Ch.178Blue Flame

Two swords crossed in midair. A sharp, explosive sound—chaeng!—tore through the air and echoed around them.

To an ordinary person, it would have sounded like a single clash, but in reality, it was the aftermath of dozens of impact waves erupting simultaneously without the slightest error.

In that single crossing, dozens of offensive and defensive moves had been exchanged. Each one carried enough power to easily slice off limbs.

—Mist Spreading.

Serena’s body became blurry before instantly vanishing from Olivia’s sight. With complete composure, Olivia raised her greatsword and swung it down toward her immediate left.

Then, she created two additional arms from her right shoulder, each swinging horizontally and vertically. Three explosive sounds rang out where the three arms had swung.

The sight of three right arms each wielding a greatsword as tall as herself was quite grotesque. But Serena didn’t bother pointing out the bizarreness of that appearance.

It was only natural. Serena wasn’t eloquent enough to use such a hideous appearance as provocation in the first place.

If it had been Charlotte, she would have mockingly remarked that the boy would surely love such an ugly appearance, but unfortunately, Serena was not Charlotte.

‘No… openings?’

Quickly scanning for Olivia’s vulnerabilities, Serena realized there were no gaps to exploit and returned her mist-scattered body to normal.

In response, Olivia’s arms merged back into one. With sickening squelching sounds—eujik, eujik—of flesh and bone being crushed, the two newly sprouted arms were sucked back into the original arm.

The greatsword came down vertically. Serena focused her mind and sliced through the very act of Olivia swinging down her greatsword.

The massive metal that had been falling stopped abruptly in midair. With the cause of the action gone, its effect had disappeared as well.

“Playing childish games, are we?”

Olivia snapped irritably and cut off her right arm that had frozen in midair.

The severed right arm instantly dispersed into black mana and vanished. A new arm sprouted from the empty shoulder, still gripping the greatsword.

Seven more exchanges of offense and defense followed. Serena persistently targeted only one specific area, while Olivia blocked all attacks by repeatedly cutting off and regrowing her arms.

After the thirty-fourth consecutive attack failed, Serena leaped back and firmly gripped the handle of Wind Shear, which was still vibrating from the impact of the clash.

‘…I can see everything else, but I can’t see her life force. Is my level of mastery still lacking?’

Serena had tried cutting everything that might weaken Olivia.

Just as before, she had sliced through the very act of swinging the greatsword to shatter causality, and she had cut through the act of seeing to rob Olivia of vision, or similarly blocked her hearing.

But all attempts had failed. No matter how Serena cut through things beyond the physical and sought opportunities, they became useless when Olivia destroyed her own body and recreated it.

Moreover, this entire process happened so quickly that it never gave Serena an opening, leaving her progress at a standstill.

The ideal scenario would be to cut through Olivia’s life force itself, as she had done to Layla, but… for some reason, Olivia’s life force remained completely invisible to her.

‘Again.’

In the end, the answer was predetermined.

Serena prepared to charge again. She lowered her stance and infused Wind Shear’s blade with mana, building up power. Overflowing with mana, Wind Shear transformed to resemble glass.

In contrast, Olivia casually held her greatsword in one hand, wearing a confident expression.

Despite Serena’s thorough preparation for her charge and Olivia’s casual, sneering defense, their skills were nearly equal.

If either had been clearly superior, the match would have been decided long ago. That was the extent of the skill gap between them.

Of course, this was all assuming Olivia wasn’t using her full power.

“You must really envy me, huh? Your target is so predictable.”

As Olivia’s mockery flew at her, Serena’s forehead tensed when she noticed Olivia’s finger slyly pointing toward her own lower abdomen.

The taunt was accurate. Attacks aimed at the head, neck, heart, or other vital organs were merely bonuses—hit or miss, it didn’t matter. Serena was truly targeting a specific area.

It was the area she had decided to destroy from the moment this creature had provoked her by claiming to have violated her lord. She hadn’t thought of anything else.

