The witch's trap that greeted us was cliché, if anything—twisting and injecting painful mories from the past to make us lose our minds. It was an effective way to subdue superhumans who were nearly perfect physically.
Even superhumans who could endure three days and nights without eating, drinking, or sleeping as long as they had mana couldn't strengthen their ntal faculties with mana alone.
Unless you were so emotionless chuunibyou character, having a grip strong enough to crush rocks like tofu or muscles comparable to steel didn't free you from emotions like sorrow and regret. ...That is, if you weren't just a spectator watching soone else's life like .
But Grace seed to have broken free from the sorcerous illusion before I did.
"Not as... impressive... as I... thought—"
"Your... pathetic... lover... is... gaining... awareness—"
"Have you... too... swallowed... the sorcery... and... gained... insight... child?"
Grace's arrows flew with gentle wind mana, but their rapid-fire trajectory and targeted locations were brutally vicious—forehead, temple, eyes, open mouth, uvula, heart, axillary artery, lungs. Thanks to this, the witch's attempts at speech were constantly interrupted.
Behind , Roland's parents' death screams repeated like a broken radio, while in front, the mad witch's image rolled her eyes with interest as she gradually transford into a porcupine.
This situation was so fucked up that I needed to do what I do best.
"Child? In this... amusing... situation... surely not—"
"Amusing... fucking bitch, how could this be amusing to you?"
After confirming the cara wasn't around, I spat out a satisfying curse.
At the sa ti, I felt intense holy power gathering in my grip as I flexed my muscles. My body strengthened with mana, holy power concentrated in my hands. Using the brutish thod of operating them separately if they couldn't be mixed, I summoned the holy sword.
Only then did I realize I had broken free from the illusion and was standing alone in a dim fog.
The illusion shattered from the re ripple of the holy sword flickering in my grip—perhaps the sorcery wasn't that grand after all. With no cara or companions around , even the dark forest had likely been an illusion. Like a dream within a dream or an illusion within an illusion, we'd been caught in the sorcery from the hillside.
Grace had awakened from the spell before and was still firing arrows. Seeing arrows flying continually from the darkness even after the burning ruins' illusion disappeared, I gripped the holy sword with both hands.
"Your lover is... breaking... her shell—"
"It's not her shell she's breaking, but your fucking head."
I employed the Imperial swordsmanship I'd absorbed from the fragnt, not wielding the sword like a baseball bat. Perhaps thanks to the illusion the witch had shown and Roland's awakened mories, it felt more natural sohow.
One half-step forward, inhaling, both hands on the hilt, poml before my chin, blade tip toward the sky without wavering—
The Imperial stance from Roland's revived mories. Recalling the genius knight's mory of swearing to hold his sword without sha before the Goddess and the Empire, I held the holy sword vertically. As if chiding that I was finally using it properly, the holy sword pulsed with holy power in response.
The holy sword, growing enormous on its own as if declaring it would fill the dark space with light, soared skyward.
Arms horizontal, sword vertical, then both hands up. My hands gripping the hilt naturally rotated into a full-force downward slash. Though it was a simple downward cut without grand swordsmanship principles or flashy techniques, the perfect stance combined with a superhuman body and glowing holy sword produced a result that was anything but simple.
SCHWAAANG!!!
The dark space shattered from the holy sword's downward slash. Whether the sorcery broke or twisted, I could see Grace in the distance. Like my false mory, her hotown village had been ravaged by an army of monsters gathered by wandering orcs.
The small girl we had rescued in a quest had been brutally murdered, Grace's parents were being devoured by monsters, and beyond that horrific scene, hungry monsters were feasting on the villagers' corpses.
And Grace stood atop a burning hut, firing arrows in every direction.
"...?"
She seed completely disinterested in the monsters eating her family and villagers. Her arrows flew wildly—sotis high toward the clouds, sotis piercing through building debris below.
As one viewer had guessed, her fingers drawing the bowstring beca increasingly difficult to see as her mana consumption grew with each shot, but her firing speed increased.
