Li realized immediately the damage he did to Lira had stuck with her. The cracks in her armor from his prior few blows remained there, and though it was minor damage, it did give him clues as to how to approach this fight.

"Not like your kind?" scoffed Lira. "No, your kind are true to their nature. They seek chaos and ruin. The end of all things. Abominations that have no concept of goodness or love or all that makes this world and all those like it so blessed."

She poised the spear end of the Prometheas torch towards Li, and even though the torch flame was now out, she did not falter, believing fully in her abilities. "And it is my responsibility that every single one of your ilk should fall, regardless of whether the Guiding Flame can judge you."

"The Guiding Flame of the Prometheas does massive bonus damage to eldritch entities, yes," said Li.

He stood up tall, his towering figure looming over Lira, his shadow faint from the fog and yet still large enough to easily dwarf her. "But you are foolish to have unleashed it when I am utilizing my shapeshifting. Especially shapeshifting at a level so high that only forest spirits such as myself are able to cast it."

"Forest spirit?" Lira took a moment to assess Li, trying to gauge his words, but she continued with the same ferocity in her voice. "No, that cannot be. The spirits and guardians of the forest value life and warmth. You are not that. I sensed it the moment you locked eyes with me. You may wear the guise of a spirit, but you cannot hide your true nature here where the dimensional barriers draw thin."

"I am both spirit of the forest and old one. I can be both chaos and order, and it is order that I have chosen to uphold," said Li.

"Perhaps once, many years ago, I may have believed your words. But I have learned through far too many mistakes on far too many worlds to never trust the words that sputter from your aberrant mouths." Lira lowered her stance just a little, preparing a charge.

Li only stared at her with his fire lit eyes, ready to take her attacks and swat her down if he got the chance, but that was secondary compared to observing what she did.

The molten earth around Lira blew away like water in a pond ploughing up from heavy impact. Her magical aura surged to insanely high levels, and since it was heavily tied with fire, it superheated the earth around her even more until just a second later, she had created an even deeper crater of liquid and burning rock around her.

Her aura formed into red arcane sigils that revolved rapidly around her, granting her a massive boost to all her stats. This was [Arcane Overdrive], an A ranked spell for a subclass of warrior called the Mystic Knight that focused on magic boosted combat.

It was one of the strongest spells in the mystic knight arsenal, heavily boosting all stats in exchange for rapidly depleting mana. As par for course, multiple other buffs surged around her as well, underlining the raging red aura around her with hints of blue and green, but all buffs related to the Mystic Knight class.

Another clue towards confirming Li's suspicions. He retreated, jumping off the lava layered ground with his paws. Before he could even land, Lira was upon him, a reddened blur that zipped past him at hyperspeed, flashes of black lashing out as she struck him countless times.

All around him, she darted, nigh unperceivable to Li in his Howling Ursine form due to its lack of agility, but even then, even if he was at his original form drawing on the stats from the Elden Seed fully, he knew that it would have been hard to keep up.

Lira was far, far, far beyond any spearman or warrior he had ever seen in this world. It was not even close. If Leonid was considered the highest end of mortal might, and Li had to describe the gap between Leonid and Lira, he would say that there was an entire planet's worth of difference between them, maybe more.

She moved around Li in a circle so fast that she melted the earth underneath her even further, and the amount of blows she unleashed went from ten to a hundred to a thousand to countless in a nigh instant, and soon enough, the intensity and pace of her movement and attacks was such that fiery wind started to whip around Li in a raging tornado.

And from that tornado came her blows, blows trained by centuries of training and dotted with high level Lancer skills that Li could barely perceive and recognize.

[Godspeed Slash]. A ranked. A slicing blow thrown with such precision that it reached the realm of the divine, slicing even through space and dealing massive true damage.

[Severing of the Wisdom God]. A ranked. A three-fold series of powerful slashes said to have been used to sever the head of the wisdom god Ganesh.

[Raging Rivers, Crashing Mountains]. A ranked. An eastern themed attack with the spear or sword that involved a hundred strikes thrown so quickly they merged into one single, obscenely powerful strike.

