“Who are you?” Cornelia asked. Her voice was trembling from the shock.

Luna, who was not only Cornelia's maid but also her childhood friend, had suddenly thrown herself out of the window.

Cornelia was older than Luna. So at first she saw her as a sister, but in the end, sisters can be friends too.

She had saved Luna's life, pulled her out of the bad life she had been subjected to, and now she had taken her own life, as if to disregard all Cornelia had done for her.

The effects of suicide on her were not up for debate, but now she was in danger of her own life because of the men standing in front of her.

Two tall men came to the door and blocked the exit. They were both wearing brown robes. One had pale skin, as if she had died, but the other was dark. Both had black hair and both had bright yellow eyes.

The black swords they held were identical to Yu's sword, but unlike Yu's sword, they seemed to absorb the light of the world, rendering their surroundings colorless.

Cornelia looked around, she didn't see a sword here that she could use against them. On top of that, the mana emanating from the men was dangerously high.

“I can't do anything against them with my bare hands,” she thought, and threw herself out of the window as the men made the first move against her.

Unlike Luna, she carried mana in her body. And not just any mana, or even a slightly above average amount, but enough to make her a powerful warrior.

Even though she did not love her father, she had to be grateful to her and her ancestors for this. In their marriages, nobles also looked at the amount of mana in their spouses and chose accordingly.

Her ancestors had the opportunity to make such choices, so they chose wives who were rich in mana. The common people did not have such opportunities, and so the noble families grew ever stronger while the common people remained powerless.

It was for the same reason that the strongest warriors came from among the nobility.

As her hair lifted, she transferred the mana from her body to her legs, buttocks and waist. When she looked down from the tower, it seemed so high, but her fall was so fast that she didn't even have time to think.

When her feet touched the ground, she bent her knees and balanced himself by placing her hand on the ground.

“Luna...”

Luna's body was in front of her. Some of her broken bones protruded from her flesh and her face was disfigured from falling on her face.

When she lifted her palm off the ground, she realized that Luna's blood was on her hand.

“Why did you do that?”

She wanted to sob, but she could not find the time to do so because of the dozens of questions she had in her mind because of the situation she was in.

How had those two people appeared out of nowhere? It could not have been possible for just two people to get past all the guards and come to Cornelia. Above all, Cornelia had directly felt the threat emanating from them. Their aura screamed ‘I am evil.’

She could no longer look at Luna and looked up with the mana she felt above him. The two men she had run away from jumped out of the window and began to descend rapidly towards her.

Without thinking, Cornelia raised her hand in the air and shouted. “QUA!”

The water droplets that formed around her hand swirled in the air as if there was an unlimited supply of water and rose upwards as if from a hose.

The water moved forward and pierced the groin of one of the men who fell from the air and came out of her head. The other man fell at the foot of Luna's body.

“One person now...”

The man Cornelia had attacked with her water spell also fell to the ground. His corpse melted into a thick black liquid, smoke billowing out of it and giving off a foul odor. His sword bounced off the ground and landed at Cornelia's feet, as if sword wanted her to fight.

She turned her attention to the man at the foot of the corpse. She wasn't very good at magic and didn't know if she could cast a spell again, but as she raised her left hand towards him, she bent down and picked up the sword on the ground.

“Hot, how does Yu hold it?”

The black sword looked as if it weighed nothing and just holding it made Cornelia feel dirty.

But unlike the sword held by the man in front of her now, when Cornelia took it in her hand, there was no phenomenon like before. The sword of the man in front of her still seemed to attract the light of the world around it, it was colorless, but the sword in Cornelia's hand was just like it, only now it was a black sword.

It was just a little hot.

“Qua,” she thought to herself. As she had hoped, the water droplets gathered around her hand again. Then the droplets moved towards the man in front of her as before.

The bells were still ringing when all this happened. The metallic sounds came both from their towers and from inside the city, the same melody repeating over and over again.

The man in front of her turned his body sideways to avoid Cornelia's attack and raised his hand towards her.

As the water she had hoped would pierce his body passed by the man, Cornelia felt a hard, large object hit her in the stomach, but she could see nothing. Nevertheless, she was thrown back by the impact.

As the castle's garden was large, she flew without finding a place to crash, and as her speed decreased, she approached the ground. When she touched the ground, her body bounced a few times and rolled a few meters before coming to a stop.

“What was that?”

She had fought opponents who could use magic before, but she had never seen such power. This was not an attack with wind magic, an invisible object had struck her in the stomach.

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She stood up clutching her stomach and saw that the man in front of her was still standing next to Luna's body.

