Chapter 258 I Don't Think I Came at a Good Time

Her mental energy—far more resilient and abundant than that of mages at her level—surged into the void like floodwaters bursting through a dam.

Verol's consciousness blurred. She felt as if she were floating in water, completely weightless.

A boundless darkness, dotted with countless brilliant points of light, stretched before her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could faintly make out the massive contours of the Aifala Continent.

'The Astral Plane—' she thought.

In her past life, she had been far from the Legendary rank. As an Academy Faction mage who spent her days among experimental apparatuses, she had never set foot in this boundless, mysterious domain—a place her mentors had spoken of countless times, brimming with rare and precious materials.

Yet to her surprise, she had reached this legendary plane beyond the Material Plane so soon after her rebirth. She hadn't even stepped onto the Transcendent Tier path, having only just reached Level 3 as planned.

At this very moment, Verol was highly tempted to indulge her scientific spirit and find something nearby in the Astral Plane to study.

Unfortunately, briefly escaping the Material Plane to arrive here was the absolute limit of what her trump card—dredged from the river of time and known as [Vieror's Extradimensional Banishment]—could achieve.

To move freely, she would have to wait until she possessed her own mage tower or had made ample preparations to fend off the lethal radiation and dangerous enemies filling the Astral Plane.

For now, she could only float here and wait.

Wait for the spell to use the Astral Plane's unique, loose environment—which connected various planes—to completely banish the red dragon, and then teleport her back to the Material Plane.

Deep in her mind, as one of the few trump cards capable of reversing almost any desperate situation she might encounter was consumed, Verol's mental energy was completely drained.

In her Perception, the last sliver of the dragon's furious roar faded into the depths of the boundless darkness.

Intense dizziness washed over her; the entire world seemed to spin.

An unprecedented weakness blossomed throughout her body. Before she could even savor the profundity of traversing space and time, the solid sensation of the earth returned beneath her feet.

'I'm back,' Verol thought.

But her legs suddenly gave out, and her overdrawn body nearly collapsed.

"..."

Her clean staff, pale gray and seemingly made of marble, sank deeply into the wet soil, mud splattering across its shaft.

Her hands trembled as she leaned on the staff, using this piece of Magic Equipment—valuable enough to buy an entire street in a remote town—as a crude walking stick.

Only then did Verol barely avoid falling and tumbling pathetically into the muddy water.

Of course, getting drenched in the rain was unavoidable.

In her current state, she couldn't care about such things anyway.

The moment she was teleported back, her clothes and hair were battered by the torrential downpour.

Forcing back the churning dizziness, she used sheer willpower to maintain her consciousness and keep from fainting on the spot.

Verol looked ahead.

But all that greeted her eyes was an empty clearing.

She could only vaguely make out a few footprints in the mud, rapidly fading under the washing rain.

Even though she had expected this, a hint of disappointment still leaked into Verol's amber eyes.

Before casting the spell, she had instructed her teammates not to leave.

She had also explained how long the spell might take, hoping they would be there to watch over her when she returned.

It was still a long way from the thirty minutes they had agreed upon.

Yet the empty clearing clearly indicated their choice.

It made sense. She had only joined the party temporarily, and had used some unorthodox methods to do so; she had no real bond with these teammates.

To be honest, facing an adult red dragon whose Dragon Breath alone could reduce a person to ashes, she wouldn't have stayed around either, strictly out of self-preservation.

After all, if the banishment failed, it wouldn't be the Spellcaster returning to the Material Plane, but the red dragon. Staying here would just mean waiting to die.

From the perspective of rational survival instincts, leaving was the correct choice.

Verol comforted herself with these thoughts.

But her brain grew increasingly dizzy, as if she would black out and collapse the next second.

Right at that moment.

A pungent stench of blood suddenly surged into her nose, carried by the damp air and washing rain.

It made her entire body tense up instantly, slightly reviving her sluggish spirit.

She turned her head, subconsciously looking behind her toward the source of the bloody scent.

In her line of sight was a familiar figure lying motionless on the ground, the blood seeping from its wounds completely soaking the muddy soil beneath it.

"Sava!?" Verol cried out in shock.

She hurried forward.

There was no need to check carefully. That savage wound piercing entirely through Sava's neck from behind—so gaping that the grass beneath was visible—already confirmed she was a corpse.

Verol hadn't even had the chance to uncover the truth behind the fortuitous encounter that caused the dragonborn's strength to spike.

