Merin's mind raced with desperate calculations.

She could run. The leash that had controlled her was no longer active. The collar no longer suppressed her powers. Her aura was free. Her wind magic answered when she called it.

Freedom was just a sprint away.

But she knew the moment she turned her back and ran, that sword currently fighting the Duchess would pierce her heart.

If the Sword King said they would die, then they would die.

That had always been the way with Ravencourt's strongest. His word was absolute. His judgment was final.

The short-lived hope threw her into deeper despair than she'd felt even while collared.

She slumped against the ground, the dawn light tearing through the night's lingering darkness. She could do nothing but watch the chaos unfold in what had once been a beautiful backyard of the Saytan mansion.

Her eyes found Kael.

The General's twin scythes danced with green vibrant aura in the middle of the SBV's three strongest generals and dozens of elite guards.

A lone figure surrounded by enemies, outnumbered beyond reason.

The first general came at her from the left. Merin knew him. A man with a longsword and decades of experience etched into his battle-scarred face. His blade sang through the air in a horizontal slash aimed at her ribs.

Kael's right scythe came up in a smooth arc, catching his sword on the inner curve of the blade.

Clang.

She twisted her wrist, using the scythe's unique shape to hook his weapon and redirect it downward. Before he could recover, her left scythe came across in a backhanded slash.

He leaned back desperately, the blade's edge missing his throat by inches, close enough to shave a few hairs from his beard.

But Kael wasn't done.

She spun, building momentum, her body becoming a whirlwind of motion. The twin scythes extended outward like the wings of a deadly bird, forcing everyone in her immediate vicinity to stumble backward or risk being cut.

As she completed her rotation, she crossed her arms in front of her chest.

Click.

The twin scythes connected at their base with a mechanical sound. The two weapons became one, forming a double-scythed staff with curved blades on either end.

The second general, a woman wielding dual short swords, tried to capitalize on what she perceived as a transition moment, a split second of vulnerability while Kael adjusted to the new weapon configuration.

She was wrong.

Kael whirled the staff in a figure-eight pattern, each end tracing deadly arcs through the air. The woman's first sword was batted aside by the right blade. Her second sword met the left blade with a jarring impact that sent vibrations up her arms.

Before she could reset her guard, Kael thrust the center of the staff forward, ramming it into the woman's solar plexus.

Thud.

The general doubled over, gasping for air.

Kael's staff reversed direction, one curved blade hooking around the woman's ankle.

A sharp pull. "WhAA.." A pained cry.

The general crashed to the ground hard enough to bounce.

The elite guards surged forward in a coordinated rush, ten of them moving as a unit, weapons raised, trying to overwhelm her through sheer numbers.

Kael's response was brutal efficiency.

She planted the center of her staff into the ground and used it as a pivot point, spinning her entire body horizontally through the air. Her legs swept out in a wide arc, boots connecting with faces and chests, scattering the first wave of guards like bowling pins.

She landed in a crouch, staff spinning above her head.

Click.

The weapon separated back into twin scythes mid-spin. One blade deflected a spear thrust aimed at her back. The other caught a sword slash coming from her left.

The third general, younger than the other two, faster, more aggressive, came at her with a battle axe that crackled with lightning attribute. He brought it down in a devastating overhead smash that would have split her in half.

Kael crossed her scythes above her head in an X-pattern, catching the axe handle between the two blades.

CRACK.

The impact drove her to one knee. The ground beneath her feet cracked from the transferred force.

Lightning arced along the metal of her weapons, but the A+ tier material drank it in harmlessly, absorbing the mana as if it were nothing more than static.

The SBV general's eyes widened in surprise.

That moment of shock cost him.

Kael twisted both scythes outward, wrenching the axe from his grip and sending it flying. Before he could react, she surged upward, driving her knee into his stomach.

He staggered backward, arms wrapped around his midsection.

Her right scythe's blade hooked around his anklejust like what she'd done to the second general.

She pulled.

He went down hard, the back of his head bouncing off the scorched ground.

'She's a demon...'

From where Merin sat slumped against the ground, she watched with something like awe.

Eight guards remained standing, having learned from their companions' mistakes.

They spread out, trying to attack from multiple angles simultaneously, no more rushing in blindly.

Kael's scythes began to spin.

The curved blades became circular saws of green-edged death, humming as they cut through the air.

A guard thrust his spear at her exposed back.

Without looking, Kael's left scythe came up and around. The curved blade caught the spear shaft and sheared through it like paper, sending the spearhead clattering to the ground uselessly.

Another guard swung a mace at her head.

Her right scythe, spinning in the opposite direction, met the mace's handle. The impact sent sparks flying, the force of two opposing rotations creating a grinding screech of metal on metal.

Then Kael did something the guards didn't expect.

Click. Click.

Both scythes extended, not connecting into a staff this time, but elongating. The handles telescoped outward, doubling in length, turning her close-range weapons into mid-range death dealers with frightening reach.

The guards who'd thought they were safely outside her strike range suddenly found curved blades carving through the air toward them.

Slash.

One guard took a cut across his chest, not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to take him out of the fight. He dropped his weapon and pressed both hands to the wound, falling to his knees.

Slash.

Another guard's sword arm got caught by a scythe's edge. He screamed as blood sprayed, his weapon falling from nerveless fingers.

Slash. Slash. Slash.

Three more guards went down in rapid succession — cuts to legs, arms, shoulders. Disabling strikes that removed them from combat or outright killing them.

Kael stood in the center of a circle of fallen enemies — three generals down, dozens of elite guards injured or killed, all of them taken apart with surgical precision.

She hadn't even broken a sweat.

But Merin was no longer watching that one-sided massacre... Her focus has long shifted elsewhere.

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