"What. The. Hell!?" Dorathal shouted as the smoke cleared.
And there she was.
Cassandra.
Even half-dead, she was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. Her maid uniform was torn, her skin bruised, streaked with blood, but her eyes those golden eyes burned like wildfire. She looked furious enough to kill everything in sight.
Her gaze swept the area, sharp and deadly, until it landed on Gail.
For a second, I thought she'd strike right there. Her hand even twitched toward her dagger. But instead, she turned her attention to me.
The next thing I knew, her real dagger flashed a clean, swift cut and the ropes around me fell away like they were nothing.
"Thank you for trusting in me, young master," she said, kneeling beside me, her voice shaking only slightly.
I couldn't help but smile, even as blood filled my mouth. "Honestly," I said weakly, "this was my last hope." I reached into my sleeve and pulled out the small disk, the one she'd given me for emergencies.
"I just didn't expect you to arrive this soon though," I murmured, handing it back to her. "This beacon really came in handy. I figured something was going on when it showed me you were still alive."
Her eyes softened for a moment but then Gail's scream shattered the calm.
"IMPOSSIBLE!" she shrieked. "How did you survive the Black Mist attacks!?"
Cassandra looked up at her, grinning. Not a kind grin an animal's grin.
"Oh, those bunch of rats?" she said, her voice low, deadly. "For an assassin guild, they were pretty weak. Just numbers, really.
Dorathal took a step back, disbelief etched on his face. "What? You survived their ambushes!?"
Cassandra tilted her head slightly, her voice cold enough to freeze bone. "I didn't just survive," she said.
And then she smiled sharp, dangerous, final.
"Understand this Gail, from this day onward," she said, "there is no Black Mist Guild." I blinked. For a second, I thought I'd misheard her. But then I saw it far in the distance, over the ridge, the faint glow of orange bleeding into the night sky.
A fire. Massive. Spreading.
I realized what she meant.
The entire guild… the assassins that tried to kill her… gone.
She'd come for me. She really came back.
"They were really weak," Cassandra muttered, rolling her shoulders as if she hadn't just walked through hell itself. Her tone dripped with mockery. "So your employer who planned all this must've been on a budget. And even that went to waste."
"You bitch!" Gail spat, her face twisting with rage as she unsheathed her sword. The metal gleamed with divine light, its edge humming faintly in the air. Dorathal moved beside her, his expression grim but wary even he knew what kind of monster he was about to face.
Two knights, against one.
But that "maid" wasn't someone ordinary.
"Two of you, huh?" Cassandra said, her lips curling into a feral grin. Slowly, she reached into her belt and pulled out two black daggers. The faint moonlight caught them perfectly one red as dried blood, the other darker than midnight.
"Crimson and Night," she said softly. Her signature weapons.
I recognized them immediately forged from mythril steel, a rare metal only found in her homeland of Khasiria. A metal that resonated with divine energy better than anything else in the known world.
The air grew heavier.
"OH GOD OF LIGHT," all three of them spoke in unison, voices overlapping in perfect rhythm. "Grant me strength!"
And then it happened.
The air burst with energy.
Blinding golden light exploded around them, the ground cracking under the weight of their divine power. I could feel it — every pulse, every ripple in my bones. My skin prickled, and the hairs on my neck stood up.
Divine energy.
This was it the very thing I'd been chasing, begging, meditating for. The thing that never answered me.
Now it was alive all around me.
Cassandra's eyes glowed gold as a radiant aura wrapped around her fluid, alive, like flame made of sunlight. Gail's was a pale white light that shimmered like frost, while Dorathal's burned harsh and sharp, like molten steel.
I could hardly breathe. The air itself vibrated, divine energy clashing between them like a storm ready to break.
For the first time since coming to this world, I was seeing it the true power of divine energy, wielded by people blessed by the gods. And I couldn't look away.
The temperature dropped.
The wind stopped moving.
Even the insects in the forest went silent.
