Fayette tried to move, but it was like treading through syrup, like moving through water in a dream. She was locked in place, her head facing up just right.

Just right so she saw him arriving.

The [Grand Magus].

Like a god, the middle-aged man slowly descended from the heavens, robes eerily calm despite the wind that had been—except it was no more. Everything was slowed to a standstill. Every single zombie and hunter, even the plaguemother herself—everyone was frozen in place. Except the [Grand Magus].

He alone moved in the frozen world.

And when that man finally spoke the name of his skill, the earth shook.

“[Domain]”

The skill was wrong—Fayette could feel it. Whatever it did, it wasn’t supposed to be this large. The pillars of light covering the horizon were shaking. The [Grand Magus’s] forehead was beaded with sweat. His mouth was tight with concentration.

But still, he landed, in the midst of it all, and looked around. His eyes gleamed with ambition. Fayette felt the air tingle with mana, and activating her mana sight, she was almost blinded.

On the man’s belt, there were four gemstones. Each one was a bright beacon of mana, and Fayette recognized their strength. She had felt it before. In the mines, she had found one ancient treasure, a bound elemental that had stoked noble greed.

And the [Grand Magus] had four just like it hanging out in the open, on his belt.

Stuck in place there, staring at that sight, Fayette finally understood what true power was.

But the [Grand Magus] did not see her. He landed on the ground and looked about with calculating eyes, not at the hunters there nor at the zombies there—only the ambient mana. The battle frozen midway did not seem to interest him one bit.

And then, finally, his forehead strained, and something forced him to say the words.

“Does anyone wish to challenge my claim?”

Fayette felt the power in the words and was sure everyone inside this zone heard them. She sensed a tacit question in them. If she was to respond—

Fayette slowly started to move again, she started stepping forward to the [Grand Magus], then there was a pop in the air—

And suddenly she alone was unfrozen, moving once more. Fayette jolted to motion, stared at the man, and suddenly it was only she and him who stood there. But Fayette had a sense that the man still wasn’t really looking at her, even if his eyes turned towards her. They saw a [Maid].

“You challenge me?” He asked.

Fayette was shaking. “You—what are you doing?” She pointed at the plaguemother, then took out one of Olivia’s pills from a pocket “We are curing the plague, Olivia was helping at the clinic with her pills until your notice stopped her—what are you doing?”

The man’s brow creased and he stared at the pill in her hand and then turned toward Olivia. But though Fayette expected the [Doctor’s] eyes to be full of fire and fury—instead she saw fear. Olivia cowered from the man’s eyes, and Fayette froze. What?

“[Analysis],” The [Grand Magus] said, and his eyes flashed blue. He stared at the pill, then waved a dismissive hand and gave Olivia a disgusted look. “So, this was the case I learned about... [Charlatan] type fakery—what an unpleasant thing.”

His eyes pierced Olivia’s. “You should be ashamed to masquerade as someone worthy.”

And then there was suddenly a cough.

Fayette turned her eyes to the source and saw Edmond, hands still locked around the plaguemother. There was a thick haze of disease around him. But he was suddenly struggling. Even in slow motion, his face had suddenly gone deathly pale, and blood was falling out from his eyes and mouth.

Her eyes ran around the scene, and then the [Maid] noticed that Martin’s hand too had suddenly turned black as death from where it had been bit.

The medicine was broken.

Just like that.

“What are you—!”

“Cease, [Maid],” the [Grand Magus] said, waving a dismissive hand. “I will now cleanse the disease. You are all dismissed. Unless—”

Suddenly, the crackle of mana around him intensified. His eyes glowed blue and one of the gemstones by his belt floated into his hand, crackling with lightning. “Unless you wish to challenge me?”

Fayette stared up at him defiantly, for a moment. But she knew. This power… there was no opposing it. And did she even want to?

He said he’s going to clean it all up… Maybe he will? Why should I stop it?

She felt a foreboding in the air, but the [Grand Magus] wasn’t even looking at her anymore. She was no threat to him. Fayette gulped and shook her head. “…no. I don’t oppose.”

Then suddenly she was frozen in place once more. The [Grand Magus] was looking around at the air, measuring, calculating. All the frozen hunters were staring at him. And at their suddenly dying companions. Olivia’s eyes were hazy. Marie looked worried. Mireille had her eyes narrowed, calculating.

“Does anyone wish to challenge my claim?”

“I do.”

Suddenly—the plaguemother was unfrozen. With unnatural grace and speed, she rushed at the [Grand Magus], skin bulging with growths and mouth wide open. “You fool, now I will—”

The [Grand Magus] did not speak. He only turned his head and flicked a finger, and suddenly there was a bright flash between him and the woman.

A lightning bolt.

It crackled and pierced through the air, lancing her straight through her torso, and the monstrous woman who had once been a [Botanist] was flung away with childish ease and contempt. The man stared at the smoldering body—still alive, and his fingers twitched four more times, and this time Fayette saw the spellcraft.

