Zoe quickly made the caring, selfless decision to go ahead and ditch the child.

Honestly, if her opponent were some kind of child-eating monster, then she would stick around and defend both of them—or so she told herself. But after all, a paladin wasn’t actually a child-eating monster. Probably.

Of course, that still left the problem of escaping—even on her own. Not a moment after she touched down, Zoe dashed to the side to avoid being impaled by a white-hot spear for the third time. Even then, the velocity of the attack was so fast that she had to quickly contort her body even as the kinetic ability yanked her to the side.

For just a brief moment, Zoe could even feel the searing heat all the way through her scales as it narrowly grazed by her. She didn’t stick around to find out what would happen next. I hope she can’t call it back like a boomerang.

{Instinct} and a flare of irritating heat warned Zoe just in time to twist back the other way as the spear-tip flew back to reattach itself to the main shaft like some kind of self-guided boomerang. I’m really starting to hate this.

Zoe sprinted forward. It only took a couple seconds for her to close in on the paladin, but the spear-tip was once again flying straight towards her at great speed. Naturally, Zoe wasn’t at all surprised—but she didn’t try to do anything to dodge either. She activated {Kinetic Manipulation} on the projectile.

She didn’t try to stop it, of course. There was no way that particular ability was currently strong enough to stop even a mundane rock travelling that quickly, let alone what was probably a powerful item with unknown magical effects.

Zoe just gave it a nudge to the side. A very hard nudge.

The amount of force it took caught her off guard, such that it was almost upon her by the time she compensated and shoved even harder. The spear shifted just slightly to the right at the very last moment, just barely grazing against her side but not truly penetrating.

{Kinetic Manipulation has leveled up! Kinetic Manipulation is now level 16.}

Zoe only had time to briefly reflect on the strange amount of inertia before she reached the paladin herself. While the woman did seem slightly surprised for just a moment, she didn’t hesitate to brace herself for impact. At the same time, she angled the shaft of the remainder of her spear as if to let Zoe impale herself with her own momentum.

Nice try. Zoe’s hastily constructed plan pretty much relied on her opponent assuming that she was attacking. But on the contrary—I just need to get the fuck out of here. By this point, Zoe was convinced that there was no way she would actually defeat the paladin at her current strength. At least, not any way I want to try.

So it was at the last moment that Zoe leapt forward as if to pounce upon her target. Instead, she activated {Kinetic Dash} midair to carry her right under the warrior’s outstretched, spear-carrying arm in a sort of horizontal high-diving position.

Zoe half expected the holy warrior to whip out some new trick—or just use extreme reaction speed—but it appeared she made it through completely unscathed. Ha! Rolling forward back to an upright position with a grace that astounded even herself, Zoe continued the sprint back to the square-cut stone corridor. She had to admit she was quite pleased with the result. She had figured that had she tried to just circumvent the paladin entirely, that she would have caught on and made a more effective attempt to stop her.

Of course, there was still her spear to worry about.

Zoe didn’t need to glance back to know that the blasted projectile was already streaking towards her back, far faster than she could hope to outrun it. That’s fine. Zoe activated her spirit shield as soon as she could physically sense the intense head radiating off of it.

It struck her just as the ghastly wisps of faded magic enveloped her entire body. But unlike the other attacks—the sloth’s shield or even the spear when she was already impaled—it didn’t instantly dissipate.

{Corrupted Spirit Shield has leveled up! Corrupted Spirit Shield is now level 4.}

The tip shattered, but the rest kept going, splattering her protective barrier with a spray of searing hot magical shrapnel. The good thing was that it didn’t do any damage to Zoe herself—yet. As the last fragments of the shattered projectile began to strike her, Zoe reached out with {Arcane Manipulation}.

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If the structure of the magic is now already broken…

It didn’t take much to unravel it completely. As the remnants of the attack fully decomposed into raw mana, Zoe finally got a sense of just how much magic had been crammed into the construct.

It was a lot.

The magnitude of the rapidly blossoming nova of primal mana was roughly on par with the raw beam of magic Zoe had used to defeat the first paladin. Nothing else she had seen so far even compared to it.

{Arcane Manipulation has gained multiple levels! Arcane Manipulation is now level 3.}

Suffice it to say, in the fraction of a second that it took for the blast to fully hit, Zoe’s entire backside was completely ravaged with a scorching radiation. Even as the pulse of golden mana exploded past her at ludicrous speed, Zoe herself was propelled violently forward.

