Not long after the recent sweep, Turtle Island was once again shrouded in blood and terror — only this time, the roles of hunter and prey had been reversed.
The vast island trembled without cease, an oppressive, titanic presence saturating the air. Many of the Sequence 9 Thornshell Turtles had simply rolled belly-up and gone still.
To the island's south, brilliant columns of battle-qi blazed skyward — the high-Sequence powerhouses on the island locked in a desperate, bloody struggle against the creatures rising from the strait. Sea cliffs crumbled and shattered without pause, massive boulders plunging into churning, muddied waves below. The destroyed teleportation portal had become its own battlefield: the Siren Queen stood alone against two high-Sequence combatants, the shockwaves from their clashing mana tearing the very clouds apart.
Along the coastline, waves roared and columns of water surged skyward. Under the Siren's command, dense ranks of Sea Clan troops crashed ashore in endless waves, encircling and hunting down the invaders.
Meanwhile, a small party — a handful of young women and one unicorn — was running for their lives through the island's interior.
Agitated by the presence of so many high-Sequence combatants, the island's native creatures had gone berserk, lashing out with dangerous aggression, attacking the group again and again.
Qin Zhihua's expression was stone-cold. Her sword flashed like a rainbow — a single stroke took the head off a red-eyed ogre charging toward her. Not a single Transcendent creature that blocked their path survived more than one exchange against that three-foot blade.
Grace had produced a black-and-red longbow, her expression grave and focused.
"Bai Mengtian, Bai Mengtian, Bai Mengtian!"
Li Fei shouted her best friend's name — but Bai Mengtian was no goddess. She could not cross a thousand mountains in an instant to answer a call.
With no outside help coming, Li Fei tightened her grip on her staff and forced herself to think clearly.
The ground lurching erratically beneath her feet, the faint echoes of screams drifting on the wind — these told her that what was happening on Viranean was no accident caused by some rogue monster. This was an upheaval without precedent.
"How far are we from the portal?" Su Ling'er asked, her face ashen, eyes bright with unshed tears.
"We can't go toward the portal!" Li Fei said, after a brief pause — decisive, cutting off any argument before it could start. She pulled every eye in the group to her.
"We've been running for half an hour and the chaos still hasn't ended! If the teleportation route were clear, a wave of high-Sequence reinforcements would have come through by now!"
— Under normal circumstances, any problem that couldn't be solved by the average high-Sequence powerhouse could be solved by shouting Bai Mengtian's name on the other end of a teleportation corridor.
Li Fei didn't know exactly what Sequence Bai Mengtian had reached — but someone who had openly killed a Duke, whose infamy nearly matched that of the Witches' Sabbath combined, would have died a thousand times over if she were only Sequence 3. Even an ordinary Grandmaster would be hiding under a false name and running for their life. There was no way the natives of Viranean — Cricket Island... no, Turtle Island — could have stirred up enough chaos to overwhelm Bai Mengtian herself.
So Li Fei was confident in her conclusion: the teleportation route had been cut off. Possibly destroyed entirely.
Su Ling'er opened her mouth. She wanted desperately to ask what do we do now — and ultimately held herself back. This was not the moment to add to the noise.
"We can't count on reinforcements for a while... we have to save ourselves!" Li Fei said, brow creased. "First priority: find somewhere hidden and lie low until Loxibrook has time to respond."
"Beatrice — summon some fairies to scout ahead. Zhihua, do you have anything that can neutralize a Delayed Summoning Potion?"
Beatrice, who had been steadily building her mana reserves, gave her silver hand-bells a gentle shake. Dozens of tiny fairies shimmered into existence and scattered outward in every direction.
"One moment."
Qin Zhihua's voice was slightly hoarse. She produced a small, dainty pink sachet — and then proceeded to pull from it an assortment of materials and tools that vastly exceeded the pouch's visible dimensions. Clearly, unlike the common spatial rings, her storage item was a [Grotto Pouch].
