"You're such a giant pain in the butt," Ruby complained as she dragged Casper's body from the small pond area to behind the destroyed building. He was still unconscious because Aurora had hit him hard on the head.

Truthfully, she wanted to ditch him and go back. Even if she couldn't help much, Ruby wanted to be there with Aurora. But she knew that if she stayed there, she would just be a burden, not so different from this pathetic prince guy.

Ruby sighed. Not to mention, things might end up badly if she didn't properly take Casper to safety. The fact that Aurora had hit him made things even worse.

"But this isn't a lady's job," Ruby said.

And it's not like out here is safe either. The sound of fighting can still be heard all over the place. If one of the rebels saw her with the unconscious prince, their biggest target, she wouldn't be able to outrun them.

And the monster, Ruby looked at it with horror as it moved closer to where she was. It seemed like nobody could stop it yet.

Ruby gulped. If that thing started to come her way, she didn't know what she must do.

And as if mocking her thoughts, the monster stopped for a moment and then suddenly changed direction towards her.

"Why?!" Ruby wanted to yell, but she suppressed it so the monster wouldn't become even more attracted to her.

It was slow. She still had time. But still, she had to carry this heavy luggage called the unconscious prince.

Her evil thoughts made her consider just leaving Casper there. This was his fault anyway. If he wasn't so weak against Nova, things wouldn't have gone this way.

But then she heard a familiar voice.

"Miss!"

Ruby immediately shifted her gaze to where the voice came from. A tall girl with a white sword ran towards her, followed by a group of three Adventurer girls.

"Rita!" Ruby said, feeling relieved. "You're finally back! Why were you so slow?"

"I'm sorry, miss," Rita said, looking ashamed.

"How did you find me anyway?" Ruby asked. "It was chaos around there. It's kind of weird you could find me that easily."

"This sword," Rita said. "It makes me able to use wind magic a lot more freely. Using it, I can tell where you're from the air and wind around you--"

"Um, sorry to interrupt," a girl with dark skin said, "but we have a bigger problem right now."

She pointed at the snail monster that was getting closer.

"What is that thing anyway?" another girl with a pink cloak commented. "I've never seen a monster like that before."

"Neither have I," a girl with glasses replied. "It's kind of cute."

"Cute?" the girl with the pink cloak said in confusion. "How?"

"They're adventurers who helped me," Rita said. "I will introduce them to you later."

"Okay," Ruby said.

"Um... and miss?" Rita said, seeming unsure about bringing this up.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Yes?" Ruby said.

"What's that?" Rita pointed to the body beside her master.

"Oh, nothing," Ruby said. "Just an unconscious prince."

"What the-? So that's really Prince Casper?" Rita said in disbelief.

"What? A prince? What is it about a prince?" the girl with the pink cloak said, getting interested.

"Not now! The monster is getting closer!" the dark-skinned girl said. "Can you guys take this more seriously?"

"Miss, please stay back. We will handle it," Rita said.

"We? This isn't part of the job you gave us," the dark-skinned girl said. "You better pay us extra."

Rita smiled. "Okay, let's talk about that later."

"Can you guys even handle it?" Ruby said, kind of doubtful. "It barely gets hurt even after getting attacked by a lot of people."

"We won't know until we try," the girl with glasses said as she and her fellow Adventurers ran towards the monster.

"Please distract it while I prepare my attack," Rita asked as she followed them behind.

"Okay!" The adventurer girls replied at the same time.

They launched some fire attacks, water attacks, and threw several knife-like weapons, but like before, failed to seriously damage the monster.

Stopping the monster seemed impossible until Rita swung her sword, creating a gigantic, sharp wind that cut through the air. For the first time, an attack successfully cut the snail monster, making it bleed and causing it to writhe in pain.

Rita grinned at Ruby. "Don't worry, I've got it, miss."

***

It's clear that Aurora had no chance of winning against Nova without her cheat skill, LightSpeed. So the logical thing to do was to use it right away. Yet, for a moment, Aurora hesitated. She could only use that skill for 5 minutes, so if she couldn't maximize that time, everything would be over.

But with how difficult she felt when parrying Nova's sword swing, while dodging Nova's other attacks, she knew that she couldn't hesitate anymore.

"Come on, use your speed, that's your best magic, right?" Nova said as she swung her sword, cutting into Aurora's clothes a little. "I won't wait forever."

"Oh, shut it," Aurora said.

She was going to use it anyway, but now, because Nova said that, she didn't feel like doing it anymore.

But whatever, she had no other choice. Putting aside what she felt right now, Aurora activated her LightSpeed.

