She snapped her foot up—not to attack forward, but to kick backward.

  The kick landed squarely on the hip of the Quarry apprentice who’d just escaped death and was still frozen in shock.

  It wasn’t too hard, but it was enough to knock the unsuspecting apprentice off balance, sending him stumbling back, almost hitting the ground.

  “You—!” the apprentice blurted out, startled and angry, thinking this stranger was turning on him.

  But right where he’d just been standing, a hideous face made of dark-green poison mist—like a viper hiding in the fog—lunged out of the haze. It opened its hollow, savage fog-mouth and bit down hard on the empty spot.

  HISS—!

  The poison met the air and the ground with a sharp corrosive shriek. A rotten plank on the path was instantly “gnawed” away, the edges blackened and smoking.

  If Pandora hadn’t kicked him aside, his flesh would be the thing bitten right now.

  The apprentice’s face went dead white. A cold sweat soaked his back. He swallowed his shout.

  Pandora didn’t even look at him. She just stood there, calm, tilting her head slightly as she stared silently at the poison-mist face hanging in the air after its missed strike.

  Deep in the hollow “eye sockets” of the mist-face, two dark sparks seemed to flicker. It didn’t attack again right away, letting out a cold, nasty “Hee-hee-hee…” Instead of pushing forward, it drifted back, its misty body swaying, like it wanted to melt into the fog again and wait for another opening.

  But Pandora didn’t hesitate for a second.

  She didn’t chase the dodgy mist-face. She spun around instead. The crimson greatsword in her hands carved a sharp half-circle as she turned, whistling through the air, and slashed backward!

  CLANG—!!!

  Metal shrieked on metal. Sparks flew.

  It turned out that deep in the fog behind Pandora, a lean second-rank apprentice holding a pair of matte-black short blades had crept up without a sound. Hopped up on some potion that killed noise and hid his presence, he’d moved like a shadow, trying to put a blade in her back the moment she was distracted by the mist-face.

  His stealth was good. His moves were ghost-quiet.

  But he couldn’t figure out how this woman seemed to have eyes in the back of her head, making a perfect block and counter in that split second.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The crash of his twin blades against the greatsword sent a numbing shock up his arm. His eyes widened in surprise.

  Pandora didn’t back off from the impact—she pushed into it. Her body moved like weightless driftwood, sliding half a step to the side and forward with the sword’s momentum.

  Right then, the poison-mist face that had floated back shot forward in a sudden burst of speed—as if it had a mind of its own—aiming for that split second when her momentum was spent, but not yet renewed.

  It opened its foggy maw and bit down viciously where she’d just been standing.

  HISS!

  Another bite into empty air, corroding nothing.

  And that half-step Pandora had slid?

  It put her just clear of the sneaky two-way attack.

  At the same time, the crimson greatsword in her hand—using the push from her charge and turn—thrust forward like a striking snake. Without a pause, it punched straight into the chest of the twin-blade ambusher, whose body had stalled for a heartbeat after the block.

  Thwup.

  A soft, wet sound of entry. Not much resistance. The red tip poked out his back.

  The sword had found his heart.

  The ambusher’s body locked up hard. He looked down, disbelief on his face as he saw the bloodless crimson point sticking out of his chest. All the color drained from his skin, leaving it paper-white.

  He saw it clear: no blood seeped from the wound. All of it seemed to have been “sucked” dry by that uncanny sword the moment it pierced him. Not just that—a cold wave of weakness swamped him instantly. He felt like he had no strength left at all, like all his power and heat had been devoured by the cold blade in his chest.

  And fed by this “hot heart-blood,” the deep red color on the sword grew even brighter. Even more eerie.

  Threads of pure, strong energy flowed back up the hilt and rushed into Pandora’s body. Her two full-power attacks hadn’t worn her out. Instead, they fed her a surge of fresh energy.

  Ember’s combat style was just that eerie and strong. She was already top-tier for a second-ranker, and with Elsa’s Sword—a supernatural weapon that drank blood and fed its wielder—she was nearly unbeatable at this rank.

  As for that dodgy, hard-to-hit poison-mist face…

  Pandora’s mental focus had already spread out like an invisible net over the meters around her. No subtle shift in the air escaped her sharpened senses. Every sway, every gather, every attempt by the mist-face to find a new angle to strike was caught in her “web.”

  With almost no effort, she used the “body” in front of her—the one that hadn’t fallen yet—as a quick shield, sidestepping another tricky lunge from the poison mist. The mist scraped the corpse’s shoulder, hissing as it ate through cloth and a little flesh, puffing out acrid white smoke.

  Pandora stared at the ugly face floating not far off, its misty outline twisting a little, looking flustered and frustrated after all its missed strikes.

  She couldn’t help but think of someone else—that third-rank apprentice who used to be the teaching assistant for her newbie group, Smoke Fox Poppe.

  This poison-mist user’s trick did have some things in common with Poppe’s move of making solid shapes out of smoke to attack. Controlling “formless poison mist,” gathering and scattering it, changing it around.

  But… the gap in power was too big. This mist-face’s speed, its agility, the sneakiness and eeriness of its strikes, couldn’t touch Poppe’s Smoke Fox, which she controlled like her own fingers.

  The speed and reflexes Pandora had, doubled by her Witch-blood and Elsa’s Sword, were miles beyond this guy’s reach.

  But maybe Pandora would have a hard time hurting this thing that was all poison mist with no real body?

  No.

  Of course not.

  Pandora’s right hand kept a steady grip on the hilt of the crimson greatsword.

  But her left hand, at some point, now held…

  a gun.