Chapter 97: Thirteen Minutes of Mayhem

“Dammit!”

For the first time, Mogras’s roar was laced with a raw, obvious cocktail of shock, fury, and weakness.

No matter how hard he racked his rust-addled brain, he couldn’t fathom how the battle had collapsed into this utter catastrophe. This was supposed to be a surefire encirclement, the perfect stepping stone for his promotion.

First, the elven apprentices, who should have been crushed like insects, had suddenly fought with the ferocity of berserkers, as if high on some arcane battle stimulant.

Then, a completely beyond understanding pink-haired priestess had appeared out of thin air. She had unleashed a “divine art” he’d never even heard of, a golden storm that had vaporized hundreds of his elite subordinates on the spot.

Now, of the two lieutenants he relied upon most, one was being thrashed and sent rolling across the ground like a broken toy, while the other was so terrified he didn’t dare show his face, cowering somewhere in the shadows.

And he himself, the mighty Mogras, was being systematically dismantled by Eldara—the very same elf who had been on the verge of death just moments ago but was now brimming with impossible vigor.

His once-terrifying strength, a maul against a rapier, felt clumsy and artless against her fluid, unpredictable bladework. Every time his massive axe crashed against her sword, he felt its momentum expertly parried, its force bled away into nothingness. In the next instant, her blade would find the gaps in his guard from impossible angles, sinking into the weak points of his armor.

What was even more fatal was the constant, looming threat of the pink-haired priestess’s weapon. Her muzzle, aimed from the distance, felt like a divine arbiter’s gaze fixed upon him, ready at any moment to unleash that deadly, golden rain of bullets.

He had tasted its power himself.

That wasn’t a battle; it was a war of attrition fought by burning through raw mana! Even his vast reserves of death energy couldn’t withstand that kind of expenditure.

He couldn’t let this drag on any longer.

Mogras’s soulfire flared violently within his skull as a desperate, insane idea took root.

“Eldara! You forced my hand!”

With a final, desperate roar, he abandoned all pretense of defense, allowing her cold, gleaming blade to plunge straight into his chest.

Squelch!

The longsword pierced Mogras’s breastplate without resistance, the tip emerging clean through his back.

Yet, Mogras let out no cry of pain. Instead, a hideous grin stretched across his skeletal face. His free left hand shot out, clamping around Eldara’s sword arm like a white-hot vise.

“Got you!”

Eldara’s brow furrowed. She immediately sensed the trap and tried to withdraw her sword and retreat, only to find his grip was as unyielding as forged iron.

At the same time, the death energy surging from the wound in his chest didn’t dissipate. Instead, it began to condense frantically, swirling at an unmatched speed until it formed a pitch-black, impossibly dense vortex.

“With my source power as sacrifice! Death Decay!”

BOOM—!

A visible shockwave of pure, necrotic energy exploded outward with Mogras at its epicenter, carrying with it an aura of absolute withering and decay! This wasn’t a targeted attack; it was an indiscriminate, domain-style curse that swept across the entire battlefield.

“Not good! Retreat!” Celeste’s expression shifted instantly.

She could feel the malicious, corrosive power contained within that black wave. It was on a completely different level from the ambient energy clinging to the undead knights.

Even as she shouted the warning, she didn’t hesitate to swing her weapon around and pull the trigger.

“Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!”

The golden barrage roared to life once more, a torrent of holy light aimed at neutralizing the spreading death domain. This time, however, the bullets vanished into the encroaching darkness like sparks into an ocean, their light extinguished with barely a ripple. They managed to slightly fade its color, but they couldn’t stop its relentless advance.

Eldara, at the very center of the blast, bore the full brunt of the attack.

She felt a force of extreme, soul-deep cold envelop her, frantically corroding her armor, seeping through her flesh, and even attempting to pollute her very spirit.

A muffled groan escaped her lips. The pristine physical state Celeste had just healed her to began to decline rapidly once more.

The elven knights, who had been busy hunting down the last of the undead, were also caught in the sudden shockwave. The sound of hissing filled the air as their armor began to corrode, and many of their faces turned pale as their movements grew sluggish.

“Dammit! It’s an area-of-effect curse!” Su Wan reacted instantly, slamming the butt of her staff into the ground. “Frost Nova!”

An ice-blue ring of frost spread out from her, attempting to freeze and hinder the curse’s power, but the effect was minimal.

