Chương 79: Chapter 78: Vanished

Present time… Lio stood inside the dark cavern, facing off against the strange woman, his eyes sweeping over his ragged and wounded party. Senna was unconscious, slumped against the wall where William had managed to drag her, a thin trickle of dark blood slowly tracking down her chin. Luckily, she didn't seem to be dead. William was, somehow, still standing. The boy was bruised and bloodied, and his body was violently trembling with exertion, but he seemed fine enough. Acceptable. Better than acceptable, honestly.

The boy had grown some backbone along the way. He glanced at Ophila, who was probably the most wounded. She was on the ground, her clothes soaked through with dark blood. Her face had lost its color, having turned clammy and pale, and her breathing had grown dangerously shallow. Lio frowned. He would have to get her medical attention fast. Turning away from his wounded teammate, he locked his gaze back onto the woman in the revealing garments.

"Who are you?" he asked. The woman tilted her head, the icy fog around her boots thickening and curling. Despite the sub-zero chill radiating from her position, a bead of sweat rolled down her neck.

"What? Going straight to business?" She licked her lips, giving a mock pout.

"No flirting first? I'm a little disappointed."

"You can be disappointed somewhere else." Lio brandished his Adamantine knife, fixing a cold, deadpan expression at her.

"I won't ask a second time. Give me a name." The woman chuckled sweetly.

"You really are a killjoy, aren't you?" she said, her fingers tightening around the long golden needle in her hand. The frosty vapor around her feet flared up, swirling around like a mini storm.

"Fine. If you must know, you can call me Sparrow." Lio tsked.

"Who sent you into Trestfall?" Sparrow giggled girlishly, twirling the golden needle between her fingers. The icy fog around her boots continued to expand, yet her expression remained completely unbothered by the cold edge in Lio's tone.

"My, aren't we demanding?" she purred, her eyes tracing Lio's face.

"You're rather cute, but the first thing you do is interrogate a lady? I must say, the boys in Trestfall have absolutely no sense of romance." Lio scoffed, his frigid expression not changing. He took a step forward, making sure not to put too much weight on his injured right leg.

"You're clearly here for a reason, Sparrow. Tell me if your here because of Ophila." Sparrow licked her lips, her eyes glinting with a playful, dangerous brightness.

"Ophila? Is that her name? She's a fragile little thing, isn't she?" She leaned forward, her mocking grin widening.

"If you really want to know, why don't you come a little closer and ask politely like a good boy? I might whisper it in your ear." Lio's eyes narrowed. Sparrow was clearly stalling, using the banter to mask the ongoing drain her rune was extracting from her, but more importantly, she wasn't going to give up any intelligence through words.

"Well then, negotiations are over," Lio said flatly. His right leg screamed in protest, the muscle fibers completely shredded, but Lio overrode the pain. It didn't hurt too much. [Mach Heart]. The musculature of his left thigh compressed, densifying into a rock-hard piston. Boom! He dashed forward, the sudden, explosive burst of kinetic force shattering the loose rock beneath his heel. Sparrow's eyes widened, but her reaction time was remarkably sharp.

As Lio entered the perimeter of her sub-zero area, the freezing temperature instantly went to work, beginning to glaze his skin in a brittle crust of ice to slow down his momentum. It felt like he was moving through liquid glass. But Lio was already a step ahead. Without hesitation, he stabbed his blade into his palm. [Pyrolysis]. The blue-gold flames erupted from the fresh wound, fueled by his own life force.

The sentient fire responded to his subconscious intent, wrapping around him in a towering inferno that violently clashed with the sub-zero temperatures of Sparrow's aura. The sheer heat vaporized the incoming frost before it could touch his skin, filling the cavern with scalding steam. Hidden inside the sudden fog, Lio activated another rune. [Isopolity]. Five duplicates of his Adamantine knife materialized, forming a crescent formation around him, their translucent edges being wrapped by the blue-gold flames.

Sparrow pivoted immediately after noticing the additional weapons, bringing up her long golden needle in a defensive position. Not panicking, she lashed out. And with a ringing clang, she parried the first two phantom blades, her icy aura instantly shattering the ghost-metal into sparkling dust. She twirled around, slipping past the third and fourth knives gracefully, the lethal weapons whistling past just inches from her throat.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. But five blades had just been a distraction. While her guard had been occupied with the hovering duplicates, Lio had slid down beneath her line of sight, holding his real blade. He drove the knife upward. Sparrow detected the strike at the last possible moment, throwing her upper body backward, but she wasn't fast enough to completely escape the attack.

The razor-sharp tip of the Adamantine knife sliced through the exposed skin on her shoulder. The blade dug about an inch deep before she managed to leap backward, reestablishing some distance between them. Lio didn't immediately press on. Instead, he reset his stance, and seeing that the flames of [Pyrolysis] had already exhausted the life force he'd fed into it, he drove the knife deeper into his palm, drawing more of the crimson blood. The corners of his lips began to quiver. Yes, this was the feeling.

