Ch.155Surpass – 1

“Why are you asking me why I came?! You don’t even want to answer me?!”

As Laila screamed, pieces of rotting flesh—tinged with yellow and green from extreme decay—fell from her decomposing face.

Maggots could be seen wriggling inside the putrefied flesh, devouring it. Some even crawled out onto her face, attempting to roam across her skin.

At first glance, they appeared to be ordinary insects feeding on a corpse, but the reality was different. They merely squirmed disgustingly on the surface without actually consuming the decayed flesh.

The discolored facial muscles began to regenerate. Rising putrid flesh covered the maggots, and the uneven contours of her skin became somewhat smoother.

It made little difference. Laila was still venting her rage at Serena, and the muscles and flesh supporting her decayed corpse couldn’t withstand the strain.

Mushy pieces of skin left stains on her tattered dress.

Not that Laila possessed healing abilities. In her current state, she existed in an ambiguous form, neither fully alive nor dead.

She was closer to what one might call a ghost or specter.

“Did you come to mock me? Or did you think of another way to screw me over? Tell me, tell me! You didn’t come here to free me now, did you?!”

Between her blackened lips that showed no signs of closing, her gums—with teeth sporadically missing—were exposed. They were half-rotten like the skin covering them.

Even her teeth weren’t normal in color or shape. Some had yellowed, others blackened. Some were half-broken. Not a single tooth had a normal color or shape.

Perhaps because her gums had decayed, weakening their grip, teeth fell from her mouth like in free fall just from her shouting, landing on the floor.

The fallen teeth immediately transformed into gray mist and disappeared, while new teeth sprouted from her gums. Even these new teeth were blackened.

Yet Laila didn’t possess healing abilities.

She was closer to what’s commonly called a ghost or specter, yet if asked if she was a ghost, one would have to shake their head—she was something quite complicated.

The reason Laila was trapped in this hideous form, straddling the boundary between life and death in this dilapidated mansion, was because of magic she had used in the past.

Magic she had desperately used just before Serena beheaded her, in a final struggle against death.

After the boy and Serena reappeared from within the defensive spell, Laila quickly realized they could never defeat Serena with the ragtag group gathered here.

Escape failed due to the boy’s scroll, and all her adventurer allies and servants were slaughtered.

When she sensed that only three beings remained standing in the garden, her desire to live overwhelmed her, and she cast an immortality spell on herself.

More precisely, a spell rumored to prevent humans from dying.

Fortunately, this was a spell first developed at the magic tower where Laila had worked, so she had not only witnessed its creation but had memorized the entire method of drawing the magic circle.

In over a dozen experiments on insects and animals, the immortality spell achieved a remarkable 100% success rate, so it wasn’t unreasonable for the mages to declare it successful.

The problem was that it was far from a spell guaranteeing complete resurrection.

In fact, it was so dangerous that it was never publicly announced and was discarded.

Insects and animals revived by the immortality spell couldn’t strictly be called alive. They showed no signs of life whatsoever.

The insects appeared fine on the surface, but animals were problematic. With blood not flowing through their veins and hearts not beating, it was impossible to call them truly alive.

Unfortunately, Laila had only witnessed the successful immortality spell experiments on insects before fleeing the magic tower, so she never saw the results of the animal experiments.

Because of this, she mistook the immortality spell for a perfect magic and used it on herself just before her death.

“That boy! He knew! He knew what spell I used! He must have known and left me like this! Otherwise, why would he look at me with those eyes?! To make me like this!”

Laila approached Serena one step at a time.

The immortality spell didn’t prevent death—it merely trapped the soul in the body.

In terms of classification, it was most similar to undead, a type of magical creature.

After Serena beheaded her and the spell reattached her head, Laila laughed arrogantly at her successful revival, but noticed something strange in the boy’s subtle gaze.

She fully realized something was wrong when she discovered her heart wasn’t beating, blood wasn’t flowing through her veins, and her skin was gradually growing cold.

The boy decided it would be more terrible to leave her in this state than to kill her, and left the mansion with Serena and her mother.

The mansion was sealed by the scroll, and Laila, unable to bear being alone, revived the adventurers and servants Serena had slaughtered.

Into undead forms like herself.

In truth, the people Laila forcibly revived were true undead.

Unlike Laila, who cast the immortality spell before death, they were revived after death and thus had almost no sense of self.

The master-servant relationship remained intact as they followed Laila’s orders, but they couldn’t despair about their fate. They just wandered slowly, covered in blood with parts of their bodies missing.

