Chapter 174: Pulsing Star

The man’s assault was obscenely swift for a child of Amelia’s age. Indeed, the disparity in their power was far too stark to ignore: he was vastly superior to her, easily capable of ending the entire confrontation in a heartbeat should he land a direct blow upon her small frame.

Yet Amelia relied on far more than sheer physical speed.

The exact instant the dagger lunged toward her, she activated her magical eyes—the Eyes of a Thousand Souls.

In the very next moment, everything within her field of vision shifted.

She saw the trajectory of his strike with absolute clarity—the angle of the blade, the shift in the man’s posture before he even initiated the thrust. It was as though the immediate future lay laid bare before her eyes.

She had no need to block the blow.

She had no need to meet his power with her own.

All she needed was to slip her tiny body to the side at the precise split second.

And so she did.

The dagger passed by her body by a paper-thin hairsbreadth. Amelia retreated rapidly, severe tension written across her small face.

This man is insane.

No, it wasn’t mere madness...

His insanity transcended anything one could expect from an ordinary human being.

Leaning backward as she retreated, her eyes monitored the man with extreme caution while her mind raced at top speed to devise a strategy to handle him.

She didn’t know if her tiny body could keep up with someone like this for long, nor whether she could endure a relentless flurry of his consecutive attacks.

She had to proceed with utmost care.

In this tiny physical form, she simply couldn’t summon her true power as a Royal as she had in her past life. She was left with nothing more than the vessel of a six-year-old child, a strictly limited mana pool, and a cultivation level still stuck at the 1st Stage of the 1-Star Level.

For the first time in a long while, Amelia found herself staring down a very real, life-threatening crisis.

The man, meanwhile, peered at her with intriguing malice, narrowing his eyes before breaking into a contemptuous sneer.

"Oh... Is this one of the beasts your kind brought along to cooperate with you and kill me? Wait... hold on, I recognize that scent..."

His words trailed off as something in Amelia’s scent or subtle aura stirred a memory deep within him.

His smile widened into something vastly more provocative.

"Oh... So you’re one of Adam’s spawn from the Lower Continent."

The man released a mocking laugh, continuing:

"One of you dares to draw near Higher Humans such as us? And you, you little bug... how dare you challenge me?"

Bug.

Yes.

Amelia heard the word with crystalline clarity.

Bug.

He had simply called her a bug.

For a moment, absolute silence reigned within her mind.

Then, something else ignited.

Sin.

Boundless, overwhelming wrath.

Amelia—who in her past life bore the title of Empress, who ruled an entire empire where millions looked upon her as the supreme authority—now stood before a man possessing enough raw power to crush her easily, yet who dared to gaze down at her and speak as though she were a mere worthless bug.

A magical aura began surging wildly around her small frame, dense mana gathering rapidly in the surrounding air as an expression of unmistakable rage forged upon her face.

"How... how dare you..."

Amelia raised her eyes to lock onto his, her voice carrying a venomous fury that defied her tiny physical frame:

"...refer to this Empress as a bug?!"

The man looked amused for a brief second before bursting into laughter.

"Oh, now this is interesting... A bug calling herself an Empress?"

Then his expression shifted, his smirk cooling into fatal indifference.

"In short, you don’t deserve to live."

Yet before he could even execute another attack...

Amelia moved first.

She initiated the strike.

Given the monumental gap in their power, her action seemed on the surface like a purely suicidal move—a child at the 1st Stage of the 1-Star Level choosing to charge headlong at a cultivator leaps and bounds above her.

Yet before the man could finish his smirk...

Something occurred that he failed to notice.

Swoosh!

An infinitesimally small slash sliced through the air.

It was so microscopic that the man’s eyes missed its trajectory entirely—Amelia had launched it the exact second his mind was distracted, capitalizing on his focus being fixed directly on her main frame.

Yet that was not the only slash.

Swoosh!

Swoosh!

Two additional slashes manifested, cutting almost silently through the air before striking the man directly in his Achilles tendons.

The man froze in his tracks.

"What...?"

His shock was short-lived.

In the very next instant, Amelia propelled a sphere of pure mana directly into a vital weak point on his body. The moment the attack made contact, the man keeled forward in sharp, agonizing pain.

That was the opening.

The single, solitary opportunity.

Amelia had mere seconds before the man regained his footing, so she didn’t waste a single heartbeat.

His head was completely exposed.

At this moment, Amelia possessed only one spell capable of subduing him—or rather, if she gathered energy rapidly enough, she might even blow his head apart despite his vastly superior level.

Pulsing Star.

Between Amelia’s palms, a tiny orb of energy began to condense. At first, it resembled a small yellow star pulsating relentlessly between her hands, each pulse signifying a denser accumulation of mana packed within.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three.

Sweat began dripping from Amelia’s forehead.

She had to finish this swiftly.

Extremely fast.

She had to execute it before her body’s mana reserves were completely drained.

Yet Amelia seemed to have forgotten one vital fact:

Her body was no longer that of the supreme Empress who wielded terrifying, limitless power.

This was the body of a child.

A six-year-old girl.

A child who hadn’t even broken past the 1st Stage of the 1-Star Level.

Amelia felt weakness spreading rapidly through her limbs, the sensation devolving into deep numbness as if her very physiology rejected pumping mana at such a lethal density.

Yet she did not stop.

She fought through the feedback until the end, continuing to accumulate and condense the energy while sweat drenched her tiny face and her breathing grew heavier with every passing instant.

The only problem...

She saw the man before her regaining his balance.

His body began to straighten once more.

He had recovered his mobility.

"You damned brat...!"

The man snapped his head up, his eyes bloodshot with rage.

"You’re no child... You’re a complete monster!"

He pushed backward at high speed, attempting to evade that lethal orb before it reached full fruition.

Yet Amelia finally completed it.

At the ultimate second...

She unleashed it.

Fwoosh!

The sphere did not travel in a straight line like a standard artillery projectile; its very launch destabilized the surrounding atmosphere, reducing the air to shimmering vapor under the weight of its immense power.

The orb traced a jagged, unpredictable trajectory through the void and smoke, charging with terrifying majesty toward the man attempting to dodge with all his speed.

Yet he could not escape.

In the end...

The orb detonated right beside him.

BOOM!

A colossal explosion echoed through the area with tremendous force, drawing the immediate gaze of everyone nearby. Thick smoke surged outward, veiling nearly everything from sight.

Amelia stood frozen in her spot, her shoulders rising and falling raggedly as she tried to gulp down air amid the heavy smoke.

She was completely exhausted.

Not a single shred of strength remained within her body.

Gazing forward, she believed it was over.

She believed that final blow had brought the end.

Yet it seemed that...

Was merely another sweet dream.