The young woman's main objective for joining this team—a "big shot" who would stir up storms across the entire Cloudclimb Province in the future, and one of the absolute worst traitors on the Alliance frontlines—was just dead like this?

For a moment, the massive shock left Verol somewhat at a loss.

Her first reaction wasn't to wonder what the escort team had encountered after she left, nor did she look for any surviving teammates around her, or stand guard against potential enemies.

Instead, she focused her last bit of attention to connect with the invisible tributaries of the river of time deep within the void, checking the current World Line Deviation Rate.

In order to prevent the Aifala Continent from falling once again into the endless natural disasters of extradimensional fusion like in her past life, the "World Line Deviation Rate" was her most important—and only—goal after her rebirth.

The dragonborn Sava was the first elimination target in Verol's plan capable of bringing about a shift in the world line.

According to her expectations, as the sinner whose sudden betrayal in her past life caused an entire resistance frontline to completely collapse, Sava's death should bring about a deviation rate of at least 0.05%.

Although Verol hadn't done it herself, since the other party died ahead of schedule, the world line should naturally reflect the change.

'It doesn't even need to be 0.05%. I can accept 0.03% or even 0.02%,' she prayed, but as her consciousness touched the river of time, Verol froze in place.

"H—How is this possible?"

"A 0.3% deviation rate!?"

That was almost six times her estimate!

"Why?"

"Where did that extra 0.25% come from?"

Accompanying the first pleasant surprise since her rebirth was an unprecedented, massive wave of confusion.

0.3% might seem small—not even half of one percent—but knowing that this percentage was based on the main axis of the entire timeline and the entirety of the future Aifala Continent, one would realize the colossal change it represented.

In fact, in Verol's plans, she wouldn't even begin to undertake actions that shifted the deviation rate by a tenth of a percent until she reached at least Level 7 in the future, when she could routinely use the mid-circle spells memorized in her spellbook.

But now, what was clearly just her initial test plan after rebirth had inexplicably brought such a massive return.

After the surprise came a fright born of the unknown; the situation had spun far beyond her control.

Her cheeks were incomparably pale from the overdraft of her mental energy. Leaning on her staff with both hands, her chestnut ponytail swayed erratically in the air as her head moved.

Verol urgently wanted to find the source that had caused such a dramatic shift in the timeline.

Then, a long, drawn-out wolf howl coming from behind a small hill not far to her front-left caught her attention.

Clenching her teeth, she slowly and carefully dragged her body in the direction of the sound.

At the same time, she pulled a small vial of blue potion from her waist pouch, tilted her head back, and downed it.

Even though her head throbbed with a pain like millions of needles stabbing into it, she still forcefully stirred her mental energy to touch the crystal atop the staff in her hands.

While completing her magical defenses, she also readied herself to flip open another trump card.

Step by step.

Her rain-soaked beige robe drooped heavily, and her small, mud-splattered leather boots left faint footprints on the ground.

The torrential rain seemed to grow heavier.

At this moment, the chaotic roar of raindrops smashing against the earth felt like the only sound left in the world.

The path around the hill wasn't actually long; even a farm child could have playfully run past it in moments.

But from Verol's perspective, it was the longest journey she had ever walked in her life.

At some point, that strange wolf howl had faded away.

Replacing it was an increasingly thick, pungent stench of blood.

She desperately wanted to see clearly what had happened behind the hill, but alongside the anticipation in her heart lurked an indescribable resistance.

It was just like in her old laboratory, facing an experimental result that had finally been barely completed after months of countless tweaks.

The hope for success and the fear of failure lingered in her heart simultaneously.

Finally, Verol rounded the hill.

The first thing she saw was another stiff corpse lying motionless on the ground.

Its head was missing, and the blood spurting from the severed neck steamed hotly in the rain.

Judging by the body's clothing and attire, it shouldn't be a member of their team.

Then, she saw a left and right arm—originating from who knew where—lying quietly on the blood-soaked grass.

They looked like parts of a doll torn apart by a mischievous child.

And finally, in the very center of the clearing, stood a terrifyingly massive black wolf—savage, seemingly born from shadows and darkness as if it hailed from the abyssal hells.

Rumble— Thunder crashed across the heavens, and dark, leaden clouds churned, brewing an aura of death.

A dense curtain of rain shrouded every inch of her vision.

As if sensing the gaze from behind, the black wolf opened its Wolf's Maw and dropped the headless corpse in front of it. It slowly turned its head. A phantom wolf howl echoed silently in Verol's mind as the wolf's cold, harsh black eyes—still brimming with remnants of violent killing intent—met her amber gaze.