Sparrow wasn't like the clumsy brutes or the slow, predictable monsters he had just spent killing on the Floor 3 surface. She had form and a powerful rune. Such stimulation. It was making him feel entirely, undeniably alive. But unfortunately for him, Lio knew that the fight was going to last much longer. The wound that Sparrow had sustained wasn't too bad, but by now, her breathing was far too heavy, her chest heaving beneath the flimsy clothes.

More importantly, the thick, white fog that had previously completely covered her was beginning to fade. The frost on the nearby cavern walls were receding, melting, while the temperature in the chamber slowly began to rise. It seemed that whatever resource she was spending to maintain her rune, it was running dangerously low. She couldn't sustain this for too long. She was clearly losing the war of attrition. Lio raised his knife.

"Are you ready to surrender now?" He expected a change in her demeanor, as most enemies who had been cornered like this resorted to three simple choices: panic, rage, or flight. But Sparrow didn't do any of that. Instead, she let out a sweet sigh, the corner of her lips curling upward into a mocking smile. She reached up with two fingers, casually dabbing at the blood on her shoulder.

"Oh dear," she murmured, her voice entirely devoid of fear.

"Look at that. You actually ruined the fabric. It took me quite a while to find something this nice." She looked up at Lio, her gaze perfectly serene and pleasant. There was no adrenaline or any terror in her eyes. Lio's brow furrowed, feeling a rare moment of hesitation. Something was wrong. The math didn't add up. He had completely overpowered her, yet she was reacting as if she was simply going through a minor obstacle.

Then, the faint crunch of gravel behind Sparrow's position flared Lio's internal alarms to life. From the shadows of the cavern wall, a small figure stepped out into the light. It was a young girl, no older than ten, wearing a simple grey tunic much too large for her thin body. Her face and hair were both neat and plain, completely free of the soot and dust that coated everyone else in the subterranean chamber. Lio stiffened, his eyes widening at the child's sudden appearance.

How had she appeared without him noticing? Over a millennium of navigating the unpredictable hell that was Ghenna, his battlefield awareness had evolved into something inhuman. When Lio had dropped down, he had thoroughly scanned the perimeter to prevent any sort of ambush. And yet, this small child had somehow gotten through his guard. The girl didn't look at Lio, or even at the pool of black blood from the Akkorok—now completely silent, probably dead from all the blood loss.

Her face was entirely blank, her eyes dark and vacant, like a porcelain doll. There was simply no fear. She stopped a few feet behind Sparrow.

"You are losing," the girl muttered. Her voice was robotic and completely devoid of any childish naivety.

"How very disappointing." Sparrow didn't turn around, though her mocking smile stiffened, betraying her irritation.

"I was just getting to the fun part, Lily. The boy has quite a bit of spirit."

"The Magistrate has issued a retreat," the girl continued, her bored expression unchanging as she stared directly at the back of Sparrow's head.

"The mission is officially canceled. We are ordered to do so immediately." Sparrow let out a dramatic, exaggerated pout.

"Oh, come on. Are you serious? I didn't even get to use that. Do you know how long it took for me to find it? It'll be a complete waste." The child simply deadpanned at her, silent and unmoving. Sparrow sighed heavily, casually tucking the long golden needle back into the folds of her limp garment.

"Fine, fine. If the old man says so. I'm not paid enough to argue with you, Lily." Lio watched the interaction, his amber eyes narrowed into small slits. The strange, robotic nature of the child and the disregard for his presence intrigued him. What exactly was going on? He took a step forward, the Adamantine blade gleaming beneath the fresh coating of blue-gold fire as he drew more blood from his palm. The heat of [Pyrolysis] flared higher than ever.

"You seem to be mistaken," Lio spoke up, fixing them both with an unflinching, cold gaze. Both Sparrow and the doll-like girl—Lily? —paused, though neither of them showed a single shred of alarm.

"You don't get to decide when to leave," Lio said flatly.

"I'm not letting you off that easily." Sparrow glanced back, flashing her playful smile again. Despite the bleeding wound on her shoulder and the completely evaporated frost zone, she looked at Lio with an almost pitying amusement.

"Oh, little mouse," she murmured.

"You really think you have a say in this? That's cute." Beside her, Lily didn't react to Lio's threat at all. Without a word, she raised a small, pale hand and placed her palm flat against Sparrow's uninjured shoulder. Lio's instincts flared to life. His left leg flexed, ready to dash forward with [Mach Heart] to bridge the gap and cut them down. But he was a millisecond too late.

The moment Lily's fingers made contact with Sparrow's skin, both of them suddenly began to distort, their physical forms scattering into thousands of tiny blue lights. For a fraction of a second, they ceased to look like flesh and blood, transforming into a bluish vapor. Then, they simply vanished. Lio skidded to a halt, his Adamantine blade cutting through empty air where Sparrow had been standing just a moment prior. The blue-gold fires coating his body died down as he cut the rune's connection to his life force.

He scowled. That wasn't a standard short-range displacement rune like Briar's, nor was it some sort of spatial distortion. It was most likely a complete conversion of matter into something else, allowing for instantaneous travel across massive distances. They were completely gone.