A massive explosion erupted before Dolores’s eyes. She saw Grin thrown by the shockwave, flames chasing behind him like wild beasts.
She felt her hand being pulled. Viseliane used her magic once more to help Dolores dissipate the heat and the impact.
Viseliane moved as if to help, but in the next moment, she clapped her hands together. A new barrier appeared, blocking a volley of arrows.
“The Royal Palace… how could it be infiltrated to this extent?” Viseliane coughed up a mouthful of blood.
The soldiers shooting at her were the ones stationed in the East City. However, several corpses lay beside those soldiers, their eyes wide with shock. They clearly had not expected their comrades to plunge blades into their hearts without warning.
But this wasn’t all. For a magic circle of this scale to be triggered without her noticing, there had to be another magician nearby with strength comparable to hers manually activating it.
This matched the “class-holders” Grin had mentioned. Although she might, perhaps, not particularly want to help Grin, watching him fall now was a desperate situation. The enemy had already launched a new round of attacks against them.
This time, two black-robed figures with extremely dangerous auras attacked together.
“Princess, activate your bracelet!”
Dolores watched Grin fall and instinctively reached out. However, he seemed to have lost consciousness, falling straight down into the bottomless collapse below.
Hearing Viseliane’s voice, Dolores hurriedly activated the protective Guardian Bracelet on her wrist.
The first strike of Sword Qi slammed into Viseliane’s barrier, followed by a second and a third.
The rapidly increasing consumption of mana caused Viseliane to grow weak quickly. Behind them, a massive sinkhole with a radius of dozens of meters was still expanding toward them.
If they didn’t do something, the collapse would soon catch up. There would certainly be no shortage of monsters and danger down there… Grin had already fallen. Now, she was the only one left who could protect the Princess.
Viseliane gritted her teeth and pulled herself together. The black-robed figure furthest away was chanting a dangerous, charged-up spell, while the one wielding the Sword Qi had already rushed in front of her.
“Ha!”
Viseliane unleashed a simple, chantless wind spell. The black-robed swordsman broke through it with a swing of his blade, but she had already drawn her bow. She released her grip, firing four arrows in rapid succession.
The distance between the two was barely 50 meters. The swordsman dodged Viseliane’s first arrow, blocked the second, was pushed back several meters by the third, and the fourth aimed directly for his head.
He twisted his body in a bizarre posture to dodge the arrow, but this caused him to lose his forward momentum. His balance was broken, and he would need several seconds to recharge and charge forward again.
“Princess, run back the way we came!”
There were traitors at the city gates, two powerful class-holders blocking the path ahead, and an expanding pit behind them. The direction they came from was the only exit.
Dolores knew she had to listen to Viseliane unconditionally at a time like this. she immediately began to run. Viseliane continued to release short, fast wind walls, intending to delay the swordsman’s recovery. She notched another arrow, her purple eyes flashing with a cold light. She no longer wasted mana to maintain her elven disguise.
She fired a charged shot, aimed straight at the chanting black-robed man.
“Don’t even think about it!”
The black-robed swordsman had recovered from the magical interference. He returned a precision strike, cutting toward the arrow Viseliane had aimed at the mage.
Ice elements were attached to his sword, which collided violently with the wind elements on Viseliane’s arrow. The impact caused a severe spatial disturbance, mana overflowing and dust swirling wildly.
Viseliane distracted herself to block the arrows coming from the city gate behind her. In the next moment, she held her bow horizontally in front of her. The sound of breaking air followed immediately.
The swordsman’s charged slash was blocked by Viseliane. Her strength was not weak; she was someone who could pull a heavy bow, after all!
She hadn’t lived for half a millennium for nothing. She had learned a bit of every skill.
She threw a roundhouse kick infused with a martial art technique toward the man’s waist. The moment he blocked with his sword, Viseliane immediately swung her bow like a blunt weapon, attempting to strike his head.
With her strength, this blow was enough to shatter anyone’s skull, even if the weapon was a bow. High-quality bows were very heavy and hard!