The entire chamber shuddered, dust shaking down from the ceiling and walls. Zoe didn’t far much better, as the nova ultimately flung her face-first into the flat stone wall. A lot of things, not quite all of them belong to Zoe, seemed to have cracked.

Her fall down onto her back seemed glacially slow in comparison. Not even able to properly groan, Zoe mustered all of her willpower—and quite a bit of magic—to roll over and rise to her elbows.

Is that— Zoe stared at the thick, tapered, curling object which lay cracked on the smooth ground just below her —Is that one of my horns? Unfortunately, she wasn’t quite in the right state to even tell if her head felt off-balance, let alone feel around for it.

Holy hell, that was way more power than I would have expected. Even for such a high level opponent, it seemed disproportionate. But Zoe could puzzle out how it came to be later. If there is a later.

Tilting her head up and peering through the haze of dust and shimmering mana—wisps of it still glowing visibly to the naked eye—Zoe squinted as the paladin approached. The woman herself looked no worse for wear—except she also looked incredibly pissed. Zoe drunkenly noted that no tip had rejoined the shaft of her spear.

As she strode forward, Zoe realized she had to do something quickly. I don’t think she’s going to take her sweet time again once she gets close enough.

Zoe eyed her mana.

Mana: 144 / 350

Reservoir: 350 / 350

The last thing she noted before it became too late was that the pond was bubbling and shaking even more violently now. That’s interesting. But the paladin was now just one stride away, and the last streamers of golden mana were finally fading. I guess two can play at that game.

Zoe discharged all of her mana.

{Arcane Reservoir has leveled up! Arcane Reservoir is now level 2.}

As the paladin seemed to be immune to her corruption, Zoe converted it all into her regular old demonic mana—it had worked on the first paladin, after all. Despite her uninjured state and previously displayed prowess, the paladin was completely unable to dodge the jagged crimson beam as it struck her in the chest.

The air shimmered around her as her own aura flared to life to protect her. Zoe’s demonic mana punched straight through. But even as the center of the holy warrior’s chestplate cracked and tarnished, the woman quickly whipped the shaft of her spear in front of it. The vast remainder of the short lived attack struck the tip of the staff and deflected away from the paladin and down into the water behind.

As Zoe collapsed onto her side, she appraised what she had accomplished. Her opponent’s weapon was completely ruined—she seemed to have entirely destroyed the projectile tip, and the upper half of the remaining shaft was a deeply tarnished, half melded and smoldering wreck. The armor had fared a little better, with the central chestplate likely ruined beyond repair as well.

But the paladin herself was fine. Zoe hadn’t landed so much as a scratch. I don’t suppose I could try groveling as an option? Without a drop of mana left and her body severely broken, Zoe felt horribly helpless. It was the first time since she was corrupted that her truly monstrous, inhuman form had utterly failed. While instinctively she could tell that it was healing of its own accord—without any magic at all—it would probably take at least days.

Furious, the paladin discarded the remnant of her original weapon and bent down. Zoe tried to smile, but the fangs probably spoiled the intended effect. Something tells me I don’t exactly have days to work with, here.

As the holy warrior grabbed her by her remaining horn and twisted her over, Zoe caught a glimpse of the pool for the last time. To her mild surprise, the surface of the water had grown perfectly calm—but a deep crimson light was beginning to blossom and rise within it. Huh.

The paladin placed her hand upon Zoe’s chest once more.

The pool erupted into a crimson fountain.

Zoe felt a strong magic strangle her very core and begin to rip her out of herself—she struggled against it, but she had no power with which to resist. And now the paladin wasn’t even looking at Zoe as she removed the heart of her spirit. She was focused entirely behind her. It made Zoe more furious than she had ever been before.

To be killed was one thing. To be defeated and defanged idly while your victor focused on something else was intolerable.

Feebly, Zoe tried to grasp the woman’s hand with her own claws and pry it off her chest—even as her core began to physically tear away from the rest of her body.

And then her assailant was violently ripped away. Zoe’s core recoiled back into place with a painful snap, and her mana ticked up by a single point. Zoe grinned as a throbbing, pulsating crimson and purple tentacle dragged the paladin down into the depths. Serves you right.

Zoe’s relieved, exhausted satisfaction became quite short lived as an identical tentacle coiled around her own legs and yanked her back into the cavern and down under the surface of the pool.

Well shit.