The past week over the continent of Eura had been exceptionally rainy, leaving deep puddles nearly everywhere, from the paved tracts to the mountain slopes.
This standing water became a highway for a silhouette dressed in an immaculate white robe, with a hood pulled deep over her forehead.
Sage moved with inhuman speed - vanishing into one puddle only to reappear a fraction of a second later and several kilometers away in another.
In just a few dozen minutes, she crossed the entire nation of Polon and reached the border of Silesia.
She did not stop, teleporting deeper into the increasingly mountainous terrain of Silesia, until a massive, strange wall suddenly rose before her eyes.
She stopped for a moment, looking at the construction with curiosity.
"Hoo? Has the King of Silesia decided to build a new city?" she murmured under her breath.
"But looking at this terrain, building here isn't profitable at all..."
She furrowed her brow, sensing something unusual in the air. She focused her gaze on the mountain peak, then suddenly vanished and materialized at a spot where a drop of water lazily dripped from a rocky ledge.
She looked down from above at what she had thought was a city, and her eyes opened wider.
"Monsters? No... they look like giants," she whispered in disbelief. "But what are giants doing in Silesia?"
Her face grew serious.
For a moment, she analyzed the situation, connecting facts that had been unsettling her for some time.
Could this have something to do with those Heroes who recently appeared in this world?
We already have quite a bit of information about them, but I still find it hard to believe...
Her gaze rested on a gigantic figure standing in the center of the settlement, clearly standing out from the others. It was a giant with brown skin and a single, massive eye in the middle of its forehead.
Sage looked down at a patch of grass near which the monster stood, waving its finger strangely in the air as if touching something invisible.
Seeing a single drop of water sliding down a blade of grass, the woman vanished. In the next moment, she appeared exactly at the location of that drop, materializing right before the great giant, who was browsing his Trade Menu in total concentration.
The giant, staring furiously at his interface, muttered under his breath:
"Damned Potato... Why is it him that has the ability to acquire such a vast amount of food when I don't even have enough to feed all these giants..."
Suddenly, right beside him, a sweet, melodic voice rang out: "If you're lacking food, you can always eat me~"
Hearing those words, the Giant felt instantly charmed. Warmth spread through his entire body, and he began to answer almost involuntarily:
"I don't have a problem..."
He did not manage to finish the sentence, however. His single eye flew wide in terror as he realized a female figure in a white robe was standing to his right.
He lunged back violently, panicked thoughts thundering in his head:
What happened?!
How did she get here?
How is it possible that none of my intruder-detection buildings triggered?!
The woman, seeing his panicked retreat, laughed lightly.
"For such a giant, you are quite skittish," she said, amused. "Don't be so afraid. This is the first time I've seen one of the giant race with my own eyes, so I won't eat you... At least not so quickly~"
Her laughter alone caused the Giant to lose concentration, staring at her with a foolish expression.
Seeing this, Sage smiled and stepped closer, gently touching him with her fingertips, accidentally nicking his skin slightly with her fingernail.
"It seems you like me, don't you?" she asked softly.
The Giant only nodded dumbly, and feeling her overwhelming scent, he began to completely lose touch with reality. At that moment, however, the other giants in the territory spotted the intruder.
With a roar, they lunged into an attack, wanting to save their leader without a second thought.
The woman's eyes widened as she watched the first giant's fist racing toward her in disbelief. She easily avoided the blow, but a second and third opponent attacked her immediately.
Sage laughed sweetly, though a hint of sadness echoed in her voice:
"Please, gentlemen, be more gentle..."
The giants paid no heed to her words.
With blank, emotionless faces, they continued their assault. Seeing this, Sage furrowed her brow, and a look of genuine astonishment appeared in her eyes.
"What is happening?" she asked herself. "Are they not under the influence of my Demonic Delight?"
Still dodging the repeated attacks, she analyzed the situation with mounting irritation.
It's impossible... No man below Phase Five without special skills should be able to resist my charm, she thought, observing their slow movements.
Is it possible they have some special skills?
She looked again at their leader, who still stood completely stunned by her presence.
"No... This leader fell for my charm easily," she murmured, performing another dodge against the giants attacking her fiercely.
"So why are they attacking me so relentlessly...?"
The Demon King suddenly woke from his state of stupor and looked around left and right in terror.
Seeing his kin furiously attacking the stranger, he grasped what had occurred and looked at the female silhouette in disbelief.
"Dammit, she's a monster in a woman's skin, not a human!" he rasped, feeling a mounting panic as he felt blood sliding down his cheek where she had grazed him with her nail, fully understanding what had just happened.
He roared fiercely, and a bright red aura suddenly flared around all the giants. At the same time, more giants began to arrive from across the territory, drawn by the battle cry.
The woman in the white robe merely looked at them with curiosity, letting out a quiet "hooo."
With a smile on her lips, she avoided every attack with inhuman grace, while rain began to drizzle slowly from the dark clouds.
The Demon King watched her, thinking feverishly:
Is she a hero?
But I've dealt with heroes before, and none were this damn powerful!
