Ruby gives off a red glow, and a magic circle forms.
They hadn’t even traded many words, but the mont Hong Yeon-hwa suddenly began chanting, the three from the old Sapphire Magic Tower made faces like, What in the world is that?
Still, maybe they decided they couldn’t just let it happen—because they each started preparing for battle in their own way.
THOOM!
A subspace opened, and a huge ice golem dropped straight down with a heavy crash. It uncurled from a crouch and rose to its full height.
Holding a longbow nearly as tall as itself, it took position behind the three from the old Sapphire.
Another man tore off his robe, revealing an upper body packed with muscle.
Instead of a staff, he wore gauntlets studded with sapphires on both hands.
And the soot-blackened witch—maybe because she’d lost her main golem in the earlier fight—seed to have taken on the role of stacking buffs on her allies.
anwhile, in that brief gap, Hong Yeon-hwa had already completed a full set of three defensive spells.
[Reverse Current Barrier]
[Scorching Armor]
[Blaze Shield]
FWOOSH,
Flas layered over one another around her, and a burning shield blazed in midair.
It didn’t just raise her defense—it also had the effect of multiplying the power of her fire magic.
Hong Yeon-hwa imdiately started casting the next spell.
She raised one hand over her head, and fire gathered into the shape of a sphere.
It was Fla Orb—sothing she’d used dozens of tis in this dungeon.
This is a greeting, and a probe.
With three opponents, and each one looking like a completely different style, she ant to see how they reacted and decide her next move ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) based on that.
FWOOSH,
The three from the old Sapphire widened their eyes at the fireball swelling with terrifying montum.
“What kind of casting speed is—!”
“What did I tell you!”
The soot-blackened witch shouted like she’d been wronged.
Looks like she’d gotten chewed out after saying she’d lost to so upstart from Ruby Magic Tower.
For a mont it looked like infighting might break out, but the three continued their chanting to face their common enemy.
The muscular man raised both hands over his head like he was surrendering and spread his palms.
Snowballs ford in each hand, rounded and growing larger, and then he pressed the two finished ones together with a firm smack.
Watching, Seo Ye-in muttered a short comnt.
“Snowman.”
“Yeah. Snowman.”
Soone might’ve asked if he was ssing around, but the man’s face was dead serious.
“Hup!”
He hurled the giant snowman with all his strength.
The other mage manipulated the ice golem, nocking an ice arrow to its bowstring.
Because of its sheer size, the arrow was practically the thickness and length of a spear.
The mont the charcoal witch layered on her buff, it fired.
The fla sphere, the snowman, and the empowered ice arrow collided in midair, and—
KWAHAAAAANG—!
A shockwave blasted out, and they canceled each other out on the spot.
aning their firepower was about even.
For now, fireballs won’t be fun.
They’d keep intercepting them the sa way.
Hong Yeon-hwa swept her staff in a wide arc.
Red magic circles etched themselves across the floor, and pillars of fla shot up one by one.
KWAHAAAAA—!
And inside them, multi-headed fire snakes flicked their tongues.
Hong Yeon-hwa’s signature combo: [Fire Pillar] and [Hydra].
Their mouths bulged, and they spat out more than a dozen fireballs.
PUP-PUP-PUP-PUNG!
“Tch.”
The muscular man’s expression tightened.
He ripped a snowman keychain off his belt and threw it forward.
The tiny keychain multiplied into more than a dozen little snown, forming a wall.
PUP-PUP-PUP-PUNG!
They were quickly pelted by the fireballs and lted away, but it bought the old Sapphire trio ti to respond.
An ice arrow slamd into the hydra and detonated.
SHWEEEAK—! PUNG—!
Another hydra got crushed under the snowman the muscular man threw.
“.......”
Even though she lost every hydra the mont she summoned them, Hong Yeon-hwa didn’t care and kept casting.
KWAHAAAAA—!
If they died, she’d just summon more.
The Sapphire mages responded instantly and dealt with the hydras.
If Hong Yeon-hwa tossed out fire arrows or fireballs in between, they intercepted them in the air the sa way as before.
PUH-UNG!
A fierce exchange went on for a while.
Neither side giving an inch.
It looks like that on the surface.
But in reality, Hong Yeon-hwa had the advantage.
She wasn’t even pushing her output to the limit, and she wasn’t using her strongest spells.
anwhile, the old Sapphire trio were fighting at full power.
And they were already pulling out trump cards one by one.
They can’t keep that up.
Items have limited uses, and powerful Skills and Traits always co with cooldowns.
For instance, the muscular man no longer had any snowman keychains left on his belt.
If the fight dragged on, the rest of their resources would start running dry too.
Still, waiting that long wasn’t a great choice.
Hong Yeon-hwa doesn’t have infinite mana, either.
Since entering the dungeon, we’d been fighting almost nonstop. By now, her remaining mana was probably below 50%.
Best practice was to preserve at least enough for the boss fight.
And we’ve probably done plenty of rank grinding by now.
The whole reason she’d been keeping it even was to grind AquaFla’s rank.
Thanks to that, I figured she was already quite close to the target—B-rank.
It’ll go up while fighting the boss, anyway.
So I decided to step in around here.
“Hong Yeon-hwa.”
“Huh......?”
“Let’s wrap it up. Use Fla Orb—make it a big one.”
“Okay!”
Fla Orb had been intercepted over and over, but Hong Yeon-hwa followed my instruction without the slightest doubt.
The sphere of fire rapidly swelled in size.
FWOOSH,
The old Sapphire mages also loaded up a snowman and an ice arrow to intercept it.
