Mana surged from both the Legendary Witch and the Saint of Execution as they faced one another.
Aristovelli wore a faint, mocking smile, as though the confrontation amused her. Across from her, Isidro's expression remained calm, yet beneath that composure lurked a murderous anticipation that was impossible to conceal.
With a slight motion of his raised hand, he beckoned his weapon.
Far above, the colossal spear answered its master's call. It tore free from the distant earth and ascended into the heavens. As it flew back toward him, its immense form gradually shrank until it regained its ordinary size. A moment later, it settled neatly into his grasp.
The manoeuvre alone sent tremors through the ground.
The guild members tightened their grips around their weapons, wary of what the Saint might do next. Yet he remained still, offering neither attack nor spell.
From behind a nearby wooden house, Chief Laskar and Loof watched from concealment. Neither dared venture closer. They were ordinary folk amid a clash between monsters. A single stray spell or careless shockwave would be enough to claim their lives.
"It is rather disappointing to find a legendary figure such as yourself lingering in a measly place like this," Isidro said coldly.
"Mind your words, brat," Aristovelli replied with an amused smile. "The Golshifteh may bask in wealth and influence today, but your lineage was never noble. Your ancestors came from villages no different from this one. Show some humility. There is nothing measly about this place."
A faint twitch crossed Isidro's brow.
"Your tongue remains as sharp as ever," he said. "But I did not come here to trade insults with a woman."
His gaze hardened.
"You are standing in my way, Ancient One. Move."
Aristovelli laughed openly. The sound carried neither warmth nor mirth.
"Did I somehow give you the impression that you stand a chance against me?" she asked. "Choose your words carefully. They may well be your last."
The air around her grew heavier.
The teasing smile remained, but her eyes had become hollow and menacing, like those of a predator peering into darkness.
"You are merely the shadow of the woman I once admired," Isidro replied, tightening his grip around his spear. "Time has not been kind to you. You are far more vulnerable than you used to be."
"Then take the risk," Aristovelli said, smiling with restrained bloodlust.
"Gladly." A savage grin spread across Isidro's face.
For a moment, neither moved. Yet everyone present felt it.
The air itself had become taut, stretched to its limit like the string of a drawn bow.
From that point onward, words had lost all purpose.
The wind converged upon a single point, compressing into a lethal sphere of swirling currents. It continued to grow.
Larger. Denser.
The very air seemed unable to bear its existence. Space warped around it, twisting beneath the pressure until the orb finally erupted forward.
The blast thundered toward Isidro.
Andromed and his master were hurled away from the village threshold as the attack carved a path through the earth, leaving devastation in its wake.
The guild members instinctively raised barriers and shields against the shockwave.
When the gale finally subsided, their eyes immediately searched for the caster.
No incantation had been spoken.
No gesture had been made.
Yet a spell of such magnitude had manifested all the same.
Their gazes soon settled upon Aristovelli as she continued her leisurely advance.
Who else could have accomplished such a feat? The answer was right before them.
Despite the violence of the attack, Isidro emerged unharmed. So did Dolores and Pritish, who clung tightly to the beast's fur behind him. A translucent Globulus shimmered around them, having absorbed the worst of the destructive winds.
Aristovelli continued forward without haste.
Before long, she reached the place where the Saint awaited her.
And there, he unveiled a deadly surprise.
Dozens of uprooted trees hovered behind him, suspended by invisible force. Their trunks groaned and twisted in midair, poised to descend like a rain of wooden lances.
"What an old trick," Aristovelli sighed.
There was genuine disappointment in her voice.
At Isidro's command, the trees shot forward.
They tore through the night with tremendous force, splintering themselves against the pressure of their own acceleration. Yet none came close to striking their target.
A faint glow passed through Aristovelli's eyes.
That alone was enough.
The airborne trees veered off course and crashed deep into the surrounding forest, scattering splinters and shattered branches across the darkness.
Isidro did not waste time dwelling on failure. Without a word of incantation, he cast another spell. Countless iron spears materialized behind him.
Their edges glowed crimson beneath wreaths of flame, transforming the night sky into a sea of burning steel.
He was no ordinary mage.
He too belonged among those capable of casting without spoken words.