Laila screamed in anguish that they couldn’t experience the same suffering as her.

“This rotting skin! The maggots crawling inside! It’s all because of him!”

Once transformed into undead, corpses don’t decay, as undead possess qualities similar to magical creatures.

But Laila’s misunderstood immortality spell had no such preservative properties. She suffered extreme anxiety watching her body rot in real time.

Being a talented mage worthy of entering a magic tower, Laila desperately researched and eventually succeeded in preventing her body from decaying further.

As a result, she transformed into something neither undead, ghost, nor specter, but something in between—though she was no longer human from the moment of her revival anyway.

And that was the end of it.

As her body changed into this ambiguous state, she lost the ability to manipulate mana, and was doomed to spend her life trapped in this mansion with her half-rotten body.

Unless someone with holy power strong enough to purify undead broke through the spatial distortion surrounding this mansion and killed her.

A few months later, the boy visited her alone and expressed genuine confusion about why she had struggled to live when she had the chance to die.

Enraged, Laila had her servants and adventurers tear the boy to pieces, but after allowing himself to be torn apart for three days, he muttered that even this wasn’t enough and simply left.

Since then, Laila had been confined to the crumbling mansion, spending her time in regret.

Until now, when Serena arrived.

“How dare you speak such blasphemy about my lord.”

Serena’s eyes flashed fiercely. The intensity was so strong that even Laila momentarily flinched.

The flinch quickly turned into mocking laughter.

“Your lord, not mine? Why should I respect the one who made me like this? I’ll say it as many times as you want. If it weren’t for him, I could have just cut off your father’s head, buried him, and lived well! But he ruined everything! He turned me into this pathetic thing!”

Wind Shear was swung.

There was no technique or cunning—just a simple swing born from Serena’s uncontrollable anger. Only its power was tremendous.

The single slash cleanly bisected Laila’s body vertically. Her rotten body split wide open, and decayed organs spilled out between the halves.

It was such a swift strike that even Laila herself only realized her body had been cut when her vision split in two directions.

“It’s useless, useless! Do you think you can kill me with such attacks?”

The halved body laughed mockingly at Serena. Then it dissolved into gray mist and returned to its original decaying form in the exact same spot.

Beside her, rotting corpses in rags, each missing some part of their body, slowly began to reveal themselves.

These were the servants and A-rank adventurers under the immortality spell, doomed to live forever in this state with Laila.

“I know.”

Serena calmly dispersed the blue mana surrounding Wind Shear’s blade. Just now, she had reflexively launched the slash because her lord had been insulted.

She hadn’t thought for a moment that she could kill Laila.

“You know and still came here? How stupid! I won’t let you leave! I’ll make you just like me, so die quietly!”

At those words, the surrounding specters all rushed at Serena.

Contrary to Laila’s declaration that she wouldn’t let her leave, Serena could escape anytime by slashing through space with her blade.

After all, she had easily cut through the spatial distortion magic to reach the mansion when she realized the situation differed from her memories.

Serena was a swordswoman who had reached the concept of dimensional cutting—something no other being could even imagine. The spatial distortion around her wasn’t even a problem.

But today’s purpose for coming here was different.

‘You must surpass your limits.’

Her lord’s final words. The key was here.

He had said that in the moment she cut what cannot be cut, Serena would break free from the framework of humanity.

Undead, ghosts, or specters couldn’t be defeated with ordinary magic or physical attacks—only holy power could vanquish them.

Even the slash Serena had just delivered, though somewhat different in nature, had been quickly recovered from by Laila, who then mocked her.

This was the fundamental limitation of the sword.

Just as humans cannot grow two heads or eight limbs no matter how much they train, a swordswoman cannot cut something without substance.

The dimensional cutting technique she had developed to fulfill her lord’s wish was the closest to such a concept. Even Laila in her ambiguous state probably couldn’t withstand dimensional cutting.

But considering that Serena hadn’t surpassed her limits even after perfecting dimensional cutting, that must have been the wrong answer.

That’s why she had dispelled the mana surrounding Wind Shear.

Not relying on high-dimensional techniques manifested through mana, but simply swinging her sword to kill these ambiguous beings surrounding her.

To cut what cannot be cut.

That was the task given to Serena, and the order from her lord.

A wave of specters made of decaying corpses rushed toward Serena. Facing this wave of corpses, Serena pointed Wind Shear.