Li Fei had come to Viranean half for the adventure and half for a holiday — and to prevent her summoned fairies from turning into unwanted chaperones at awkward moments, she had borrowed a bottle of [Delayed Summoning Potion] from Qin Zhihua the day before. The potion postponed the effect of Summoning Magic by three days, meaning all four summoned fairies would appear at once on the morning of the fourth day.
But right now, in this situation, more help was unquestionably better — even if the fairies could only do what Old Jiang had done: serve as a rearguard to buy time.
Qin Zhihua's movements were fluid and precise — effortlessly controlled, not a single motion wasted. Working with just the most basic of tools, she had the neutralizing potion prepared in moments. Li Fei drank it in one go. A halo of soft light bloomed at her side, and four newborn fairies appeared, blinking around at the older girls surrounding them with wide, curious, slightly dazed eyes — then tumbled affectionately into Li Fei's arms.
"I'm sorry about this..."
Li Fei's gaze was distant and soft as she gently stroked a fairy's golden hair.
Suddenly, from somewhere to the left and behind them, came a short, sharp cry — a voice soft and clear, unmistakably that of a fairy.
The fairy sentinels had done their job. They might not be able to find a safe haven quickly — but they could rapidly identify where the danger was.
Then more cries followed, one after another, accompanied by the blurred, heavy sound of massed footsteps drawing closer. Whatever was coming, it was coming in numbers.
Judging by the direction: the threat was approaching from the coastline.
"Move toward the center of the island!" Li Fei said, voice low. "The danger is mostly coming from the sea. If we push deeper inland, we should be able to buy more time."
"Mm."
Without further deliberation, the group quieted down and changed course. Qin Zhihua took the lead, sword in hand, clearing the path ahead. Grace and Beatrice fell instinctively to either flank. Fufu brought up the rear.
They had not gone far when the sounds of fighting and shouting reached them — and it sounded vaguely familiar.
"Cowell?" Beatrice frowned. "Should we—"
"Scout it first. If it doesn't look too dangerous, pull them into our group!" Li Fei said without hesitation.
At some point, command of the party had simply settled into her hands.
Beatrice summoned a vivid green owl. Her eyes went white simultaneously — and as the owl took flight, ghostly outlines of what it saw flickered through her gaze.
"They're surrounded by Harpies and tree monsters," Beatrice reported a moment later. "But it doesn't look critical. They should be able to wrap it up before long."
Li Fei exhaled. In the same moment, her System Panel registered a drop of 2 Potential Points — and two new entries appeared in her Knowledge Tree:
[Introductory Combat]
Unlocks the ability to learn and use Tier-I combat skills.
[Introductory Weapon Mastery]
Increases melee damage by 10%.
Her Fortune Points had been spent to zero at the same time.
[Staff Weapon Proficiency (Lv1)]
Skill Effect: Increases proficiency with staff-type weapons.
The logic was obvious: in a crisis that urgently demanded combat power — and short of flipping over her hidden cards — someone with 24 points of Strength was absolutely going to be more effective in melee than at casting spells.
A flood of images and knowledge cascaded through Li Fei's mind: warriors with knotted muscle locked in blood-soaked combat against dragons; tall, lean female barbarians strangling Behemoths with their bare hands. Every movement those figures made was packed with explosive, visceral power — every muscle fiber, every bone vibrating in a strange, perfect rhythm.
Li Fei opened her eyes. They were bright.
The staff that had always felt slightly awkward in her grip now sat in her hand like a natural extension of her arm — as easy and familiar as holding a pair of chopsticks. She could manipulate it any way she pleased.
— She'd have to treat that crafty little fox to something nice when they got back. The Silencing Earrings had cost a fortune, and if not for the fat commission she'd earned off her that night, Li Fei wouldn't have had the money to buy the Knowledge Book for Terrain Awareness — let alone a second one.
"Forward."
Li Fei said a single word — and moved first.
Qin Zhihua and the others could not begin to process what they were seeing: in the span of a single deep breath, the girl who had been pure brute force with a spell-caster's body had somehow transformed into a natural melee genius with all the raw potential of a Grandmaster.
...
