"URGH!!"

  Runelt bleeds as he holds her ice katana with his bare hands. His hands and stomach are beginning to freeze due to the massive temperature drop of her ice katana compared to his body temperature and the surrounding area's temperature.

  "I apologize, I didn't mean to actually stab you, cause I expected you to move away given your show of speed just now."

  "You're so mean. . . 4th Judge. . . Urgh. . .!!"

  "I once again apologize. Let m---!!"

  Yuki was cut off mid-sentence. Runelt, all of a sudden, uses his Faith power and transforms both of his hands into raging fiery phoenix talons. The ice katana crumbled, and it was also gone from his stomach, but so were his blazing talons.

  Yuki flies away from Runelt in reflex.

  "You baited me? Nice."

  "Thank you for the compli--!! Huh?"

  Runelt notices that her ice katana wasn't entirely crumbled and vanished. He was left confused.

  "(The earlier giant ice shield was a separate creation to the tall knight, but now, isn't that just one long katana? It should've been all cancelled out through our contact just now.)"

  As Runelt is confused, Yuki did something brilliant. The reality of the situation is that as Yuki's ice katana crumbles due to the rules of the Judges, she disconnected part of the katana that hasn't crumbled yet, separating the still-in-shape katana part from the crumbling one. But due to how almost instantaneous the canceling speed of Judge's Faith power is, it was a split second feat that is virtually impossible if being done by anyone else other than, maybe Lily the Queen of Time or Martin, the man who called himself God, however as those two aren't one of the Judges, this feat may only belong to Yuki. She is truly one exceptional Believer, even amongst the best of the best.

  From behind, Runelt realized the spear users are now in range to attack him. He turns around towards the spear users and spawns his 10 phoenix tails again from both of his palms. He controls them to stab through all 10 of the spear users right in their head armor again. They crumbled and vanished just as the spear was only 2cm away from piercing Runelt on his back.

  After that, he immediately went after the only ones left of Yuki's troops, the spellcasters and archers. They are all ready to fire again towards him, but he spews out his phoenix tails again and quickly intercepts all 10 of the spellcasters first, they all got stabbed on the chest and then crumbled and vanished.

  Runelt then opens both of his arms wide and transforms them into a pair of giant fiery wings.

  "FINAL ONES!!"

  Runelt flaps his giant fiery wings, and the force of the wing flap blasts all 10 ice archers into pieces, rendering them useless immediately. And then both of his arms return to normal.

  *!!!*

  Once again, Yuki was behind Runelt, but this time she didn't try to stab him. Instead, two of her dragon heads on her shoulders open their mouth and release icy breath at close range towards Runelt.

  Runelt immediately flies away, but only very short distance, before turning around towards Yuki. He then transforms his entire right arm into the head of his phoenix transformation.

  "Breath vs breath!" said Runelt.

  The phoenix head opens its beak and shoots a raging flamethrower towards Yuki.

  Both the ice breath and fire breath clash. The sound of fire and ice both clashing and crumbling filled the silence of the night in a desert in the middle of nowhere.

  "(This is going nowhere, I have to increase my output.)" said Yuki.

  *!!*

  Runelt felt the pushback from Yuki's output.

  "Now this is gonna be tough! I'll follow you!"

  Runelt also increases his output. The hot and cold breaths are clashing even more intensely that they are starting to affect the temperature of the desert around them.

  On Yuki's side, it started to hail, while on Runelt's side, the sand underneath started heating up. There is no snow falling on Runelt's side, and there is no heat coming to Yuki's. They have created an entirely different environmental hazard with differing temperatures surrounding them that it looks like the sky is all cold blue on Yuki's side and is all bright gold on Runelt's side.

  "2nd Judge, I wanna see more from you."

  *!!!*

  Yuki increases her output so much to the point where the sand underneath her has started to freeze solid, and a blizzard has raged on her side that Runelt can't even see any desert past her visually because of the scale of the blizzard. The immediate pushback from Yuki, in turn, has ignited Runelt's fighting spirit.

  "THIS IS GOOD 4TH JUDGE!!! WANNA GO ALL THE WAY?" hypes Runelt.

  Runelt also increases his output massively that the sand underneath him started glowing in gold from the heat alone. The golden glow was so intensely bright that it almost hurt Yuki's vision.

  "Are you sure we should keep going, 2nd Judge?"

  "You're the one who got me excited!! Don't let me down now!"

