The hammer shot forward at an impossible speed toward the space between Jett and Marcus, forcing them into a panicked dodge.
But before it could crash down, it began to disintegrate into a rain of pixelated fragments, evaporating into nothingness.
The hammer… disappeared?!
Jett's confusion lasted barely a second. Then his eyes widened.
Shit… He got us. He wanted to disrupt our covering fire. His real target is—
— LEO! he roared.
He spun around, hastily drawing his bow. A poorly concentrated energy arrow split into three streaks, which he sent flying toward Remedy.
But on the other side, it was already over.
Leo, startled by Remedy's lightning-fast advance, unleashed a colossal burst of flames in panic—a true wall of fire.
Remedy dropped low, sliding beneath the flames like a shadow, passed between Leo's legs, and emerged behind him.
Too fast!
Leo spun around, but Remedy was already airborne, twisting mid-rotation.
CRACK!
A spinning kick slammed into Leo's neck. Leo blocked with his arm, but the impact stunned him, making his knees tremble. His vision blurred.
Damn… I dropped my guard.
Purely on instinct, he raised his arms to protect his face, adopting a high guard.
A mistake.
Remedy followed up with a double low kick, sharp as a whip, striking the inside of Leo's knees.
AARGH!
Leo's legs gave out, forcing him into a painful, unstable stance.
VWIP—VWIP—VWIP!
Three streaks of light pierced Remedy's back. By moving behind Leo, he had stepped directly into Jett's line of fire. A thin stream of blood spilled from his mouth, but he clenched his teeth and swallowed the scream.
Without losing a second, he moved again, using Leo's staggering body as a living shield between himself and the other two.
Leo knew.
He was finished.
The blows rained down. Ribs. Spine. Lower back. No technique. No flourish. Just raw, methodical, merciless violence. Dull impacts echoing through flesh.
Behind that human shield, Marcus was helpless. Only Jett, curving his arrows, could still attack.
Boom.
The hammer reappeared in Remedy's hand, spinning to form a rotating shield that intercepted the projectiles in a crackle of dispersed energy.
Sensing Remedy's divided attention, Leo tried to seize the opening to break free.
But Remedy was already back on him. His leg swept Leo's footing, sending him down. Before Leo could hit the ground, Remedy grabbed his head with one hand and slammed it violently—like a nail—into the damp earth.
THUD.
Leo — (HP: 9%). Unconscious.
Remedy — (HP: 65% ➝ 59%).
He straightened up, wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand, and planted his foot on Leo's chest, like a hunter standing over his trophy.
— That's one down! he shouted, breath short but voice clear.
Then he looked up at Jett and Marcus, a predatory grin on his face.
— WHO'S NEXT?
Watching from her position, Serene saw the faintest hint of a smile—an infinitesimal, fleeting anomaly—form at the corner of her lips. Then her expression returned to neutral. In her outstretched hand, a dark glow began to pulse softly, slowly leaking outward.
On the other side, a sharp, strange laugh rang out.
Jett's.
— Well played, Remedy! Well played!
His laughter was a mix of restrained anger and forced admiration. He had fallen into a classic trap born of arrogance. He had believed that the three of them, with their coordination, could easily crush a lone target. And that very certainty was what Remedy had exploited.
— You got me this time. I'll give you that.
Remedy smirked despite the burning pain in his back.
— Oh yeah? I already impress you? You haven't seen anything yet.
He'd been lucky. Jett's arrows this time had been prepared in haste. If Jett had taken even one more second, either Leo would have escaped—or Remedy would have suffered far more severe injuries.
The provocation worked.
Jett's smile vanished, replaced by a mask of cold focus. He drew his bow. A far denser, more vicious mass of energy condensed into a single arrow—its formation strangely faster despite its increased power.
— Then give me everything you've got, Jett said, his voice turning metallic. Don't say I didn't warn you afterward.
Remedy rested the hammer on his shoulder, adopting a heavier, more grounded stance.
— Don't worry. I—
The words died in his throat.
Two blades were buried—one in his skull, the other in his throat.
He froze.
It was a fleeting image that flashed through his mind. A brutal alert, his senses screaming imminent danger.
It wasn't coming from the front, nor from behind.
But from the side. From above.
He spun instantly, lifting his hammer in an instinctive upward block.
CLANG! CLANG!
Two icy swords of bluish-white crashed down simultaneously onto the metal with brutal force. The impact hurled Remedy backward, his heels carving twin furrows into the ground as he struggled to stay upright.
He looked up, breath stolen.
Two identical figures—cold and elegant—advanced in perfect synchronization toward the center of the clearing. Their breath formed small clouds of frost in the air.
Neve (Level 12).
And her ice clone.
Their gazes—just as cold as their blades—moved from Remedy, to Jett and Marcus, then to Leo's inert body.
A new player had entered the battlefield.
A far more dangerous one.
---
Neve?! Remedy thought, his blood running cold.
So that bad feeling I had…
— Remedy. You're going to fight me.
Neve's words fell clean and sharp, like her blades, plunging the clearing into glacial silence.
Fight her? Is she insane?
And that killing aura… it's aimed straight at me?
— Wait, Neve, what is—? he began, trying to grasp the incomprehensible.
But another silence descended—heavier, more oppressive.
It came from Serene.
— Stay back, Neve. It's not your turn yet.
Her voice was a dark, perfectly neutral whisper that seemed to absorb all other sound.
Neve slowly turned her head toward her, as if only now noticing her presence.
— Stay out of this. I'm not here for you, she replied, her cold eyes seeming to pierce through the thick lenses of Serene's glasses to meet her empty gaze.
The tension between the two young women suddenly eclipsed everything else.
The duel between Remedy and Jett was forgotten.
— If you take one more step toward Remedy, I will kill you.
Serene's threat was devoid of emphasis, almost mundane.
And that was precisely what made it terrifying.
Neve didn't answer.
Her ice clone lunged forward—silent, lethal—its sword aimed straight at Serene's heart.
It wasn't Remedy.
Nor Jett.
Who intercepted it.
BOOM!
A mass of flesh, fur, and pure rage burst from the trees with a thunderous roar. The titanic creature slammed into the clone head-on, sending it flying into a tree trunk that cracked apart with a sharp snap. The clone remained there, fissured, nearly shattered.
The beast stood right beside Serene.
But its bloodshot gaze was not on her.
Above its massive head hovered a smooth black sphere, around which dark spectral arrows revolved—each one pointing toward a single luminous point that had appeared moments earlier above Neve's clone.
It wasn't there by chance.
And before anyone—Remedy, Jett, Marcus, even Neve—could fully understand what had just happened, a new reality imposed itself upon their senses.
The air grew heavy.
Colors drained away.
A translucent darkness, like ink diluted in water, spread across the battlefield.
The terrain was now bathed in Serene's energy field.
The rules of the game had changed.
And from now on, only one person decided everything.
Serene.
---
Chapter 13 — End.