Rrrrip!

  A sharp tearing sound rang out. The thin leather armor was useless against the sword’s edge, splitting wide open.

  A ghastly wound, from shoulder blade to collarbone, laid her skin open. Warm blood instantly soaked her clothes.

  However, Elsa’s body only sank slightly.

  Not a trace of pain was on her face. The horrific wound might as well have belonged to someone else.

  But what truly stunned Rod was what happened next.

  The force of the recoil made Rod sway for an instant. His sword was knocked aside, his defense crumbling.

  In that fleeting gap,

  Elsa’s empty left hand, coiled like a spring, lashed out!

  The force of the charging warhorse was enough to shatter bone. The blood gushing from her shoulder was weakening her. The immense inertia should have crushed her.

  The air froze. The onlookers couldn't even breathe.

  And yet, she seemed to cast all of that aside, using her still-intact hand, like an iron claw, to grip the armor on Rod’s waist and abdomen!

  “You—!”

  Rod’s pupils contracted to pinpricks.

  He simply couldn’t believe his eyes.

  A handmaiden, using her body of flesh and blood, to physically intercept a steel mount at full speed! This wasn’t bravery; it was madness! It was an act only a monster would make!

  “Get. Down. From. There.”

  A roar, like that of a wild beast, was squeezed from Elsa’s throat.

  Her waist dropped, her feet driving into the ground like wedges. Every muscle in her body tensed to its absolute limit, and the power she’d suppressed erupted all at once!

  BOOM—!

  Both horse and man lost control, letting out a mournful shriek!

  The massive warhorse was pulled—its front hooves leaving the ground by this completely illogical, brute force! And Rod, fully armored in the saddle, was violently ripped from his mount, crashing heavily to the ground!

  A cloud of dust filled the air.

  The entire process was over in the time it took to draw a single breath.

  Not far away, Pandora’s heart felt as if it were about to stop.

  She saw the bloom of blood on Elsa’s shoulder, saw her stagger, saw her face drain of all color… every frame was a knife twisting in her heart.

  But in the next second, when Rod fell ignominiously from his horse, and Elsa, though swaying, stood firm again, the heart that had leaped into her throat finally settled back into its chest.

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  “Elsa…”

  Elsa didn’t turn back. She didn’t even have time to tend to the wound.

  Her entire attention was locked onto the figure on the ground, his helmet askew, struggling uselessly.

  On Rod’s face, there was only incomprehensible horror.

  “No… this is impossible…”

  A knight’s creed was shattering.

  He struggled to get up. He still held his sword, but the arrogance in his eyes was gone, leaving only the trembling of one who had been marked by an existence they could not comprehend.

  How could this be explained?!

  He was a knight! A knight who had ridden a warhorse and fought a hundred battles!

  His opponent was a handmaiden! A handmaiden who wasn’t even wearing iron armor!

  Why did he lose?

  By what right?!

  His entire understanding of the world was shattered.

  Was it he who had gone mad, or had the world been turned upside down?!

  “Nothing is impossible, traitor, Rod.

  From the day you swore fealty to the Viscount, Miss Pandora has been watching you.

  Every single day.

  But you broke your oath.

  You betrayed the Viscount, and you betrayed the faith the young miss had in you.

  You deserve to die.”

  Elsa’s voice was cold, devoid of a single shred of human emotion.

  She slowly straightened her body. The wound on her shoulder had already stopped bleeding. The tip of her sword rested on the ground, leaving a broken trail of blood.

  “Your greatest reliance was this horse.”

  Elsa stepped forward, one step at a time, her voice like ice. “Now, you have left it. It is time… for you to die.”

  Before the words had even faded—

  Elsa’s figure vanished!

  All that was left was a blurry, blood-colored afterimage…

  “What?!”

  Rod was horrified, instinctively swinging his sword to block!

  However,

  it was too slow!

  His reaction, in the face of Elsa’s inhuman speed, was as slow as a crawling turtle!

  A piercing whistle cut through the air.

  The glint of the long sword carved a perfect, fatal arc from bottom to top!

  Thump—

  The sound of the sharp blade cutting through flesh, severing the joints between the bones, was dull and clear.

  Time, for Rod, seemed to freeze.

  His movements stiffened. The fear, the anger, the disbelief on his face… all of it froze there.

  A thin line of blood slowly appeared at his throat.

  The next moment—

  Thud!

  The severed head, stained with blood, separated from his body and rolled to the ground, covered in filth and dust.

  The headless corpse remained standing for a moment, then collapsed with a crash, kicking up another cloud of dust.

  Until the very last moment of his life, Rod could not understand—

  how he, a fully armored knight, could be… dragged from his horse by a handmaiden in such an absurd manner, and then… decapitated?

  It was illogical!

  It went against the very laws of the world!

  Rod died with a grievance in his heart, but his dissatisfaction was of no concern to anyone.

  Pandora didn't even spare him another glance. He was dead. Her focus was already on Elsa, who stood straight as a ramrod despite the ghastly wound, like a blood-soaked Asura.

  She took a long, deep breath, then slowly let it out.

  The heart that had been in her throat finally, completely, settled back into its chest.

  “Hah…”

  She raised a hand, wiping away the cold sweat that had beaded on her brow.

  “As expected…”

  Pandora looked at Elsa, her gaze complex, filled with awe, with fear, and with a sense of relief that was hard to put into words.

  “The product of the System’s 【Myriad Alchemy】… something else. A ‘humanoid weapon.’ In this medieval world, who could stop it…”

  In this era where knights were nearly invincible, in this era where armor and warhorses dominated the battlefield, in this era where gunpowder was still just a nascent spark, an unarmored “handmaiden” could face a charging, fully armored knight, pull him from his horse with brute force, and then cleanly decapitate him?

  All for the price of a wound that was far from fatal?

  It was a miracle!

  And the root of it all was an ability from the System—

  【Myriad Alchemy】

  Pandora shifted her gaze to the two knight-squires. They were gaping, frozen like stone statues.

  A deathly silence hung over the clearing.

  This scene would be seared into their memories as an indelible brand.

  From this day forward, they would never dare to show the slightest disrespect to “Elsa.”

  Because what they had witnessed with their own eyes was an otherworldly being… wearing the skin of a human.

  After several seconds of suffocating silence, Pandora broke it.

  Her voice sounded calm, but it carried an authority that could not be resisted:

  “Now, answer me. Who is it that you serve?”