Monica’s face tightened with a cold, focused seriousness, but her composure never cracked. Her voice, when she spoke, carried the clear, commanding weight of her rank—devoid of fear, brimming with unwavering authority.

  “You sound like you’ve appointed yourself the arbiter here.” she stated, her eyes locked on Renda’s cyan mask. “But all I see is a criminal hiding behind a theatrical name and a mask. You still have a chance. Surrender. For your own well-being.”

  Renda and her companions—K17 and K33—showed nothing but open mockery at her words. Renda’s masked head tilted, a silent, dismissive chuckle seeming to emanate from her.

  The threat of lawful authority meant less than nothing to them.

  Behind Monica, Sera leaned subtly toward Aers, “What is this ‘Weaver Club’? Some kind of violent union for the empire’s textile workers? Was it always this… extreme?”

  Aers kept his eyes forward, his body still throbbing from the earlier beat down. His reply was a low, grim mutter. “They’re a bunch of lunatics. A cult. They go around killing people in the name of ‘art’ and worship another killer called the Green Weaver. To think they were behind all the serial killings… and this riot…” He let out a sharp, pained breath. “How problematic.”

  As Aers's words hit the air, two blurs of violent intent launched for his throat. K17 and K33 moved not just to kill, but to silence the blasphemy, their speed a reprisal for calling their god a mere killer.

  They did not reach him.

  Their charge met an invisible, crushing wall. Monica’s gravity field slammed down like the hand of a titan, not just halting their momentum, but actively driving them into the shattered cobblestones.

  They strained, muscles cording, mana flaring to resist being pressed flat, but they were pinned in place, forced to expend all their strength just to stay upright.

  “Green Pillar.”

  Renda’s voice was a casual sing-song from a new vantage point—the roof of a nearby shop.

  Three glowing magic circles flared to life on the ground. One beneath Monica, one under Aers, one under Sera.

  The spell couldn’t complete the formation.

  Before the searing energy could erupt, Monica’s will flexed again. The same gravity that pinned the knights crushed downward on the three nascent spell circles.

  In the same, fluid sequence, Monica pushed Aers and Sera with a cushion of force, shoving them clear of the targeted zones.

  The intricate magic fractured under the overwhelming pressure, flickering and dissolving into useless motes of light.

  Then she moved.

  Her action was a single, continuous response: halt the knights, crush the spells, protect her officers, attack the leader.

  She shot toward Renda’s rooftop position. Her kick wasn't a martial technique; it was a hammer of condensed force aimed to shatter the woman where she stood.

  Renda, even under the increasing weight of Monica's gravity field, twisted with serpentine grace. Monica’s kick sailed past her side, the force of it still enough to shear stone from the roof's edge.

  Off-balance but not beaten, Renda used her momentum to spin, her finger lancing out in a sharp, precise jab aimed at Monica's collarbone.

  The fingertip glowed with a sickly Red—the same Toxic Mana Surge that had nearly killed Aers.

  Monica saw it, tried to pivot, but the counterattack was too swift. The empowered jab landed with a wet, concussive thud against her shoulder.

  Agony, sharp and corrosive, exploded from the point of contact. Monica gritted her teeth, instantly manipulating the force around the impact to contain the spreading necrosis and blast herself backward, trading ground for reaction time.

  She was hurled from the roof, but her control never faltered. She twisted in the air, redirecting the momentum, and landed smoothly several meters away in the street below, one hand clamped over her seeping shoulder, her expression granite-hard.

  Monica, wounded but standing between Renda and her officers; the two knights still grinding against her gravity field; and Renda, poised on the roof, a faint, amused smile likely playing behind her cyan mask.

  Renda looked down from the roof, her body moving freely now that she had subtly shifted out of the gravity field. She studied the invisible barrier Monica had erected around the arcade with a tilt of her head.

  "What kind of magic is it?" she murmured, not quite a question. She reached a hand out to the edge of the force field. It didn't crack or shimmer like a normal barrier; it offered a dense, unyielding resistance that actively pushed back against her touch. If she forced it, the pressure would only increase, threatening to crush whatever attempted to breach it.

  "Setting up a barrier like this… one that cannot be escaped easily. How wonderful." Her compliment was laced with a sigh, a tone of genuine, melancholic pity. "I suppose you must be one of the elites the Empire sent to clean up this mess. Otherwise, I doubt I'd have randomly seen someone of your caliber here."

