“Such a violent girl,” Lindyss said as she twisted her torso, evading Mary’s sword strike by a hair’s breadth. As Mary brought her arm back up to swing again, Lindyss flicked a tiny ball made of shadows at Mary’s wrist. The shadow ball collided with her armor, knocking her arm back and interrupting her attack. “How about it? Want to talk now?”

Mary’s mouth hung open as she blinked at her arm that was knocked back by what she assumed was the magical equivalent of a pebble. Her eyes wavered as she bit her lower lip. “As expected of the wife of a dragon,” she said, meeting Lindyss’ gaze as she brought her sword up to her mouth.

“Wait, hold on, you’re misunderstanding something,” Lindyss said, her expression darkening as she placed her hands on her hips. “I’m single, alright? What are you—”

Mary ran her tongue along the edge of her blade, coating the black metal with a layer of blood. Her face grew pale as she tilted her chin down and pressed her still-bleeding tongue against her armor. Her armor flashed with a red light as her blood trickled down while circling around to her back, forming runic patterns along its surface that glowed like lava running down the side of a volcano.

“Oh-ho?” Grimmy raised his eyebrows as he shuffled backwards further into the cave. “That’s a branch of magic I haven’t seen in a long time. But most people carry around the blood of others to fuel it. Why aren’t you?”

Mary froze like a startled deer. “…My blood is more efficient,” she mumbled after a brief moment of hesitation. She raised her head and knocked the hilt of her sword against her breastplate. “Null-magic.”

“Is that what it sounds like?” Lindyss asked Grimmy without taking her eyes off of Mary.

“Why don’t you test it out?” Grimmy asked back with a smile. Though Lindyss couldn’t see his face, she knew his smile was a smug one just by hearing his voice. “If you lose this fight, I’ll stick another soul in you so you won’t lose the next one.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t,” Lindyss said as she took a step forward. A smoke-like hand shot out of Mary’s shadow and grabbed onto her ankle. The bloody runes on Mary’s sabatons flashed red, and the hand disappeared. Lindyss clicked her tongue as she leapt backwards, dodging a horizontal strike by Mary. Lindyss seemed to float as she was pushed back by the wind pressure that accompanied Mary’s swing, and before the cursed elf could even touch her feet against the ground, Mary was already slashing down at her head with an overhand strike. A purple aura sprang out of Lindyss’ back, forming wings that flapped hard once, shoving her to the side.

Mary’s brow furrowed as her sword struck the ground, creating a ten-meter long fissure in the earth. She whipped her head around and leapt to the side, following Lindyss, but the cursed elf had left a glob of purple aura in the air which flew towards Mary’s face, and she slashed at it with her red sword. Unfortunately for her, the glob split in two and avoided the strike before congealing behind the sword and glopping onto her. It clung to her nose and mouth, squirming its way inside.

Mary’s eyes widened as she grabbed at the aura, pulling bits of it out at a time with her gauntlet as a black rune shone on her forehead. Black lines ran down from the rune towards her nose and mouth, digging out the offending purple aura with a black aura of its own. By the time Mary had finished clearing her respiratory passageways, hundreds of tiny red fireballs were floating around her.

Lindyss smiled at Mary and raised one hand. Chills ran down Mary’s spine as she leapt forward, but she was too slow. Lindyss snapped her fingers, and a chain of explosions swallowed the empress whole. Lindyss flew up into the air instead of waiting for the smoke to clear and created more and more tiny red fireballs that floated above the ground and in the sky like little fireflies. When the smoke cleared, Mary appeared with blood pouring out of the cracks in her armor, her face covered with soot and her hair frizzy. A black aura crawled down her body, taking on the shape of a turtle as she tilted her head at Lindyss. “How did that hurt me through my null-magic?” Mary asked as her bleeding stopped.

Lindyss smiled, and another tiny fireball exploded. Mary didn’t even flinch as her aura absorbed the impact. “Simple,” Lindyss said with a shrug. “All anti-magic works on the same principle—distorting the mana inside a spell. It looks like your null-magic disperses mana on contact. If I create a tiny explosive fireball, you can cancel it out before it explodes, but you can’t do anything to stop the physical impact if it explodes.

“Do you always lecture people while fighting?” Grimmy asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Lindyss said, glaring at Grimmy. “She reminded me of Vur for a second. Look at her head tilt and wide, innocent eyes.”

“Huh,” Grimmy said, stroking his chin. “You’re right. She does remind me of Vur.”

“You two know Vur?” Mary asked, her head tilting even further.

Grimmy snorted. “She’s stalling for time to heal her injuries,” he said to Lindyss. “Why are you letting her do that? You’re monologuing like a final boss in a play. If you don’t watch out, she’ll cut you down and win.”

Lindyss rolled her eyes. “I know. Did you think I wasn’t doing anything?” she asked as she crossed her arms over her chest. Without warning, the ground underneath Mary dropped straight down and crumbled into bits before she could use it to jump up, revealing a seemingly bottomless hole. Lindyss clapped her hands once, causing the hole to secrete an oil-like substance along its walls as its surface hardened into diamond. “There, now she’s trapped like a turtle in a jar.”

“You’re getting a lot of use out of that geomancer’s soul, aren’t you?” Grimmy asked as he lumbered out of the cave and peered into the trap. Through the darkness, he could see Mary leaping onto the walls but sliding down instantly due to the oil. The hole was in the shape of a cone, larger at the very bottom and narrower at the top.

“It’s convenient,” Lindyss said as she landed on Grimmy’s head, disabling her aura wings and the tiny floating fireballs. “Besides, it’d be a waste not to use it after suffering for so many years just to incorporate it.”

“You’re not going to finish her off?” Grimmy asked.

“Nope.” Lindyss leaned back as she drew a book and a drink out of her pocket. “It’s easily ten times more difficult to capture someone alive without injuring them than it is to kill them.” She placed a straw into her drink and took a sip. “This is a show of power. Once she gives up, I’ll capture her and use her to train Vur or something. She looks like she’d make a good sparring partner. She’s really fast—I almost got hit by her attacks.”