Watching them, I said to Seo Ye-in,
“Ti for a surprise special lecture.”
“Star instructor Kim Ho.”
“I told you Space Fold is all about timing, right? When you use it matters.”
“You did.”
“I’ll show you why.”
Whether you move from 4 to 6, or 8 to 10—what’s the difference?
Either way you shave 2 off the travel distance.
That’s not all it does.
Reducing travel distance is already strong, but that alone feels a little lacking if you’re going to slap on a label like “finisher-class.”
Space Fold’s real value is sowhere else.
And I was going to show it with this one move.
Soon the fla sphere—now about the size of a human body—left Hong Yeon-hwa’s hand, and the giant snowman and empowered ice arrow launched.
The projectiles arced upward, about to collide in midair—
[Space Fold]
The fla sphere blinked out of existence, then appeared directly above the old Sapphire trio.
The soot-blackened witch’s mouth fell slightly open.
“Th—”
PUH-UUNG—!
Before she could say another word, the fire explosion swallowed them whole.
anwhile, the snowman and the ice arrow sliced through empty air in the wrong place.
I t Seo Ye-in’s gaze.
“If you nail the timing, you can do stuff like this.”
“Timing......!”
Her gray pupils widened slightly.
Just like ★Blink★ can ignore obstacles and pass through, Space Fold can do the sa.
You can ignore the enemy’s defensive asures and ram your attack straight in.
FWOOSH!
One clean hit decided the outco.
Everything was blazing so fiercely that even trying to make a snowman, it wouldn’t grow properly—and the ice golem was already half-lted.
There was no way they could continue fighting.
“Ghk......”
“Twice, like this.......”
In the end, the only choice the trio had left was to swallow their rage and run.
*****
After smashing even the move the old Sapphire Magic Tower had prepared with such ambition...
We finally reached the heart of the mobile fortress: the main power room.
It was an enormous space, nearly as wide as an auditorium, packed with all kinds of devices.
In one corner sat a gigantic tank—and the auxiliary power room’s tank looked downright cute compared to this one.
The turtle inside was nearly dinosaur-sized.
But the massive tank was frozen solid, and the turtle couldn’t move at all, only blinking its eyes.
A middle-aged man in a navy suit stared at it. Then, sensing us, he slowly turned around.
“Do you know how much effort I put into this plan?”
I exchanged a look with Seo Ye-in, and we answered one line at a ti.
“Do we really have to know? Right?”
“Not curious.”
The man’s brow twitched.
“......Three years. A full three years. Because of you, those three years have turned to nothing.”
“Well, you should’ve done a better job. Honestly, if it’d been five or ten years, you would’ve succeeded.”
Maybe the dungeon rank would’ve been B or even A.
Another vein popped on his forehead.
“You interfere in soone else’s work, and you’re proud of it.”
“You keep talking like you’re the victim, but you’re the one who broke into soone else’s house right now, aren’t you?”
Seo Ye-in added another line.
“Bad intruder.”
The veins on his forehead multiplied like crazy—then, at so point, his face returned to blank neutrality like a lie.
He must’ve decided it was pointless.
“Enough. What use is asking for understanding? Even if you understood, you’ve co too far.”
He reached into his chest and pulled out a single water bottle.
He opened the cap and tilted it toward the floor—
And water began pouring out in a flood from the bottle that had looked perfectly ordinary.
Instead of spreading outward, the water gathered into one place and took on a human form.
It was the water spirit Undine.
“......At this point, I’ll have to make you pay a price.”
“Can you?”
“It’s not impossible—if I offer everything.”
With his arms spread wide, the man murmured a spell under his breath.
His body gradually collapsed, replaced by ice.
KRRK-KRK,
Then Undine wrapped its entire body around him—like it was embracing him—and absorbed him completely.
A form mixed half water, half ice.
He offered himself as a sacrifice.
As if inheriting its master’s final will, the spirit bared open hostility toward us.
Facing it, I said to Hong Yeon-hwa,
“We’ll support for now. If it gets too much, say so.”
“Okay. I will.”
She nodded and began casting.
Undine slid toward us and reached out with one hand.
All-rounder type.
Confident in any fighting style, but it decided closing in would be advantageous against a turret-type.
But the one who answered the close-range fight wasn’t Hong Yeon-hwa.
It was .
Its cold-laden hand and my hand packed with compressed wind collided.
BANG!
The next mont, Undine retreated like the tide going out—then a pillar of fla shot up from the spot where it had been.
KWAHAAAAA—!
And when a hydra was summoned right after, it surged in again like the tide coming in.
It raised a wave and washed the hydra away.
But Hong Yeon-hwa had already completed her next spell.
Her staff spewed fire like a flathrower.
KWAHAAAAA—!
Undine pulled back again like an ebbing tide, then crashed down like a tsunami, raising waves as it attacked.
Then it withdrew again, then surged in again—repeating the sa pattern.
And there was a reason for that.
[Advance and Retreat].
A water-attribute Trait: the more it repeats its back-and-forth movent, the more it multiplies the power of its Skills.
KWAHAAAAA—!
A wave stronger than before crashed down on us.
Hong Yeon-hwa countered with fire magic.
She was starting to look a little strained.
Sensing it, Undine seed even more excited and kept up its assault.
It fell back, then swept in with a blizzard.
WHOOOOO—!
At that mont, Hong Yeon-hwa—who’d been frowning like it was hard—snapped her eyes up.
“......!”
“It went up.”
“Yeah.”
[‘AquaFla’ grade is increasing. (C→B)]
KWAHAAAAA—!
Her flas began pushing back the blizzard with fierce montum.
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