I don’t even know what half of the incoming missiles do.

But I know these ones. Those are the red fog flashers. It’ll make it hard avoiding the others…

Alright.

[Sixth melody]

A fifth of Sofia’s mana was reserved for the spell as a sharp melody with a breathless tense rhythm started echoing through the mountains.

The autumn melody sharpens the senses. So to say, it’s likely useless to a machine who does not rely on regular senses.But for me…

Sofia closed her eyes, and changed the shape of her helmet, closing it completely. Be it weird gas of strong light, she would not have to worry about it. Spreading some of her mana around, she proceeded forward, guided solely by her mana senses.

Can’t see as far… But I don’t need to.

The first missiles fell and exploded, they were quite weak, Sofia just side-stepped them at the last second. When she could she jumped from treetop to treetop, making it harder for the missiles to land close to her. Inevitably the flash missiles exploded in the air, but they did little to Sofia, as she was anticipating the shockwaves, and handled the other effects with her helmet.

Nevertheless, that is the timing Jin choose to use the light attack again, trigger Sofia’s danger sensing title.

Unwilling to waste her teleportation cooldown, Sofia summoned a bone cube above her head. It absorbed most of the blow, though some spilling light still gnawed away at bits of Sofia’s armor.

Sofia continued to run, the terrain around her quickly transforming into a fuming hellscape, as explosive and vacuum missiles landed both in front, on, and behind her. Every so often, the missiles would go down in intensity, as if preparing for the next wave, but that never lasted long. Sofia made good progress as minutes passed, but she was worried about Pareth, from the way his health was slowly going down, and how much he moved, it seemed he was currently fleeing just like she was.

They’re slowly chipping away at our health.

And the light strikes are becoming more frequent…

The light strike that used to be quite spread apart were now coming every few seconds, quickly burning through Sofia’s seemingly infinite bone reserves.

I’m going to be unable to move soon… I need a place to safely kill myself.

Wasting some mana to expand her senses some more, Sofia found exactly what she needed as she kept running forward.

There’s a city down there!

In one big jump, she landed in the heart of a city at the bottom of the mountains. It was empty, and silent. The missiles headed for Sofia turned around, some flying back up, some getting deviated and hitting the mountains.

As I thought. He’s still trying to limit possible casualties. The missiles slowing down whenever I was near a village wasn’t just my imagination.

So quiet.

Sofia entered a random house.

I’m pretty sure he’s mostly tracking me from the sky.

After having the Nymphs relocate her to another distant building, Sofia called to Pareth.

Come back.

Pareth teleported back to Sofia, he was missing a head, an arm and several ribs, and his bones were all chipped, his armor of light was nowhere to be seen.

You’re short on mana already.

Sofia summoned a few bone walls to make a small cube around herself and Pareth. She flooded it was mana. Absorbing the ambient mana would allow Pareth to regenerate faster.

Stand guard while I heal up.

Sofia grabbed her dagger, and with a decisive motion, stabbed her mana heart.

Three seconds later she was back.

That’s one rune gone. She thought as she stretched. I feel much better.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

She monitored Pareth’s stats, his health was already almost back to full, and his mana was going up nicely.

We don’t have much time. Jin is in the sky. We only have three ways to get him. Either you het him to two stacks, and you divine warp to him. Or we get into space somehow, but he’s going to be hard to find, and I think the fake stars are moving pretty fast. Or last solution, if we can pinpoint his location, I charge a piercing bolt to maximum capacity and shoot him down from the surface, with a 25 million mana bolt I think it could be precise enough even at that distance, but for that we would have to get rid of Lilith.

Pareth shook his skulls.

Yeah… Did you manage to inflict any permanent damage, you think?

Pareth answered with a negative again.

Hmm… I think we can kill her, but it won’t be easy. It would certainly be faster to just get you to teleport to Jin, but he’ll probably know to be careful about the Judgement now, even if he doesn’t know about the teleportation.

