Chapter 347: Downpour (03)

--This Chapter is written in Mia’s POV--

Following Turner’s scent led me down a hill and into a small clearing.

I could smell exactly where he was hidden, but the moment I jumped him, I got stuck in a thin layer of faint green water that glued to my feet and arms.

It felt too sticky and rubber-like for simple [Water Magic], yet I couldn’t feel much mana emanating from the wall.

The more I struggled against the green layer, the harder it became.

With no better choice left, I retreated away from it, only to find that the wall now surrounded me.

Turner: "Would you look what I caught? It’s not often we see a beastwoman capable of beastifying that much."

He appeared from behind one of the trees ahead of me.

Using his index finger, he drew a circle on the green water, cutting it like plastic.

Turner: "It doesn’t matter the tribe. Your kind always rushes ahead... So dumb."

The hole he created was large enough for me to see his ugly face clearly; the mercenary wore a smug smile, as if he had already won.

Like a veil falling around me, the water wall shrank from every direction.

However, the snow of my Beastification fell on the green water’s ceiling, freezing it in an instant.

I leaped into the air, breaking the thin layer of ice and landing behind Turner.

The man didn’t even manage to turn his head in time to react, and yet, a pink water whip caught my punch.

Mia: "Tch."

I formed icy blade gauntlets over my fists and forearms, but the one-second window Turner’s water whip bought him was enough for a purple wave to crash against me.

Though I broke past the purple wave, the added weight paralyzed me, and the ground was completely soaked with his water magic.

The forest had turned into his territory.

I could only maintain a small section of it filled with my snow.

What bothered me the most, however, was how little mana he seemed to have spent.

The wave hurt me too much for someone of his level, and the gravity effect was equally strong.

That felt like a spell, but he had not chanted a single line...

After a second had passed, I was able to move my legs again.

At the same time, the water in the ground had formed small, colorful puddles that scattered through the field.

Purple water chains burst from these puddles.

I couldn’t move recklessly with the minefield around me, and my increased weight still slowed me down.

The gravity effect seemed to decrease with time, so I expanded the falling snow into large, snowflake-shaped shields to block the first chains with magic.

Making sharp turns, I avoided both the puddles and the chains, and with my speed returning to normal, I closed the distance.

This time, I made sure nothing would stop me, and my knee slammed against Turner’s chest.

He held tight to his book even as he tumbled back, and as the pages flipped uncontrollably, the rain changed color.

I already had the timer of my Gift’s Battle State triggered with Milo, so instead of resetting it to boost my stats, I triggered the Hunt State.

It should’ve lowered Turner’s mana to the point that he would only get weak splatters from his spells even if he were a great mage, but...

The pink raindrops stopped in midair as if time had frozen.

I thought the falling snow would be enough to protect me even if I didn’t push further into my Beastification to spread it into a larger area, but with every single raindrop turning midcourse toward me, the rain was just too dense.

Despite raising a curved barrier of ice around myself, the effects of Turner’s pink water overwhelmed my senses.

My nose felt numb.

My eyesight was blurry.

An annoying ’ding’ repeated in my ears.

Most troublesome of all, when I tried to lift my right arm, the left one responded instead.

Miwen: "...Someone’s struggling."

Even though my senses were so cloudy, my ears picked up the sound of his voice and twitched on their own.

My heart beat faster than during the battle, and I had to actively stop myself from sighing.

Mia: "Took you long enough, idiot."

I stood up, letting the ice barrier melt.

Turner was nowhere to be seen, and no matter how much I sniffed the air, I couldn’t catch his scent.

It was like the rain had completely washed away any tracks I could follow.

Miwen: "Better safe than sorry, right?"

As he lifted his hand and approached me, I kicked his stomach with enough force to drive my foot into it.

Miwen: "W-What are you doing!?"

I tried using the Battle State to reset my timer, but my Gift found no valid target.

The Hunt State was the same.

As "Miwen" faded into fog before my eyes, I followed his scent through the forest.

Once I found him again, I narrowed my eyes.

Miwen?: "Oh, that’s where you are-"

Wrong order.

Miwen often smiled before speaking. He was that sure of himself when he had something dumb to say.

Miwen?: "Mia? Wait-"

I smashed his skull and moved on.

The next Miwen I found was even worse. He stared at my face for a second too long.

The real Miwen would normally check my entire body first, looking for something to provoke me with.

Mia: "Ha... Haha..."

Hunting Miwens through the forest was incredibly fun.

Their smiles were almost as smug as my idiot husband’s.

I had always wished I could just kick them out of his face...

Now I had an excuse to do just that.

After a few minutes and a dozen or so Miwens, my nose finally picked up Turner’s scent again.

He was sitting on his knees, waiting for me at the entrance to a cave, only a kilometer away from where we had left off.

Miwen?: "Kitty-"

His scent was off, his voice cracked, and even if he were the real Miwen, I’d have punched him for that.

Turner: "You know... Girls your age don’t normally hit their crushes like that."

I couldn’t stop a small laugh from escaping me.

Thanks to his illusions, I got to relieve so much stress...

I was in a great mood.

Mia: "Is that so? I wouldn’t know. My love for him is that aggressive."

Purple and blue water streamed in circular canals on each of Turner’s sides.

Since no faint green water screen stood between us, I stepped outside of the forest and into the open.

Mia: "...You could have gotten further away. Why this place?"

He probably used the time to lay a trap, but no matter where I looked, nothing about this place seemed off.

Magic already wasn’t my strong suit, and with the book casting manaless spells, I needed a minute to search the surroundings thoroughly with my mana.

