Chapter 166 : Making Ruthless Threats
Chapter 166: Making Ruthless Threats
The priest girl in the white robe was so frightened that her legs trembled uncontrollably, yet instinct still drove her to raise the magic staff in her hand, attempting to cast a speed-enhancing spell on her teammates.
However, the darkness of human nature often came faster—and more vicious—than the claws of monsters.
At the very moment the priest girl began chanting her spell—
The red-robed female mage standing one step in front of her suddenly turned her head.
Her originally delicate face was now twisted like that of a malicious ghost.
There was not a trace of concern for her teammates in her eyes—only madness and cruelty born from a desperate will to survive at any cost.
“Sorry, Lucy.”
The female mage screamed, and instead of pointing her staff at the monster, she abruptly aimed it at the priest girl who was casting a spell for her.
“Boom!”
A small but bone-shattering explosive fireball detonated between them.
Its power wasn’t particularly great, but at this distance, it was more than enough to be lethal.
“Ah——!!”
The priest girl let out a shrill scream.
Her left calf was directly struck by the shockwave of the fireball, charred black. She lost her balance and fell heavily into the foul-smelling sludge.
The protective shield on her body shattered instantly.
Meanwhile, the red-robed female mage used the recoil from the explosion, combined with the already-prepared [Wind Movement Technique], to shoot into the sky in the opposite direction like an arrow released from a bow.
“Lucy, don’t blame me! Once the monster is full, it won’t chase me anymore! You’ll understand, right? I’m the hope of my family—I can’t die here!”
While frantically channeling her magic to fly, the female mage screamed hysterically, as if doing so could ease the guilt in her heart.
Lilia lay behind a rock, watching the priest girl collapsed in the mud, staring in despair at her departing companion, and the sludge monster steadily approaching, ready to enjoy its “buffet.”
Although she was a lackey of the Demon Queen, a worker for the evil faction—
This move was truly disgusting.
The priest girl had already given up struggling.
Looking at the massive shadow blotting out the sky above her, tears mixed with mud streamed down her face. She could only helplessly close her eyes and wait for death.
Meanwhile, the red-robed female mage had already flown dozens of meters away.
She was about to plunge into the mist layer above and escape completely.
Lilia slowly stood up from behind the rock.
If the mage had simply run away, she might have hesitated about whether to interfere.
But this woman had crippled her teammate’s leg and used her as bait just to survive.
That was… infuriating.
And besides—
“If you make it back and report this, how am I supposed to carry out my next task?”
Lilia drew her dagger.
She narrowed her crimson eyes, locking onto the figure in the air who was celebrating her escape.
Distance: eighty meters.
Extremely fast movement speed.
Mist obstructing vision.
An ordinary archer would probably be helpless in this situation.
But for Lilia now…
“Sorry, this path is closed.”
Lilia took a deep breath, and at that moment, her heartbeat seemed to stop.
That mysterious sensation surged up again.
The entire world lost its color in her eyes, turning into a black-and-white silent film.
The sludge monster’s tentacle, which had been about to strike, froze half a meter above the priest girl’s head—even the dripping slime was suspended midair.
The fleeing female mage’s expression froze between wild joy and twisted relief. Even the faint spark of magic at the tip of her staff remained suspended.
Skill—[Time Stop].
“Go!”
Lilia gave a low shout, and the dagger in her hand flew out.
Its speed was so fast that it carved a long vacuum ripple through the frozen scene.
When the few seconds of time stop ended—
Color surged back into the world like a tide.
The nauseating swamp stench, the echoing roars of the monster, and the sound of the wind all returned in an instant.
“Hahaha! I knew it! I’m chosen by the gods! How could a low-level monster possibly kill me!”
The red-robed female mage was still laughing wildly, her voice sharp with extreme excitement.
She was already imagining how she would embellish this experience after returning to her family, portraying herself as the sole survivor and tragic hero.
Then—
Her laughter stopped abruptly.
Like a crowing rooster suddenly having its neck seized.
“Puchi!”
A soft sound of a blade piercing flesh.
Followed by a tremendous impact.
The black dagger appeared out of nowhere, piercing through her wind-type magic shield and embedding itself with perfect accuracy into the root of her right thigh.
“Ah——!!!”
The pain only reached her brain at that moment.
The female mage let out a scream ten times more shrill than the priest girl’s earlier cry.
Her body fell straight down from over twenty meters in the air like a ragdoll.
“Bang!”
With a dull thud, she landed face-first in a mud pit less than ten meters from the sludge monster, splashing up a large spray of black sludge.
Coincidentally, she fell right within the priest girl’s line of sight.
Their eyes met.
Only this time, their positions seemed to have been reversed.
Lilia dusted off her hands and slowly stepped out from the shadows.
Looking at the female mage writhing in the mud, crying out in pain, she curled her lips into a mocking smile.
“Didn’t you come down just like that?”
“I told you, you shouldn’t compare yourself too much.”
“Since you’re teammates, you should stay nice and neat together, don’t you think?”
In the distance, the sludge monster, which had been preparing to eat, paused in confusion at the sudden turn of events.
Its simple mind probably couldn’t understand why food from the sky had suddenly fallen on its own.
But instinct told it this was a buy-one-get-one-free deal.
Thus, its massive tentacle changed direction midair, abandoning the immobilized priest and instead sweeping toward the bleeding, more enticing red-robed mage.
“N-no… don’t…”
Looking at the approaching tentacle, true despair finally appeared in the female mage’s eyes.
She tried to crawl up, tried to counterattack with magic, but the intense pain in her thigh and the panic of losing her staff made it impossible for her to concentrate.
“Save me! Lucy! Hurry and heal me!”
At death’s door, she was still barking orders at the teammate whose leg she had just blown apart.
Lilia rolled her eyes.
This woman’s skin was probably thicker than that of the sludge monster.
“Ah! My leg! It hurts! Lucy, you bitch! Heal me now! If I die, your entire village will be buried with me!”
The red-robed female mage writhed wildly in the mud like a slug sprinkled with salt.
The massive sludge tentacle had already wrapped around her waist, dragging her toward that giant, fang-filled maw.
Even at this moment, she still relied on that ingrained sense of class superiority to pressure others.
In her eyes, someone like Lucy—a low-born village girl—existed solely to serve nobles like her.
Even though she had just blown off her leg.
Lucy lay on the ground, her face pale as paper from the agony of her broken leg. Cold sweat plastered her mud-streaked blonde hair to her forehead.
She looked at the hysterical woman in the distance, the light in her eyes gradually fading, leaving only a lifeless numbness.
She did not raise her staff.
She didn’t even look at her again, only lowering her head and clutching the mud beneath her, her fingernails breaking and bleeding without her noticing.
“Since you’re so noble, then let your family come save you.”
Lucy’s voice was quickly drowned out by the sludge monster’s chewing sounds.
“You dare disobey me? You lowly—”
The mage’s curse was cut short.
The tentacle suddenly tightened, squeezing the air from her lungs along with those venomous words, like toothpaste being forced out of a tube.
“Tsk tsk tsk.”
Lilia squatted on a rock.