Clang!
A greatsword rang out, carrying the force of a crumbling mountain — bisecting a Harpy at the waist, the momentum carrying through to cleave off a tree monster's arm in the same stroke.
As the ogre let out a shriek of pain, a Magic Arrow drilled through its eye socket with surgical precision. In the muffled detonation that followed, the ogre convulsed and collapsed, blood spraying from every orifice.
"Not bad at all, Sherlock."
Cowell, who had been handling his side of the fight with easy comfort, let out a low whistle. "That kind of control — if you showed up at the Magic Academy, you'd probably snag a Special Enrollment spot, wouldn't you?"
Behind the mask, the corner of Sherlock's mouth curved into a small smile. He opened his mouth to reply — and then threw himself sideways into a roll, narrowly avoiding an axe that came swinging for his skull. Zoller's blade swept out in the same instant, bisecting the shrieking tree monster that had lunged after Sherlock.
More than twenty Transcendent creatures were still pressing in on all sides. Over ten corpses already littered the ground — and the number kept growing, while the enemies still standing kept dwindling. Victory was only a matter of time, given how seamlessly the four of them worked together.
"Oh? Is that so?"
A mage-robed young woman of staggering beauty came sprinting out of nowhere at extraordinary speed — black hair streaming behind her, both hands swinging a staff that was nearly as tall as she was and thick as her wrist. She brought it down in a sweeping arc.
In the shrieking rush of displaced air, a tree monster that had just turned around found its head detonating like a watermelon under a truck tire.
Qin Zhihua, who had followed a half-step behind, let out a quiet breath of relief. She stepped forward, robes drifting, and with a graceful sweep of her blade sealed the throat of a screaming Harpy diving toward them from above.
If I activate Dragon's Might, I might be able to hammer apart something at Sequence 8...
Li Fei filed the thought away and turned to Qin Zhihua with a bright smile. "Leave the Sequence 9s to me."
Qin Zhihua nodded without a word, answering with action instead — her figure circling at Li Fei's side like a phantom, each step landing with effortless grace, the occasional flicker of her blade drawing arcs of crimson through the air.
Grace drew her bow in silence. A rainbow-shimmering arrow screamed across the sky and punched clean through a Harpy's left wing, sending it crashing to the ground in a wailing heap.
What skill is that? The damage output is something else...
Li Fei noted it briefly, then snapped her attention back to the fight.
After smashing three more "watermelons" in quick succession, she finally understood why mages always looked down on pure melee fighters — and why the War Academy's standards for Aptitude weren't nearly as strict as the Magic Academy's. Without Aptitude, a mage simply could not cast a single spell. Warriors were different: even someone with Aptitude as low as her own could grind out extraordinary fighting technique, and could grasp the more direct, intuitive portions of combat-class Transcendent knowledge through sheer practice.
Fufu and Beatrice had not joined the melee. Instead, they kept a watchful eye on the surroundings, guarding against anything unexpected.
With the fresh reinforcements thrown into the mix, the battle shifted into a one-sided rout. When the last two Harpies finally spread their wings and fled, silence returned — broken only by the sharp, metallic reek of blood soaking into the ground.
"Our thanks."
Cowell scratched the back of his head and gave a sheepish laugh. He had made a passing remark about the Magic Academy's Special Enrollment students, and now two of them — both breathtakingly lovely — had actually appeared. Having been caught in the act, he felt distinctly awkward.
"Don't mention it."
Li Fei waved it off and came straight to the point. "Something has gone badly wrong on Viranean — very badly. We're heading for the center of the island to wait for reinforcements from Loxibrook. What about you?"
"We should obviously head toward the teleportation route and check the situation," Simon began — and found that no one backed him up.
"The center of the island is definitely the right call for shelter... If the teleportation route were still clear, this chaos would already be over by now."
Sherlock turned and looked toward the southern end of Turtle Island. Muffled reverberations still drifted from that direction at irregular intervals, enough to set the nearby trees trembling.
"We'll head for the center too — together?" Cowell thought it over briefly and made his decision.