Aurora barely dodged a tentacle-like attack that almost grabbed her ankle. She then ran toward Nova's left side while carefully not touching the floating darkness balls around her.

Aurora swung her knife.

It was the first damage Aurora had done, yet it was shallow. Nova succeeded in dodging even against her super speed.

Not wasting time, Aurora started moving again. This time she attacked the side of Nova that was holding the sword, trying to make her drop her weapon. But again it was a shallow attack. Nova's hand was bleeding, but it wasn't deep enough to affect her.

To actually dodge her speed twice, this couldn't be a coincidence.

Aurora stopped.

"What's wrong?" Nova said, smiling. "Surprised I can react at all against your speed? You shouldn't show off your secret ability on a stupid duel then. Because it will be useless in a real fight later."

Aurora gritted her teeth. Of course, Nova wasn't going to just sit down after getting humiliated by losing to her. It turned out that this whole time, she was prepared to deal with her speed.

And Aurora was frustrated because Nova was right. She didn't really regret it, but it was a fact that the duel from the other day was not really important. She didn't really plan for the future when she used LightSpeed against Nova that time.

Aurora shook her head. Doesn't matter. It's already happened. Stop thinking about it. She couldn't hesitate now; the clock was ticking. She had less than five minutes left.

Aurora started moving again, trying to attack from all sides, from behind, and even from below. But she could barely damage Nova.

How could she predict that? Aurora wondered.

Aurora kept trying, yet Nova kept dodging, and even almost did a counterattack. Thankfully, it was too slow for Aurora, making it easy for her to dodge.

Aurora stopped, trying to calm herself down. This wasn't working.

"I'm going to admit, that speed of yours was fantastic," Nova said.

Aurora was stunned. She didn't expect Nova to compliment her. It was stupid, especially in that situation, yet Aurora was kind of happy to be acknowledged.

"But it's clear that you're not used to fighting, right?" Nova continued. "Your movements were so obvious; it's almost pathetic."

That stung, but it was true. Aurora couldn't help it. She was the indoor type who liked playing games or reading books. Of course, she couldn't fight. She never learned martial arts either.

"And that speed of yours," Nova said. "You can't keep using it forever, can you? I can't feel any anxiety from your attacks, as if you had a time limit."

Aurora gulped. Nova read her perfectly.

"But enough talking," Nova said. "Come, give me your best shot."

A little annoyed, Aurora started moving again, but Nova wasn't just all talk. She could really read Aurora's movements, and despite her best efforts, Aurora's attacks just kept missing. She tried varying her movements, throwing a fake attack, and attacking with both her knife and spear of light, but nothing seemed to work.

Finally, Aurora jumped back, realizing she was running out of time. She estimated that she only had about a minute left for LightSpeed to remain activated. Now, she had to make a decision: use the remaining time to run away, or...

She reached into her pocket and grabbed a potion, her last hope.

"A healing potion?" Nova guessed. "No, you didn't get hurt. Then..."

Without hesitating, Aurora opened the bottle and drank the potion.

Nova rubbed her eyes, thinking that something was wrong with them. But that wasn't the case. Aurora had faded away and then... disappeared.

Suddenly, Nova felt danger approaching and jumped back, but it was too late. Something cut her deeply on her arm, and blood started dripping from the wound.

"Interesting," Nova said, trying to stop the bleeding. "So, you still have some tricks up your sleeve. Super speed and invisibility? What a nasty combination."

Aurora's attack had connected, but Nova's calm demeanor worried her. Aurora needed to finish this quickly, before Nova found out more of her weaknesses.

With one, two, and three cuts, Aurora kept moving and swinging her knife, and it was working. Nova was barely able to dodge her attacks. Nova cursed, and the wounds that Aurora gave her started to affect her movement.

Finally, the last swing from Aurora brought Nova to her knees and made her drop her darkness sword. It fell behind Aurora.

Aurora pointed her knife at Nova, who stared back at her with cuts all over her body. The effect of invisibility from Marina's potion had completely disappeared, as had the effect of LightSpeed. But Aurora couldn't waver. It would be the end if Nova realized she didn't have any weapon left.

"Give up now," Aurora said, trying to act as confidently as possible.

She hoped to intimidate Nova, but instead, Nova laughed. "You're still naive, I see," she said. "This is a real fight. You shouldn't assume the fight will end until one of us is dead."

The meaning behind Nova's words was too late for Aurora to understand. Suddenly, Aurora dropped her knife as she felt a pain in her chest. She looked down and saw a black sword stabbed into her. Using her tentacle darkness, Nova had grabbed the sword and attacked Aurora from behind.

***