"I would know why history granted you the title you bear," Isidro said firmly. "Do not disappoint me, Ancient One."
"Less talking. More fighting," Aristovelli replied with a yawn as she spun her wand between her fingers.
The flaming spears descended in a relentless rain of fire.
Aristovelli responded with a casual upward flick of her wand.
Instantly, the entire barrage came to a halt.
Thousands of burning points hung motionless in the air, suspended as though time itself had been seized.
Silence followed.
For a brief moment, she studied the flames with quiet scrutiny, as if evaluating something beneath her expectations.
"They're not nearly hot enough." Her voice carried the same indifferent disappointment one might reserve for a poorly executed lesson.
"With flames of this level, you will accomplish nothing." A faint smile formed on her lips. "Allow me to show you how it is done."
The atmosphere shifted at once.
Mana erupted from her body in overwhelming waves, coalescing into a colossal pillar of radiance that pierced the heavens and swept the clouds apart, laying bare the night sky above.
The pressure alone was suffocating. The suspended spears began to tremble.
Then they dissolved.
Iron turned to molten flow.
Flame itself unravelled into nothingness.
Within moments, the entire storm of weapons had been reduced to glowing droplets that dissolved into the darkness.
The guild members and villagers watched from afar in stunned silence.
For many of them, it was the first time they had witnessed power on such a scale.
The silver radiance of Aristovelli's mana reflected within Isidro's eyes as his expression darkened. Dolores and Pritish could do little more than stare.
The quantity of mana before them defied reason itself. Never in their lives had they imagined that a single being could possess such overwhelming power.
Andromed remained tense and watchful beneath the Saint, bearing his weight as it awaited a command that had yet to come.
"Now then," Aristovelli said brightly.
A grin spread across her face. "Let's have some fun."
At those words, her vast sea of mana surged outward. It flooded the battlefield like a cosmic tide. From that celestial ocean emerged immense tendrils of shimmering energy, twisting through the night like the limbs of some ancient creature born among the stars.
The moment Isidro saw them, he understood.
"Andromed!" the Saint roared.
The celestial tendrils moved at once, descending from every direction with bewildering speed. There were too many to count, and each carried enough force to shatter stone upon impact.
Andromed sharpened its instincts to their utmost limit and narrowly evaded the first assault. The strikes crashed into the earth with deafening violence, pulverizing rock, uprooting trees, and leaving great scars across the battlefield.
Yet the onslaught did not cease there. The tendrils continued their relentless pursuit, striking with deadly precision while Aristovelli's magic spread beneath the ground itself, rupturing the terrain and reducing every stable foothold to rubble.
Andromed bounded desperately from one fragment of solid earth to another, weaving between the attacks with remarkable agility, but even a mythical beast could not evade such a storm forever.
Recognizing this, Isidro intervened.
Dozens of iron spears materialized around him and shot toward the witch. Before they could reach her, however, the celestial tendrils shifted course as though endowed with minds of their own, intercepting every projectile and reducing them to fragments of molten metal.
The Saint refused to relent. More spears appeared. Again and again, steel met cosmic radiance, their collisions unleashing violent shockwaves that shook the heavens and scarred the land.
The disparity soon became evident. There were simply too many tendrils. While part of Aristovelli's magic dismantled his attacks, the remainder continued their assault upon him and Andromed without interruption.
Meanwhile, the Legendary Witch stood in complete serenity. Her eyes remained closed as she guided the battlefield with effortless motions of her wand. Each flick of her wrist altered the course of destruction; each turn commanding countless tendrils with flawless precision. She resembled less a combatant than a conductor leading a grand symphony, every movement measured, every note perfectly placed.
Judging the Saint to be in difficulty, Dolores and Pritish instinctively raised their wands to assist him. The reaction they received was not gratitude but fury.
"How dare you interfere in my battle!?" Isidro roared, turning upon them with bloodlust blazing in his eyes. "Do you take me for someone weak enough to require aid from wretches such as yourselves!?"
The two women immediately lowered their wands and bowed their heads. Neither dared utter a single word.
Isidro returned his attention to the battle, continuing to intercept the celestial tendrils with storms of iron while Andromed focused on preserving its footing amidst the collapsing terrain.
