-38- The Flower of Elements

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Using the magic power remaining within her body to activate the “Regeneration Pump” and prevent infection by the mutation factor, Yvette brushed the dust from her shoulder and climbed out of the shallow crater.

She was not at all surprised by the Six-Armed Demon’s treacherous attack. In truth, both sides understood perfectly well that each was already on the other’s kill list.

After suppressing the Pillbug Queen’s evolution, Yvette would certainly have found a way to kill the Six-Armed Demon. She could never allow another fourth-stage mutant to be born. Conversely, the Six-Armed Demon would also seek an opportunity to kill her, knowing that this astonishing silver-haired girl would never permit another threat of the same kind to emerge.

Their cooperation had been founded on no trust whatsoever from beginning to end. The reason neither side had exposed the charade, and why they had continued their hypocritical alliance, was not merely that their goals happened to coincide. Each had been harboring ulterior motives, hoping to win a measure of the other’s trust and deceive them to some extent—though neither had succeeded.

“The Pillbug Queen wasn’t trying to advance to the fourth stage. It was recovering from its wounds, wasn’t it?” Yvette suddenly asked after a brief silence.

“Ha… hahahahahaha—!”

After a moment of dead silence, the Six-Armed Demon erupted into an unrestrained peal of laughter, mingling wild delight with smug triumph.

As though it had finally heard the long-awaited line, it said with deep satisfaction, “You foolish human, you’ve figured it out? But it’s too late!”

“That’s right. There was never any lord from the very beginning. I made it up! No mutant on this island has ever reached the fourth stage—how would I know what a lord even was?”

“I was merely toying with you, making you and the largest nest here exhaust each other’s strength so that I could reap the benefits!”

“What pitiful fools you are. You have no way to verify whether any of this is true. Whether my words are true or false, you had no choice but to venture deep into the Corrupted Forest and investigate for yourselves, obediently becoming my pawns.”

“So when I said I was the wisest perfect creature, I wasn’t lying at all, was I?”

Yvette gazed at it in silence. Its words provoked no anger, shame, or regret from her.

She had already sensed it during the battle, when the Six-Armed Demon had shamelessly held back and done almost nothing. In fact, she had nearly guessed the truth outright.

For one thing, its acting had been convincing. It had seemed exactly like a feeble novice who excelled in agility, was poor at frontal combat, and posed little danger. For another, as it had said, she could not put her mind at ease without seeing the state of the mother nest with her own eyes.

Under the influence of that anxiety, she had tolerated it far more than she should have, and wasted a great deal of magic power that ought to have been conserved.

Essentially, this had been an overt stratagem built upon an information advantage. Yet even knowing it was a trap, she had been forced to step into it.

After thinking for a moment, she asked, “Is this your special ability?”

She had been puzzled before. Since third-stage mutants possessed magic power, they ought to have some means of using it. She had previously assumed that the Six-Armed Demon’s speed came from expending magic power, but even so, its performance had not seemed especially formidable—at most, it had been exceptionally good at surviving, with first-rate escape abilities.

Now, it seemed that was not the case. Its true special ability was this six-armed, six-winged combat form. Judging by the aura of power it radiated, it was on an entirely different level from every third-stage mutant she had encountered before.

“You’re quite perceptive.” The Six-Armed Demon chuckled. It stretched its body, then picked up the alloy battle blade from the ground and held it in one hand. After giving it a casual swing, however, it tossed it away again. It already had enough arms; wielding a long blade would make it too easy to injure itself. More importantly, it did not want Yvette to get her hands on it and introduce further complications.

“On this entire island, you are the only one who has been worthy of seeing my ‘perfect form’ so far. Be proud, human mage. Be proud! I am but one step away from my fourth evolution! To die by the hand of the island’s strongest and most highly evolved perfect creature—surely even death should be an honor!”

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With that, it transformed into a blurred phantom, curving slightly as it slashed toward Yvette.

Yvette’s pupils contracted faintly. Instinctively, she summoned a blue-white runic ring beside her. A serpent of lightning shot from within it, but failed to strike its target, exploding instead across the ground and blasting up a patch of scorched earth.

The Six-Armed Demon dodged three successive bolts before finally seizing an opening and darting forward. Its claws and bone blades slashed simultaneously toward the silver-haired girl’s throat and waist.

Wrapped in a furious green gale, Yvette arched backward and avoided the attack, though a lock of silver hair was sliced from her forehead. Then runic rings appeared in both her palms, and flames surged from them, forcing the Six-Armed Demon back for the moment.

The radiance faded. The two figures separated almost as soon as they had met.

In that initial exchange, Yvette had not been wounded, but she had come within a hair’s breadth of death. The slightest misstep could have cost her head.

