Rhuvia's arms burned where the residual curse energy still crawled under her skin like living acid. She forced herself up onto one knee, empty hands pressed into the blood-soaked earth, and lifted her head.
"You…" The word came out rough, almost a rasp. "You're a witch."
Ines's mouth curved into something that was no longer quite a smile. The black-tinged mana around her fingers pulsed once.
"Hmf-ff… Took you long enough."
The confirmation coming straight from her mouth landed harder than the manabolt had. Rhuvia's mind raced backward through every rumor, every carefully worded warning from the capital brass, every odd detail about the Viscountess's rapid rise.
Even 10 years ago, Ines had been just a Baron's wife, with modest influence. In just this short time, she now commanded full companies of strange, unregistered soldiers, had political backing, and carried enough raw power to intimidate even some nobles from the capital. That kind of climb does not happen on talent and ambition alone.
"Fuck," Rhuvia breathed. The realization tasted like real defeat to her. "I should have guessed, fuck…. Of course you're a witch, or at least I should've guessed you have been deep enough in their circles to have this much power in such a short amount of time. That's how you managed to climb so fast. I should've looked more into you before coming here."
Ines tilted her head, almost fond.
"Hmmm, Knowledge is such a double-edged thing, isn't it? You finally see the shape of the board… and now you discover you're already past the point where only seeing it doesn't even help you."
She raised her free hand.
Rhuvia did not wait for the next spell. She lunged sideways, snatched her staff from the dirt in a single rolling motion, and came up already casting. A compressed gale roared out of the transformed spear-point, tearing a trench through the leaf litter and forcing the nearest soldiers to scramble back. The wind howled between them, sharp enough to strip bark from the closer trees.
To Rhuvia's shock, Ines simply walked through it, as if this was nothing to her.
The black mana around her body simply drank the edges of the gale, unraveling the clean wind into harmless eddies. She did not even raise a proper barrier. The curse energy acted like a living filter, consuming whatever elemental force touched it and leaving only the residual sting of raw power in the air.
Rhuvia's eyes narrowed. She knew she had to change tactics right now, or she won't survive this.
Short, rapid thrusts of the spear-point mixed with layered air blades, high, low, feinting left her staff. She closed the distance, refusing to give Ines the luxury of range.
For a few heartbeats it almost looked even. Sparks of clashing mana lit the clearing. The transformed staff rang against hastily formed dark shields. Rhuvia's footwork stayed precise, her breathing controlled despite the shallow well of mana left in her core.
Ines met every strike with a calm expression, as if she knew the outcome of this battle already.
A horizontal slash of pure wind aimed at the Viscountess's throat was casually turned aside by a backhand swipe of cursed energy. Even the follow-up thrust toward the heart met a sudden spike of black mana that locked the spear-point in place for half a second, just long enough for Ines to step inside Rhuvia's reach and drive an open palm into her sternum.
The impact was not physical.
Curse energy flooded through the contact point as if ice water was poured straight into her veins.
Rhuvia's vision whited out. Her knees buckled. She barely managed to throw herself backward somehow, rolling across the bloodied ground and coming up coughing, one hand pressed to her chest where the residual corruption still burned her insides.
Ines did not press the advantage immediately. She simply stood there, brushing a speck of dirt from her sleeve, and regarded the guild master with something that looked almost like genuine appraisal.
"You really are the strongest person I have fought since I killed the head of the throne family," she said with a voice that seemed almost funny coming out of her at this point.
"I mean that as a compliment, Guild master. Most mages I have met until now rely too heavily on their party or their prepared ground. But you actually forced me to use my real power after all these years."
A small, almost regretful smile touched her lips. "I had hoped to keep the witch side quiet a little longer. The soldiers did not need to see it. But you just had to keep pushing. You just had to keep surviving. So congratulations, Guild Master. You earned your life. Of course, only if you can survive this."
Rhuvia spat blood and forced herself upright again, staff held low, confused at what Ines was saying. The praise landed like another blow. But the strongest since the throne family's head? And she was going to let her live? Why? Thoughts like this kept coming to her, unnerving her focus at this moment.
She attacked anyway, bruising her thoughts away.
The next exchange was shorter and far more brutal. Rhuvia poured what little clean mana she had left into a wide, spinning barrier of razor wind, hoping to create space and recover. But Ines simply walked into it again. The black energy around her flared, eating the blades of air as they touched her.
Then she answered with three successive manabolts, each one denser and more powerful than the last. Rhuvia blocked the first, deflected the second at the cost of a deep gouge across her left shoulder, and took the third full in the side. A direct hit.
The world around her tilted.
She hit the ground hard, staff still somehow in her grip, lungs refusing to draw a full breath. The curse energy was no longer just burning; it was trying to root itself deeper, whispering along her nerves like it wanted to stay.
Ines stepped closer, unhurried.
"You know now," she said softly. "But guess what?"
The ground behind Rhuvia began to thrum.
It was not a usual magic cast. There was no chant after all, no visible gathering of power in Ines's palm.
The spell simply was a silent, immediate command that reached across the clearing and sank into the dead magic circle Rhuvia had thought permanently broken. The runes that had gone cold after the guardian's core was shattered flared back to life in a single heartbeat. Violet light raced along the ancient lines, brighter and hungrier than before, as if something on the other side had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Rhuvia's head snapped around.
The circle was open again.
This was not the weak, sputtering remnant she had left behind. This was a full, roaring gate, the edges of it already beginning to distort the air around it. The path the monsters had used was no longer sealed. Something larger and far more deliberate now looked out from the other side. Rhuvia could swear she was seeing through what was beyond it.
She only managed half a step toward her fallen staff, trying to pick it up.
But Ines's final blast hit her squarely in the back.
There was no time for a proper barrier. The dark manabolt, thicker, denser, laced with the same clinging curse, slammed into her with the force of a battering ram. Rhuvia's body lifted clean off the ground. The world spun. Pain exploded across her shoulders and spine as the curse energy tried to root itself deeper.
She saw the glowing circle rush up to meet her, violet light swallowing the edges of her vision. In reality, she was the one who was flying toward the gate now.
Finally falling into the large open black gate, which swallowed her whole.
One moment she was airborne in the clearing. The next she was gone, pulled through the reactivated circle as if the dungeon itself had reached out and claimed her. The light flared once, then collapsed inward with a sound like a held breath being released.
As it faded, only the faint, pulsing afterglow of the runes remained. The clearing became empty of any trace of the Tier 5 mage who had stood there moments before.
Silence settled, broken only by the soft groan of a wounded soldier somewhere in the ranks.
Ines lowered her hand. The black mana around her fingers unraveled into thin wisps and vanished. She regarded the now-quiet circle with mild, almost clinical interest.
"Well," she said at last, with a light voice. "That was fun."
She turned to the nearest officer, expression already smoothing back into cool composure.
"What are you all waiting around for? Send word to the outer teams; the rest of them are still loose in the forest. I want them found and killed before they reach the village walls."
The officer bowed and moved to obey. Around them, the surviving soldiers began to drag their dead and wounded out of the blood-soaked clearing, the earlier fear already being replaced by the disciplined silence of men who knew better than to question the woman who had just erased a mage, the strongest they had ever seen in their life, from the board.
Ines stood alone there for a moment longer, eyes on the faintly glowing runes, before noticing the staff of Rhuvia left beside her on the dirt. She picked it up. "Hmm, interesting."
As she was admiring the staff of Rhuvia, her soldiers and knights began forming their formation once again.