Chapter 340: A Formidable Foe

I stood there for a moment, confused at what she was saying.

“So you have seen this before after all?”

Kassie did not respond immediately. She simply turned and ignored the reanimated assassins. Walked right past them like they weren’t there. They reached for her and she didn’t even glance at them.

She walked toward the dead slaves.

I understood then. For Kassie, this was different. These weren’t strangers lying in the water. These were women she’d freed. The moment they were touched, it became personal, and whoever had pulled this stunt, whatever point they’d been trying to prove, they’d gone and bitten off far more than they could chew.

Kassie reached the bodies and stared down at them.

“Cindy.”

The monstrous horse materialized in a shower of sparks, standing beside Kassie with her unnatural height. Even in the dim tunnel light, the creature’s presence was immense.

“Burn them for me… peacefully.”

Cindy neighed softly. Almost like she could read into Kassie’s tone. The horse was not dramatic today. She stepped forward and smacked her hooves against the ground, igniting blue flames that caught the first body and began to spread gently to the rest.

It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t destructive. It was a cremation.

Kassie stood watching, her face embedded in that armor, completely unreadable. Her towering height was utterly still. Behind her, the assassins were closing in, dragging themselves through the shallow water toward her back.

She didn’t look at them.

She cracked her neck. Twisted it to the right, and the sound of bones popping came out almost eerily. Then to the left. The same sound.

She turned slowly…

And released a wave of pressure that flattened everything to the ground.

The undead bodies that had been moving toward her turned to pulp, pressed against the stone as if the weight of the sky had dropped onto them. Blood splattered in every direction.

The bodies had been pulverized. Reduced to wet ruin across the tunnel floor. But the blood was still moving. Struggling. Crawling across the stone without a body to carry it, reaching for other pools of itself, trying stubbornly to reassemble something from nothing.

Kassie stood and watched it happen.

Then another pressure fell on the atmosphere. This one was familiar.

Kassie glanced upward through the cracks in the tunnel ceiling, that crimson trail from where her eyes would have been flowing out for a moment. She moved slightly. Two steps to the side.

The next moment, a giant creature carved out of flames crashed down beside her.

My eyes widened.

’Ifrit?!’

Kassie wasted no time. The moment the creature landed, before it had even settled, she moved. Her body twirled forward in a blur that looked less like movement and more like she’d been torn through space. From the side, she brought the greatsword around in a brutal arc and brought it down against the head of the giant Ifrit.

That level of speed was abnormal. Far beyond anything I’d ever seen from her.

The creature could not react. Had not even finished landing. Its entire body was cleaved in equal halves, the two sides falling apart in opposite directions, flames guttering and dying where the blade had passed.

I stood there with my mouth open.

I honestly thought I had seen the best of Kassie.

I was wrong.

’She killed a Heroic Summon with a single cleave of her sword?!’

I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of what Kassie could do. She might not have abilities like the Pyre Saint, but there was no doubt. She was the absolute peak of physical capability.

However, something was happening.

Ifrit’s body was merging together. The flames were reigniting, the two halves pulling toward each other, the summon flickering back to life.

Kassie shifted. One leg back. Positioned herself sideways.

Then her sword hand moved.

It became a blur, and with every blur it carved a line that sliced the reforming body apart so fast the creature couldn’t complete a single reassembly. Arcs of light hung in the air where the blade had passed, and pieces of the Fire Lord flew in every direction, each chunk too small to reconnect with the others before the next cut separated it further.

When Kassie stopped and slammed the tip of her sword into the ground, small chunks of the summon rained down around her. Blood splattered and washed over her armor, dripping from the helmet, from the greatsword, pooling at her feet.

I was worried. Worried that this wouldn’t be enough, that Ifrit would keep reforming and Kassie wouldn’t stop.

But Ifrit did not stand again.

A new presence arrived instead.

Kassie glanced up at the sky through the cracks in the ceiling. There was a crimson bird, something that looked like a griffin, and on its back sat a man with red flowing hair. He looked down at us and smirked.

“So it’s you… you bastards were the ones that destroyed my home. I’ll find every one of those slaves and kill them, then I will come to personally destroy the Black Snow Company with my own hands.”

His eyes were blood red and fierce, emanating deep malice.

I didn’t let him finish.

White chains burst from my body and lunged upward. I didn’t aim for the griffin’s legs. That would have been futile. The chain latched onto a pipe that extended from the tunnel’s upper structure and snatched me off the ground, turning me into a blur as it flung me across the open air toward him.

The Blood Mage’s griffin flapped its wings and generated a hurricane of wind, but I twisted through the air and countered it with my own flames.

I manifested the fire that touched the hurricane into snakes and small birds, giving them shape and direction. At this level I could barely hold the constructs together, but they spread faster because of the personality I’d pushed into them, chasing and snapping and dividing the wind.

Kassie had moved too. Before the Mage could pull away, she was already on him, one hand on the griffin’s wing. She paused for a single moment.

In that moment, she was a demon.

Glaring… wishing nothing but pure destruction upon the man beneath her hand.

Then she ripped the griffin’s wing off.

Blood sprayed as the severed wing tumbled downward. Kassie grabbed the man by the neck. My chains were already around his torso.

But he showed no remorse. He laughed.

“Why be in such a hurry? I said it will be your turn after I kill all the slaves that desired freedom and got it.”

He laughed again and his body began to swell then it exploded.

But the rain of blood did not fall. Instead, it drifted upward and flew across the air, every drop heading in the same direction, pulled by something unseen.

I landed on the ground and looked up at the trail of blood vanishing into the night sky.

“It’ll be a good idea to follow it,” I said.

Kassie touched down softly beside me. Her helmet opened, and her indifferent eyes watched the blood drift away.

“No. It’s useless. He was thorough enough to create a sacrificial body, which means the only place that will lead us to is a trap.”

She paused.

Her expression got colder.

“We have quite the formidable foe this time around.”

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