Chapter 293: Liraya Vs Ines (Round one)

The dark mana slammed into CorpseSlayer with a sound like tearing cloth stretched across the sky.

Liraya held the blade with both hands, feet planted, shoulders locked. The curse-forged steel drank the attack greedily, incompletely, but enough for the dark mana to not get in contact with Liraya’s hands. 

The blast split around the edge and scorched the dirt on either side, leaving two blackened furrows. 

When the light faded, Liraya was still standing. Smoke rose from the ground at her feet.

Ines lowered her hand slowly.

“I should have known,” she said. The mild tone she was using all this time was gone. What remained was cold, personal anger. 

“I should’ve known; like a fool, I invited a goddess into my house. Sat at the same table. Let her listen to my plans. Fuck, how thorough of me.”

Liraya straightened, still gripping the sword. Behind her, Lys remained on the ground, breathing hard, one eye swollen shut, blood still running from a dozen cuts. He stared at the woman’s back as if trying to force a name out of the fog in his head.

Liraya’s voice came out steady, though her arms trembled from the residual force.

“I don’t understand. How could you come to the conclusion I was the Goddess of Fate just because I recognized the sword?”

Ines gave a thin, humorless smile.

“Don’t take me for a fool, immortal. Living in this realm does not mean I am ignorant of what happens above it. I know how things work at your little Pantheon. I know very well only a handful of gods and goddesses hold the authority to send souls back into this mortal world. Fewer still know the true nature of the cursed weapons scattered across this land. Among those of the highest rank, only one is female.” She tilted her head. 

“And guess what her name is? It is none other than The Liraya. The Weaver of Fate.”

She took a single step forward. The knights around the circle remained perfectly still, waiting for Ines to give an order.

“After that, the rest was simply me connecting the dots around me. A village boy who should have died the moment he touched a cursed blade. And you throwing yourself between him and me just to save him. Plus the divine magic’s reek your body gave off since the day we met; it is stronger than anything I have sensed from even the pope or his high priests. It only makes sense if you were the one who sent him here… and somehow got dragged down into a mortal body yourself. That is why you reek of divinity so strongly, and just now tried to protect him, is it not? Tell me I’m wrong!”

Liraya did not answer immediately. The last pieces of the careful mask she had worn for days in front of Ines simply fell away as Ines explained it all like that. So, she found no point in pretending anymore.

She exhaled once.

“Hmmmm, So? What do you intend to do, now that you know about me?”

Ines raised both hands. Dark mana gathered again, denser and more violent than before, coiling around her fingers like living smoke.

“What else? I am just going to kill you with my own hands. Then I will take your soul and use it to widen the reach of my own magic. A goddess walking directly into my path, on the very night I needed greater power… how could I possibly refuse a gift like that?”

She attacked.

The first lance of dark mana screamed across the short distance. Liraya met it with CorpseSlayer, the cursed blade ringing as it absorbed and scattered the force. 

She was not Lys. The sword was not familiar to her the way it was to Lys. Plus, there was the issue of her never wielding a blade in this mortal body. Without her divine knowledge’s access, and her awkward footwork, which was serviceable but imperfect, her swings carried the stiffness of someone who had not lived by the blade. 

Yet, there was this other fact, the weapon itself was still CorpseSlayer, and that alone let her survive the opening exchanges with Ines.

Lys, still on the ground behind her, forced himself onto one elbow. His vision swam. He could only watch as the woman who had just spoken his true name fought to keep them both alive in his place.

Ines pressed harder. A second blast. A third. Each one heavier. 

Liraya blocked, redirected, gave ground in small steps. One of the deflected waves of dark mana tore past her and slammed into the ranks of Ines’s own knights. Two men were thrown backward; a third dropped to his knees, armor smoking.

That was the moment Ines’s remaining composure snapped cleanly in half.

The analytical coldness vanished. What replaced it was pure, focused fury.

“Enough is enough. I have played with you for a long time. It is time to end this. I don’t have all night.”

She stopped casting at range. In a single fluid burst of speed that belied the calm she had shown all night, Ines closed the distance herself. Liraya brought CorpseSlayer up for another block. But Ines did not meet the blade with magic this time. She caught Liraya’s wrists with both hands, twisted with precise, brutal leverage, and tore the cursed sword free from her hand.

Liraya’s eyes widened as she saw Ines not only touch the cursed sword, but grab the hilt of the sword like a seasoned warrior.

Ines reversed the weapon in one smooth motion and drove it forward.

The dark steel punched straight through the center of Liraya’s chest.

Without giving Liraya a chance to fight, Ines just gave the final blow, ripping her open with her own blade.

---

For a fraction of a second, everything stopped: the knights, the distant noise of the village, even the sound of Lys’s ragged breathing. Liraya looked down at the blade buried in her body, then up at Ines’s face. Surprise, pain, and something like weary acceptance moved through her expression in rapid succession.

Ines held the sword steady, dark mana already beginning to crawl along the blade toward the wound.

“I told you, didn’t I?” she said quietly. “I don’t have all night.”