Novel Full Chapter 1079: Warm Welcome
Chapter 1079: Warm Welcome
Her lips peeled back into a razor smile behind her mask, eyes flashing bright with wild delight. ’Master was right.’
She didn’t have to win the tug-of-war. She only had to play her part.
The moment before the guard’s boots touched the ground, Blossom’s free hand slashed across the air. Her magic roared in answer.
“[Veil of the Hollow]!”
An eruption of void-smoke poured around them. It was dense, suffocating, clinging like tar. It rolled out in an oily cloud, swallowing both Blossom and her captor whole. The world vanished into pitch black. Sight fractured into uselessness; every sense of theirs was clawed at by the distortion the smoke carried.
The royal guard reacted instantly. Using the hold on her ankle, she wrenched Blossom down. There was no hesitation, no panic. This was a professional. She pinned the dogkin’s arms tight so that she couldn’t cast again, then readied herself to lunge out of the radius the instant her boots found purchase.
Only… her boots never met stone.
Because just as the black haze thickened, a circle of violet-blue light bloomed beneath them.
“[Warp Gate].” Quinlan’s voice whispered from thousands of miles away.
The portal swallowed both captor and captive in a blink.
That spell wasn’t meant to be utilized like this. Its formation took time and space. Any experienced fighter could simply sidestep the shimmering distortion before it fully stabilized. But here, in midair, with no ground to push from, no flight skills to rely on, and senses crushed by Blossom’s veil… the royal guard Cassandra had no chance.
She and Blossom vanished, ripped from Valorian soil in an instant.
“Tch! Cover Lady Cassandra!” one of her allies shouted as they rushed into the smoke. Steel scraped free of scabbards, boots hammered cobblestones. The black veil swirled around their frantic movements.
“Where?! Where is she?!”
“They’re not here! I can’t feel them!”
“No, it’s worse! Our senses are off! This isn’t normal smoke!”
One coughed, stumbling as the distortion turned his balance sideways. Another slashed wildly into the haze, cutting nothing.
“That woman had a strange class! Nothing’s reading right!”
The shrouded street echoed with confusion as blades were swung and spells let loose at phantoms, only hitting their own teammates, innocent bystanders, and the city’s infrastructure.
…
The world lurched.
One heartbeat ago, Cassandra had been dragging her captive through smoke and distortion, boots reaching for cobblestone that never came. Next, she stumbled onto soft grass as a clearing opened wide beneath the blue sky.
Her pulse thundered in her ears. She spun, eyes scanning her surroundings, trying to make sense of it all, thanks to her experience and extensive training snapping into place even as disbelief tried to overwhelm her chest. ’I was displaced? Impossible. This is far too large a distance to be covered by mere displacement…’
But then, from one moment to the next, her analytical thoughts fractured.
They were everywhere.
Figures stood in a ring around her with weapons at the ready and the air humming with already cast magic. A translucent shimmer coated each of them, a soft blue glow that covered their bodies as if it were a second skin. ’Arcane shields…’
One woman’s fists blazed with orange fire, ready to obliterate her target with an explosive punch. Another stood still, chanting. A chorus of sigils dripped from her fingertips in black motes that stained the ground. ’A curse bearer…’
And another, a lithe elf cloaked in serene moonlight, pulled ethereal constructs of silver light into existence, each form sharpening into blade and bow and beast. ’I don’t even know what that is… Some form of summoning…’
Cassandra’s throat ran dry. These weren’t scattered nobodies. This was a proper unit. Trained. Buffed. Ready to fight.
And yet, even among them, one figure stole her sight. She couldn’t understand why, though, because he was the least imposing among them all.
At the center of the clearing sat a man, cross-legged, eyes closed. Still. Serene. As if the world around him was nothing more than a dream. For the briefest of moments, she thought him vulnerable. Reachable. A man who chose the worst spot to start meditating.
That was a thought she dismissed in the very next heartbeat because the air bent around him. A presence pressed against her chest, heavy, suffocating, even with his silence.
Then, he lifted a single finger.
Light rippled outward as his mana flared.
“[Overlord’s Magnanimity].”
Cassandra’s grip faltered. The weight in her arms shifted, the captive she had clung to with iron certainty suddenly thrashing with impossible strength. No, this wasn’t just struggling. Her muscles rippled, her speed tripled, her body flowing with power that hadn’t been there a heartbeat before.
Her prisoner twisted with the fluidity of a genius gymnast, spine bending wrong, as pure acrobatics and newfound physical stats carried her in a liquid motion that slipped through Cassandra’s guard. Hands clawed, feet kicked, and in a blur of sharp motion, the girl was free.
“No!” Cassandra snapped, reaching after the would-be escapist, only for searing pain to explode through her palm.
An arrow. Clean. Precise. The shaft had pinned her hand just shy of her quarry’s trailing cloak. She staggered, gaze snapping to the direction from where the arrow came, and saw the archer. Blonde hair and long ears caught the sun’s light. A new arrow materialized on her bowstring, marking her as a special archer.
Cassandra’s heartbeat screamed in her ears. The captive vanished back into the circle before turning around and baring her gauntleted claws at the royal guard, ready to join in.
And then…
The man at the center of it all opened his eyes.
They swirled with the four basic elements, colors colliding in a storm given form. The previous, meditative calm was gone. The weight of something vast, ancient, and unrelenting pressed down on her as his gaze locked onto hers.
His voice was unnervingly soft when it came.
“Welcome, hound of the crazed lunatic.”
It sounded as if he greeted an old friend, but Cassandra knew that reality was anything but that.
No… Hearing those words, a violent shudder traveled up her spine. Looking into those strangely mesmerizing eyes of his, an existential crisis bloomed across her mind.
…
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