Those arrows flying in all directions weren't hitting empty space, clouds, monsters, or village ruins—they were striking the mad witch's illusion chattering beside . Every arrow had found its mark, making her look beyond a porcupine, more like the straw dummy Zhuge Liang used to collect arrows.
"How... is... this... possible?"
"Hey, your voice is cutting out. Got so kind of error?"
"What... do...?"
Her form so corrupted she no longer resembled a witch, her voice couldn't transmit properly either, making only unpleasant static sounds. It seed her ticulous nature ant her actual body was nowhere near here.
Unknown sorcery that had swallowed a natural 6★ and a 5★ party whole. Thinking it dangerous, I'd drawn my holy sword to swing it recklessly while practicing my swordsmanship, but the sorcery was surprisingly weak.
I didn't understand how the sorcery worked, but once I realized it was an illusion, I was sent to a dark space, which shattered imdiately when I struck it with the holy sword. It was an anticlimactic conclusion for using such an incredible skill with a 24-hour cooldown and only 5 minutes duration.
I briefly regretted not using it to just stab the flying witch with the enormous holy sword. That kind of regret was probably an incurable disease of RPG users—hoarding elixirs only to see the ending with them unused, the disease of not moving to the next map without revealing 100% of the current one, and the disease of not using ultimate skills while aiming for critical hits and damage.
"...Were you there, Roland?"
"What, you can see now?"
"Of course I can see you. If I couldn't see sothing that big, I'd fail as a hunter."
While I was considering whether to raise hell with the holy sword that still had so duration left, Grace ca toward , leaping over the ruined village.
Though seeing her parents die vividly before her eyes must have been sowhat shocking, she buried her head against my chest as if seeking comfort, unlike her usual self. Deciding the holy sword's duration wasn't important in this situation, I dispersed the holy power and embraced her, feeling her warm body temperature even through my armor.
"Roland, aren't you suspicious?"
"Of what?"
"That I might be the witch's illusion? Like, what if I pulled out a dagger and, while pretending to be in your arms, stabbed your side!"
"Did you go from seeking comfort to feeling embarrassed in an instant?"
"...Even if you notice that, don't point it out."
She mumbled with her head buried in my chest. As I was about to pinch her cheeks that had turned red with embarrassnt, I glared at the gauntlets on my hands, then noticed sothing familiar floating toward us from beyond the ruined village.
"Wow, what's this? Why are Grace and Roland together?"
-The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter! The official wife is the hunter!
-Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon! Archer coin to the moon!
-LOL you think the first woman is the winner? What if her stats and skills fall behind? She's the party's true mistress, you idiots LOLOL
-Ignoring the witch's sorcery completely? Archer is OP AF, why even have a staff holder LOLOL
-Archers taking advantage of the situation, typical: shoots allies in the back more than monsters LOL
Han Se-ah's broadcast, which I secretly checked when her translucent cara approached and started a 360-degree recording of Grace with her face buried in my chest, was chaotic as usual.
Han Se-ah, being a ga player without mories of this world, must have done so kind of check. Pretending to bury my nose in Grace's hair, I moved my hologram window to check the fan accounts and the eat-sleep-cheat accounts I had bookmarked, and roughly figured out what happened.
There were no nightmares shown to the player, but they couldn't let her completely bypass such traps either, so they probably made her roll so dice. Not luck-based dice rolls, but rolls based on abilities.
And while Han Se-ah had her awkward monts, her mana control rivaled that of the Magic Tower's geniuses.
Roll, roll, roll—
In the dark space where pale forms flickered like ghosts from 80s classic films, Han Se-ah rolled holographic dice through mana. In a 60-second short video, she succeeded in throwing the dice five tis in just three attempts, rolling four 6s and one 5, then imdiately turned the cara away.
Judging by the chat—half crying out that it was impossible and half mocking with choking sounds—she must have even opened betting in that short ti.
As I embraced Grace but looked elsewhere, the perceptive woman noticed and questioned .
'Her mana control is really fucking good.'
"What are you looking at, Roland?"
"I thought I felt Hanna's magic. Was I mistaken?"
"Hmm, I don't think so. I can feel it a little too."
No, I just made that up.
How the hell did she find a way to break the sorcery?
Enjoy the chappy!
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