"How is this even possible?" the Saint thought, sweat forming upon his brow. "She's weaving multiple Afforae simultaneously while exerting complete dominion over the surrounding space. Every movement, every trajectory, every change in the battlefield falls under her control. Even Miezan would be astonished by such mastery. No... astonishment would be an understatement. She's a monster. I must respond equally."
For a long while, the rhythm of battle belonged entirely to Aristovelli. Then, at last, a subtle change emerged.
The number of spears surrounding Isidro multiplied at once.
Dozens became hundreds. Hundreds became thousands.
For the first time, the celestial tendrils found themselves outnumbered.
"Heavenly Iron Rain!"
At the Saint's command, the spears descended mercilessly from the heavens. As they fell, they expanded to monstrous proportions, each one growing larger than the last until they resembled colossal pillars of iron capable of crushing entire districts beneath their weight. What rained upon Aristovelli was no longer a mere attack.
It was judgment.
"You forced me to use my Expellis," Isidro thought with a faint, almost delighted smile. "Now pay the price… be crushed."
At Corniche Village, every witness stood frozen. Eyes widened. Breath stolen. Even those accustomed to the presence of magic could not comprehend what now unfolded before them.
On the field, Aristovelli remained composed, her eyes still closed as though she stood in meditation rather than battle. With slow, graceful motion—like a dancer tracing an unseen melody—she opened her arms to the heavens. Her mana, already suffocating in presence, surged beyond all known measure.
"Magnolo," she chanted softly, the word falling like a note rather than a command.
The space itself answered.
The magic tendrils multiplying from her aura expanded to match the descending storm of iron. Yet they no longer resembled mere extensions of power; they had become something formless, vast and unshaped, swelling far beyond the scale of Isidro's conjured spears.
Those who watched, whether mage or villager, could only stand in stunned silence. They lived in a world where miracles and destruction were familiar, yet what unfolded before them transcended expectation—it belonged more to dreams than reality.
Aristovelli's formless magic blocked and engulfed the Heavenly Iron Rain entirely. The collision did not merely shake the land; it rippled outward in waves of force, as though the very atmosphere had cracked under the weight of opposing immensities.
"She blocked it!?" Gron cried, disbelief breaking his voice.
"This is insane!" Eltrish added.
Even Loof watched with a mixture of awe and something close to reverence, as though witnessing a future she once dared to imagine.
Yet Isidro did not falter. His gaze remained coldly fixed upon the outcome, as though failure was nothing more than a passing inconvenience. In his mind, the first measure had failed—but failure was never the end of intent.
Only the beginning of adjustment.
Andromed moved the instant Aristovelli's attention remained divided.
The beast tore forward, its form swelling mid-charge—bones and muscle shifting into something more brutal, more predatory. Its claws lengthened, its jaws widened, saliva burning as it spilled from between sharpened fangs.
It surged toward her with the intent to devour.
And then—
A voice, calm as a lull yet heavy as a decree, slipped into the minds of the Agape cultists.
Aristovelli's voice.
It felt as though time itself had faltered.
Isidro stood motionless, frozen mid-reaction, his eyes widening in sudden shock. Dolores and Pritish felt the same distortion, though their minds struggled to fully grasp what had just occurred.
"Did you know?" Aristovelli's voice echoed directly within their thoughts, calm and almost conversational. "Beasts—no matter their form or their loyalty—will always bow to fear. It is their nature. Observe."
"Sit."
The command fell like a weight upon the world.
Andromed collapsed instantly, its massive frame folding inward as though every ounce of strength had been stripped from its core. In the span of a breath, its form began to shrink and warp under overwhelming fear, bones and flesh compressing until the great beast was reduced to the trembling shape of a small cat.
Dolores and Pritish, who had been riding upon its back, were thrown off balance as the transformation completed beneath them. They lost their footing and dropped hard to the ground, driven down not only by the sudden collapse but by the suffocating pressure radiating through the battlefield.
Isidro alone managed to twist mid-fall and land properly. though even he was forced back a step by the weight of her presence.
"Andromed!" the Saint barked. "What are you doing?!"
The beast did not respond.
It only trembled, shaken by an invisible terror, as though it had stared directly into the face of extinction itself.
