! THIS IS THE BATTLE I'VE DREAMED OF! I AM SO, SO HAPPY!" She wasn't afraid. She felt alive.

I myself fell from the vaporized ice grip, landing hard on the now red-hot volcanic rocks. The heat should have melted my armor and burned me to ash in an instant. But something else happened.

The Incursio armor all over my body, which had been cracked and nearly destroyed, now began to glow with an intense red light. It didn't melt. It drank the heat. I felt an incredible energy, the energy from Endeavor's Prominence Nova, flow into my armor, being absorbed, converted into fuel. My pain and exhaustion vanished, replaced by a wave of power so great it made me tremble. The cracks on my armor closed, and its black surface was now coursed with red veins that pulsed like magma.

I stood up slowly, feeling a power I had never felt before. I was a walking nuclear reactor. I could feel Tyrant's rage within me, also rejoicing at this new power, pushing me to unleash it all, to destroy everything. But I held it back. I controlled the rage, channeling it into a cold determination.

I looked across the plain that had now become a sea of lava and molten rock. In its center, there was a giant ice sphere that was rapidly shrinking, and inside it, I could see the silhouette of Esdeath. She was the cornered goddess of winter. And I... I was the dragon knight who had just been fed by the sun.

Our roles had been completely reversed. The battlefield was now mine.

In the middle of Endeavor's man-made hell, I stood. The pain was gone, replaced by a power that felt limitless. I looked at the Ice Queen, now trapped in her melting palace, and for the first time since meeting her, the dragon within me did not scream in fear.

It smiled.