“Forget the minions! Selene, shield up! Xia Lian, covering fire! We’re falling back!” Celeste made a snap decision, her voice cutting through the chaos.

Just as the battlefield descended into turmoil, Mogras, the architect of it all, used the cover of his own explosion to make a move no one expected.

He released his grip on Eldara. The skeletal warhorse beneath him let out a mournful cry, its four hooves digging into the earth before it launched itself backward, carrying its master away from the front line at a full gallop.

He was running.

He had actually unleashed a high-cost, resource-draining ultimate ability just to create an opening for his own escape.

As if on cue, Ghost Blade, who had been lurking in the shadows, and The Witherer, who was still struggling on the ground, acted in perfect unison.

Ghost Blade’s figure dissolved completely into the darkness, vanishing without a trace.

The Witherer, meanwhile, used a surge of dark energy to crudely reattach his severed hands to his wrists. With trembling fingers, he pulled a pitch-black scroll from his robes and tore it open. An unstable spatial rift immediately yawned open beneath him, swallowing his broken body whole.

In the span of just a few seconds, the three bosses had paid a heavy price and vanished from the battlefield, each using a different method to ensure their escape.

Confirming that the enemy commanders were gone, Celeste finally let out a long, shaky sigh of relief.

‘Transformation, end!’

With a single thought, the gorgeous and cumbersome prayer priestess dress on her body dissolved into motes of light, reverting to her simple starting robe. The Sky-Piercing AK-47 in her hands, which had been spitting holy fire just moments before, shimmered and transformed back into a harmless-looking pink magic wand.

Following her lead, the giant holographic screen overhead, which was still blasting a fan-made rock anthem, flickered once and then popped out of existence.

The world was finally quiet.

And with the silence came a wave of exhaustion so deep it felt like a physical tide crashing over her.

“Hah… hah…”

Celeste leaned heavily on her staff, panting for breath as sweat beaded on her forehead. She felt like her arms were made of lead, so sore and weak she could barely lift them, and a tremor ran through her legs.

This permanent character card was unbelievably cool and brutally effective, but the side effects were no joke.

It had only been thirteen minutes, and she felt like her very essence had been scooped out. If she’d had to keep it up for any longer, she was certain she would have collapsed on the spot.

“Sis! Are you okay?!”

Selene rushed to her side in a single stride, steadying the swaying Celeste with a look of pure worry on her face.

“I’m fine,” Celeste managed, waving a dismissive hand. “Just… a bit drained. It’s like that time I turned into the Maid Knight.”

She fumbled in her system inventory, pulled out an energy drink, and chugged it down. “I’ll be fine after a little rest.”

Su Wan and Xia Lian gathered around them as well.

“You…” Su Wan began, her eyes a complex mixture of shock, curiosity, and a trace of bewilderment—the look of someone whose entire understanding of the world had just been shattered. “The power of this ‘Heroic Spirit’ of yours… it’s just too outrageous, isn’t it?”

She knew Celeste had a trump card in her Heroic Spirit possession, but she had never, ever expected it to be this powerful. A single person had suppressed three boss-level monsters.

Xia Lian stood beside her, her gaze flickering between Celeste and the smoking husks of armor left behind by the “purified” undead. She muttered under her breath, her voice barely a whisper.

“The video… it was too much… pulling a Gatling gun from under her skirt… and that ‘Warrior of Love, Barbara’ title… it was just… way too much…”

Even now, she could feel her face burning with secondhand embarrassment. The thought that everyone on the battlefield had just watched that mortifying promotional video alongside her made her want to find the nearest hole and pull it in after her.

Just then, the sound of heavy footsteps approached.

It was Eldara.

She walked over and came to a stop before the four of them. Her pitch-black armor was even more tattered now, scarred with the corrosive marks from Mogras’s final attack, but she stood as straight and unyielding as a javelin.

She raised a hand and removed the hideous, all-concealing helmet, revealing a pale but stunningly beautiful face. Her complexion, however, was far from healthy, and a thin trickle of blood oozed from the corner of her lips, a proof of the lingering effects of the curse.

The entire battlefield fell silent. The remaining undead minions had already been dispatched by the morale-boosted elven knights. Now, every single elf’s gaze was fixed on the mysterious, pink-haired priestess.

Eldara was quiet for a long moment before she finally spoke, her voice still carrying its characteristic chill, but now layered with something else.

“Thank you for your assistance, guests from another world.”

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]