Chapter 759: Changing Lives. Leticia Chrono.

The girl took a deep breath and steeled her resolve.

If not now, when? When will you ever get a chance like this again?

She raised the staff and poured her mana into one of her two skills.

A volley of wind blades tore across the distance and slammed into the contained beasts, and her eyes went wide. The damage was far greater than anything she’d managed before, the beasts recoiling under her strikes, crying out in pain as blood shed.

This staff... it’s incredible! She cast again, and again, the wind blades carving through the trapped creatures.

It wasn’t just the lethality of her attacks, but the efficiency that stunned her. Each cast drew a lower portion of the mana her skills normally demanded, letting her chain attack after attack without draining herself immediately. An S-Rank weapon in the hands of a weak Awakener was a transformation, and she felt it with every strike.

Moon watched the young girl, who looked no older than eighteen, cut down the helpless beasts, and smiled.

Notifications flickered at the edge of his own vision, small Life gains from the kills since his runes had contributed to pinning the creatures. But five Lives per kill was nothing to him. The girl was reaping the overwhelming majority, and that was exactly what he’d intended.

The girl watched her own notifications blaze across her vision, Lives accumulating at a rate she’d never imagined possible, numbers climbing faster than she could track.

Within just two minutes, her level rose seven times!

Without hesitation, she funneled every attribute point she gained straight into her mana, desperate to keep casting, to squeeze every drop out of this once-in-a-lifetime windfall. She knew that the moment the Association arrived, their fighters would start killing too, and her golden opportunity would evaporate.

Every second counted.

But even with the staff’s efficiency, her reserves had limits. After a dozen more attacks, her mana reserves finally gave out.

Moon watched her expression crumble, the dawning despair of someone watching a miracle slip away, and he smiled.

"Drink this." He tossed one of the stronger First Order mana-replenishing potions he still had from his storage ring.

The girl’s eyes went wide as she caught it. "Thank you!"

She popped the cork and gulped it down like a man dying of thirst in a desert, her mana surging back, and immediately returned to her attacks, wind blades tearing into the beasts once more.

By the time the Association arrived, most of the creatures had already been slaughtered by the girl, with Moon’s runes holding them helpless the entire time. More than sixty corpses littered the ground, and the girl stood among them, huffing and puffing, flushed and exhilarated, clutching her borrowed staff.

"What happened here..." The first Evolver to arrive muttered, taking in the scene. He was the closest responder, a Two-Star Evolver, more than strong enough to have handled whatever a First Order gate produced.

Then his eyes landed on Moon, and understanding dawned instantly.

He hurried over, his manner immediately shifting to deference, and nodded politely.

"Sir Moon, I didn’t realize you were in the area. Thank you for intervening, you saved us a great deal of trouble, and likely a good number of civilian lives. We’ll take it from here, we are in your debt, as always."

Moon gave an easy nod. "It was on my way. The gate’s a broken one, so watch for any aftershocks, and get the perimeter formally sealed."

The Evolver nodded quickly, grateful, and began directing the response, while the young girl stood off to the side, still catching her breath, staring at Moon with a mixture of awe and overwhelming gratitude for the stranger who had just changed the course of her day, and most likely her life.

"Also," Moon added, glancing toward the girl, "she was the one who killed all the beasts. Credit her for everything."

"Of course, we’ll see to it immediately!" the Evolver said at once, his eyes shifting to the young girl, who had apparently earned the grace of Moon himself, a fortune in luck no one could have planned for.

Hearing his words, the girl stood frozen, her body locking up as if struck by a shock. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Not only had the rising star of New Avalon handed her a power boost through that incredible staff, kept the beasts pinned so she could kill them safely, and refilled her mana so she could keep going, but now he was crediting every single kill to her. Which meant the entire monetary value of those sixty-plus beast corpses would be hers. And that wouldn’t be less than a few million dollars at least.

Finally regaining control of her limbs, she walked over on unsteady feet, staring at him with a tangled mix of admiration, worry, and disbelief.

"I... I don’t deserve any of this. Why did you help me so much? You don’t even know me."

Moon smiled. "Why not? There’s no one stopping me."

The girl blushed faintly, caught off guard, put on the spot with no idea how to respond. Because in the end, he was simply right. Nobody could stop him from doing exactly as he pleased. He was that far above the world around him.

"T-Thank you," she managed, her voice earnest. "I’ll never forget this. I hope that one day we meet again when I’m strong, so I can repay you properly for all of this. My name is Leticia Chrono."

"Nice to meet you, Leticia. Moon Outlaw," Moon said warmly. "And I hope we meet again too."

She nodded rapidly, her head bobbing like a chicken pecking at seeds, a bright smile breaking across her face, the exhilaration and gratitude overflowing.

"See you around." Moon gave her a casual wave and turned to leave.

"W-wait!" She reached out toward his retreating back, her hand extending but stopping short of actually touching him. "You forgot your S-Rank staff, I can’t just keep—"