-35- Engagement

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After crossing several mountain ridges, Yvette lowered her head at the top of a slope and gazed down upon a withered forest.

It was a basin within the Ish Mountains, home to the Rotting Forest. Perhaps influenced by the dense concentration of distortion factors, some of the dead trees had begun to sprout tender shoots again. Their color was an eerie deep purple. Who knew whether the first plant-type aberration might eventually be born from them?

“Teacher, look!” Rosalind suddenly exclaimed.

Following the direction of her finger, Yvette saw a grayish-white mist spreading outward from the deepest reaches of the Rotting Forest.

It clearly was not dream mist. Its color was strange, carrying a gloomy, dirty cast, utterly lacking the crystal-clear purity of dream mist, which resembled pristine white clouds. The two of them immediately turned toward the Bladed Demon, waiting for it to explain the situation.

“Why are you looking at me? Do I know everything?” the Bladed Demon said.

Apparently, it had no idea either.

After a moment’s hesitation, Yvette took a small mask from her belt pouch.

It was a homemade gas mask composed of a filter, a low-grade casting unit, and an elemental capacitor. A small-scale air-filtration spell had been inscribed into the casting unit, giving it roughly an hour of operating time. She had prepared it specifically for situations involving poisonous fog and the like.

The pouch also contained several explosives. Their damage was mediocre; their primary purpose was to provide positional information, making them little more than rudimentary signal flares.

Apart from those, the only remaining equipment was the alloy combat blades hanging from the waists of teacher and student alike. Yvette had barely practiced close-quarters combat, so she carried hers merely as a precaution.

Once Rosalind had put on her gas mask as well, the three of them entered the fog-shrouded Rotting Forest. After a brief hesitation, they put away their arcane boards and advanced cautiously on foot, keeping close together.

They had taken only a few steps when Rosalind realized that the Bladed Demon had vanished.

“Hey… Mr. Demon? Mr. Bladed Demon? Where are you?” Rosalind called out. One hand clutched tightly at the hem of her teacher’s clothing, lest she become lost as well.

No answer came. Her voice trembled as she asked nervously, “Teacher, it didn’t sneak away, did it? Have we fallen into a trap?”

“No. There’s something wrong with this fog. It contains… a spell formation.” Yvette frowned. The runic ring on her right hand lit up and faded repeatedly.

After several minutes, she removed her gas mask and said with certainty, “This isn’t poisonous fog, but it isn’t ordinary either. Within it lies a complex array of spells, something like… a gigantic magic circle. Its effect should be to make people lose their sense of direction while also isolating sound to a certain degree.”

“Can you decipher it, Teacher?” Rosalind removed her own mask and drew a cautious breath. The air truly was no different from ordinary mountain air, save for being somewhat more humid.

“No… Its runic groups are dynamic, and there are many unknown runes I’ve never seen before.” Yvette shook her head, and a dreadful conjecture immediately surfaced in her mind.

To the Origin Civilization, no rune on Origin Star was truly unfamiliar. Although the number of known basic runes had already exceeded ten thousand, the Origin Civilization had at least identified and named every one of them. At most, some remained poorly understood, their properties unclear.

Yet this spell formation enveloping the Rotting Forest contained numerous new runes that even she did not recognize…

Could it really have come from beyond the universe? Was the source of the apocalypse, the truth behind the aberrations, an invasion by some terrifying cosmic pathogen?

No. It might also be the result of encrypted packaging. She had experienced something similar in her dreams while using the Black Tower Pharmaceuticals’ encrypted packaging service…

For a time, countless conjectures churned through Yvette’s mind, yet her expression remained unchanged—calm as ever. This was a critical moment. As a teacher, she had to remain composed even if Mount Tai collapsed before her, so that Rosalind could keep her own composure as well.

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“What do we do now?” Rosalind instinctively moved closer to her teacher.

“Keep going. Apart from making people lose their sense of direction, this fog is harmless. I can’t alter or hijack the magic circle, but I’ve found a clue. As long as we follow the correct route, we won’t be led astray and can proceed directly to the formation’s core.” Yvette spoke with confidence.

The two continued forward. The fog around them grew increasingly dense. Visibility shrank from more than a dozen yards to only a few. When they looked up, all they could see was a sheet of gray-white mist; not a ray of sunlight penetrated it.

They could have flown out from above, but then all they would see was a forest enveloped in heavy fog, making it impossible to determine the broodmother’s location. The broodmother was capable of moving as well, though rather slowly.

By contrast, advancing through the fog along the clues extracted from the spell formation made it entirely feasible to follow the trail and locate the one releasing the mist.

After they had gone a little farther, heavy footsteps gradually reached them from ahead.

Sensing danger within the fog, Yvette stopped. She was just preparing to cast a pillar of flame to pierce the mist and scout the way when Rosalind suddenly drew her blade and slashed at a fleeting shadow beside them.

A round object slick with viscous blood rolled to the ground. A short, still-twitching tendril of flesh dangled from the severed opening.

“A human head… Shepherd Sheep?” Seeing this, Yvette immediately identified the aberration attacking from within the fog. Of the four broodmother’s guards, only that creature could use human heads as weapons.