"That's exactly what we were hoping to hear."
The two parties came to an immediate agreement.
...
Viranean under the night sky had not fallen quiet.
From the island's southern edge came the occasional eerie sound — eerily like the wail of a newborn infant. But the battle between the high-Sequence powerhouses seemed to have finally subsided; the ground no longer shook.
The Transcendents who had arrived full of ambition to "build a new frontier" were now running for their lives through the darkness, their screams cutting through the night air at irregular intervals.
Dominance had shifted entirely to the Sea Clan forces. Their silhouettes moved through every corner of the island, flushing out Transcendents hiding in the shadows, swarming them, and consuming them alive.
The colonizers who had come to slaughter and plunder were now the ones left terrified and helpless, bleeding into the earth with no hope of their bones remaining whole.
Beside the rubble that had once been the teleportation portal, the Kraken bathed in moonlight. A few strikingly beautiful Sirens stroked the Queen's long, elegant fish tail, lavishing her scales — brilliant as gemstones — with reverent attention, their expressions rapt and adoring.
On a candelabra nearby sat two heads, eyes still wide open in fury — recognizably the high-Sequence Transcendents who had fought the Kraken during the day.
Suddenly, several fish-men escorted two elves forward, forcing them before the Kraken. A heavy blow drove down behind each elf's knees. To the stomach-turning crack of shattering bone, the elves cried out and collapsed — kneeling on the ground before the Siren Queen.
"Mercy — mercy — please, please..."
One elf was weeping openly, pleading in a voice thin with terror.
The other's eyes blazed with venomous fury as she glared up at the Queen, words spilling out in a torrent of defiance and profanity.
Slap. Slap. Slap...
A rapid succession of strikes silenced the elf's contemptuous words — continuing until blood ran from her mouth and nose and teeth had been knocked loose.
Then a Siren stepped forward, unrolling a magic portrait scroll. On it were depicted a Siren mother and daughter.
Had Li Fei been present, she would have recognized them immediately — they were the two Zhihua had just acquired as part of her household the day before.
"Have you seen them? Tell me, and I'll let you live."
The Kraken rested her chin in one hand as she asked, her voice impossibly melodious and sweet — but utterly without inflection.
"Oh? Are they your wife and daughter?"
The blood-soaked elf gave a broken, bitter laugh and slurred through split lips, "They've definitely been taken to Loxibrook by now... my sisters will make sure they suffer in every way imaginable..."
The graphic words that followed were left unsaid.
Slap. Slap. Slap...
Another volley of strikes.
"My Queen, for such desecration of our kin, they should be repaid in kind..."
The Siren who had been massaging the Kraken's tail raised her alluring face, eyes flickering toward the looming male Sea Clan warriors nearby in silent suggestion.
Before she had finished speaking, the fish tail twitched — and sent that lovely-faced Siren flying.
The Siren spat blood. She crawled back to the Queen's side and prostrated herself, trembling.
"Your Majesty, forgive me — your Majesty, forgive me..."
"It seems they have no useful information."
The Kraken said it flatly. "Deal with them."
Several Sirens moved forward, their long tails undulating. Female Sea creatures descended from above on beating wings, wicked smiles spreading across their beautiful faces. They closed in around the defiant, strong-willed elf — ignoring her frantic struggling and flailing — and dragged her by the hair into the dense forest. A moment later came a sharp, piercing shriek, which quickly cut off and dissolved into muffled, choking sounds.
Many of the male Sea Clan members glanced repeatedly in that direction — but in the Sea Clan's matriarchal society, not one of them dared make any request of the intensely exclusionary Queen.
The remaining elf — the one who had not been chosen — seemed to grasp something of what was happening. Her whole body shook. She screamed until her voice broke:
"I'm innocent! I only came to gather medicinal herbs — I never harmed a single Siren!"
A moment later, her head was mounted on a large tree beside the ruins of the portal. In the night wind, a row of heads swayed — but their eyes, still wet with tears of blood, remained fixed on the north. Toward home. Toward Loxibrook.
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