But she never got to finish her sentence, because the noble moved faster than her mind could process.
*SLAP!*
The sound shot through the air like a whip, echoing off the walls. Her head snapped sideways so violently it felt as if her neck had been borrowed by a professional executioner. A single, startled squeak escaped her lips, which was far more pitiful than dignified, before her eyes rolled back in their sockets.
Her knees buckled. Her body pitched forward in slow, graceless collapse.
She hit the ground face-first with all the majesty of a sack of wet laundry.
The Countess of Vexmore, jewel of aristocracy, paragon of etiquette and noble bearing, was unconscious from a single slap.
But just before her head hit the ground to receive the second slap of her life, the cruel chime of a notification rang in the Countess's fading awareness:
[You have been defeated by the Primordial Subjugator.]