All these hits among countless others battered Li, and he could hear the ground shatter under him, sloshing up lava. Shockwaves from attacks travelled past his body and split apart the earth in all directions behind him, creating massive fissures.

The entire landscape was rumbling and shattering and tearing apart – a true battle between high leveled entities.

And throughout all this, Li kept himself moving back, throwing out the occasional defensive swipe, but he could not hit Lira as she was now, buffed up to the max. Now, he thought, she seemed about as physically powerful as she should have been.

He sustained damage even through the massive regeneration of his powerful passive, and soon, he dipped right below what he knew to be fifty percent health. This was enough damage to use. He used his paws and massive front legs to cover his head, weathering another hundred blows in a half second, but a half second enough to regenerate his throat and head.

Taking in a breath, he used the Howling Ursine's special ability [Thousand Echo Howl], the same ability that had completely eviscerated the eastern golem Lady Zhen. He cast his howl downwards, aiming for an omni-directional blast.

The howl left his lungs like a high ordinance bomb, immediately blowing away the entire layer of molten lava atop the earth before shattering it even further in an even deeper crater. The concussive shockwave of his voice laced with the echoing sobs and wails and laments of countless souls traveled outwards, crashing with the raging red tornado Lira created with her movements.

In an instant, the tornado died down as Lira stopped, having to raise her arm and cast [Magic Greatshield], hiding behind the crimson red shield construct as the howl slammed into her. Countless cracks wreathed the greatshield within a few seconds of impact, and soon, it shattered, blowing her back far into the distance.

Again, though, Lira steadied herself in the air, her thrusters shooting out flame to keep her from flying too far out from the fight. Though she was a dot in the distance, Li could see through his rapidly regenerated eyes clearly that there were cracks lining her entire body.

Damage.

And confirmation.

She was not the real Lira. She was a construct. An absurdly powerful one, yes, but Li knew that Mystic Knights had access to the immensely powerful spell called [Perfect Arcana: The Warrior] that allowed them to create a direct copy of themselves that stood at level eighty but retained all the equipment, skills, and spells of their level 100 self.

It seemed that in this world, it even copied skills and memories, meaning in Lira's case with all her martial prowess, the spell was significantly deadlier.

The only downside was that the construct could not heal by any means and had all the weaknesses inherent to magical constructs. Which included dispelment.

With enough distance made, Li got out of his Howling Ursine form and into his true form. A dangerous thing, because even without Lira's access to the Guiding Flame, he still lost his regeneration on top of staying at half health. But he had already won this fight.

Each of the steps back he had taken in his Howling Ursine form were meant to get him closer and closer to where he had initially planted his cluster of torrentlilies.

He was now close enough to make one quick leap back to the area, and he could see through his empty sockets that Lira was speeding towards him, the thrusters in her armor exploding with fire as she pressed forwards, spearpoint aimed at him.

She was rapidly closing the distance with her boosted stats, and perhaps, if Li had been less careful and observant, she might have been able to catch him.

But that was not Li. He knelt down and put a hand over his arm. He had no regular access to dispelment, but he did have the [Thousand Eye Band], a celestial item part of his core arsenal that had the old one Sho-Gath imprisoned within it.

Like he had done with his fight with Chi-You, he took intentional damage to draw up enough of a blood offering to Sho-Gath in order to access the Old One's arsenal of spells, one of which was an immensely powerful dispel.

Bloody red particles flowed from Li into the band speckled with countless red, bulbous and alien eyes, and the band shuddered, taking in the offering.

Lira was upon Li now, but the waterlilies triggered as she neared. The earth rumbled, and then from deep under the ground, enormous geysers of water erupted, slamming into Lira and sending her hurtling into the sky.

But strangely, as Li willed the band to cast the dispelment called [Smog of the Imprisoned Horror], the spell did not manifest. Instead, the countless red eyes aimed towards Li, training their gaze on him, and then, darkness swallowed his vision.