Wreath of Lilies, Cauldron of Poison

A View from the Other Side

The giant skeletal figure raised his arm and called forth a sword that gleamed under the moonlight. Then with one sweep, released a sharp Energy that cleanly cut through everything in its path.

"Duck!!" Brett shouted.

The men who were too slow to respond only realized that they had been cleaved to two when their upper body were launched upwards from the force, followed by fountains of blood. As for the handful of men were fast enough, they cowered with their heads down, crying for their mommies.

Brett stood up, heart still palpitating from the near-death experience. Then his heart jumped when he saw that it had not ended yet.

"Now, try to defend against this one!!" Connie clasped her hand together in prayer, focusing her Energy into her palm, and leapt high into the sky, leaving a trail of plum blossom petals.

She descended upon them like a mighty mountain falling down from the sky. Even while she was still a few meters away from the ground, the pressure that came from her attack caused the trees around them to bend and crack.

Seeing the attack coming at him, Brett quickly used all his strengthening Skill that he possessed. "Iron Body! Gargantuan Strength!! Indomitable Defense!!"

Thea, sensing the crisis, called forth a barrier of wind to protect her man.

A raging fire built up on his axe, its blade glowing white hot. The muscles on his body bulged, his skin reddening from the life force he was using to fuel his Skill.

"MOUNTAIN'S FURY!!" A giant axe made of his life force met the Dao Avatar's descending sword.

A deafening explosion. Trees were uprooted, boulders as old as the forest blew apart, and the men who were unfortunate enough to be near them were blown away.

The effect of their clash created a crater about one kilometer wide and a few meters deep. Brett was in the middle of it, breathing hard. Blood from burst veins wet his skin. He fell to his knees, unable to stand. He looked at his precious axe broke, reduced to only a stump of broken handle.

"Did you kill her?!" Thea hoped against hope as she peeked out from behind a large boulder. She had the good sense to protect herself using her Elemental's power, yet even she was blown away by the explosion, ending up with a few scrapes on her being.

"No…" Brett wiped the blood on his lips with his thumb.

Connie stood at the edge of the crater, looking at the slightly bent nail of the Crimson Serpentbane. the imposing Dao Avatar behind her had slowly dissipated into nothing.

The Dao Avatar is hard to control. Maybe because it is still incomplete? Connie pondered. This was only the second time that she called upon its power, and she was not used to it.

No matter how I tried, the other half would not manifest. Is it because Tian Gu has the other half of my Dao Symbol?

"That monster is gone! Such powerful Skill must have drained her of her mana!!" Brett bellowed, intending to rouse his men. What he did not expect was how fearsome she was, that it caused the remaining men he had, had already fled without looking back.

Brett looked up from the crater after drinking enough Potion to heal himself. However, the vicious poison had seeped inside his body, causing him to be unable to heal fully.

Suddenly, a barrage of throwing knives shot towards Connie from behind. But a halfway transparent Centipede phantom image blocked them. Connie shot towards the attacker and drove Crimson Serpentbane into his stomach, causing him to roll away until he was stopped by a nearby tree.

"Not bad. You jumped back just before I managed to pierce through your defense."

The Scout tasted blood in his mouth. He then felt for his stomach and saw the three holes caused by the strange weapon. It managed to pierce through his Zagriva Leather Armor. Any deeper and it would have reached his guts. However, that one attack alone had told him that anymore than that and he'd be dead.

John took out a spherical item from his pocket and detonated it. A blinding light caused Connie to lose her sight for a few seconds, but it had bought enough time for him to melt into the darkness.

"Quite the resourceful little fox," Connie said, genuinely impressed.

Just then, a Connie's hair stood up, sucked up by a powerful whirlwind that began to form at her location. At the other end of the crater, she saw the female Summoner with both hands outstretched and legs trembling like a newborn fawn.

"You will pay for hurting Brett!"

Connie was not stupid enough not to realize that a spell was taking form and jumped back to avoid getting caught up in it.

Brett used this chance to climb up from the crater with all haste.

"Thea, stand up! We can't defeat her!"

"W-what about John?!"

