272: What the…?

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**Chapter 272**

I looked at her and set my feet for a fight I had already started writing in my head.

Silver armor. A blade in a line that said she knew where my throat was. I pulled mana into the edges of my sight to assess the level of her mana because that blow just now wasn’t normal, and looked through the plate and her body instead of at her.

And I was right. It was mana far beyond her current level. It was George’s level of mana. I had felt enough of her body by thoroughly touching most of her nooks and crannies to know her body couldn’t hold that mana.

There wasn’t going to be a fight.

Mana was moving in her like there was no set pathway. It rode her veins too clean in places and too violent in others, turning corners no body should have been able to bear. That armor wasn’t just for show. It was stopping the woman inside it from exploding.

I let the sword’s tip drop a fraction. She didn’t miss it. I picked up the observation and interest in her eyes. As if she hadn’t expected someone to look beyond the outer shell she was showing.

She spoke first.

“And who would you be?”

Now that was a question I didn’t expect. She should know me. I had been molesting her for a whole week. But what I didn’t expect even more was her voice.

Anne’s voice had been empty, almost devoid of emotion. This came out of the same mouth with amusement sitting in it, warm, almost pleased that the question existed. As if there was no worry in the world for her at all.

“Rude,” I said. “You should introduce yourself first.”

A small sound left her, almost a laugh, amusement dripping in it.

“Right. I should have.” She rolled one shoulder until the silver complained and cracked her throat, a wet little noise that didn’t belong to a woman this beautiful. “But unfortunately, introducing myself through this puppet would be difficult. So let’s push off our introduction for the next time.”

Puppet? As expected, I wasn’t talking to Anne. And whoever she was, she wasn’t in Anne’s control all the time. Otherwise, she would have known who I was. And more than that. It was the way she spoke.

The words were dressed like everyone else’s in this world. Slightly British, the old medieval, stuck-up way. The tone wasn’t. It sat too close to the way I thought when I was alone. Modern world under the old era. Like someone borrowing a mouth and not bothering to hide that the mouth was borrowed.

“You’re not the woman I’ve been walking behind for three weeks.”

“Observant. Don’t get attached to the observation. It won’t keep you alive by itself.”

“Then stay long enough to tell me whose hand is in her.”

“You couldn’t get my name out of me, so you’re trying the roundabout way?” The amusement sharpened. “Quite clever of you. Where did a guy like you come out of anyway? Pretty sure I have everyone in this kingdom down. Anyone of importance, anyway.”

She was smart. She was only giving hints that weren’t quite hints. She was controlling what to give and what not to.

“Pretty sure you’re clever too. Would have loved to chat with you. A pity.”

“A pity indeed. You look like a handsome fella. But unfortunately, you’re lacking something that would interest me.”

“And what would that be?”

“Something… hard,” was all she said with an amused expression before she began to change. Or revert.

The shine in her eyes died first.

Then she began to glow.

It started under the breastplate, a pale climb that turned the silver into a lantern. The mana I had been watching spiked, folded, and went rotten. Mana Overload. Not a clean burst of stored power. Soured charge with nowhere to sit, climbing toward a blow that would take the camp, the trees, and the priest I had left breathing. Couldn’t let that happen again.

The system hit me before the heat did.

[Warning]

[Vessel collapse imminent]

[Estimated yield: 5km radius detonation]

[Advisory: Vacate immediately]

[Distance recommended: 80 meters (fatal injuries would be avoided)]

[Time remaining: 9 seconds]

Eight.

The glow jumped to her throat. Pine needles at her boots curled and went brown.

[Time remaining: 6 seconds]

[Advisory: Vacate immediately]

[User’s survival chance at current range: 11%]

I didn’t run.

Six seconds was enough to be a coward. It was also enough to put my hands on the problem. I closed the space, slammed both palms onto the silver at her ribs, and shoved my own mana into her body before she finished becoming a bomb. Quite literally.

It fought me. Her mana.

My own mana channels screamed when the first blow of her mana tried to invade my body. I pinned the raging mana with my own mana, which was quite literally raging now too, but I wasn’t trying to crush her mana I was trying to narrow it, giving it a stable path to flow.

[Warning]

[Contact with collapsing vessel]

[Yield reduced: Recalculating]

[Time remaining: 4 seconds]

[Advisory: Break contact]

I didn’t break contact.

What I could take, I took. Heat poured up my arms and into my own energy core, which was my heart. What I couldn’t take, I bled off through my palms into the dirt, forced it down into roots and soil until the ground steamed and a ring of needles around us went black.

Most of it had to go that way. Charge that has already decided to explode couldn’t be absorbed. I had to dump it. I just hoped the dumping was fast.

[Yield: Contained]

[Status: Unstable]

[Expulsion: 61%]

[Absorption: 18%]

[Unaccounted: 21%]

The glow under the plate stuttered. Her mana resisted vehemently. Her knees went. I went with her so the contact wouldn’t break, kneeling in pine needles, hands locked to the metal, teeth set against a pressure that wanted my ribs from the inside.

[Time remaining: —]

[Detonation: Aborted]

[Residual surge: Ongoing]

The last violent knot in her chest unclenched and leaked away as heat and a smell like burnt incense. The body slumped. Empty. It was nothing but a shell.

I sat down hard because the issue at hand wasn’t over. There was still foreign mana inside me.

[Warning]

[Foreign energy detected: Divine Mana]

[Status: Hostile to the user’s channels]

[Integration: 4%]

My own mana tried to spit it out. The mana wasn’t compatible with me.

[Integration: 11%]

[Advisory: Stabilize or risk mana channel rupture]

Like I didn’t know that.

I breathed the way I had learned across too many lives. Not force. Shape. I took the bright stuff in small pieces and wrapped my own flow around each piece until it stopped cutting. Sweat ran into my eyes. The percentage crawled.

[Integration: 23%]

[Integration: 31%]

Then the thing in my navel woke up.

The dark energy from Julian’s race didn’t ask for my permission. It moved the way it had moved when George’s divinity had been on the table. Hungry. Certain. It rose from the low point under my gut and met the divine charge like a mouth meeting a meal.

[Devouring Divine Mana…]

[Divine Mana remaining: 81%]

The rejection eased. Thanks to that, it became easier to separate the two. The mana and the divinity separated. I took the mana. The dark energy took the divinity for itself and went back down to my navel.

[Divine Mana remaining: 64%]

[Divine Mana remaining: 42%]

[Integration check: 71%]

[Divine Mana remaining: 19%]

[Divine Mana remaining: 7%]

[Divine Mana remaining: 0%]

[Process complete]

[User status: Stable]

I don’t know when it ended. An hour. Two, maybe. Maybe more. Only that the dark energy finished eating, and the night finished with it. It was very difficult to force my brain to keep my consciousness. Passing out now wouldn’t be a wise decision.

The priest still passed out, chest rising. The paladin was where I had left him, in two arguments with the dirt. Anne was on her side in the silver, not breathing.

I first made sure the priest wasn’t waking up. By casting the sleep spell on him.

Then, without further ado, I walked towards Anne, or what was left of her.

I had a feeling. A feeling I wanted to confirm before anything else.

The plate was still faintly warm. I put a hand on the chest-piece, then on the fauld that had been losing to her hips, and sent both into the inventory. Since she was dead, the inventory considered the armor ownerless. The underlayer went with it. She lay on the needles as the body only, tits heavy against the ground, that gigantic ass unmarked by metal for the first time since she had stepped out of the tent.

Then my eyes fell to her crotch.

“What the…”