The moment Ren's mana brushed against the corrupted pulse beneath the Wood ruin, Selthia felt him back.
She did not panic. She did not alter her flow or scramble to issue panicked commands through her network. Instead, she smoothly shifted into the next phase of her deployment, moving in absolute silence without giving off a single signal that might alert her strongest enemy.
Deducing Ren's immediate trajectory required almost zero effort on her part.
The corruption understood him intimately. Over the years, her network had breached his mind, meticulously studying his cognitive patterns, and observed him mapping and cataloging his behavioral ticks. Long before Ren even landed his first strike against the Fire Dragon, Selthia already knew the exact coordinates he was flying toward and precisely what he intended to do when he got there.
If Ren believed he had caught her off guard... well, he had, to a small degree.
