Yuffie’s Ambush

Swinging his longsword, he cleaved the Sequence Two dire wolf before him in two.

Kold had already lost count of how many magical beasts he had slain on the city wall.

Leaning on his longsword, he knelt on one knee, gasping for breath.

From morning until now, he had barely retreated from the city wall.

Not long after he had retreated to Laita City with Her Highness Yuffie, these magical beasts had charged out from the surrounding forests and begun to attack Laita City indiscriminately.

Fortunately, due to Her Highness Yuffie’s command, the civilians who had been queuing to enter the city had now all been taken into Laita City, so there were not many civilian casualties.

These magical beasts were different from the ones usually seen.

Each one’s pupils were scarlet, and they seemed more bloodthirsty than the magical beasts Kold had ever seen before, with a higher desire to attack.

Moreover, ordinary wounds could not have a particularly large impact on the magical beasts, as if their pain had been blocked.

More importantly, these magical beasts, whether they were Sequence One or Sequence Two, surprisingly had no magic crystals.

This point made Kold feel extremely strange.

In addition, staring at the magical beasts’ scarlet pupils, Kold felt that he had seen these bloodthirsty eyes somewhere before.

However, before he could think too much, a new wave of magical beasts charged towards the city wall again.

These magical beasts seemed to be under the command of someone behind the scenes, with strict coordination and cooperation based on their different characteristics.

There were flying magical beasts harassing them in the air, and thick-skinned magical beasts blocking the front of the procession.

Behind them were some races with high mobility, directly leaping over the city wall to engage in battle with the mercenaries.

Fortunately, Laita City had invited a large number of mercenaries to deal with the beast tide.

Although the beast tide had not occurred for the past few days, causing some mercenaries to retreat, most of them were unwilling to make a trip for nothing and had still been hunting magical beasts near Laita City, waiting for the beast tide to appear.

As it turned out, their wait had paid off.

Being unable to harvest magic crystals made their enthusiasm for killing magical beasts to resist the beast tide not very high.

However, Yuffie, on behalf of the city lord, had promised to give compensation, which made up for this shortcoming quite well.

After returning to Laita City, Yuffie had taken control of Laita City and the Church, making the city lord and the local officials all follow her commands for unified dispatch.

After a day of defending the city, they had temporarily repelled the attacks of these magical beasts, preventing them from directly threatening the safety of Laita City.

Looking at the magical beast corpses on the ground below the city wall and his colleagues who were bandaging their wounds, Kold did not let down his guard.

The magical beasts responsible for attacking the city today had not even reached Sequence Three.

It was conceivable that the magical beasts responsible for attacking the city today were nothing more than cannon fodder to be consumed in the eyes of the commander behind the scenes.

When the Sequence Three magical beasts truly appeared, that would be the time when Laita City faced its test.

One could imagine that if Her Highness Yuffie’s team had not appeared near Laita City, just the quality of these magical beasts would have been enough to trample the entire city.

In a dark corner of Laita City, the shadow that should have been motionless suddenly rippled.

Bare feet with leg chains stepped out from within the shadow.

A black robe concealed her figure.

From the long hair that peeked out, one could tell that this was a woman.

She was precisely the Shadow who had infiltrated Laita City under the cover of the beast tide.

“This is the place in the entire Laita City least affected by the Holy Stone.”

Shadow identified her position in Laita City and prepared to walk towards the Church.

She had no intention of using her abilities to sneak in, neither before nor now.

Previously, the Laita City Church had been holding Philly captive, so all its protective magic arrays were in an activated state, making it impossible for Shadow to enter.

And now, the residual Holy Stone factor in Laita City had not yet dissipated, preventing Shadow from using her abilities everywhere.
For this reason, she could only infiltrate the Church on foot.

The people of Laita City were all focused on the beast tide.

Along the way, Shadow did not encounter much resistance and arrived at the location of the Church in Laita City very smoothly.

Even walking into the Church was like entering an unguarded place.

She didn’t even need to use her soul vessel.

“Alright, that’s far enough!”

Just as Shadow was about to go deeper into the Church, a voice stopped her steps.

The aura of the Holy Stone rose from the ground, transforming into chains that pounced towards Shadow.

The moment she saw the Holy Stone magic array appear, Shadow’s scalp went cold.

She knew she had fallen into a trap.

‘To bury the Holy Stone underground and then use a magic array that eliminates its aura as a cover…’

Countless chains bound Shadow’s body, making her unable to move.

Shadow couldn’t help but turn her head to look in the direction the voice came from.

“This is the last bit of Holy Stone left in the Church. You should feel honored to be dealt with by this magic array, because this Holy Stone magic array has only failed once.”

The Holy Maiden with her eyes covered appeared from around the corner, as if everything was within her control.

Only when she mentioned the failure of the Holy Stone magic array did she think of the purple witch who had descended from the sky, and a chill couldn’t help but run down her spine.

‘Yuffie swears that the next time they meet, she will definitely make her pay!’

Then, Yuffie turned her attention to the witch before her, “Actually, I’ve been thinking, why did we happen to detect the aura of the beast tide just as we were leaving, while in the days we stayed in Laita City, everything was calm and nothing happened? It can’t be that we didn’t receive the gods’ favor, can it?”

Yuffie walked and walked, coming before Shadow.

In front of her, she took out the box that had originally held the soul vessel.

Looking at the box before her, Shadow’s breathing became hurried.

Because the soul vessel inside was precisely the target of her actions.

“After thinking it over, only the soul vessel could be the reason for you to go to so much trouble.”

From Shadow’s expression, Yuffie could see that the other party knew of the soul vessel’s existence, but did not know that the soul vessel had already disappeared.

Her heart couldn’t help but sink.

There was still another force in the dark eyeing the soul vessel that hadn’t shown itself.

But Yuffie did not let her thoughts show on her face and continued, “This escort mission was a team formed by the Church’s high-level officials through random selection. Even these knights didn’t know what they were escorting, so it’s not easy for information to leak during this process.”

“From the beginning when Uriel received the soul vessel for escort, the accidents along the way have never stopped. The sudden report of a witch, the rise in magic essence concentration in Noda Forest causing the magical beasts to become restless, the killed knights, and the attack by the Witch’s Society… this was all your arrangement, wasn’t it?”

Yuffie’s sharp questioning seemed to want to turn her words into a sharp blade to pierce through the witch before her.

“Your Excellency the Holy Maiden must be joking. I don’t have that much ability.”

Shadow smiled.

She had already recognized the blindfolded woman before her as the Holy Maiden of the Church.

“Not that much ability, yet you can enter the Church of Laita City at this time? Witch, are you joking with me?”

Yuffie controlled the chains in her hand to tighten around Shadow’s body, making it impossible for her to breathe freely for a moment.