The heavy footsteps came again, but this time they did not approach in a straight line. Instead, they circled around them. Before long, another horrifying human face shot out of the mist, and Rosalind cut it down with a single stroke.

Viscous brain matter and black blood splattered across the cold alloy blade. Rosalind flicked the gore away and said, “Teacher, you go on ahead. I’ll take care of this one.”

Her assigned target in the original plan had been the Night-Walking Demon, but there was no reason she could not adapt to changing circumstances. Besides, she could remain here, whereas her teacher had to continue forward. Otherwise, who would deal with this obstructive fog?

“If you can’t win, run. There’s no need to fight to the death,” Yvette reminded her.

Assigning some of the enemies to Rosalind was part of the strategy. It was not merely because Rosalind now possessed both the willingness and the ability to share her teacher’s burden. Yvette herself also had to manage the allocation of her magical power. Her current total reserve was 644 points, and until the broodmother was destroyed, she had to preserve as much of her strength as possible.

As for the Bladed Demon… no one even knew where it had gone. It might have slipped away entirely. Yvette had never expected it to contribute much in the first place; this was more or less within expectations.

“Mhm. I won’t overestimate myself,” Rosalind said with a gentle nod, her voice obedient and her gaze solemn.

Thus, no longer paying attention to the Shepherd Sheep’s harassment—and no longer needing to slow down to accommodate her student—Yvette immediately stepped onto her arcane board and shot forward like a gust of wind, heading straight along the route she had deciphered.

…

At the same time, within the withered forest blanketed by gray-white fog, the Bladed Demon was darting through the air at a speed too swift for the naked eye to follow, raising violent gusts of wind in its wake.

A moment later, a colossal shadow appeared in the mist ahead. The creature was forced to brake sharply, swerving several times through the air before barely managing to regain control.

Then, as it gazed at the terrifying black silhouette slowly drawing near, at the enormous bat wings gradually emerging from the fog, the corners of the Bladed Demon’s mouth began to rise. A tiny curve formed there, filled with contempt and mockery.

…

Five minutes later, having left the area guarded by the Shepherd Sheep, Yvette felt that the surrounding fog had grown so dense it seemed almost solid. Wind magic still had some effect, however. It could scatter the mist and temporarily clear a patch of visibility.

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Just then, a red point of light suddenly appeared within the heavy fog, putting her on alert.

Her crimson armor activated instantly, covering the surface of her body and clothing. A moment later, an elemental blast combining fire and lightning shot out of the mist straight toward her face. Yvette raised a hand and blocked it.

The agitated magical elements exploded in her pale, jade-like palm. Smoke curled upward, yet not a trace remained.

Yvette shook her slightly aching hand and stared expressionlessly toward the attacker. A half-mechanical aberration emerged from the fog, covered in purplish-red flesh and standing a full three stories tall.

There was no doubt: it should be the “Mechanical Tyrant.” Its model could not be identified, however, making it impossible to determine which manufacturer had produced the arcane war machine. Judging from its structure, it appeared to be an artillery type. It advanced on two legs, with a mana cannon mounted on each mechanical arm, capable of firing elemental rounds.

Almost instinctively, Yvette attempted to hack into it, but the effort came to nothing. The machine had evidently not opened its data-receiving port.

Hopefully, I can deal with it using no more than 150 points of magical power…

Yvette silently calculated her chances and was just about to throw a lightning bomb when another shadow suddenly flew out of the fog beside her.

She immediately focused her attention on it and saw the Bladed Demon emerge from the mist, screaming as it crashed face-first into the ground.

“Hey… I-I’ve got two of them here! Hurry… hurry up and help me…” the Bladed Demon said as it struggled to get back up.

Behind it, two enormous figures soon emerged from the fog: a gigantic three-headed vulture, and a strange, gray-black, obese monster with bat wings and nothing on its face but a single mouth.

“Rotbeak Vulture. Night-Walking Demon…” Yvette murmured the names her student had given the two monsters, then glanced at the bedraggled Bladed Demon sprawled on the ground.

She said nothing, but the confusion in her ruby-like eyes was unmistakable, as though she were asking: How can you be this useless? Are you really an aberration of the same rank as them?

That look wounded the Bladed Demon deeply.

“You… What are you looking at? Isn’t it normal to lose when fighting two against one? Besides, they’re absurdly strong. I suggest we circle around together for now and wait for an opportunity to isolate one of them. We can solve the problem through wisdom…”

Muttering, it rose to its feet and flew into the air. If its face had not been covered by carapace, it probably would have blushed with embarrassment.

Perhaps because the enemies were far stronger than expected, it was also clear that its voice had begun to carry a hint of retreat. It no longer placed quite so much faith in Yvette’s strength.

Yvette said nothing. She rose into the air as several red and blue-white runic rings lit up around her, radiating a force that made the Bladed Demon’s heart tremble.

Then, amid the interweaving flames and lightning, the Rotbeak Vulture, which had been the first to charge into close range, let out a shriek and was blasted away. One of its heads was scorched black, and it lay on the ground wailing without end.

“Good grief… She’s that powerful?” The Bladed Demon stared in stunned disbelief. Only afterward did it remember to add, “Wait—that wasn’t the target I picked…”