  Her voice softened further, dripping with false sympathy. "So sad. You could have done so much in life. And yet, you will die so… hopelessly here. You know what" She leaned forward slightly, the cyan mask gleaming. "Don't worry. I won't kill you. I'll keep you as a rare pet for myself." Amusement colored the final words, sweet and deranged.

  Monica ignored the taunt. Her focus was entirely inward, on the wound.

  This feeling… it's corrosive. She didn't just poison my flesh. She targeted my mana circuits directly. The realization was cold, clinical. An attack designed to corrupt the internal energy system. How dangerous.

  She analyzed the sensation as she suppressed it. Luckily, the mechanism seems to be introducing a corrupted mana signature that then replicates and spreads, damaging the circuits from within. It can be suppressed. Even avoided. I was hit because my focus and mana were split three-way.

  I'm suppressing its growth. It won't be a physical impediment. Once this is over, a high-grade potion or a purification spell will flush the toxic mana out entirely. But for now… it's a disturbance. A static in my control. It's like trying to conduct a symphony with a damaged instrument.

  Her eyes flicked to K17 and K33, still straining under her gravity. If I release those two, I could concentrate enough power to forcibly eject this corruption right now. But Aers and Sera would be left exposed. Unacceptable.

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  The calculation was instant. She would maintain the suppression, fight with the handicap, and keep the two heavy hitters pinned. The risk to her subordinates was a non-option.

  As Monica ran through her tactical calculations, Sera and Aers stepped forward, falling into battle stances on either side of her.

  Aers took a sharp, steadying breath. His body ached, but his will was iron. "Ma'am," he said, his voice low but firm. "You can release those two. As long as it's one-on-one, I'm confident I can take either of them."

  Sera offered a tight, fierce smile, a stark contrast to her usual sharpness. "Of course we can. At least I can." As she spoke, she pulled a small stack of blank, white paper cards from a hidden pocket.

  With a practiced flick of her wrist, she fanned them—all but one vanished back into her sleeve. She held the remaining card, her gaze serious. "I don't mean any harm. Could you show me where you were attacked?"

  Monica, after a fractional pause of assessment, nodded. She indicated her injured shoulder.

  Sera pressed the white card against the wound. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the pristine paper darkened rapidly, turning a sickly, mottled black and violent red, as if it were absorbing a photo-negative of the injury and the toxic mana.

  The searing pain and creeping corruption in Monica's shoulder vanished, leaving only a faint, residual ache. The card in Sera's hand now pulsed with a captured, malevolent energy.

  Monica flexed her shoulder, testing the restored control. "Thank you."

  Sera shook her head, tucking the now-dangerous card away with care. "No need. Just trust our capabilities."

  From her perch, Renda observed the entire exchange, her masked head tilting with intellectual curiosity.

  Hmm. So many people with unique magic or powers are gathered here. That man with the reversal technique, this gravity-manipulating officer, and now this new female officer. Her technique... it looks kind of similar to his. Are they related? Or something else entirely?

  A wide, unseen smile stretched behind her cyan mask.

  I am curious. I will make sure my questions are answered.

  Her amusement crystallized into action.

  As Monica felt the corruption clear from her shoulder, restoring her precise control, her mind moved with lightning speed.

  Renda's curiosity was a palpable threat, a distraction that could unravel their coordination.

  Trust their capabilities, Sera had said.

  Monica decided to do exactly that—by forcing the fight into terms she could control.

  Her will flexed, not with a crushing wave, but with surgical, spatial intent.

  Whump.

  BANG.

  A whiplash of concussive force, followed by a surge of warping spatial magic, tore through the arcade. It wasn't an attack aimed to injure, but to divide.

  Aers, Sera, K17, and K33 were violently thrown apart, hurled into opposite corners of the plaza as if by a giant's hand.

  Before any of them could recover, shimmering walls of opaque, amber-tinted energy solidified from the ground up with a deep thrum.

  They formed two separate, cube-shaped barriers. One sealed Aers inside with K17. The other trapped Sera with K33.

  This two new, smaller barriers were different from the wide-area one sealing the arcade.

  These were precision instruments. Monica had woven a selective condition into their fabric: within each cube, one person would feel an extra, crushing force on their body, slowing their movements, while the other would operate under normal conditions.

