"4 milliseconds," Chris blurted out.
Nia heard his sudden whisper through the chaotic wind. She turned her head slightly to look at him.
"Did you say something?" Nia asked.
Chris was still entirely unsure about his own terrifying theory. "No. I'm just talking to myself."
Back on the fifth day of the battle against the Titan, Chris had witnessed Celia's self-healing speed. He had clocked it at 4 milliseconds compared to the 700 and 800 milliseconds of the two veteran Healers from Team B. He previously noted in his mind that the 4-millisecond speed was incredibly fast, but he dismissed it as completely useless in a direct clash of blades. Anyone would have thought the exact same thing.
But Chris was witnessing something right now that completely shattered his reality. The same self-healing speed he once threw away as useless was currently operating as a brutal method for direct combat. The fast regeneration simply outpaced the destruction of the flesh. He was completely lost for words, and his dry throat refused to make another sound.
While Chris wrestled with this impossible truth, Kaelen finally recovered and cleared his mind. He had felt completely shocked by the impossible sight where a Healer coated a sword with Aura, but that strange weapon was not occupying his mind right now.
It was the terrifying feeling. A raw primal alarm screamed in his chest, begging his exhausted legs to run away.
He stared directly at the source of that dread right now. It was a Mage wearing a dark robe and a conical hat.
It was Lumina.
Calamity Child? Kaelen questioned in his mind. Why is she here? And what was that? I sensed something incredibly dangerous from her, but what?
As he struggled to calm his racing heart, he saw Celia standing a few meters in front of him. Directly ahead of the elf loomed the towering Miasma-Titan.
The Calamity faced the direction where Lumina stood about a hundred meters away. Then, the mountain of rotting timber suddenly started walking. It ignored the scattered Adventurers entirely and lumbered directly toward the open field where Lumina was standing.
Kaelen froze. During their entire clash with the Miasma-Titan, the beast never directly approached them unless they attacked it first because it never saw them as a threat.
It hurt his fierce Adventurer's pride, but the sight unfolding before his eyes was unbelievable.
At first, he thought the dangerous presence he felt coming from Lumina was just a brief hallucination. Seeing the Titan intentionally walk toward the young Mage confirmed his worst premonition of the danger coming from the girl.
Kaelen gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached. Calamity Child was categorized by the Miasma-Titan as a genuine threat, while he was not.
A few paces away, Thorne leaned heavily on his staff.
She... that young Mage... she's a monster, Thorne thought. He was visibly shivering.
The old Mage saw the Titan marching toward Lumina, so he knew the beast had clearly marked her as its target. He immediately tried to stand up to help the young Mage, but his exhausted muscles completely refused to obey his commands. His fatigue was healed by Nia, but he lacked the energy to stand.
It was the exact same reality for Kaelen. The big commander had given everything he had on their one final shot against the Titan. All the them could do now was sit in the rubble and watch.
A few meters away, Celia held her glowing sword tight. She looked up at the towering back of the Miasma-Titan.
"How rude," Celia complained aloud. "You are ignoring me."
She squinted through the dark and saw the monster walking toward her party member.
"Lumi changed her outfit," Celia noted softly.
Without another word, Celia started to move and followed the Titan. She ran fast to launch her attack.
Celia jumped two meters above the ground. She swung her sword with both hands, delivering a brutal vertical slash directly into the back of the Titan.
KRR-SHHHK!
The heavy steel made a direct hit against the petrified bark. It caused deep damage, but the Titan completely ignored the painful hit. The colossal beast continued to walk toward Lumina. It could not talk, but its primal instinct told it to eliminate the being in front of it. For the monster, she was a true threat.
Celia was dumbfounded after being ignored like a nuisance. She attacked the Titan on its back continuously, but the giant timber did not even notice her.
Then a loud, deafening explosion rocked the street.
FWOOSH-BOOM!
A highly condensed fireball hit the Titan directly on its face. Another explosion erupted right after the first impact. Lumina stormed the front of the monster with a relentless barrage of fireballs.
Celia kept attacking the thick roots, but she could not stay behind the beast forever. She had to act as the vanguard for Lumina. Mages are normally weak against close-quarter combat because their combat nature is suited for long-range battles.
Celia darted around the massive roots and quickly moved to the very front of the Titan to stop its forward movement toward Lumina.
The towering monster swung a heavy, thorny vine down to crush the annoying Mage. Celia dashed right into the descending shadow. She raised her glowing sword and parried the heavy timber with a flawless, upward sweep.
CLANG!
Sparks scattered brightly across the broken cobblestones. Lumina fired three more fireballs over Celia's head, and the flames blasted the beast's chest. The monster retaliated by sweeping its massive root-leg to trample the elf Healer. Celia dropped into a low crouch, sliding perfectly under the attack before slicing cleanly through the thick bark of the passing limb.
The strategy was incredibly simple. While Lumina kept attacking from a safe distance, Celia had to act as her personal vanguard to deflect the crushing blows.
That was exactly what it seemed like to Nia as she watched from a distance. But for Chris, the attack pattern from Lumina looked kind of strange. She was not attacking a specific, vulnerable body part of the Titan.
Thorne noticed the weird tactic as well. Lumina shot multiple regular fireballs at completely different parts of the Titan's body. She aimed from the head down to the chest, and then she blasted the lower roots.
Is she perhaps testing something? Chris wondered.
Kaelen realized the combined attacks from Lumina and Celia were not actually halting the beast because the Titan simply continued walking forward. He tried to stand up again because he wanted to help the two girls. He wanted to at least help them escape, because for him they were still both too young to die in a place like this. His tired legs gave out beneath him, so he collapsed back onto the stones. He could not stand.
"Damn!" Kaelen complained loudly.
The toxic gray fog had cleared earlier because Nia cast a wide-range purification spell to clean the air, but the foul miasma was starting to build up in the atmosphere once more.
Korinn noticed something very strange about the returning toxic fog as it started building up.
Both of them still have a lot of energy to fight, Thorne thought. How?
As Celia and Lumina battled the beast, Thorne suddenly froze. A chilling realization struck the old Mage.
"When..." Thorne stammered, turning his head to look at the others. "When did you see Perpetual Saint and Calamity Child last drink a vial of Mana potion?"
Nia shook her head. "I don't know. I was in Team A."
At that specific question, Chris completely froze. He almost forgot the terrifying detail he noticed while keeping an eye on Celia and Lumina in the safe camp.
Then Korinn suddenly shouted in panic. "The miasma... the toxic fog is attacking the elf!"
Nia frowned and looked at him like he was crazy. "Huh?! What are you talking about? A fog is just a fog. It doesn't attack anyone."
Chris immediately looked toward the fight. He was still freezing from the realization that Celia and Lumina had never drunk a single Mana Potion in the almost fourteen days of the grueling raid, but another unbelievable sight served itself right in front of him.
If the toxic air was not cleared earlier, this phenomenon would not be obvious at all. But because Nia wiped the sky clean just minutes ago, the fresh toxic fog pouring from the Titan's body moved clearly in their vision.
Chris remembered what his fellow Thief had said on the eighth day of their raid. The other Thief claimed he saw the fog around the elf disappear. Chris had dismissed it as a simple hallucination at the time, but now, he could clearly see it happening with his own two eyes.
His logical mind was an absolute mess. He completely failed to comprehend what was going on after a lot of strange and bizarre happenings surrounding the blonde Healer.
Korinn responded to Nia's doubt. He pointed his index finger directly toward Celia, who was currently moving fast to deflect a swinging root.
"Look!" Korinn yelled over the noise. "The miasma... To be precise, the elf is attracting the toxic fog. It's coming to her."