Chapter 430: Aura Test.

The world held its breath.

Two mystical presences—as different as heaven and hell, the divine and the profane—collided with a simple smile.

And then… the AURAS exploded.

The ground shook as if the very heart of the world had suffered a spasm. The sky trembled, rippling with unnatural colors. Reality creaked like a mirror cracking from within.

KRAAAAAAASH!!!

The magical discharge was a living, brutal, uncontrollable force.

Dozens of witches were thrown into the air like leaves in a hurricane. Market stalls were reduced to rubble. Potion bottles shattered in colorful explosions. Rare ingredients were thrown into the wind like confetti from the apocalypse. Ancient tomes spun in the air before exploding into mystical flames or teleporting away out of instinct for survival.

In the center of the chaos, Morgana, enveloped by a thick shadow barrier, protected herself with one arm in front of her face, shouting something no one heard. The sound was swallowed by the cosmic roar of the collision.

Pandora staggered—just for a second.

A second that said a lot.

Her crystalline aura, once as unperturbed as eternity, trembled. The runes carved into her skin pulsed faster, as if recalculating. The luminous serpent around her hissed violently, coiling tightly around her neck, as if preparing for war.

Pandora’s opalescent eyes narrowed, and the smile on her lips widened—with excitement, not fear.

“…Can you keep up with me?” she said, her voice almost enchanted, like a child who had found a deadly new toy.

In the eye of the magical hurricane, Vergil stood like a living statue of fury.

His aura burned. Alive, unstable, pulsing like a newly awakened heart. The shadows around him trembled, and the ground beneath his feet continued to crack, unable to bear the weight of his power. His eyes, now red as the core of a volcano, burned with a thirst for combat.

He let out a low, hoarse laugh—and there was something animalistic about it.

His teeth seemed sharper, and the usual sanity in his gaze had given way to a wild electricity.

“You underestimated me, you walking crystal,” he said, his voice reverberating like thunder in an ancient temple. “And that was a mistake.”

Pandora raised her eyebrows, then laughed—a sweet, musical laugh… and an absolutely malicious one.

“You’re bold… too bold,” she said, dancing her fingers in the air as crystals swirled around her body like moons in orbit. “You know what they say about playing with fire, right?”

Vergil tilted his head, his horns briefly appearing as shadows behind him, their outlines burning red.

“Yes,” he replied, with a crooked smile. “But in that case, I would like to be just the fire…”

ZAAAP!

The serpent of light shot out like a living bolt of lightning, a line of energy cutting through the air. But Vergil was already moving.

In a fluid, fierce spin, his body twisted in the air like a living blade—and his leg collided with the creature’s side with such absurd force that the impact released a shockwave, throwing even more witches away.

“RUN, YOU FOOLS!” one of them yelled, protecting a basket of floating mushrooms with her own body.

“THEY’RE GOING TO DESTROY THE SQUARE AGAIN!”

“Activate the containment barrier! QUICK!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAH!”

“You’ve already fainted four times today, you idiot!”

While chaos reigned in the background, Pandora stood in front, unperturbed, focused. She raised a finger—and the crystal danced in the air, multiplying into prismatic fragments, sharp as enchanted daggers.

They flew like shots from a magical machine gun.

Vergil did not retreat.

“COME ON THEN, YOU DAMNED DOLL!” he roared, his aura roaring around him like a demonic bonfire about to devour the world.

FWHOOOOOM!

His presence exploded — burning the air, melting some of the crystals on impact, deflecting others with his fists.

PAAFT! KRAANG! — each deflection sounded like bells being smashed by sledgehammers.

Pandora cut through the air as if she were dancing in zero gravity. Her movements were graceful, elegant—but there was no tenderness in them, only lethal efficiency. As if she were conducting a symphony of destruction, shaping the battlefield around her with her gestures.

But Vergil…

He wasn’t an instrument.

He was the entire orchestra, smashing his own instruments to pieces.

His fist came from below — brutal, direct, a comet of pure fury.

Pandora raised her arm, blocking with a crystal shield — but the impact threw her back, next to Vergil, opening a magical vacuum that sucked in the air, the sound… and for an instant, even the light.

FUUUUUUM!

The square froze.

The witches were fallen, hidden, or trembling behind protective spells.

Some recorded everything in magical orbs. Others just prayed to any entity that wasn’t watching the scene with popcorn.

And then…

BOOOOOOOM!!!

They lunged at each other — again.

Fists collided.

Aura against aura.

Chaos against control.

Hell against eternity.

The impact created an expanding magical storm — cutting winds, lightning bolts of raw energy, gusts of heat, cold, and temporal distortions that made the surrounding space twist like wet fabric.

The sky cracked above them. Literally.

A thin, bright, menacing line cut across the heavens — as if the plane of existence were cracking in fear.

Pandora gasped.

But her smile was wide, almost childlike.

Vergil bled.

But his smile was bigger. Perverse. Savage. True.

Their eyes met, and the world seemed to stop again.

There, in the center of destruction, in the eye of the hurricane, there was a second—just a second—of recognition.

Not as enemies.

Not as monsters.

But as… equals.

“You amuse me,” Pandora murmured, her opalescent eyes vibrating with raw power.

“You annoy me,” Vergil retorted, spitting blood on the floor and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Then we’re even.”

The chaos was about to continue.

Pandora twirled her fingers in the air, pulling new fragments of crystal to orbit around her body like enchanted satellites. Vergil wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with a maniacal smile, his muscles tensing, the aura around him seething, ready to explode again.

Both were about to launch another attack.

But then…

SILENCE.

The auras faded.

Vergil felt as if someone had pulled the plug on his body—the heat, the demonic energy, everything disappeared at once, as if swallowed by a black hole.

Pandora took a step back, confused, her crystals falling to the floor like shattered glass, lifeless.

“What…?” she began to ask, frowning.

Vergil turned his head.

And then he saw it.