  Crafting these two complex, conditional barriers was tenfold more difficult than erecting the simple, massive wall around the entire plaza.

  The mental strain was a sharp, cold pressure behind her eyes. But it was necessary.

  It neutralized Renda's numerical advantage and ensured her officers would not be overwhelmed in a fair—or favorably tilted—fight.

  Renda, observing from her perch, didn't seem alarmed. She seemed… intrigued.

  She raised both hands. A sickly, crimson aura—thick with corruption—wreathed her arms. Her chant was a soft, sibilant whisper. "Toxicity Magic: Toxic Fluid."

  The corrupted mana liquefied, pouring from her fingertips not as an attack, but as a terrain alteration.

  It flowed across the ground like vile, sentient syrup, spreading rapidly to coat the stone of the arcade floor, slithering around the bases of the two glowing cubes.

  Then she uttered a second command. "Surge."

  The fluid pulsed, its level rising slightly, claiming the ground as its domain. Some of it even trying to seep through the conditional barriers.

  Monica reacted instantly. She couldn't stop the fluid, but she could refuse to touch it. Concentration narrowed her expression as she whispered, “Lift.” The forces around her body shifted, carrying her upward.

  She made herself almost weightless, her boots barely grazing the contaminated ground.

  Simultaneously, she breathed, “Repel.” she wrapped herself in a shimmering, personal field of repulsive force—not a solid barrier, but a constant, outward push designed to deflect contact, to keep the corrupted substance at bay.

  Renda just smiled behind her mask. The preparation was not complete.

  "Toxicity Magic: Gas."

  From her pores, from the very air around her, a cloud of the same crimson mist billowed forth. It was thicker than smoke, carrying a cloying, metallic scent.

  It filled the arcade, swirling around the barriers, mixing with the liquid below to create a poisonous, three-dimensional domain.

  Renda had now claimed the entire area—liquid below, gas above. She stood at its center, a queen in a throne room of her own venom, utterly unaffected.

  Inside the barrier containing Sera and K33, the world was an amber-tinted vignette of the chaos outside.

  Sera glanced past the giant knight, her tone deceptively light. "It does look quite scary out there. How dramatic."

  K33 stood firm, though he felt the extra weight Monica had woven into the barrier solely for him.

  It was oppressive, but nothing like the crushing grip that had pinned him before. A mocking grin spread on his face. "This is nothing. You have yet to see what our liege is truly capable of."

  Sera tilted her head, her expression one of curious concern. "Hey, about your liege's magic… the toxic stuff. How powerful is it, really?"

  K33, believing he was humoring a dead woman's last, fearful question—and eager to gloat about Renda's superiority—answered with spiteful pride. "Powerful enough that none of us can match her. She is the strongest among the devotees of our artistic god, the Great Green Weaver. Her purity of purpose—"

  Sera interrupted him, her voice flat. "Sorry, I don't really know about this 'Green Weaver' guy you keep mentioning."

  K33 was about to snap a retort, to explain the magnificence of their patron, when a searing, corrosive agony exploded in his gut.

  It felt like his insides were dissolving. Toxic mana surge? His mind reeled. No… that's not possible. How? When—?!

  He crumpled to the amber-lit ground, muscles locking in paralyzing pain. His vision swam, and he saw Sera standing calmly, holding a small, rectangular card in her hand.

  The card, which had been a mottled black and red when she pulled it from her pocket, was rapidly draining of color, turning a plain, sterile white.

  The Toxic Mana Surge that had nearly killed Aers and wounded Monica was now leaving the card and flooding into his body.

  She had launched the attack from an artifact he never saw as a weapon.

  There was nothing to notice.

  As the corruption ate through his mana circuits, Sera looked down at him, her face devoid of pity.

  "I hope you die quickly," she said, her voice matter-of-fact. "I don't have any other big tools right now."

  In her mind, a cold, professional observation clicked into place: Egotistical enemies. They're always like this. So confident in their own narrative, they never see the trap in a question. They always fall for the simplest methods.

  She let out a small, weary sigh, not for him, but for the predictable brutality of it all, and waited for the barrier to fall.

  Then out of nowhere, a sharp, insistent vibration buzzed against her hip.

  Her talisman.

  She pulled it out, the small carved stone glowing with an urgent, pulsed light. It wasn’t a general alert. It was an emergency signal