As Kane was about to leap, something held him back. His body froze just as his right foot was raised. His gaze turned blank as if the life of him were pulled from his body. The claws reverted back into mere nails.

The sudden turn of events had only made Erin strengthen her vigilance and guard.

Red lightning began to flare up like an aura around Kane. Life returned to his gaze but Erin recognized those gaze not as his own. The pupils shrunk at the sight of Erin.

“We met again… well, sort of,” Erin remarked.

The possessed Kane dropped his feet and straightened his posture. His gaze turned into a glare, directed at Erin. “Once again, you have escaped my grasp. Not even my strongest thrall was able to apprehend you.”

Erin raised her brows when she heard those coherent words. There was no dragging and rasping in between. The reason she could think of was the state of the body the Necromancer was using as a medium.

“I don’t know if this is simply a testament of your skill or fortune. Nevertheless, I will have no more of that. You will regret your meddling, I will make sure.”

“You have already failed to kill me more than twice. I doubt your competence and your thralls’.”

The Necromancer chuckled with a sneer. “I will not kill you,” he said.

“Sure, and I don’t have a co— cunt.”

“Your death will come but first, I will make you suffer. I will see to it that you regret being meddlesome. I will make you wish you hadn’t crossed me.”

As typically condescending as the Necromancer sounded, Erin narrowed her gaze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He scoffed with a smile. “You’ll see. Who knows, perhaps those who survive, will come to you, laying all the blame on your meddling.” He chuckled again. “I won’t kill you but I will hurt you bad.”

“Failure is the foundation of success, your persistence is admirable.”

“Say what you wish, you’re already too late.” The Necromancer clicked his tongue and withdrew its consciousness from Kane’s body. The red lightning dissipated. Kane gasped and groaned as he resumed control of his body. “That damn fiend… interfering with my revenge...”

“Huh… I’m guessing this particular... arrangement is mutual.”

“Mutual?” Kane spat. “Like I will ever work with that abomination. I am just using him.”

“More like he’s using you.”

“Enough delays. I will see you dead.” Kane grew claws on his hands once again and leaped across the river in a single kick. His claws bared.

Erin cast Mystic Blade on her saber but her vision whirled and the feeling of having one’s soul sundered assaulted her, like her body was torn into pieces from the inside out. Strangely enough, it didn’t hurt. She almost fell from the queer sensation but her tails and Sixth Sense kept her standing. The tranquil blue glow on her blade faded off.

“Is this how it feels like to have your lifespan shortened?”

“Die!” Kane screamed out his desperation.

Erin raised her saber in response but her body wobbled. She threw away her defensive stance and dodged the swipe by an inch. Kane attacked again but she could only dodge. She still had her focus but her body refused to comply. “Damn it! Have I been using too much Mystic Blade as of late? Come to think of it… I had been using it a lot.”

Kane thrust out his claws and Erin was barely able to parry it. Indignance painted his expression and he lashed out his claws without any rationality. Erin evaded the attacks that she couldn’t block or parry. Even though she wasn’t at her best, her defeat was a far cry, and Kane noticed it too. He cried and shouted but no words were spoken as he assaulted with no traces of elegance or grace.

“Fine, Arcane Edge it is then.” Erin cast Arcane Edge on her saber and swung at Kane.

Kane raised his arm and her saber bounced off his skin. He laughed when he saw the Fox-kin’s weapon was ineffective against him. He countered and almost caught the Fox-kin by her arm but her tails, clad in Arcane Armor, fended him off.

“Fucking bollocks,” Erin cursed. “That’s no level three Iron Skin.”

“Oh, you have Appraisal.” Kane scoffed. “Figures, but my real power transcends the mere numbers projected in one’s mind. Your reliance on your Appraisal skill will be your downfall!” Kane roared and charged straight at Erin.

Erin sighed and a snigger followed. “Perhaps I will be in a difficult situation if I was still limiting myself to the sword.”

“What?” Kane blurted as he was baffled by the confidence in Erin’s face.

Erin lazily raised her free arm up and splayed open her palm. “Have a taste of thunder, you hopeless brute,” she said with an exasperated tone. A bolt of lightning shot out from her palm and struck Kane square in the spot just above his chest. The air rippled and he was sent tumbling backwards across the damp soil.

“What… the fuck!” Kane groaned as he struggled to get up. “Your spell conjures quick… preposterous!”