Since she wasn’t a professional melee fighter, Viseliane’s heavy-handed reaction was meant to give the opponent time to retreat, though the cost was giving up the advantage of the first move.
The black-robed man had no intention of risking his life against Viseliane. He took a few steps back to dodge her overhead strike.
Viseliane clicked her tongue, but the following aura of mana left her with no mind to focus on anything else.
The chanting mage redirected his magic toward the weak Dolores. Viseliane could only curse him for being despicable before turning to block the attack for her.
However, the opponent’s strength was only slightly inferior to hers. It was impossible for her to easily block a spell that had been charging for so long.
Overtaxing her soul, Viseliane condensed a magic circle that blocked the terrifying, beam-like spell.
But what followed was the swordsman’s close-range slash. To make matters worse, the arrows from the guards behind her occasionally interfered.
As she blocked and parried, she had to ensure Dolores’s safety. Facing two enemies at once, she couldn’t quickly kill one to escape the predicament. Instead, she continued to accumulate injuries due to the stalemate.
She was starting to burn her own life force. She simply couldn’t stop the enemy mage’s charged spells.
At the same time, a blood-drenched hand reached out from the deep pit behind them and gripped the edge.
Viseliane felt her body becoming heavier and heavier. She no longer had the strength to pay attention to Dolores’s side. Some arrows had already struck Dolores’s shield.
Viseliane’s hands were trembling. During the fight, she had managed to knock off the swordsman’s hood, revealing his face.
It was indeed Count Kanko. Viseliane had seen his face at the banquet.
“Viseliane, you can surrender. We won’t kill the Princess,” Count Kanko said, attempting to persuade her now that his identity was exposed.
“Never…!”
How could she possibly believe his words? How could she be willing to hand the Princess over to enemies who plotted such filthy things?
Relying on her stubborn will and burning her life force, Viseliane forced the man back with another close-range engagement. However, whenever she tried to take a step forward, she was pushed back by magic.
Viseliane’s vision began to blur. Her lungs and chest began to ache with a burning sensation. Especially her heart—it felt as if something was tightening around it.
The exhaustion of her soul and the recurrence of her curse.
She had already done her absolute best. She couldn’t help but wonder… if only Grin were here.
Because the Princess was in danger.
She couldn’t blame Grin for not being there. After all, he had personally stepped into the danger himself.
Viseliane used the last bit of her strength to construct a defensive spell. She truly had no more strength left to resist.
She turned her head, looking at Dolores with eyes full of tears and guilt.
“I’m sorry… Princess…”
She could still lift her hand and hold her weapon, but she didn’t even have the strength to notch an arrow.
Was she praying for a miracle?
If prayer worked, she was willing to become the most devout believer of the gods for Dolores’s sake.
In a situation like this, anyone’s help would do. At least, at the very least, she couldn’t let the Princess fall into the hands of villains.
Count Kanko shattered the defensive magic circle with a single swing. He looked at the two of them with a sneer and celebrated with the black-robed mage behind him.
“The Fourth Person, it looks like we’re about to harvest a noble Princess!”
“But before that, let me show her little maid the consequences of resisting.” Kanko prepared to swing his sword to sever Viseliane’s limbs. He only cared about Dolores because she carried the blood of the Rand Royal Family.
Viseliane had just given him a lot of trouble, and she was an unstable factor.
As Viseliane watched with a gaze full of resentment, he swung his sword down.
A flash of golden light erupted, followed by the crisp sound of metal clashing.
“What?” Count Kanko let out a cry of surprise.
A silver-glowing metal shield blocked his sword. In the next instant, the surrounding energy distorted. A bloody gash appeared on Count Kanko’s chest, and he was quickly sent flying.
A pair of eyes filled with rage watched him from behind the shield. Everything around them seemed to be turning a furious red.
Viseliane’s vision had been blurred by tears of guilt toward Dolores. She had watched Count Kanko raise his sword, her heart full of resentment and worry. Even though Dolores had held her hand, silently encouraging her with actions and words, it only deepened her guilt.
Count Kanko’s ugly face had been magnified countless times in her mind.
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