The young woman's body stiffened instantly. She felt a chill shoot straight from her tailbone up to the crown of her head, locking her entirely rigid.

Her vision suddenly blurred for a moment.

In the next second, the giant black wolf was washed away by the rain.

Revealing the tall, slender figure holding an Iron-Gray Greatsword, radiating an even more freezing and ruthless aura.

The pitch-black eyes meeting hers quietly magnified, swallowing up her remaining consciousness like a black hole.

In that instant, the nightmares that had invaded countless nights of hers returned: the "Death Omen," the bloody ground paved with viscera and severed limbs, the towering spire built from skulls...

The shadows carved deep into her heart from her past life erupted in her mind, accompanied by an indescribable, boundless terror.

Roll—

A viscous dampness carrying residual warmth splashed onto her face. It was as if something had suddenly dropped from the sky in front of her, rolling all the way to her feet.

Verol subconsciously looked down.

It was face up.

Lifeless eyes, brimming with terror, stared back at the young woman.

She stood there, dumbfounded.

Lying quietly at her feet was Trevelyan's head, caked in muddy water and blood.

Boom— A blazing flash of lightning struck down from the clouds, followed by an earth-shattering thunderclap that swept through the air.

Her already heavily overdrawn mental willpower, which had been pushed to its absolute limit after casting the spell, finally collapsed under the terrifying impact of the scene before her. The severed head rolling to her feet became the last straw that breaks the camel's back.

Verol's frail body, leaning on her staff, suddenly violently twitched twice before her eyes rolled back, revealing the whites.

With a thud, she collapsed onto the ground.

Passing out entirely.

Awoo— A wolf howl rang out once again.

The ruthlessly cold figure crossed the spatial divide through the effect of a combat technique, arriving in front of her in the blink of an eye.

Xia Nan took two quick steps forward, bent down, and placed his fingers just below the young woman's nose.

Feeling the breath against his fingertips, he finally let out a sigh of relief.

He stood up and scratched his head.

"When did she get back? She didn't make a sound."

He had thought it was another enemy sneaking up for an ambush, but surprisingly, it was just his teammate who had finished casting her spell.

At the same time, he guessed that perhaps Verol had expended too much energy casting the spell, which was why she fainted the moment she saw him.

However, since she had returned alive, the red dragon should have been banished to another plane, just as she had promised.

This allowed Xia Nan to breathe a sigh of relief.

Recalling Verol's previous instructions, he bent over, took a pale blue potion marked with the letters "VI" from the mage girl's waist pouch, supported her head, and forced it down her throat.

'This should do it,' Xia Nan thought.

He then left Verol lying in the muddy water and turned to rush in the direction of the Half-Elf.

He naturally knew how to prioritize.

Right now, the red dragon was banished, and he had chopped off the heads of the two enemies as if they were Goblins.

There was no more danger on the field.

Feeding Verol the potion she had specifically requested earlier was the absolute limit of what he could conveniently do after confirming she was still alive.

Over there, Hai'an and Wood seemed to be severely injured. He needed to hurry over and see if there was any chance to save them.

"Save the young master first!" Wood's hoarse roar echoed from the clearing on one side, reaching him when he was only halfway there.

Seemingly having just regained consciousness, the normally resolute and calm middle-aged man was now lying weakly on the ground. His left arm was completely gone, and a pair of daggers lay scattered beside him.

Upon seeing Xia Nan's figure, he ignored the blood spurting from his severed limb. Enduring severe pain that would have triggered an ordinary person's bodily defense mechanisms, he reached into his waist pouch with his intact right arm and tossed over a Healing Potion in noticeably more exquisite packaging.

Extending his left hand, Xia Nan caught it out of the air.

Xia Nan didn't stop his steps, arriving by Hai'an's side in a single breath.

Without any wasted movements, he poured the entire bottle of potion directly into the Half-Elf's mouth.

Pfft—

Pus and blood, mixed with silvery-white venom, sprayed out from his wounds.

His breathing, which had been frantic and gradually weakening, smoothed out in response.

Although he wasn't completely healed, his life had clearly been saved.

Xia Nan stood up and gave a thumbs-up to Wood—who was deathly pale and nervously watching them from behind—signaling that there was no major problem.

Only then did he walk briskly over to help the man bandage his wounds.

With this, the battle was completely over, and the wounded had received treatment.

Xia Nan only hoped that whatever they harvested while cleaning up the battlefield would make up for the losses their escort team had suffered on this trip.