Chapter 94: Sneak Attack

As soon as the chant ended, the fire rising off the Faceless Witch’s body began to die down.

Her body, covered in burns, started healing rapidly, all her wounds closing up, including the deep gash in her chest.

Even her head began knitting back onto her neck, and the leg that had been injured before started healing too, until the black frostbite scarring vanished completely.

"Fuck." Magna used the one word that best described the situation.

But this wasn’t the moment to let the flaws in his plan stop him, since he was aware that killing her was never going to be easy anyway.

He didn’t stand still and let her finish regenerating. He moved again to strike.

The fire arrows also kept coming, slowing down her regeneration as well as buying him time.

At least while she was regenerating, she didn’t seem able to move, which worked in their favor.

The moment Magna closed the distance, his dagger began slicing into her skin again, opening deep cuts across her body, though each one kept healing right after the next slice.

Renna’s fire arrow wounds and the dagger cuts on her body healed back closed at the same speed, but Magna didn’t stop his attacks, refusing to think of them as useless.

At the same time, he kept checking the golden glow coming from her abdomen, her mana reserve.

After she cast the spell, that glow had dropped a little, meaning her mana reserve had gone down slightly.

But as she kept regenerating, that glow kept shrinking further, which meant that as long as they kept giving her new wounds to heal, her mana would keep depleting, until she could no longer regenerate herself at all.

The real problem was figuring out who would run out first.

The fire arrows had started thinning out over time, meaning Renna’s mana reserve was running low first.

Magna wasn’t doing much better either, swinging his daggers nonstop, his shoulders starting to cramp up.

The blades of his daggers had also started to dull. Even without blood in her body, her flesh alone was enough to wear down low quality blades.

The fight had suddenly turned into a battle of endurance, and whoever ran out first would lose.

’At this rate, I should use the spell.’ Magna thought, still holding his trump card in reserve.

—

Outside the dimension, two Witches stood in the middle of the forest, finishing their preparations.

"Are you sure she’s reckless enough to come here and face the Faceless Witch alone?" Celeste, her expression calm and unreadable, swept her gaze across the forest.

A while ago, before leaving the Winterborne estate, they had realized Renna was missing.

"That’s exactly the kind of person she is." Rowana answered, sounding quite certain.

The grim truth was that after arriving here, they still couldn’t find her, which meant she had most likely already found a way into the dimension.

"How long do you think she’s been in there?" Rowana asked, still scanning the area.

She examined every tree, every bush, even the air itself, searching for a weak point where she could break the barrier with her spell.

"It’s been a little over an hour out here, assuming she went in around the time you noticed she was gone." She quickly ran the calculation. "That probably means she’s been in there for around 10 hours already."

That was roughly the time difference between the inside and outside of the dimension, based on her rough estimate.

Hearing that, Rowana’s hand trembled as she rested it against the trunk of a tree.

That was more than enough time for her to already be dead, or captured.

What was even stranger was that Magna was missing too, leaving Celeste with a gnawing knot in her gut.

Even if she believed Magna was quite mature for his age and incredibly smart, he was still a child. She feared his curiosity and sense of adventure might have dragged him along with Renna as well.

"Okay, I found a spot that looks good enough." Rowena called out to her after examining the tree trunk a little more.

Once Celeste came closer, she began to explain.

"I’ll cast my weakening spell now. Get a strong attack spell ready and cast it when I give the signal."

It was the only way for two Witches, one Death and one Life, to break through the barrier of a Time spell user.

Death spells didn’t have a direct advantage over Time spells, but Rowena had a spell that could weaken the barrier. With Celeste delivering the final blow, they could break through at that spot and create a gap they could slip through.

Once she finished explaining, she began to chant.

"O Eclipse of the Fading Sun, darkness that has gathered since before the First Light, Blind Mother of Ash and Ruin. Corrode the flesh of matter, devour the lies."

The moment her spell activated, black lines began spreading out from where her palm touched the tree trunk.

They didn’t stay confined to the trunk either. At one point they broke away from the tree and started spreading through the air itself, forming wide cracks across what looked like an invisible wall.

They grew and grew until they covered a two by two meter stretch in front of them.

"Now." Rowena gave the signal, and Celeste began her chant.

’’O Vein of the Living World, River that has flowed since before the First Dawn, Silent Mother of Rain and Sea. ’’

The words flowed from her mouth so fast that the honorable names were finished within a second, and the next second was spent tracing the mana pattern that brought the spell to life.

"By the footprint of frozen time, let the blood of the world turn to frost... Unravel, Glacial Calamity."

An unbelievable force of frost burst from her palm, rushing straight into the cracks and freezing the entire invisible wall in front of her.

Unlike when Magna had used the spell clumsily, Celeste’s version looked far more focused.

It didn’t scatter and cover everything in frost, nor did snow start falling around them. It stayed concentrated on a single point, freezing and shattering the wall directly.

Within seconds, the cracks grew wider under the freezing force, and then a shattering sound rang out across the area as the wall finally broke apart and collapsed.

"Good." Rowena let out a relieved sigh, seeing that they had actually managed to break the barrier.

Celeste, her expression still unchanged, checked inside for any presence before making her move.

Even with the two of them together against one enemy, she wasn’t the type to let her guard down and walk straight into enemy territory.

"I’ll cast a detection spell first." She said, and after seeing Rowana nod, she raised her hand to begin chanting. But before she could even start, an attack came from behind them.

One of the trees behind them suddenly seemed to come alive, all its branches shooting out at once like spears, aimed straight at Celeste and Rowana’s backs.

They had been so focused on the Faceless Witch that they never even thought there would be another enemy attacking them from behind.