It was art. A blindingly fast and complex weave of lightning mana put together in an instant, then aimed at the woman. Four in rapid succession.

A broken but still living body froze in its place.

For a third time, the [Grand Magus] looked around, and this time he shouted out his challenge. “Does anyone wish to challenge my claim?”

This time—nobody did.

It took a moment, but something was acknowledged, and the skill settled. The walls of light surrounding the island faded, and Fayette felt her body begin to move once more.

But her [Maidsense] told her of what had truly happened. The [Grand Magus] was growing. Not physically, he was the same size as before, but his presence was expanding—larger and larger—covering the whole island.

Fayette felt her breath catch. How high level is he? What is this? What is he doing?

He wasn’t wasting time. The skill was obviously straining him heavily, his hands were shaking, and his eyes were red, but his face bore excitement—the look of a mad scientist at his triumph.

The zombies were unfreezing slower than the others, so the hunters rushed away from them, and to their wounded friends. Marie was yelling for Olivia to come help Martin as Martino wept by his side, and the [Doctor] wasn’t responding, she was just staring at the world with hollow eyes that saw nothing.

But Fayette couldn’t take her eyes off him. She wanted to see. The [Grand Magus] waved a hand forward, and then the plaguemother’s smoking body was lifted to the air by a complex weave of air mana and brought near his eyes.

It was the moment, Fayette could feel it. The [Grand Magus] was looking down at the body in front of him, but it was more like him staring at the whole island from up in the heavens. Finally, he reached for his whole domain and the authority he held there and activated a skill.

“[Rend].”

Fayette saw it happen.

Martin screamed and clutched at his hand as suddenly a million lances of mana flitted out from the [Grand Magus], rushing all over the island. Some touched the silver-haired hunter’s arm, and suddenly it was torn to shreds as all the plague mana within was violently and mercilessly ripped out.

Edmond did not scream, for his whole body was suddenly ripped apart into bloody bits as the plague infesting it was pulled out wholesale through every inch of his skin.

And it was happening everywhere.

All the plague mana in the air, every bit of plague settled in the ground, every single rose that had been lain, and every single zombie and person who had any of it in him—

Every bit received a violent trashing of mana as the plague got ripped out. Then it all started flowing. A grand river. An ocean.

Fayette stared stunned with horror as she realized what was happening in the clinic and in every house housing a plague victim, but she was also awed.

It was all flowing to the center, toward the [Grand Magus]. An inescapable hurricane of plague mana ran toward him in endless rivers from every street on the island, and it all collected right below him—at the plaguemother’s body.

Her eyes flung open and the woman started screaming inhumanly, as a vast ocean of plague mana roared into her veins and core in an awesome tide. The [Grand Magus’s] face was locked in a mad smile of triumph, as he reached out with a hand, and punched it straight into the woman’s chest, to where her heart was.

“[Conjure Elemental].”

The plague mana started crackling and thickening over the woman, and her body began melting down into nothing but slag as her screams intensified until all was quiet. Only the roar of mana filled Fayette’s ears as she stood stunned, no more able to move than she had been under the skill.

Every single hunter in the area watched stunned, as the [Grand Magus] finished his performance.

The plaguemother had vanished into smoke, but all the plague mana was gone too. The area was suddenly calm and quiet. Until the [Grand Magus] opened the arm he had plunged into the woman’s chest.

A gleaming gemstone sat there. Crackling in a sickly dark green color of plague mana, filled with the strength of a greater elemental. The [Grand Magus] stared at it only for a moment, and then he spoke, quietly, to himself.

“Excellent.”

Then the mad grin faded. His face returned to normalcy. He tucked the newly-forged well of mana into his belt, right next to his four other ones.

With a thrum of air mana, he started flying up into the sky.

Fayette stared at his figure as it disappeared up into the clouds. She did not even realize she had thrown a fork with [Cutlery Control] at him. Her mind was roiling.

Because she understood now. She wasn’t dumb. She had thought the government was handling the matter strangely, not doing its best to curtail the disease, but now she finally understood.

They had never been trying to curtail it in the first place. Why not let the plague fester and condense, if it all can be turned into more power later? And the most horrible thing, the thing that made Fayette’s stomach drop—

Was that it had worked. She breathed the air and watched the mana around her, and felt how clean it all was. There was not one bit of plague mana anywhere. Every single zombie had fallen down, melting into puddles of goop, but even they resembled normal blood now.

Fayette smelled the fresh autumn air and did not hear her fork clang down to the pavement, because she heard another thing. That familiar thing. That ding.

[Good assistance in the cleaning!]

[Level up: You have reached Maid level 24! Congratulations!]

[2 Skill points gained!]

[Progress towards next level: 0%]

Yes, the place had been cleaned swiftly and efficiently through violence, heedless of the waste or loss of lives. Only now did Fayette understand how terrible it truly was.

How familiar it truly was.