“I agree. I am preposterous but… that will be overstating at this point.”

Kane got up, his chest from being struck the spell by Erin was charred black with a small hole. “W-why… am I still... feeling pain…?” he groaned.

“Good to know,” Erin said. She shot out another bolt of lightning but this time, Kane dodged low and the bolt went over his head. He snickered gleefully at his trivial success. Erin wasn’t disheartened. In her experience, the same attack usually lost its effectiveness after its first usage. She infused lightning into her saber and dashed towards Kane with Fleet Foot.

Kane shrieked at her speed, too shocked to properly respond against Erin’s fatal assault. Heraised and crossed his arms, or at least he tried to. Erin thrust faster than he could raise his arms.

Erin’s blade impaled Kane through the point between his throat and chest. There was a lot of resistance from Iron Skin but since it was severely weakened by her prior lightning attack, her blade went through.

Kane’s last words weren’t even words but a single gasp of disbelief. His last gaze was filled with his denial towards his demise.

Erin pulled out her sword and coated Arcane Edge on the lightning-infused blade. She spun into a wide swing and lopped Kane’s head off.

[Experience gained +30% - Level Progression: 100%]

[Erinthea - Lv 17 increased to Lv 18]

[Ability Points gained +2]

[Skill Points gained +2]

As soon as Kane’s lifeless and headless body fell to the ground, red lightning flared up once again.

“Oh… what a sore loser.” Erin wasted no time in kicking the corpse into the river and hid behind trees. A few seconds after, an explosion erupted from the river, raising tides of water and throwing fishes into the air. Some fish made it back into the water but some landed on dry land.

She slumped to the ground, a heavy sigh escaped her mouth. A few curses also leaked through her supple lips. The words of the Necromancer from before were still lingering in her head, latching on to her mind like a parasite. The Necromancer made it clear he wanted her to suffer and going by her experience with this sort of threat, it could only mean that he intended to hurt the ones she cared for. Lyra and Celia were the first ones in Erin’s mind but they were safe in town, safe from the Necromancer at least. With all the Paladins around, there was no one a practitioner of death magic or its minions could slip past the Paladins’ notice. So Erin ruled out the two as the possible victims.

“Green Scar’s town...” Erin muttered to herself. Unlike Quinteburgh, the borders were merely wooden fences. It could never hope to stop something akin to a monster stampede. Sweat began to drip and anxiety set in the more she thought about it. However, her rising heartbeat slowed down when Aedan came into the picture. “With him there, he would never allow anything to happen to the town.”

Though Erin told herself as such, she wasn’t completely assured. Aedan’s powers were greatly limited at present. There was no telling if he was capable of protecting every single townsfolk by himself.

“I must warn them,” Erin decided.

As she prepared to return to town, her ears picked up approaching footsteps. Going by the scent of the polished metal smell, it was either town guards or Paladins, or both. When the faint smell of incense came, she concluded there was at least a Paladin among the footsteps.

Erin followed the river and went downstream, opposite of the direction to the town. At the end of the stream was a pond, there was a path on the side that would take her to the east entrance of the town. If she took the same route back to town, she would surely be seen and suspected. She decided to take the long way around and return through the other entrances.

As she ran, the Necromancer’s words kept coming back to haunt her. She couldn’t get rid of the thought that someone she knew would be hurt in the Necromancer’s attack. The only way she could calm her heart and mind was repeatedly reminding herself Aedan was there. Still, the memory of a city being devastated by a Goblin horde resurfaced in her mind and it only made her trepidation worse.

She picked up her pace and rushed towards the east gate.

“What’s the rush, milady?”

The cold sounding voice froze Erin’s body in place. She turned her head to her right, where the voice came from. A woman in priestess garbs was there, standing in between trees with a hood over her head.

Erin sniffed the air to be sure; she couldn’t pick up any smell from the priestess in front of her.

The priestess took a step closer to her.

Erin’s eyes widened at the fact that her step made no sound.

As the priestess stepped out into the light from the shade, Erin could finally see the few strands of red hair under the hood. Coupled with the immense aura Erin was feeling from the priestess, the clergy woman’s identity became obvious. Erin had just encountered her last night but this time, she didn’t have Twilight Veil to hide her face.

“A Fox-kin, three tails, tall, unparalleled beauty, swords— you must be Lady Erinthea,” Azaela guessed. Her voice was low but it reached Erin’s ears.

“You know me?”