"He'll make it out by himself! He knows his limits!"

As his partner had said, the Scout was making a quick getaway, holding onto the wound that had started to fester. He cursed the fact that they only had one Item Ring between them. And it was on Brett's hand.

Dammit! Dammit, Dammit!! This woman is out of our league. Who in Sud-Ghazid would believe such a young woman could be this deadly?!

"Running away? That's not very nice."

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A haze of white fog followed behind him, like a ghost, floating in the air.

"W-what?"

The blindfolded beauty, gliding next to him spoke with a playful smile. "If you were still together with the other two, you might have a chance in making this a bit more entertaining for the Mistress."

Lihua grabbed the back of his neck, and redirected the momentum of his running so that his face met the trunk of nearby tree. And then another behind it, and another one behind it. After the fourth one, his face was scraped raw and bloodied as if he was wearing a red face paint. Yet the man still barely retained his consciousness, even though he was being assaulted by such raw pain.

"Unrestrained Candidates are annoyingly resilient," the woman clicked her tongue. "But you are a good, cowardly one. We can find some use for you," Lihua waved her sleeves and froze the man from the leg up to his waist.

While John's fate had been decided on the other side of the forest, Brett and Thea were running desperately. Thea, who had been using the Wind Elemental's power to quicken her feet, ran out of mana. With the sudden loss of support, she - who was as physically gifted as a five-year-old – tripped on a tree root and fell to the ground.

"Thea!"

"Brett, help!" the Summoner reached out for help, tears dripping from her eyes.

Brett doubled back and was about to take her hand when a slender hand grasped her by the neck and pulled her away.

"N-no! Stay away!!"

Connie ignored the woman's plea, grabbed her left wrist, and twisted her arm with such force that her forearm broke, and the bone pierced through the skin.

CRACK!!

"AARGH!!"

The blonde-haired girl did not let go even as she pleaded. She moved in such a way that Thea fell to her knees naturally.

"THEA!!"

Brett saw the miserable condition of her lover and instantly all colour was drained from his face.

"B-brett…! H-help…!" the Summoner cried out weakly, her strength having been drained from the excruciating pain. Blood from the open wounds dyeing her clothes crimson.

"You!! How are you a noble?! You don't fight fair!!"

And all this time, she did not even use a sword to fight. How is she a Swordsman?!

"This coming from the one leading an ambush to try and kill me?" she knocked at her temple with the tip of her finger. "Are you simple or something?" Connie lightly moved her hand that was holding Thea's broken hand. That slight move caused a searing pang deep inside her bone, causing her to whimper pathetically.

"I – If you spare us, we'll tell you who told us to attack you!"

"Oh, I will find out who made a move against me. But it doesn't have to come from you or your companion here."

Connie delivered a kick powered with Yin Energy that dug into her stomach, rupturing her unprotected innards, sending her body flying into the air. Brett desperately ran and caught her body. Even with his strength, the force of the impact caused him to stumble and fall on his back.

"B-brett…" Thea blubbered weakly. "I can't feel…m-my legs…"

Brett saw the bloodied face of his woman, as she coughed, trying to draw a breath that could not come.

"It…it's okay. You're…alright. You're gonna be alright!!" he said desperately as he watched her eyes starting to lose their focus. "We'll got back to Boccosca and see my parents. And we're going to be heroes…!"

"Thea…?" Brett shook her body lightly, trying to elicit any response from her. "…Thea…?"

"Having regrets?"

Brett heard the hateful voice of the human-formed monster speaking lightly behind his back.

"If you didn't make the choice of going after my head tonight, you would have been sleeping in a warm bed with your lover in your arms. And tomorrow…tomorrow would just be another day," her voice was gentle, as if a storyteller reciting a romantic tale, before dropping into a threatening growl. "But the choice you made tonight means you will not see day break tomorrow."

Slowly, Brett placed the body of his lover down. He turned around and used every Skill that he could manage to use with his remaining power and launched a powerful punch loaded with enough strength to obliterate a Zagriva's head.

Only to see his outstretched arm fell onto the ground.

"My arm!! My arm!!! How-!!!"

