Lena couldn't go for the kill from that position, and nothing stopped Lucius from leaving the blade—which would send her into a brief free fall, leaving her defenseless. Instead, she kicked him in the face.

[Critical Strike! You dealt 450 Physical Damage.]

Lucius screamed as the joint buckled. He went down on one leg and was forced to lower the shield for just a fraction of a second.

Lena drove her second dagger into the gap under his armpit.

[You dealt 1208 Piercing Damage.]

[Target is Bleeding.]

Lucius roared and backhanded her with his gauntlet. It was a clumsy blow, but it had weight. It caught Lena in the chest, knocking her back five feet. She landed in the mud.

Lucius didn't follow up. He couldn't. The dagger was still buried deep in the muscle under his armpit, and the pain had locked his sword arm.

His blade slipped from his grip and hit the mud with a thud. He clutched his side where the steel was lodged. Blood seeped between his fingers and stained the metal of his gauntlet.

At that point, his breathing was ragged—each whiff difficult to make—and he could do nothing but gasp as his punctured lung struggled to function.

At the same time, Jake was wrestling with Isadora. It was an ugly, frantic brawl. She was clawing at his face, using fingernails and spells to burn his skin.

"Let go!" she screamed, kicking at his legs.

Jake didn't let go. He had a grip on her robes, and he was dragging her toward a tree.

"Stop fighting," Jake grunted.

"I will kill you!" Isadora said. "I will purge you!"

She got a hand free and grabbed a dagger from her belt. She stabbed him in the shoulder.

[You took 150 Physical Damage.]

Jake didn't even flinch. His adrenaline was too high. He slammed her against the trunk of the pine tree. The impact knocked the wind out of her again, and the dagger she was holding fell from her hand.

Although she tried to raise her hand to cast, she had nothing left, having entirely depleted both her mana and her stamina. Jake pinned her arm against the bark and looked at her.

She wasn't a terrifying priestess anymore. She was just a woman, bleeding and exhausted, looking at him with pure hatred.

That actually made Jake hesitate, because now he wasn't fighting an enemy anymore; he was fighting a human, albeit a mutated one, one that did unspeakable things.

"You're out of mana," Jake said, his voice flat and detached.

Isadora looked at him. She didn't see a boy. She saw the end.

"You are a monster," she spat. Blood sprayed from her broken nose.

"You are worse, then."

He pulled a dagger from his belt with his free hand, and, without hesitation, he drove it into her chest, right through the white fabric of her vestments.

[Your Party Member Jake Roberts has defeated Battle Priestess Isadora Thane.]

Isadora slumped, her body going heavy against his grip, as Jake allowed her to slide down the trunk of the tree.

He stood there for a moment, breathing heavily and clutching his fractured arm, while a strange sense of wrongness settled over him in the wake of killing her in cold blood.

His hands shook, though he was uncertain if the tremors stemmed from the fading adrenaline or a deeper internal shift, and a hollow sensation occupied his chest as if something essential had been carved out and left empty.

It's done, he thought, staring at his hands. They were shaking with a fine, uncontrollable tremor. He wasn't sure if it was just the adrenaline draining out of his body or if it was the realization of what he had to do.

He felt a strange hollowness, as if a vital piece of his body had been scooped out and abandoned alongside her life.

The world felt thinner, colder. He had expected a sense of victory or perhaps a surge of relief, but there was only this echoing emptiness.

Killing someone in that way was different from doing it during an exchange of blows. In the heat of battle, when steel was flying and spells were crackling, killing was instinct. It was survival.

You didn't think—you reacted. All you could do was strike before you could be struck. But this? This had been an execution. Isadora had been helpless, out of mana, bleeding, and pinned against a tree.

She'd looked at him not as an opponent but as a person about to kill her, and he'd seen the fear in her eyes even through the hatred.

He had killed her anyway, driven by the urgency of the situation and the knowledge that she would have done the same to him without a second thought had their roles been reversed.

Even though he reminded himself of her status as a Battle Priestess of the Church—a woman responsible for horrors he could barely conceive—the justification failed to fill the hollow emptiness in his chest.

Turning his attention elsewhere, Jake saw Lena had also ended her confrontation with Lucius, who was now reduced to a desperate man trying to crawl away from the scene.

Lucius had abandoned his sword and was dragging himself through the mud, one hand reaching out as if he could grab the distant safety of the outpost.

Lena walked up to him. She was limping a little, holding her bruised shoulder. Jake realized it must not have been an easy fight for her either.

She stepped on his hand, grinding her heel into the metal gauntlet until the fingers underneath crunched.

That was a little cruel, but he could understand why Lena was being so ruthless with Lucius. After all, it was the church that brought the death of the only family members she had left in this world after the apocalypse.

Lucius gasped, rolling onto his back. His helmet had fallen off during the battle. His face was a mask of blood and sweat, his eyes wide and unfocused.

As he looked at Lena, he saw the coldness in her eyes and knew there was no mercy there—nor would there be in the future—which made Lucius realize he was going to die.

"Do it," Lucius said. He coughed, and blood bubbled over his lips. "Silas will find you. The Church… never forgets."

Lena tilted her head. She looked down at the man.

"We are not going to let Silas find us," Lena said. "In fact, we are actually going to pay him a visit in his cave."

At that moment, Lucius's face turned into a mask of horror, because if they knew about the cave, then they knew Silas would be vulnerable. They were planning to kill Silas and already knew where to go.

Lena knelt down and drove her daggers into the gap between his neck and shoulder armor, twisting the blades to sever the artery.

[Your Party Member Lena Merridon has defeated Captain Lucius Grey.]

Lucius twitched once, then went still.

The forest fell silent. The heavy breathing of the two killers was the only sound in the area. In the distance, the roar of the Hydra echoed through the trees.

Jake walked over to Lena.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Lena rolled her shoulder, wincing. "He hits hard. You?"

Jake looked at his arm. It was purple and swollen. "Broken. But it's nothing we can't fix."

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