  Runelt increases his output even further. His raging fire breath is now pushing back Yuki's icy breath all the way back to her. Runelt is now completely blasting his fire breath so massively that the blizzard on Yuki's side quickly thawed out and stopped, returning the weather to normal cold night desert temperature.

  ". . .I didn't kill her right. . .?"

  Runelt then dismisses all of his raging fire that has been burning on Yuki's side while also creating a path of burnt sand 1400 meters in length, 2 meters deep, and 10 meters wide.

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  *!!!*

  After all of his fire disappeared, Runelt saw Yuki completely stand still without a single burn wound anywhere on her body. The sand near her is also unburnt compared to the ridiculously long burnt sand path behind her.

  Yuki was wearing her ice being made into a gown that was also fully animated, so that it didn't look rigid or stiff, complete with a tiara on the top of her head. She has ice sleeves that almost cover her entire hands, from the fingertips that cut off a bit near her shoulders. She has a snowflake on the center of her torso. She also has beautiful glittery ice skirts covering most of her legs, leaving only her feet with a pair of transparent icy long socks and a pair of icy glass slippers. Her appearances show how much she looks like a queen at first glance.

  One thing that's clearly different is that the ice that she used on the gown was vibrant blue compared to all of her other ice that she's constantly been using, signaling the extreme difference in the negative temperature.

  Normally, Runelt's fire should've canceled Yuki's ice gown on contact, making her move choice entirely pointless; however, his intense, gigantic flame never made contact at all. What happened was that Yuki's ice gown was so cold that it created a dense cold air barrier that Runelt's flame never got past it. This is one of her most powerful creations as the genius Ice elemental Believer.

  Her ice gown and tiara crumble soon after as she no longer needs them.

  "2nd Judge, I think you get way too hotheaded. I know you're fired up, but you need to keep a level head when it comes to being a Judge, especially during Judgment. You'll end up falsely judging someone someday."

  ". . . sigh, you are right. I wanted to disagree just now, but I realized how dangerous I was being. I humbly apologize."

  "You are. . . surprisingly cooperative. I see. I was right about you, 2nd Judge, you are a wonderful person." said Yuki with a flat facial expression.

  "(Huh? Is she flirting? No wait but she said she has her senpai. . . What on earth is she trying to do? Or am I just reading a bit too much into her odd choice of words?)"

  "You are the first elemental type Believer that can shape their elements into these many shapes and forms. You can even move them as if they are animated and alive. That is kinda scary, not gonna lie."

  "I don't limit myself to one shape like most Elemental Believers. I see no reason to do that."

  "That is because just making one shape consistently is pretty hard. Your belief is strong, and so is your Faith power. That's why we need you. Please come with us! At least please listen to what our leader has to say!"

  ". . ."

  Yuki suddenly generates a ridiculous amount of ice.

  "I thought you were stopping? Why are you so stubborn?!"

  "I have no tolerance towards people who can't contain their emotions and proceed to make mistakes."

  "What do you mean? After all that talk about me being level-headed?"

  "You said it yourself that our leader did all of those horrible things out of trauma. I expected better from the supposedly 'leader' of the Judges."

  Yuki's ice began to shape itself. It took a few seconds, but it has fully shaped and takes the form of a woman's figure.

  "You wanna continue?"

  "I won't stop as long as you continue to ask me to work with the First Judge!"

  "I said it was gonna be just a simple meeting! No less, no more!"

  In the middle of the desert, Yuki has created a gigantic human figure of ice that is 10 kilometers tall.

  "This is. . . my most precious 'shape'. I'll say it once again. I don't want to have anything to do with the other Judges! We're on our own."

  Runelt transforms his back into golden fire, and it grows a pair of golden fiery wings. He flies above and ascends to the height where Yuki is. She creates a small balcony on the woman figure's forehead to stand and control the gigantic ice woman figure.

  The gigantic human figure of ice lifts its right arm and opens its palm.

  Runelt also increases the size of his wings, and they are now gigantic and are 7km in length. He spreads his wings wide open.

  "This is going to end ugly." said Runelt.

  Yuki's gigantic figure of ice swings its palm forwards. Runelt flaps his two gigantic wings forward, and it causes a giant shockwave of air. Yuki's gigantic ice figure's hand stopped in midair, causing it to launch a massive shockwave of air as well.

