The clash between Kairo and Wine raged, shaking the very ground beneath the Sand territory.
Kairo summoned torrents of water, forming towering waves that crashed down on the Poison Tribe soldiers. Each strike extinguished their poison clouds and washed away the venomous residue clinging to the battlefield. His elemental control was precise — he wasn't just attacking blindly but neutralizing Wine’s toxins at every turn.
Wine, however, wasn’t intimidated. His purple mist spread further, creeping along the battlefield like a living entity. Wherever the mist touched, the sand darkened, withering into a brittle, lifeless form. It was as though Wine’s poison wasn’t just attacking his enemies but the very land itself.
Yuki, still standing behind Kairo, could feel the shifts in the ground through her heightened senses. The sand was changing — growing brittle, less responsive to her commands. Wine’s poison was corroding the very element she was tied to.
Kairo noticed too. "Tch," he muttered. "He's poisoning the terrain."
Wine chuckled. "That's right, Kairo. It’s not just about you or me — I’m corrupting the land itself. The Sand territory will be mine, just like the rest of the world will be."
He raised a hand, and the rainbow alliance soldiers — Magma defectors, Aqua betrayers, rogue Fairies, and others now poisoned to the core — surged forward again. Their attacks were chaotic but relentless, a mix of elemental blasts tainted by toxic fumes.
Kairo countered, summoning water walls to block the incoming assaults. Each time an elemental attack — a fire blast from a Magma rogue or a vine strike from a corrupted Nature tribe soldier — collided with his water, a hiss echoed across the field as the poison tried to eat away at the liquid.
But Kairo wasn’t just on defense. With a flick of his wrist, he turned the defensive walls into water lances, hurling them with deadly accuracy. Soldiers were knocked back, some screaming as the pure water counteracted their poison-infused powers.
In the chaos, Yuki felt another shift beneath her feet.
The sand — her sand — was still there, hidden beneath the poisoned layer. It was weak, but not completely gone. She closed her eyes, letting her senses extend beyond sight. The movement of soldiers, the flow of water, the creeping poison — she felt it all.
"Kairo," she said softly but firmly.
He didn’t look back but acknowledged her with a slight tilt of his head. "What?"
"I can feel the untainted sand beneath the poisoned layer," Yuki said. "If I can reach it... I can help."
Kairo’s jaw tightened. He didn’t want her to push herself — not here, not now. But he also knew better than to underestimate her, especially after witnessing her earlier burst of power.
"Fine," he said. "But stay behind me."
Wine, noticing their brief exchange, grinned. "Oh, planning something, are we?" His voice dripped with mockery. "It won’t matter. This land will belong to me. Your little blind wife can’t save you."
Kairo’s fury ignited at those words. His water surged higher, crashing down like a tidal storm, sending even more Poison Tribe soldiers flying.
But Yuki stayed focused. She sank her fingers into the poisoned sand, reaching deeper through the layers until she connected with the untouched sand below. Her senses sharpened — she could feel the clean, uncorrupted earth beneath the surface, waiting.
With a deep breath, Yuki willed the pure sand to rise.
It responded slowly at first, struggling against the poison's grip. But then, as her resolve hardened, the clean sand broke through in patches — glowing a faint golden hue — swirling around her like a protective aura.
Wine's smirk faltered. "What…?"
Kairo chuckled, his eyes fixed on the shimmering sand. "Guess you underestimated her."
The battle shifted again. Kairo with his relentless water attacks, Yuki with her newly awakened control over pure sand, and Wine, who now realized that even his poison couldn’t completely claim this land.
The battlefield was a chaotic storm of elemental fury, but in that moment — when Wine’s poison bullets raced toward the innocent Sand tribe people — everything seemed to slow.
Yuki, her senses sharper than ever, felt the energy of her people clustered together. The slight shift in the air as the bullets cut through. The faint sound of the sand shifting beneath their feet as they moved, terrified.
Without a second thought, she moved.
The moment the poison bullets were about to strike, Yuki threw herself between her people and the attack. Instinct took over. She didn't think — she just felt. Her will to protect overpowered everything.
Raising her hand, the untainted sand beneath the group rose in a towering, protective wall. The bullets struck the barrier, hissing as the poison tried to corrupt the sand, but this part of the land — untouched by Wine’s corruption — remained pure and firm.
The Sand tribe people behind her gasped.
No one spoke. They couldn’t comprehend how the blind woman — the undesirable they once ignored — had not only protected them but had done so with incredible elemental mastery.
