“Don’t move!”
Beatrice descended swiftly on her broom.
Before her feet even touched the ground, she leapt off and landed right in front of Aurora.
Without hesitation, she pulled Aurora into her arms and began chanting quickly.
“Water of calm, source of purity, draw out all that is evil…”
The burning pain across Aurora’s body began to fade. Cradled in Beatrice’s arms, she glanced down at the wound on her arm and watched as the black slime evaporated into wisps of dark smoke and vanished into the air.
“You bastards—are you seriously pretending I don’t exist?!”
“Kill them! Kill them both!”
The man in the black robe slashed his dagger through the air. The black creature, which had been swallowed by the flaming tornado, crawled once again from the rift.
Smoke was still rising from its scorched body, and pitch-black sludge dripped from it like molten tar.
The monster let out a furious roar and unleashed another torrent of black slime. This time, the mass of sludge was even thicker, darker, and more menacing than before.
“How dare you ignore me! I’ll melt you both down to your bones!”
But Beatrice remained perfectly still, still holding Aurora in her arms. Seeing the black tide bearing down on them, Aurora began to panic.
Though she trusted Beatrice and knew she must have some way to counter it, the memory of the slime’s searing pain was still fresh in her body and mind. Her heart trembled with fear.
Reflexively, she shut her eyes and buried her face into Beatrice’s shoulder.
But the expected impact never came.
Instead, she heard the man’s voice rising in disbelief and fury.
“No—no way! How is it purifying so fast?!”
Aurora cautiously opened one eye. The sludge was still coming down in waves… but as if an invisible barrier surrounded them, none of it could get closer than two meters.
The moment it reached that perimeter, it vanished into black mist—evaporated by some unseen force.
Not a single drop was able to touch them.
“High-tier purification magic… That’s high-tier magic!?”
The black-robed man’s eyes widened in disbelief.
A high-tier witch using advanced purification spells—and she wasn’t stationed with the knight orders or any formal organization?
She was traveling around like some apprentice witch? He refused to believe it.
Snarling, he slashed his dagger again.
The creature roared, receiving its command. With a powerful leap, it lunged forward, raising its tar-stained fists to strike.
But by then, the purification and healing on Aurora had been fully completed.
She slowly turned around. The monster’s fist was only inches from her face.
Yet her expression remained cold and unflinching—like ice.
Bang!
The monster’s massive fist crashed into a diamond-shaped barrier. Behind it, Beatrice stood completely unharmed—but the same couldn’t be said for the creature.
Its body began to melt, and all the half-digested remains inside it spilled to the ground.
The monster tried to retreat, but something suddenly restrained it. Its enormous body was frozen in place, unable to move even an inch.
At some unknown point, a violet liquid had emerged around Beatrice. Like tendrils, it tightly coiled around the monster, wrapping more and more of its body with each of its struggles.
The harder it fought, the more the liquid engulfed it, as though trying to completely swallow the creature whole.
“This magic… Damn you, witch! Don’t tell me you’re one of us?!”
“One of you?” Beatrice’s voice was cold. “Don’t lump me in with filthy, revolting things like you.”
“Devour it—Netherfiend.”
As her words fell, the violet liquid surged and quickly spread across the creature’s body. In no time, it had completely enveloped it.
The monster screamed and thrashed inside, but it kept shrinking, and shrinking—until at last, there was only silence.
“You… You actually summoned a Netherfiend?! But you didn’t even draw the necessary summoning circle—how the hell did you do it?!”
Netherfiends were beings from another realm, entities with no fixed form—usually murky and foul like a puddle of sewage. But they could be shaped into whatever their summoner desired: octopi, birds, even humanoid knights.
However, summoning a Netherfiend required massive preparation. It wasn’t just about carving intricate, precise magic circles—it also demanded extremely rare conditions.
In most cases, summoning one was like setting a trap: everything had to be arranged in advance, and even then, the creature could only remain in this world for a few fleeting minutes.
Beatrice didn’t bother answering. She hated being interrogated—especially by someone on the verge of death.
She snapped her fingers.
The Netherfiend, mid-devouring, suddenly paused. Then, as if obeying her command, it spat out a pile of white bones and half-digested limbs.
Floating in the air, the Netherfiend reshaped itself once again—this time into Beatrice’s favorite form: a mass of writhing tendrils. It shot toward the black-robed man like a spear.
Boom!
Dust exploded into the air. The man barely evaded a blow aimed straight at his heart, but his left arm was completely shattered. Thick blood gushed out in torrents.
“Damn it—damn it all!!”
The man dissolved into a swirl of black mist, trying to flee into the sky.
“You did that to my Aurora… and you think I’ll let you walk away?!”
Beatrice snapped her fingers toward the sky again.
The tranquil night was suddenly stirred by a violent wind, and in the next instant, rain poured down in sheets. But the raindrops weren’t normal—they glowed faintly with a pale green light.
The moment the rain passed through the cloud of black mist, a blood-curdling scream tore through the sky.
“So painful, so painful!!”
The black mist instantly reformed into a human shape. The man plummeted from the sky and crashed heavily to the ground.
He coughed up a mouthful of thick blood. The bones all over his body had been shattered into pieces—he was now completely immobile.
With great effort, the man turned his head slightly and caught sight of the badge on Beatrice’s chest. Despair flickered in his eyes.
“A… A High Witch?!”
“High Witch?”
Beatrice looked down at the badge on her chest, then calmly removed it right in front of him and replaced it with another one.
“G– G– G–Grand Witch?!!”
Beatrice had already been a Grand Witch for a long time—she just hadn’t bothered to change her badge. Frankly, it was simply too much of a hassle.
The man’s spirit was completely crushed. He never imagined that someone bearing such a badge would appear in this place—let alone that he would run into them.
A Grand Witch was an existence that could rival even a low-tier demon god. There was absolutely no way he could contend with someone like her.
“You’ve devoured so many people—why don’t you experience what it feels like to be devoured yourself?”
With that, Beatrice snapped her fingers again.
The World Fiend at her side transformed into the shape of a wolf. Though its eyes were also made of sludge, that didn’t stop it from glaring at the robed man with a predatory hunger.
“Eat him.”
“Wait!! Didn’t you say that green-haired girl was fine? I lied! She’s not dead—I know where she is! Spare me, and I’ll take you to her!!”
“Heh. I couldn’t care less. Eat him.”
“Wait!!”
This voice didn’t come from the robed man—but from Aurora, who had been behind them all along.
Beatrice rolled her eyes upward. She knew the most troublesome part was about to begin.