Turner: "Your snow is quite tiring. I couldn’t get much farther than this, so I had to make a bet..."

There was no particular smell coming from the cave, but its soil and walls had definitely been washed with his water magic.

Mia: "Did it pay off?"

The mercenary smirked and closed the book in his hands.

The water circles beside him stopped, and the man stood up.

Turner: "We’ll see. I do have one question for you, if you don’t mind answering."

I still had no idea what trick he was hiding, if any.

He could also be trying to buy time, but...

Miwen and the others would soon be done, and the jaguars wouldn’t take more than a second to find me.

Wasting time worked in my favor more than in his.

Turner: "The book says those illusions were almost perfect. How did you figure them out from the real thing?"

Almost perfect.

That was it.

Mia: "I can recognize the sound of his steps from kilometers away... I can tell how long he’s worn a shirt just by how much it smells like him, even if he’s only worn it for a minute..."

There was just so much; I could go on and on.

Mia: "The length of his stare. The warmth of his breath. The cadence of his words. The tilt of his head. His smell. His attitude..."

I got a little carried away but...

Mia: "You could watch him for a hundred years, and you still wouldn’t know him the way I do."

Only after speaking all that did I realize what that meant.

It was so embarrassing that my face heated up, but luckily, Turner was the only witness, and he’d soon be taking this secret to his grave.

Turner: "Oh... Someone with your strength and awareness could make a killing with us. Have you ever thought about becoming a mercenary?"

He lowered the book, almost disarmingly.

It was just a tiny gap, but the book wasn’t closed anymore.

Mia: "I’m already in an army. Besides... Taking people from their homes to sell them as slaves... I heard that too many times, and it always made my blood boil."

Hamperlon had done the same to my tribe for nothing more than shiny rocks in a cave.

It felt disgusting.

Turner: "Haha... But isn’t this entire phase of the Divine Event about taking ownership of others through force?"

He was not wrong.

But precisely because I didn’t want to see Miwen do that, I suggested the marriage alternative to Fenya.

The current prisoners of the Kingdom, Sabrina and Edmond, were an exception. Even Nissa and Jackie were more about stopping something dangerous, and they lived tranquil lives, but while this was currently fine to me...

It was a slippery slope I’d rather not see him slide too far down.

Mia: "I guess you are right. But since I’ve answered all of your questions, how about returning the favor?"

The ground shook slightly beneath my feet.

I tensed the muscles in my legs, ready to jump at a moment’s notice.

A second passed, and nothing but silence hit me.

Mercenaries were hardly the type to play fair, but they loved boasting and talked more than they should.

Mia: "The elf you saw with us, Kiara... She said you’ve captured her friends. Tell her where you kept them, and I’ll convince my husband to let you live through this one."

Turner briefly furrowed his brows before his lips curled into a sinister smirk.

Turner: "I sold the one girl from that party to a doll maker. As for the two men..."

I didn’t need to hear it, and he thought it was much funnier not to say it; instead, he pointed his index finger to the ground.

My gaze lowered to the snow around my feet.

The underground rumbled loudly.

A moment later, a massive stream of blue water burst up beneath me.

I dodged it by leaping back, but one after another, dark blue and deep purple water pillars exploded before me.

The water surging upward then curved in the air, releasing a barrage of bullets my way while the main body burst beside me.

It was a continuous attack on a scale that matched Elizabeth’s...

Mia: "No. Not really."

After spending so long with the Demon Queen, I had started to forget how fearsome it was to fight her at her best.

Deep down, I knew it’d be an insult to compare this to what she was capable of.

Still, she was the best metric I had for the non-stop onslaught of water magic I had to face.

I knew the purple water’s effect and blocked it with my snowflake shields.

The blue water, on the other hand, I focused on dodging.

Every time I stepped toward Turner, another pillar would burst before me.

Hiding behind the trees wasn’t effective. The snow of my Beastification told him exactly where I was.

I couldn’t afford to lose my Beastification, though.

He’d hit me with purple rain, or worse, pink rain.

Mia: "Haah..."

Keeping up my Beastification was starting to take a toll on my mind.

My thoughts were slightly slower, and the faint voice whispering into my head grew more annoying by the second.

I could feel a couple of familiar scents approaching from two directions at high speeds, but I couldn’t focus enough to identify them.

The answer to both problems was the same.

I let loose my grip, ceding more control to the voice in the back of my head.

It was like I had entered a new world.

My fur grew so thick, the air felt chilling.

With how long my fangs had become, I could barely close my mouth without biting into my own lips.

I could only push my Beastification this far without relying on the effects of my [White Queen Of The Snow Hunt] skill, but I didn’t want to reveal all I had unless it was necessary, and...

It was enough.

I could see the cracks in the earth before it would burst.

I could run past them before the water streams would break through.

I could reach Turner.

Turner: "You-"

The two canals around him burst into swirling pillars that protected him.

I dashed into the water.

Despite how it whipped me, I made my way across.

My fangs reached Turner’s arm, and I ripped it from his body, book and all.

The man ran from me, using [Wind Magic] to propel his feet.

It was such crude magic compared to the book that even after beastifying more, I could feel the mana.

Not only that, it was far too slow.

Unfortunately, one of the familiar scents I had sensed earlier finally showed up.

Erik: "...Seems like I finally got lucky for once."

The mercenary’s eyes widened before he looked back and smirked.

Turner: "Hah... Haha... My bet might have paid off, after all..."

I triggered the [White Queen Of The Snow Hunt].

At the same time, I prepared to send a request to Miwen so I could flee to the Kingdom.