Slap in the Face

Clang, clang, clang, clang—!

The crisp sound of metal on metal echoed throughout the plaza.

In terms of sheer size, the Death Knight stood before Aliciel like a small giant, towering over three meters tall.

Yet its speed was anything but sluggish.

It effortlessly swung a massive greatsword nearly two meters long, each arc unleashing a razor-sharp wave of energy that carved deep fissures into the ground and walls.

However, Aliciel was faster.

Her smaller frame granted her superior agility, allowing her to dart and weave around the Death Knight.

With every flicker of movement, she left another gash upon its armor.

The knight’s seemingly powerful and heavy blows never once found their mark.

The battle had devolved into a one-sided game of cat and mouse.

‘This is it… just like this…’

A brilliant smile bloomed on Aliciel’s face.

Her lace-adorned dress fluttered and danced as she weaved through the attacks, moving as if in a waltz.

The sharp edge of the knight’s blade never so much as grazed her, not even nicking the ribbons at her waist.

The scene was an exact mirror of the day the Head Maid had so effortlessly dispatched a Death Knight.

For Aliciel, who idolized the Head Maid and saw her as the ideal, this moment felt like she was finally drawing closer to that goal.

‘Ah, what a shame,’ she thought.

‘I almost regret letting Ren Dao-zhen leave.

Without an audience, this beautiful performance will go unremembered.

Such a pity.’

“Don’t get cocky!”

“Ngh? Mmph—!”

Just then, however, the Death Knight seemed to notice the triumphant smile playing on Aliciel’s lips.

With a furious roar, it abruptly changed its attack, feinting with its greatsword.

Aliciel dodged instinctively, but in the next instant, the knight drove a powerful kick straight into her abdomen.

The terrifying force sent her flying, her body doubling over.

She spun several times in mid-air, bleeding off the momentum before landing gracefully back on her feet.

“…”

Aliciel remained silent, but a murderous glint flashed in her eyes.

She was clearly infuriated that the Death Knight had interrupted her splendid ‘dance.’

The Death Knight, for its part, was equally enraged by Aliciel’s harassment.

Her attacks lacked raw power, but the starlight imbued in her blade was anathema to the undead, causing a searing pain with every strike.

“Follower of the Star Dragon, are these feeble strikes all you can muster?”

“…”

Aliciel offered no verbal reply to the knight’s taunt, choosing instead to answer with her actions.

A stream of starlight-purple energy gathered in her palm, instantly coalescing into a beautiful orb.

The sphere pulsed with brilliant light, a halo of energy encircling its surface.

“Starfall!”

Aliciel thrust her palm forward.

The starlight in her hand shot out like a meteor, moving with a deceptive slowness that masked its incredible speed as it hurtled toward the Death Knight.

“Hmph—!”

The Death Knight hastily raised its greatsword, cleaving down upon the approaching star.

The moment they connected, a blinding light flooded the plaza.

“BOOM—!”

A deep, muffled explosion thundered through the subterranean space.

The ground shook violently as countless rocks rained down from the ceiling.

The magnificent stone hall was instantly obliterated, the entire underground plaza reduced to ruins and buried beneath the falling debris.

“Whoa—! What was that noise?”

Ren Dao-zhen, who was hastily making his escape, jumped at the colossal sound from behind him.

He quickened his pace, terrified the entire mountain was about to collapse.

“What is this? Such a powerful aura!”

Also startled were the Holy Adjudicator Knights who had followed the Star Butterfly into the cave to aid the victims.

They were in the middle of administering treatment when the sudden tremor shook them.

They could all feel a formidable aura emanating from the depths of the cave.

“This is… the aura of the starry sky? It’s from the same source as that butterfly.”

“Is it that maid?”

“It must be.

It seems she’s locked in a fierce battle with the true master of this cave.”

“Hmph—!”

As they were talking, a smile touched the lips of their squad leader, Belinda, the strongest among them—a six-winged angel.

With a flap of her wings, she transformed into a streak of golden light and shot directly toward the cave’s depths.

“Captain!”

Though her team members tried to call her back, they could not stop their battle-eager captain.

The perspective returns to the underground space.

Gazing at the plaza, now buried beneath countless tons of rock, Aliciel placed her hands over her stomach, smiled, and struck a maid’s victory pose.

“BOOM—!”

Unfortunately, this battle was destined not to end so easily.

In the next moment, an endless aura of death erupted from the rubble, blasting the debris away—annihilating it, disintegrating it.

A thick miasma of death-energy billowed out, filling the entire cavern.

From within the black mist, the Death Knight raised its greatsword high.

An eerie green phantom flame clung to the blade, and in an instant, the nearly two-meter-wide sword swelled to a length of dozens of meters, and it was still growing.

“Waaah—!”

Hoisting the colossal sword of deathfire, the Death Knight swung it horizontally at Aliciel.

The pupils of her starlight-purple eyes contracted.

“BOOM—!”

An even louder roar than before ripped through the air.

The earth shook and the mountains trembled—a tremor far more violent than the last.

“What is this?!”

Belinda, who had been racing toward the depths of the cave, came to a sudden halt.

In the next instant, a razor-sharp blade of light rushed toward her, effortlessly slicing through the stone walls in its path as if they were warm tofu.

Belinda dodged to the side, evading the blade, but its momentum was undiminished as it continued to carve its way toward the cave’s exit.

“This is bad! Get out of here, now!”

Realizing the danger, Belinda quickly contacted her team members.

From an outside perspective, the entire mountain peak trembled violently before a blinding light erupted from within.

In the next moment, a huge portion of the mountain began to collapse.

A landslide of rock and debris cascaded down, throwing up clouds of dust.

An entire face of the mountain had sheared away, exposing the network of caves within like a cross-section diagram.

And in one of the lower caves, a dumbfounded Ren Dao-zhen could be seen pressed flat against a wall.

“Gulp—!”

The young man swallowed hard.

‘A single sword strike had cleaved a mountain thousands of meters high straight from the inside.

Is this the power of an S-rank monster?

It’s on a completely different level from A-rank.’

“Aliciel?”

Ren Dao-zhen looked down at the ruins formed by the collapsed rock, a seed of worry for her sprouting in his heart.

“Vmmm—”

The next moment, two beams of light burst forth from the earth—one starlight-purple, the other an eerie green.

From within the pillars of light, two figures emerged.