Yuki's body trembled — not from fear but from pure, unfiltered rage.
Her breathing grew heavy, and her usually calm face flushed red with fury. Her sand rippled around her, responding to her emotions, the grains swirling like a storm at her feet.
Wine watched, his smirk slipping ever so slightly. “You should’ve just stayed in the shadows, girl,” he sneered. “Now you think you can stand against me?”
But Yuki didn’t respond with words.
She let out a shriek — a sound so raw and full of anger it seemed to shake the very battlefield.
“How dare you?” she growled. “How dare you attack people who have nothing to do with this?! They are my people — you have to go through me if you want to hurt a single one of them!”
The sand around her exploded.
Without warning, she unleashed a massive Land’s Wrath — a brutal shockwave of sand and stone — directly at Wine. The force was so sudden and fierce that Wine barely had time to react. His soldiers scrambled to shield him, erecting a toxic barrier, but the blast was too strong.
The poison soldiers who dared to block it were thrown back, knocked unconscious or buried under piles of sand.
Wine staggered, coughing as dust and sand swirled around him.
Kairo stood a few steps behind Yuki, stunned. He had known Yuki was powerful — but this? This was something else entirely.
Her will to protect wasn’t just strong — it was overwhelming.
And it didn’t stop there.
Yuki, her blind gaze locked onto Wine, could sense his energy clearly now. Every move he made, every shift in his stance — she felt it. She didn’t need to see him; her senses had already painted an invisible outline of his entire presence.
“You won’t touch them,” she said coldly.
Then, she attacked again.
She struck the ground, sending earthquakes rippling through the battlefield, knocking Poison tribe soldiers off balance.
With a flick of her hand, she created sand shockwaves — sharp, slicing blasts of compressed sand — aimed straight at Wine, forcing him to dodge or take the hits.
When Wine tried to counter by releasing clouds of purple poison mist, Yuki responded with sandstorms, whipping the air into a frenzy and dispersing the toxins before they could spread.
It wasn’t just the power behind her attacks that scared Wine — it was the precision.
Despite her blindness, Yuki’s attacks were so accurate that it felt as though she could see everything happening around her. Every move Wine made was met with an immediate response — a wall of sand blocking his poison spikes, a blast of earth knocking him back every time he tried to advance.
And the scariest part?
Yuki wasn’t flinching — not even when the poison grazed her skin.
Poison darts that scratched her arms or clouds of mist that brushed her legs seemed to have no effect. It wasn’t that she was immune — Kairo knew that wasn’t possible — but her will to protect her people was so fierce that the pain simply didn’t register.
Wine stumbled back, his once-confident grin replaced with a scowl.
The other Poison tribe soldiers, watching their leader get battered by a woman they thought was a helpless "undesirable," began to hesitate. No one dared interrupt Yuki's rampage now.
Even the collapsed tribes — the ones still conscious enough to watch — were stunned.
Dune, weak and barely able to lift his head, stared in disbelief at his daughter. The same daughter he had cast aside — the one he had once believed to be a burden to Sand Tribe— was now standing at the forefront, defending their people with a strength he didn’t know she possessed.
His voice, hoarse from exhaustion, whispered, “Yuki…?”
The 4 fallen heroes — Arson, Sylvia, Glacius, and Peggy — also looked on, their bodies battered but their minds reeling.
Arson blinked. “She’s… stronger than I thought.”
Sylvia, still weak but alert enough to process what was happening, nodded slowly. “She’s not just strong… she’s looking resolute.”
Glacius observed without saying a word but by his expression, it was obvious he was shocked too.
Peggy was clearly trying to say something, watching with a mix of shock and awe.
But perhaps the most interesting reaction came from the Sand tribe people — the very ones who had looked down on Yuki for years.
They now watched in fear — not of Yuki herself but of the immense power she wielded. The same girl they had once mocked and ignored was now their protector, standing like a force of nature between them and certain death.
Whispers spread among them.
“She’s… Dune’s daughter?”
“An undesirable… has this kind of strength?”
“She’s terrifying…”
“…but she’s protecting us.”
Kairo, still battling the remaining Poison soldiers, couldn’t help but smirk — not at Yuki’s fury but at the expressions on everyone’s faces.
He muttered under his breath, “That’s my wife.”
And at the center of it all stood Yuki — a woman blind to the world’s judgment but fully aware of the danger threatening her home and her husband.
Wine, now bruised and battered, knew one thing for certain:
He hadn’t just provoked Kairo.
He had awakened a beast.