She had been so focused on targeting that woman’s lower abdomen that it would have been stranger if Olivia hadn’t noticed.

“Mind your own business. It’s none of your concern.”

Serena growled, sharpening her blade. The very situation of having to exchange words with this creature was utterly humiliating. She needed to rescue her lord as quickly as possible.

“Mind my own business? I can’t do that. After all, knights must pledge loyalty to their lord’s children and serve them too, right? Soon, your future master will be born in here—how can I not care about that? Or are you planning to serve a different master?”

“You fucking bitch—”

Unable to endure Olivia’s provocations that touched every one of her sore spots, Serena cursed and charged forward. Wind Shear’s blade was filled with killing intent.

Serena had no intention of pledging loyalty to her lord’s child. Serve her lord’s child? Why should she?

If her lord were to have a child, it would undoubtedly be Serena’s own child, born after ten months of her own labor pains. Why would a mother pledge loyalty to her own child?

Blue flames flickered at the tip of Wind Shear. The flames rapidly grew in intensity until they enveloped Serena’s entire body. Her charging trajectory blazed with blue light.

A streak of blue lightning shot toward Olivia.

Moon Breaker. Originally, it was a technique that could be life-threatening even to Charlotte if she took a direct hit, regardless of defensive magic, but now its fundamental power was different.

Concepts that hindered the technique’s execution began to be cut away one by one.

First, she cut away the residual mana that disrupted the flow and slightly diminished Moon Breaker’s power. The momentum of the chaotically surging blue flames briefly faltered.

She cut away sound. The sight of enormous concentrated mana without producing the slightest noise created a distinctly uncanny feeling.

Finally, she sliced through the unnecessarily distorted space. Olivia’s world split in two, and Serena mercilessly penetrated between the divided worlds, advancing in a straight line.

Fragments of the split world brushed past her on both sides, but she ignored them all. Serena’s two blue wall-eyes remained fixed solely on Olivia’s lower abdomen.

“Hmm… is that your most confident sword technique?”

Watching Serena charging as an avatar of blue flames, Olivia drew black mana around her body. The black mana soon ignited into pitch-black flames.

“It’s nothing special.”

Then, with her body wrapped in black flames, Olivia kicked off the ground and lunged at Serena. Seeing this, Serena was aghast. That was unmistakably Moon Breaker.

The act of mimicking and using her technique wasn’t what surprised her. Serena herself had done such things countless times, causing all sorts of jealousy and frustration.

What caused her displeasure to surge was her rough understanding of why that woman was deliberately copying her sword technique.

“Shut your mouth.”

—KWAAANG!

Wind Shear and the greatsword collided head-on.

The avatars of blue flame and black flame entangled with each other, creating a shockwave of tremendous force that shook the space. The sky at the point where the shockwave erupted temporarily receded.

The space made of black mana undulated wildly like a coastline hit by waves. Vision distorted, sounds echoed, and the world became jumbled.

Everything in the world warped except for Serena and Olivia alone.

“Ah, I just felt a little flutter in my womb. It means the egg and the sperm my master bestowed upon me have implanted in my uterus. I should think about prenatal care now, so it’s best to avoid violent activities. Don’t you agree?”

“I told you to shut that mouth!”

Olivia smirked as she stroked her lower abdomen, which was engulfed in pitch-black flames, with her left hand. Of course, it was all lies, and Serena knew it.

But knowing something and acting on that knowledge were two different matters.

“If you don’t want to, I’ll make you shut it myself.”

The blue flames enveloping Serena’s body intensified.

Her sapphire-blue wall-eyes remained fixed on a single point. Serena concentrated all her senses on that one target.

Wind Shear, having absorbed mana to its limit and transformed to resemble the finest handcrafted glass, trembled along its blade.

In Serena’s eyes, a sword path appeared—a trajectory that would pierce through Olivia’s left iliac bone, tear through her uterus, and emerge from the right iliac bone, severing her upper and lower body.

She drew in a breath.