At the edge of the clearing, Aristovelli's formless mana crushed with Isidro's Expellis. The spell collapsed almost instantly, disintegrating into drifting iron dust that vanished into the night air.
Only then did she open her eyes.
Her gaze swept over the aftermath with quiet amusement, as though confirming the outcome of a lesson already concluded.
"End of instruction," she said lightly. "It was… nostalgic seeing your face again, Golshifteh brat."
"Stop disrespecting me!" Isidro snapped.
"Don't be childish," she replied with a soft laugh. "There are far more important things for you to worry about than your pride."
Without warning, the atmosphere darkened.
A shadow vast enough to swallow the battlefield stretched over them. Isidro lifted his gaze—and for the first time, his footing faltered.
Above them, Aristovelli's formless mana had condensed into a single colossal mass, shaped like an abyssal limb descending from the sky.
Isidro gripped his spear at once, attempting to invoke Globulus, but the moment had already passed.
The impact struck.
The clearing itself seemed to collapse inward under the force, the earth splitting and groaning as a deep crater was carved into the ground with catastrophic violence.
When the dust began to settle, silence followed.
Yet Aristovelli remained untouched.
She tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something distant.
"They escaped," she thought with mild amusement. "A teleportation spell… how clever."
The wind swept across the battlefield, carrying a voice that hissed through the air like a blade drawn across stone.
"You cannot save her, ancient one. She will not survive my fury."
Aristovelli recognized the voice immediately, even as it attempted to disguise itself within another's cadence.
"The fact that the Agape Cult has sent you after the woman you speak of only proves she is not one that can be easily slain," she replied lightly, almost conversational. "But I wish you luck."
"Do not feign ignorance. It does not honour you," the voice answered, colder now. "When I am done with her, I will return for you. This time, you will not be reduced—you will be vanquished completely."
The wind fell silent.
Whatever presence had carried the message dissolved into the night.
Aristovelli turned away as the battlefield began to mend itself beneath her influence. Broken earth and shattered remnants slowly reformed, as though time itself was reversing its own scars.
Not far from her, the villagers and guild members rushed forward, their fear replaced by awe. They called out in relief and reverence, voices rising in chaotic praise.
Yet Aristovelli paid them little mind.
"So, this is the strength of a Patriarch…" she thought, gaze lifting toward the moon. "Not bad. He was clearly restraining himself. Perhaps he is saving his full strength for Victoria. A cautious man… one who avoids unnecessary risks."
Her expression sharpened slightly.
"From what I saw, he currently stands above Aiden and Godric. And Victoria… with her lack of experience, she would still be at a disadvantage."
She exhaled softly.
"I've bought them a day or two at most. They will need to act together for this."
Her shoulders slumped at last, the weight of battle giving way to exhaustion.
"What a nuisance… I need a hot bath."
***
In a distant forest, far from Corniche Village, the Saint emerged through a fading magic circle alongside his servants.
The moment they arrived, he drove his boot into Andromed's small, cat-like form, sending it crashing violently into a nearby tree.
"Andromed… how dare you submit to another in my presence!?" he roared.
The creature could not answer. It only trembled, caught between fear and pain.
Dolores and Pritish held their breath in silence, unmoving.
The Saint stood trembling with rage. Veins marked his skin as his expression darkened into something almost inhuman. For a moment, it seemed as though he intended to punish them all—especially his new servants—for their interference in the battle.
But that intent collapsed the instant he felt it.
A sudden surge of pain twisted through his body. Blood spilled from his nose. Then, without warning, he coughed violently, dark blood following.
He dropped to one knee, clutching his chest.
"Master!!" Dolores and Pritish cried, panicking.
"What…?" he thought, his expression frozen between disbelief and shock. "I thought I had avoided it. The wound is deeper than expected… she did this deliberately to slow my hunt. Curse you, Titigweti Aristovelli…"
After a moment, he forced himself upright, as though nothing had occurred.
The two women watched him uncertainly, until his gaze fell upon them.
"We stop here," the Saint declared.
"We shall resume the hunt in two moons. From now, you will prove your worth. Any who fail will be executed by my hand. I will not tolerate dead weights."
His presence pressed down upon them like a physical weight, suffocating in its certainty.
"Mediocrity will be discarded."