CHAPTER 364: MERCIFUL IS WEAKNESS-II

Arabella clenched her fists tighter, her knuckles whitening as her resolve hardened. She already knew what she was up against, monsters without conscience, without mercy, and she would offer them none in return. With a sharp flick of her will, broken stones littering the ground shuddered, lifted, and spun through the air.

Their jagged edges gleamed before slamming forward, impaling the skin walkers who dared to lunge. One by one, they were driven into the walls like grotesque trophies, nailed in place with terrifying precision.

Those who recoiled in fear she left for Ariel, her companion’s strength could easily finish them. But the ones who pressed forward, who refused to break, were met with her full wrath.

Shards of stone speared through eyes and limbs, leaving bodies twitching uselessly. Others, who tried to slip past and swarm Ariel, were struck by forks of lightning called down with merciless precision. The air cracked with thunder, the acrid stench of scorched flesh spreading as the creatures were roasted where they stood, collapsing in smoking heaps before they could even gasp their last breath.

The other skin walkers who saw what had occurred to their friends, stepped away in a momentary fear and hesitation.

One of them shouted, "You said they were half bakes!"

"I don’t know either! She is supposed to have no guidance on how to use her magic!"

"Then why could those two.. the youngest one... she’s at the same level as Lady Alice isn’t she?!"

Arabella heard this and wondered if they could feel how her magic was perhaps even far above Alice’s capability. For now, she could only use basic magics but what if she could replicate what Circe has done?

She recalled again through the books she had read and those informations she had gathered from Lastor.

He told her many things from Circe’s achievements, how she could manipulate the entire... world to her needs.

Manipulate the entire world?

By just wishing for it? She doesn’t think that she could replicate that no matter how much magic she has. After all, magic spells are needed to activate certain type of magics and simply wishing it with her magic doesn’t help.

"Ah!" Ariel cried out, stumbling backward so suddenly she nearly collided with the shimmering water barrier. Arabella instantly dropped her magic, her heart lurching as her eyes snapped to her sister.

Ariel’s arm was scalded with angry red flesh marred by a deep, blistering gash, as though fire itself had raked across her skin. The sight made Arabella’s chest seize.

Rage flared, and with a single sweep of her hand she sent the skin walkers surging toward the looming statue at the chamber’s center, a stone woman clutching a sword. Their bodies struck the jagged folds of the statue’s stone dress, impaled and torn in a violent, final crash.

But death meant nothing to her in that moment. Arabella’s focus was consumed by the raw, burning wound carved across Ariel’s arm. She rushed to her sister’s side, her voice trembling despite the steel in her eyes.

"What happened?!"

No one had touched her, there had been no fire, no flames. So how...?

"They threw, ah!" Ariel hissed, recoiling as her fingers brushed the wound. Her breath shuddered. "They threw some kind of liquid at me." She pressed her palm to the burn, summoning her healing light, but the glow faltered. Her brow furrowed, panic flickering in her eyes. "It’s... it’s not healing..."

Arabella snapped her eyes to the couple of skin walkers who were watching them intently, smiling when they seem to have confirmed that their little trick had worked and began to assign to each of the remaining skin walkers which was still a couple more than what they could handle.

"It’s that liquid," Arabella narrowed her eyes with anger. She had held back a little in hope of showing mercy but how foolish she was.

She forgot that this had became a battlefield and Cassius had always warned her the moment she gave mercy... that was the moment someone wouldn’t hesitate before killing her!

"Throw this!"

"Now is the time!"

"Go for the youngest first!"

They were merciless.

None of them had concerned about being merciful and once she lower her guard, it wouldn’t be her who suffered the loss but the people who she held dear...

How could she allow this to happen... if her weakness once again caused the people around her to be harmed.

When the sound of the sharp hiss of a snake resounded from her back, Arabella realized once again that she had no time for this.

She had no time to be held back here... not when the person she wants to protect with her life was in a grave danger.

Without any hesitation as the skin walkers threw the glass potions toward her, Arabella reached out her hand, her expression grew more determined with the anger that now coursed into her vein, turning her green eyes brighter than before.

"I tried to be merciful," she uttered her last words as from her palm a great gust of wind swept across.

Some of the skin walkers stood on their feet, believing that the wind would once again only threw them across the ground as it did earlier.

But... they were wrong. Gravely wrong.

The wind that had moved in a curve was more vicious than before, moving like a blade in the speed of a blink.

When one of the skin walkers saw the hand moving across, he stood still with a grin, still holding the bottle and was about to throw it when he realized how the wind was moving in a speed much faster than before.

Then he realized in that speed of second how the people who once stood in front of him lost their upper body to the nothingness, falling slack down when their lower half was still standing.

It took him another couple of second to realize that the wind hadn’t only pushed them from their feet, it was now severing their body in half, a move that none of them had expected.

With just one swept of her hand, Arabella had managed to cut down the number of skin walkers by half.