Seeing that his warriors could not even brush the edge of her robe, he cursed under his breath.
He wanted to join the fight himself, but he hesitated.
No... won't the same thing happen again if I approach her?
Terrifying shivers ran through him, and he clenched his fists, reaching the only logical conclusion:
I should run...
As soon as that thought was born in his head, he heard a loud snap of fingers.
The dozens of giants who had been fiercely attacking the woman just a moment ago simply vanished.
The giant's single eye opened wide in terror as he saw the figure slowly and delicately approaching him.
"What... what did you do?!" he gasped in a trembling voice.
The woman answered with a note of sadness in her voice:
"Unfortunately, those kin of yours haven't learned how a lady should be treated, so I had to defend myself against their attacks."
"You... you killed them?" the giant asked in disbelief.
Sage laughed sweetly, shaking her head in disapproval.
"It saddens me that you take someone like me for a murderer. You know, someone as delicate as I am is afraid of blood."
The giant stepped back, seeing that the woman did not stop approaching.
"Then what? What happened to them?"
Sage smiled, and her hand, delicate and nearly transparent in the glow of the rain, rose slowly, pointing to a single droplet levitating right before the massive being's nose.
Unlike the billions of other tears from the sky, this one hung motionless, ignoring the laws of gravity and trembling slightly as if pulsing with its own life.
The giant narrowed his single, powerful eye, staring at the watery sphere with dull incomprehension.
For a moment there was silence, broken only by the steady hum of the rainfall, until finally the monster raised a finger and muttered with authentic consternation:
"Is this... some new variety of berry you want to push on me instead of potatoes?"
Hearing this, Sage erupted in pearly, joyful laughter that echoed across the mountainous terrain of Silesia.
"No, silly," she chirped, moving so close to him that he felt the sweet, dangerous scent radiating from her.
"Look deeper into this drop of water."
The giant narrowed his great eye and focused all his attention on the tiny sphere. Suddenly, he noticed a miniature, trapped silhouette inside the drop.
"That... is that a giant?" he asked, shocked.
"Mhm..." the woman murmured sweetly.
The Demon King could not grasp the situation. His mind refused to cooperate with what he was seeing.
"But what is a giant doing in a drop of water?"
"I had to defend myself somehow, so I trapped them in these drops," she explained gently.
The giant looked around and now spotted dozens of drops hovering in the air, and in each of them was the reflection of one of his warriors.
"You trapped over three-meter-tall giants in a tiny drop of water?" he whispered in disbelief.
"Mhm," the woman confirmed, stepping even closer. "So, my dear..."
She did not manage to finalize her sentence, however, as the massive giant before her simply vanished into thin air.
Seeing this, Sage's eyes flew wide in disbelief. She instantly threw out her hands, and at the spot where she and her conversationalist had stood a moment ago, a thicket of blue strands erupted, creating a large, sealed blue cocoon.
"Darling, escape methods are very difficult against me," she said, smiling sweetly to herself.
Being inside the safe cover, she looked at her fingernail, on which a drop of the giant's blood shimmered. She closed her eyes, focusing all her power on tracking the victim's trail.
Only after a moment did the cocoon vanish, and Sage looked around with an expression of astonishment rarely seen on her.
"He has vanished from the continent of Eura..." she whispered in disbelief.
She furrowed her brow, analyzing the situation. She looked at the drops of water still levitating, in which she had trapped the remaining giants.
She let out a heavy sigh, feeling unsatisfied.
"I didn't even manage to gather enough information," she muttered to herself. "The only thing I managed to obtain is the fact that these invaders are very weak. They can barely be compared with Phase Nine."
She directed her gaze again to her fingernail.
Seeing that the remnant of blood still shimmered upon it, a malicious, predatory smile bloomed on her face.
"You may have managed to escape me..." she murmured in a low voice."But can you escape the curse?"
She extended an open palm, upon which a delicate blue flower with crystalline petals materialized in a flash.
She carefully tilted the finger of her other hand, allowing the drop of the giant's blood to flow straight into the plant's chalice.
In that same second, the blue was violently displaced by a color of deep, gory red.
Sage brought the flower to her lips, which also took on a bloody hue under the influence of the magic.
"Kiss of Fate," she whispered seductively, placing a tender kiss upon the petals.
In response, the flower suddenly burst into blue flames.
For five long seconds, ghostly moans and squeals erupted from the flames, as if the burning plant were suffering on behalf of the victim.
Sage watched the spectacle with satisfaction until the last spark died in the air.
"Sayonara," she tossed out with a smile, then with a movement of her hand, she drew the drops with the trapped creatures toward her.
She pulled a small vial from her bosom and, with a swift motion, poured the water drops - along with the giants trapped inside - into it.
"The only powerful thing they have is the ability to escape... I must remember that for the future," she sighed with resignation, stowing the vessel.
After those words, her silhouette began to lose focus, blurring in the damp air. Sage once again began to vanish and teleport through the puddles, setting off further through the misty, mountainous terrain of the nation of Silesia toward the west.