In the small forest, a thick smell of blood began to spread, overwhelming the scent of rotting leaves and soil.
An Ya stood alone in place, a hint of barely concealed panic finally flashing across his face.
Too fast.
From the moment they made contact until now, barely two or three minutes had passed, and without even touching the enemy’s clothes, he had already lost a member skilled in close-quarters assassination.
“What exactly do you want?”
An Ya gritted his teeth, his bird beak curved blade held tightly in front of his chest, his eyes warily scanning every inch of shadow around him.
He tried to buy time through negotiation, searching for a sliver of opportunity to escape.
“Was it someone who hired you with money? Or are you after the secret of the night owls?”
An Ya’s voice echoed through the dark woods, tinged with an almost imperceptible tremor.
“Name your price. What the night owls can offer you is ten times more than your employer!”
“I have no interest in your vulgar schemes and conspiracies, and even less interest in your money.”
Ailiya’s cool voice drifted from all directions, elusive and unfixed, like the whispers of the Death God in one’s ear, making it impossible to pinpoint her location.
Her words had barely faded.
whoosh!
An extremely faint sound of something cutting through the air came from An Ya’s right side, a blind spot in his vision.
“I’ve been waiting for you!”
A fierce light blazed in An Ya’s eyes. His ever-tense nerves exploded into action.
He didn’t choose to dodge. Instead, he spun around savagely, his curved blade wrapped in a stream of shadow magic, and slashed fiercely toward the direction of the sound.
thud!
The blade cut through the dark figure without any resistance.
But An Ya’s heart sank like a stone, a chill shooting up his spine.
That feeling of hitting nothing but air again!
“Another phantom clone! Damn it!”
An Ya roared, about to change his stance and defend, when he felt every hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
A deadly chill had already pressed against his nape.
Ailiya’s real body had somehow appeared behind him like a ghost, her dagger coated with high-density mana, stabbing silently toward the vital point of his spine.
“Don’t get too cocky.”
At this moment of life and death, An Ya let out a piercing scream.
“Swarm of crows dance!”
BOOM!
The instant before the dagger struck, An Ya’s body grotesquely swelled and twisted.
Then, with a muffled bang, his entire body exploded into hundreds of jet-black shadow crows!
Like a black storm, these crows flapped their wings in a frenzy.
Instead of scattering in all directions, they ferociously swarmed and counterattacked the nearby Ailiya!
Ailiya’s icy blue eyes narrowed slightly.
In the vision of her [Eagle Eye Art], these shadow crows were not only incredibly fast, but their feathers also emitted faint, barely perceptible strands of greenish-black poisonous mist.
If any of these crows touched her, or if she inhaled even a trace of that mist, she would definitely fall into a very troublesome negative state.
“Interesting skill.”
A special magic that could transform into a flock of crows, combining group attack, poison interference, and life-saving escape—such a skill was rare at this stage.
‘A high-level skill that balances survival and group damage. The only drawback is probably its weakness against large-scale AOE or high-intensity group-counter magic.’
Facing this overwhelming storm of poisonous crows, Ailiya chose not to confront it head-on.
[Sprint]
A cyan glimmer burst from her legs. Her body, light as a leaf, drifted backward for over ten meters in the blink of an eye, just before the crows engulfed her, creating a safe distance.
Then, she snapped her left fingers with a crisp sound.
[Flash Spell]!
A blinding light, even more dazzling than before, exploded like a miniature sun at the center of the crow flock.
“Caw—!!!”
Crows formed from shadow magic were naturally weak against pure light magic.
Under the close-range illumination of the intense light, a large number of crows shrieked miserably, their formation thrown into chaos.
Seeing the situation turn bad, An Ya immediately controlled the remaining few dozen crows to regroup, abandoning the attack and frantically fleeing into the night sky beyond the woods while the light still lingered.
“Trying to run?”
There was no way she would let this juicy experience package slip away.
Ailiya snorted coldly, raising both hands. Small dining knives glinting with a blue light were already wedged between her fingers.
[Precise Throw]
[Mana Infusion]
whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Nineteen blades, infused with high-density mana, shot through the air like precision missiles, forming a dense net of death that instantly engulfed the fleeing crow flock.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A series of muffled explosions rang out in midair.
The crows struck by the dining knives burst into foul-smelling black liquid and fell.
***
Meanwhile, the lead crow hidden within the flock let out an extremely miserable screech in midair, forced to transform back into a hunched human figure.
thump!
An Ya crashed heavily onto the muddy ground covered in rotting leaves.
A small dining knife had pierced straight through his right shoulder, blowing a bloody, gaping hole from which blood gushed, exposing the white bone fragments.
He struggled to get up, but Ailiya had already appeared before him like a phantom.
Her cold dagger pressed steadily against his throat.
“Your magic is quite interesting. I’m very interested in it.”
Ailiya looked down at him from above, her icy blue eyes devoid of any pity, as if she were examining a clearly priced commodity.
“Now, I’ll give you a chance to live. Hand over the cultivation method completely.”
“If it’s valuable, I might consider letting you leave this forest alive.”
An Ya stared fixedly at Ailiya’s emotionless eyes.
After a moment, he suddenly let out a hysterical, bitter laugh, filled with despair and frenzy.
“Hehehe… Hahahaha!”
“Members of the night owls die in battle; there are no prisoners!”
Gasping and coughing blood, An Ya glared at her with venomous eyes.
His expression twisted into something extremely savage.
“Dream on! Even if I die, I’ll drag you down to hell with me!”
CRACK!
An Ya didn’t hesitate. He bit the poison sac hidden in his back molar, and at the same time, resolutely and violently reversed the remaining shadow magic inside him.
“Forced suicide with poison and self-detonation?”
Ailiya reacted instantly, bursting backward in a rapid retreat.
BOOM!
An Ya’s corpse let out a muffled explosion.
A mass of highly concentrated poisonous blood mixed with violent shadow magic exploded, instantly corroding the surrounding grass, trees, and soil into a pool of acrid black liquid.
If Ailiya had dodged a moment slower, or if she had been greedy and tried to loot items from his body, she would definitely have been splashed by the poisonous blood from this final counterattack.
“He would rather swallow poison and detonate his magic than reveal even a scrap of information.”
Standing at a safe distance, Ailiya looked at the unrecognizable, bubbling corpse on the ground, a hint of regret flashing in her eyes.
A loyal soldier absolutely devoted to the organization—this type was the hardest to deal with and the hardest to extract information and skills from in the game.
“What a pity… Still, this trip wasn’t completely useless.”
She let out a silent sigh in her mind.
[Battle Concluded]
[Judgment: Perfect Victory]
[Killed An Ya Lv.31, gained experience points…]
[Killed Ti Gu Lv.25, gained experience points…]
Listening to the series of generous system notification sounds echoing in her mind, and feeling the magic power inside her body once again filling up and increasing, Ailiya’s mood settled a bit.
She turned her head and looked toward the Mill Ruins in the distance, still blazing fiercely.
“That idiot Graves shouldn’t be dead yet, right?”
Ailiya adjusted her night outfit, erased the traces of the battle, and once again melted into the darkness, heading toward the ruins.