“Of course I do,” Azaela said, smiling ambiguously. “You’re the latest rage around these parts.”

“And you must be Azaela,” Erin replied.

“My reputation certainly precedes me. May I know what you’re doing out here, Lady Erinthea? I don’t wish to implicate you but you were running away from my colleagues. Suspicious, is it not?”

“I was attacked by someone. I retaliate. In his last moment of death, my assailant used a spell to blow himself up but I avoided his last act of desperation.”

“And who might be that someone?”

“Kane. An adventurer.”

“And why would he attack you?”

“Ask anyone in Green Scar. He’s a scum and I was always there to stop his foul acts. He built a petty grudge out of that.”

“Making himself explode as a last act of desperation, that kind of spell is classified as forbidden. To be able to cost that large of an explosion, he must be quite a Mage but I doubt that. I would have heard of him if he was some adept Mage. He’s not.”

“No longer my problem anymore and neither should it be yours, Azaela. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an urgent matter to attend to.”

A sword manifested into Azaela’s hand and she “blinked” into Erin’s path. “I don't think so, Lady Erinthea. You are a suspect of a likely crime. I can’t let you off, not without a few more questions.”

“Damn it, I already said I have an urgent matter. I have no time for this farce of yours.”

“Farce? Could you be one of those that believes all the bad rumors about us Paladins?”

“Doesn’t matter. I am short on time, Azaela. Please move.”

“If we’re going down this road, you will regret this, I guarantee you.”

“Move!” Erin raised her voice.

“I can’t do that, Lady Erinthea. I—” Azaela stopped just as she was about to unsheath her sword. She stared blankly at Erin. Her hand hesitating on drawing her sword. She remembered the warning she was given. She remembered those words clearly. She didn’t want to give in to those fears but… this wasn’t about her pride, this was about the risk of raising the ire of a Dragon.

She would be going against her Faith and duty if she let Erin go but it was either this or risk angering the Dragon. She refrained from shouting out her frustration with great difficulty. She cared not if she was written up by her masters but her pride on the hand, she would not allow it to be trampled, but who was she to say otherwise of a Dragon’s threat. She had no intentions to harm the Fox-kin but Dragons weren’t known to be rational or reasonable. That was a hornet nest she couldn’t afford to poke.

Erin remained on guard but confusion plastered her face at Azaela’s action, or rather, inaction.

Azaela eventually willed her sword away and relaxed her stance. With her crossed look, she stepped out of Erin’s way and walked off, but not before leaving parting words. “Outworlder, your guardian angel… I will return the humiliation, one day.” And she disappeared into the trees.

“Outworlder… she knew?” Erin breathed. “How....? And who’s my guardian angel? She couldn’t be talking about Nyx, could she?”

More problems had beset upon her. A Paladin, Azaela of all people, knew about her secret. And she had a guardian angel, who supposedly was the reason Azaela let her go. Aedan came into her mind but she dismissed it. She came upon no explanation that Aedan could be the reason.

“Unless Aedan had done something to me without me being aware... He couldn’t have… Wait. Lust Deviant had been dormant lately. The only ones who knew about it were Lyra and Aedan. Lyra is definitely not the reason, which leaves… Aedan… What did he do…?”

The cerebration ended with Erin groaning to herself even louder. She didn’t arrive at an answer. She was aware she had been shelving a lot of problems for her future self but she could only do this for so long before everything came bursting out.

However, now was no time to be pondering about those things. She remembered the Necromancer’s words once again and sped through the forest, reaching the east gate just before more Paladins were dispatched into the forest.

 

Erinthea - Faerie-kin: Three-Tailed Fox-kin

Level: 18 | Status: Moderate Exhaustion

Might: 20 | Arcane: 25 | Finesse: 22

Magic Arts - Spirit Magic Lv. 8 | Arcane Edge Lv. 5 | Arcane Armor Lv. 6 | Lightning Magic Lv. 4

Combat Arts - Sword Art Lv. 7 | Fleet Foot Lv. 5 | Brawler Lv. 5

Innate Skills - Appraisal Lv. Ex | Night Vision Lv. Ex | Sixth Sense Lv. Ex | Toxin Resistance Lv. 1 | Lust Deviant Lv. Ex

Unique Talent - Mystic Blade Lv. Ex | Revenant Lv. Ex

 

Level Progression: 0%

Remaining Skill Points: 10

Remaining Ability Points: 4