He looked at the stump on his elbow and saw the darkening that had begun to spread from the open wound.

"Not bad. You are stronger than the cronies you brought, but only that. Just…not bad. And you dare threaten me and my companions with just that?!" Connie said, taunting him with the claws, still wet from cutting his arm off.

"Damn you! Damn you!!!" he said, abandoning all reason as he kept on going.

"Yes, of course. I have killed your paramour. Only right that you won't even entertain the thought of living. In that case…"

Connie's claws sunk into the man's chest. And then, with a nasty crunch, she broke his chest bone and pulled out his still beating heart.

The man's knees buckled, his eyes still in disbelief at seeing his heart in her hand. The life force of an Unrestrained Candidate was powerful, and he was still conscious even after the shock.

"…I will grant you, my mercy."

Connie dropped the blood-drenched organ to the ground and stepped on it before turning her back and left.

Brett, whose mind had thrown out any reason, filled with the desperate attempt to live, tried to scavenge his crushed heart before his body finally succumbed.

"Ugh…uugh," John slowly opened his eyes. Though he was groggy, he could feel grass prickling the right side of his head. He blinked a few times, trying to gain his bearing.

He saw the woman that had wiped out their men, sitting in front of a bubbling cauldron.

"These are the only five that survived the bloodbath," he heard the raven-haired woman said. "Thankfully, you held back a bit. Otherwise, there be no one left to interrogate."

A Dark Elf's face suddenly appeared from the left of his vision. "This one's awake now."

"Prop him up with the rest of them," Connie said.

John was dragged against a post and forced to kneel with four of his men. Their hands and feet were bound by thick ropes that dug into their skin.

Connie, stirred the contents cauldron with a wooden spoon as she said. "I'll give you all a choice, tell me what I want to know, and die a quick and painless death. Or don't, and die a slow and painful death."

There was no response from the men. They simply looked down, refusing to look at her. Then one of them spoke. "Just do your worst, you whoreish cunt!!"

"…not the brightest candle in the bunch, are you?" the blonde-haired girl sighed. "I'm loathe to waste too much time with this bothersome matter. Let's make this quick."

Connie stepped before the offensive man, grabbed him by the hair and dragged him a few steps forward. She then placed both hands on his head and forced him to look up at her.

"Silence, keep their eyes open."

At her orders, Arryn and her underlings grabbed their head and forced them to watch.

"Open wide…" she said playfully as she positioned her head above his.

"W-what are you doing?!"

Connie opened her mouth wide, her cheeks cracked open like that of a snake ready to swallow its prey, revealing the inhuman fangs hidden behind them. The scary scene caused the captives to scream in fear.

The unlucky man under Connie's control saw this firsthand also screamed, but it was quickly silenced by a noxious gas that suddenly spewed forth from her mouth into his, forcefully entering his body through his throat. Spreading through his lungs and into his blood vessels.

"AARGH!! AGHHH!!" The pain as the poison started to break down his body caused the Near Death Skill the man had to awaken, and gave him the strength to break through his ropes. However, even with it, he could do nothing but to claw at her forearms desperately. But his pitiful strength could not even break her skin. The screams of pain trying to escape from his mouth were drowned by the torrent of poison. His body flailing uncontrollably from the involuntary reaction.

Soon, his body began breaking down, the lower part of his torso melted first, starting from his stomach. Gravity did its job and his everything past his waist fell into a heap. Flesh turning into blackish goo. His arms fell to his sides before falling off his shoulders.

Finally, when everything from the neck down was gone, Connie closed her mouth, swallowing the leftover poison. She then crushed the dead man's skull between her palms. Illumca appeared beside her, took out a clean white handkerchief, and handed it to her. Connie wiped the residue of brain matter and skull fragments off her hands with it. She then tossed the dirtied handkerchief to the ground, where Illumca incinerated it with a Fireball Spell.

She walked over to the remaining four men. "Now, would anyone be interested in telling me what I want to know?

"W-what kind of monster are you…?" John cried out from sheer terror.

Connie smiled wide, for a moment, her eyes turned serpentine. "The kind that has little patience."