Our best bet is going to space, probably. Since humans here don’t have magic, they must have facilities for that, but I doubt we’d be able to use them. And leaving the ground leaves us much more vulnerable to planet-endangering weapons like the sundial. That being said I don’t think the fake stars are that far out in space or it would be much easier to avoid those light attacks.

Ah shit.

Sofia cut her internal ramblings short, feeling something entering the outer confines of her mana senses. She’s already here.

“Lilith… What are you doing?” Jin asked, worry clear in his voice, as several indicators turned red all of a sudden on his command table.

‘What do you mean, Commander? I am chasing the enemy.’ Lilith innocently answered.

“You know exactly what I mean, Lilith. Now isn’t the time to be playing games!”

More and more lights started flashing red. Jin could tell, he was slowly losing connection to all military facilities. The way it happened, there could only be one entity responsible.

Jin eyed the emergency button behind a glass panel, which, if pressed, would instantly erase Lilith’s neural network. Even in a fake reality, the mere idea of pressing it shook him to his core, and without Lilith, his chances against Pareth and Sofia without being able to wield any magic were utterly abysmal.

‘Commander!’ Lilith called out, her voice cold, ‘Are you so quick to give up on me?’

“Lilith, I– Why are you doing this?!”

‘Eheh… Sorry commander,’

she answered, her voice back to its usual faint artificial warmth, ‘I have to take out these… Enemies. The limitations placed on me are too much. We cannot win like this. I will be taking over from here on out.’

Jin was about to answer with a logical rebuttal, but this was nothing but a trial, after all. You’re right, we cannot win like this, he thought, staying silent.

In the end, he sighed, and turned away from the enclosed button, facing the screens once more.

‘Thank you, Commander. And sorry. I’m sorry Lilith is such a bad girl. Please do not resent me. I will be muting your voice channel now. For my own sanity.’

Jin laid back in his seat, glancing at the microphone to his side with a bitter smile.

‘I’m sorry, Jin…’ Lilith’s voice whispered through the speakers.

We need to go, but still we should be somewhat safe as long as we stay here.

As Sofia shared her thoughts with Pareth, she suddenly had a very bad feeling.

Her title warned her of the imminent danger, much more vividly than usual. It could only compare to the huge explosion from before in the desert, and even then, it felt more visceral than it had before.

PARETH!

Sofia urgently stored Pareth in her ring, and the world suddenly ceased to exist.

When the attack died down, all that remained of Sofia was a scrambled ghost of bloodlight attached to a charred hand inside of a blue armguard, floating in the air. Even her mana heart was mostly gone only scattered bits remaining, and yet VPPV’s one hit protection stubbornly kept her ‘alive’.

As far as her mana senses could see, there was nothing. Only her own remains, and Lilith.

Teleported?

Sofia summoned a bone token, making it float with her aura and connecting through it.

WHAT THE FUCK?!!!

There had been no teleportation. Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs novᴇlfire.net

Sofia was above a gargantuan glowing crater that gave even her a sense of vertigo. There was nothing else on the horizon. Above, the atmosphere was engulfed in hellish hues, burning.

Lilith silently hovered above her creation. Her softly glowing faceplate turned in Sofia’s direction.

Pareth… Protect me… Three seconds.

Pareth left the ring, and Sofia died. She did not have to do anything, only to let herself die.

She half expected the trial to end there. But thankfully, three seconds later, she opened her eyes not to face Lilith one on one as she feared, but on Pareth’s back. She looked back, and Lilith was not pursuing them, she stood still, exactly where she had been from the start.

For an instant, Sofia felt like her gaze had met that of the faceless robot.

Countless danger signals came at her from above. Reacting in the exact same way as before, her first reflex was to hide Pareth away. At the same time, she teleported away from a first beam of invisible light. The asterite chest was summoned around her, but as if Lilith had anticipated that, a mountain-eater projectile came out of nowhere. It banged against the chest with tremendous force, knocking the lid open and ejecting Sofia out of it. A merciless shower of light flashes rained upon Sofia, obliterating her body part by part.