Dorathal was sweating I could see the beads of it running down his temple, glinting in the moonlight. Gail, despite her sneer, had her stance pulled too tight. She was nervous. Only Cassandra was calm, not just calm, gleaming.
She stood there with her twin daggers crossed, that faint smile of hers sharpening into something terrifying.
And then—
Clang!
Before I could even blink, they vanished.
The air split open with a deafening sound of metal striking metal a shockwave of divine energy burst outward, shaking the trees and kicking up dust around me. The sheer pressure of it made my lungs seize.
"Oh, God of Light, grant me protection!" they all cried out their voices echoing like thunder. Their bodies shimmered, glowing with divine radiance as they moved faster than my eyes could follow.
Cassandra was a blur. Every step she took was silent, her blades cutting through the air in flashing arcs of gold and crimson. Gail barely managed to block every strike that landed against her sword sent sparks flying.
Dorathal tried to flank her, his blade swinging wide with divine energy flaring like molten fire, but Cassandra turned, blocked it effortlessly, and pushed him back with a kick so fast I barely saw her move.
I couldn't believe it.
Two knights both trained, both blessed by the gods — and neither could even touch her.
They exchanged a look mid-fight, some unspoken plan flashing between them, and spread apart, trying to attack from both sides.
But even that was pointless.
Cassandra moved like liquid light flowing, unpredictable, devastating. Every time they closed in, she met them first. Her blades spun, curved, and danced through the air in perfect rhythm, parrying one, deflecting the other.
The air hissed from the sheer force of it all sparks raining down like fireflies, divine energy clashing in brilliant bursts that painted the dark forest gold and silver.
And I… just watched.
Frozen. Mesmerized.
That was the strength divine energy could grant the very power I had begged for.
This… this was what knights who could wield divine energy looked like.
But Cassandra she was worse.
I remembered what Cassandra once told me about ranks among divine warriors. Gail was a Tier 3 Divine Knight, someone standing right on the cusp of breaking into aura a breath away from becoming an Aura Blade Knight. Dorathal, on the other hand, was one a Tier 1 Aura Blade, who'd only recently achieved aura mastery. Both of them were supposed to be powerful beyond reason, the kind of people who could slay monsters or men without blinking.
And yet…
Cassandra moved through them like they were practice dummies.
She was something else entirely. A Tier 3 Aura Blade, the kind that stood just below the rank of Master Knight. Her every motion radiated control, her attacks carrying precision that made both Gail and Dorathal look like fumbling novices.
The difference in levels was like the difference between a spark and a lightning bolt.
They couldn't do anything against her.
Not one thing.
Every strike they threw was countered before it even landed. Every parry they attempted was broken by sheer speed and power. Cassandra didn't just fight, she dominated.
The air was alive with divine light flashing gold, white, and blue cashing and dispersing in violent bursts that sent waves of energy through the trees. Each impact was loud enough to make the earth quake beneath my feet.
I could barely breathe, barely blink, barely comprehend it.
And then-
"YOU BITCH!"
The voice came from behind me.
I spun around just in time to see him emerge from the dark.
A man, draped in a black hood that swallowed the light around him. His hands dragged a long chain, each end attached to a deadly curved blade that scraped against the ground, leaving deep scars in the dirt. The sound of it was enough to make my skin crawl a low, metallic drag that echoed through the forest like a death bell.
His face was hidden beneath the hood, a black mask concealing everything but his eyes glowing, faintly red, burning with hatred and bloodlust.
Cassandra turned toward him, tilting her head slightly, her expression shifting from fury to something that almost looked amused.
"Oh," she said with that mocking lilt in her voice, "there you are."
Her daggers twirled once in her hands, gleaming dangerously under the moonlight.
"Guild master."
The man said nothing at first. Only the faint clinking of his chains filled the silence steady, rhythmic, deliberate.
And then he lifted his head slightly.
The shadows around him seemed to bend.
For the first time since she arrived, Cassandra's eyes narrowed not in fear, but recognition.
The Black Mist Guild's true leader had finally shown himself. And I… I could feel it in the air. This was going to be nothing like the last fight.