  The two gigantic shockwave clashes. The gigantic clash of thick force of wind sends sands on the desert high above towards the sky in the area. The sand hovering high in the sky immediately blocks both of their visions, creating a sandstorm-like scenery.

  *!!!*

  Both of them felt an extreme difference in temperature of something moving along through the sands above the sky.

  *FWOOMM*

  *SSRRHHIIKKK*

  A flaming talon was stretching under the cover of the sands and grabbed Yuki's left hand, while a frozen wolf head was flying under the cover of the sands and bit Runelt's left hand.

  "ARRGH!"

  "Urgh!"

  Runelt and Yuki both scream in pain, although Yuki's scream is a lot quieter.

  Immediately, Runelt and Yuki activate their Faith power on their wounded hand.

  The frozen wolf head and the giant flaming talon immediately disintegrate upon contact with the opposing Faith power, canceling one another.

  Yuki's cardigan and her sleeves are burnt and her skin is also burnt a bit, while Runelt's forearm internally bleeds and freezes, however. . .

  *FWOOSSH*

  *!!*

  A golden flame engulfed Runelt's entire left forearm. The flame disperses, and his frozen wounds are completely healed.

  "That is cheating, you can heal yourself. Our Faith power will continue to cancel each other. While we may strike and wear each other down towards a victory, you can restore your wounds and be completely fine no matter how long the fight takes!"

  "So, what are you trying to say?"

  ". . ."

  Yuki's gigantic woman figure made of ice suddenly cracks and crumbles on its own as per Yuki's will. She grows a pair of icy draconic wings on her back and slowly descends to the sand below. All of the ice didn't cause any dent or make craters on the sand below as they all crumbled into tiny pieces and disappeared mid-fall.

  Runelt sees her actions, and he, too, descends from the sky and lands on the sand. He turned off his gigantic pair of wings as soon as he landed.

  The gigantic cloud of sand had flown and scattered away to the point it became invisible to human eyes. The vision between them is now crystal clear.

  Yuki froze her burnt wound to ease the pain, even if just a bit.

  "I give up." said Yuki, again with her flat expression.

  "You serious?"

  "Like I said, you can heal. Even if I kept going, I would simply exhaust myself fighting you. Even when I have a chance to win, it will be extremely difficult, seeing how we both are Judges and our Faith powers kept canceling each other. It would cause massive destruction if we both truly went all out. Everything and everyone else around would be involved; that would be against our duty."

  "Everything and everyone else? We're in the middle of an empty, giant desert!"

  "I was talking about my senpai and your sister. You also didn't consider your own sister's safety when you fired off that massive flamethrower at me, didn't u?"

  "I am not that ignorant, my flame never reached both of them because I also paid attention to where they were."

  "Hmm, you may be hot-headed, but you do still think. I must say you flatter me."

  "(Again, with the odd and flirty choice of words?)"

  "So, will you come to the gathering with us? Will you adhere to our leader's request to come?"

  ". . . That I cannot do."

  "Tch! So now we're back to square one. What would it take for you to agree?"

  "I'm looking at this from the opposite perspective, I can make you give up on us joining with the other Judges!"

  "How exactly?"

  "This. . ."

  *!*

  Yuki opens her right hand, and she summons the Sword of Purification.

  "What are you trying to do? Are you trying to trap me inside the dome of light using 'Restoration'? That won't work! That mode only activates towards someone who's fallen into Berserker state or someone with a very intense level of negativity!"

  Runelt immediately goes into his battle stance as a warning to Yuki.

  *!?*

  However, Yuki stabs herself with the sword. The sword turns black, and she pulls it out of her chest.

  "What. . . are you doing?"

  "God never told us, so I found this out by accident. Also, you are far too cautious. I have no more intention of fighting. Rest assured."

  Yuki walks towards Runelt in a calm and composed manner. Runelt notices that and he finally understands that she really no longer wishes to fight, so he exits his battle stance.

  Yuki is now in front of Runelt directly.

  "Here."

  Yuki offers Runelt the corrupted and blackened Sword of Purification.

  "What does this supposed to mean?"

  "Take it to your heart, and it will answer you why I dislike our leader's actions as a murderer!"

  ". . ."

  Runelt promptly takes Yuki's sword. He stares at it for a few seconds. He then proceeds to stab his own chest with it.

  "Urrgkhh!!"

  And with that, as if a bunch of videos of a certain event are rushing through Runelt's head, he receives a memory, a very dear memory of Yuki's past.