The Six-Armed Demon, meanwhile, had been blasted in the face by searing heat. Though it had retreated the instant the flames touched it, the corners of its mouth still drooped slowly, leaving it looking somewhat grim.

It had discovered that its advantage was not quite as overwhelming as it had imagined. In particular, even after entering its perfect form, the silver-haired girl’s spells could still penetrate its defenses. That was genuinely infuriating. Before activating its perfect form, its defenses could be broken; after activating it, they could still be broken. Wasn’t that the same as having opened the form for nothing?

Of course, matters had not deteriorated quite that far. At least compared with before, after entering its perfect form, it could now break through the silver-haired girl’s defensive magic in turn. It was not entirely useless.

Thus, the battle became a confrontation between two fragile combatants: a fragile mage and a fragile assassin. Both had to move with the utmost caution, avoiding the other’s touch while searching for opportunities to wound their opponent. Each danced upon the edge of a blade.

A few seconds later, the Six-Armed Demon launched another attack. It circled around Yvette like a shadow, occasionally closing the distance without warning to strike before immediately retreating.

Around Yvette revolved four-colored runic rings of ice, fire, wind, and lightning. Like loyal guards, they remained fixed toward the four directions. Whenever an attack came from any side, she could intercept it at the greatest possible speed, buying herself time for an evasive maneuver at the very limit of her ability.

This exchange of counters and responses continued for several minutes. When the two sides separated once more, Yvette’s steps had grown unsteady and her breathing ragged. Her pure-white dress was torn in several places, revealing the lining beneath. Two long, narrow wounds had also appeared on her forearm and shoulder, steadily seeping blood.

Crimson soaked through the fabric as the mutation factor spread madly beneath her skin. With layer upon layer of worsening conditions weighing upon her, her presence had weakened to a degree it had never reached before.

The Six-Armed Demon was not faring well either. Large areas of its scales had melted or been scorched black, and two of the wings on its back were missing, severely impairing its ability to fly.

Yet the corners of its mouth rose higher and higher, filled with smugness and cruelty.

Yes, it had realized it. This mage’s magic power was nearing its limit. Her presence was like a guttering candle in the wind, and the spells she cast no longer possessed their former strength!

Although it did not know why she had yet to be infected by the mutation factor, that no longer mattered. Its next attack would be the moment of her death!

Its heart burned with excitement. It took to the air once more, its membranous wings vibrating furiously as it drove its speed to the utmost limit. It became a black streak plunging from above, unleashing a lethal killing blow.

At the same time, it remained intensely wary, prepared to retreat the instant it made contact. It still had a second, third, and fourth chance to attack, while the mage opposite it surely had few trump cards left.

“Die!”

In that instant, the demon’s mad laughter and the bone-chilling flash of its blade descended almost simultaneously.

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Yvette chose to dodge once more. Her slender, delicate figure resembled a lamb struggling desperately beneath a wolf’s jaws.

But this time, she did not immediately pull away as she had before.

Instead, she turned sideways and, at precisely the right moment, seized the Six-Armed Demon’s bone blade with her pale-jade hand. No matter how fiercely the wound in her palm throbbed, she refused to let go.

Then, dense layers upon layers of runic rings appeared at point-blank range, surrounding the Six-Armed Demon.

Its expression changed instantly. It had anticipated that she might be concealing a final move, but this hidden card was far more formidable than it had imagined.

It immediately drove another bone blade toward the girl’s heart, hoping to force her to retreat. Yet, strangely, as the blade descended, the magical barrier that it had been able to shatter only moments before suddenly flared with crimson light. Hard as iron, it deflected the attack outright.

Its defenses had been broken?

They… couldn’t be broken?

Why couldn’t it break through them? It had clearly been able to moments ago!

It froze. Then it saw the silver-haired girl’s exquisite, lifeless face. At the corners of her mouth, an exceedingly slow curve began to rise, forming a tiny arc of smugness, contempt, and malicious intent.

“You… deceived me…”

With death already at hand, the Six-Armed Demon suddenly understood.

The broken defenses, the apparent weakness—all of it had been an illusion! From the very first ambush, every time it had shattered her defenses, the silver-haired girl had allowed it to happen deliberately. Her purpose had been to make it believe that it had a chance to kill her.

Only under that illusion would it refuse to flee and instead give her an opening of its own accord, allowing Yvette to restrain at close range the nearly untouchable sovereign of speed!

To lay this trap, she had even been willing to risk being wounded, infected by the mutation factor, or perhaps killed outright through a moment of carelessness!

But now, it was already too late to sever a limb and escape.

In that belated despair, dazzling particles of magic converged in an instant, erupting outward like a supernova.

During the final second before its consciousness vanished, the Six-Armed Demon saw a vast, resplendently colored flower of the elements blooming beneath the azure sky.

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