The man took a step forward and trampled Luna's corpse, then came the second step, and when he took the third step he started running. Thanks to the intense mana in his body, he was abnormally faster than the speed at which an ordinary person runs.

Cornelia did not think she could escape him in this situation, she raised her sword and threw herself into defending the attack.

As the man's black sword landed on her face, she raised the black sword she had taken from her opponent's friend and defended herself.

As the sound of steel clashing mixed with the chiming of bells reached Cornelia's ears, she felt the hilt she was holding grow a little warmer.

Her opponent's arms were stronger than Cornelia's arms and the mana in Cornelia's body was small compared to her opponent's mana. The difference between them allowed her opponent to put pressure on her.

The dark man's face contorted and disgust appeared in his yellow eyes, as if he was trying to kill an animal. He was pressing his sword down on Cornelia with all his might, and Cornelia's sword, which she had placed under his sword, was about to touch his face.

His sword was so abnormal that when it came close to her face, Cornelia saw a colorless, formless world. Her own colors seemed to be absorbed into the sword, life faded.

She slid her sword with him and moved out from under him and to his left. Using her mana, she strengthened her arms and swung her sword at the man's back, which was not protected by any steel.

The move went through the gap as her opponent ducked nimbly, and while he was still ducked he swung his sword at Cornelia's stomach. Cornelia dodged it and used her next chance to pierce his chest.

Her sword moved quickly towards the chest of the man in front of her, but this attack was met by her opponent's sword. Her opponent struck Cornelia's sword with his sword and this time he tried to drive his sword into her chest.

Cornelia played the same defense. Her opponent, instead of giving her the opportunity to attack as Cornelia had just done, decided to follow up with another attack. He spun around and tried to cut Cornelia's neck.

Cornelia defended this move with her sword, then jumped back and landed on the roof of one of the outbuildings in the castle garden.

“What are you?!” she shouted at the man on the ground. The bells kept ringing.

“E Soenit,” replied the man below. Cornelia did not understand what language he was speaking.

She knew Aramish and Brahatul, but she had no idea what the word 'Soenit' meant, and the 'E' probably meant 'one', as in Brahatul.

“A Soenite?”

Cornelia's question went unanswered. The man raised his hand into a fist and pointed it at Cornelia. Cornelia felt the threat but could do nothing. The man opened his fingers and the same thing that had hit Cornelia in the stomach earlier, this time hit the roof she was on and knocked her into the outbuilding.

“God damn it!”

While Cornelia was on the ground, the door in front of her shattered into pieces, and Cornelia shielded her face with her arms to protect herself from the flying pieces of the door.

“Inu tiren en valar niu heta.”

As the man walked through the shattered door, he spoke again in a way Cornelia could not understand. It was a foreign language, so she could hardly make out the words, but she managed to make out the word 'valar.'

She didn't know if it came from the name 'Valarfin' or if it was an independent, language-specific word.

“Speaking of Valarfin... I hope he didn't come to the castle.”

She was surprised that her opponent gave her a chance to get back on her feet. Maybe he just thought he could kill Cornelia either way, but she was back on her feet.

“He will come... He will enter the castle to find Yurine.”

She was about to start worrying about Yu when he started attacking again. The only thing that allowed Cornelia to defend against the abnormally fast attacks was that she was also abnormal compared to normal people.

The Vermilians did not want their castle to be cold, dark and damp like other castles. So they employed more servants than Cornelia could remember the names of, and not all of them could fit in the castle.

In fact, in most castles, the servants lived in close quarters, so they could fit them in the castles, but when it came to giving them each their own room - as the Vermilians did - they had to build new outbuildings.

But even if they wanted to give their servants a slightly better life, these were outbuildings and they were very cramped buildings. Cornelia found it difficult to swing her sword in this narrow space.

But whether it was the strength of the man in front of her or the abnormal properties of the sword, the man swung his sword as if there was no wall, and where it hit the wall, it cut through it like a cake.

For him there were no walls, his sword overcame this problem. Cornelia's sword, on the other hand, kept hitting the walls and she had difficulty defending herself.

“QUA!”

She didn't have to say the name of the spell when she cast it, but it was easier and more effective when it came to sudden attacks.

She raised her hand and opened her palm towards her opponent's chest. Droplets of water immediately appeared in the air, accumulated and swirled towards her opponent.

Her opponent was not idle in the face of this attack. In fact, he didn't do it in anticipation of Cornelia's attack. He raised his hand at the same time as Cornelia and tried his invisible attack again.

When their palms aligned and they made the same attack, the water rushed hard on both of them. Because of the position, more water was on Cornelia's side.

As they both tumbled to the far corners of the corridor, Cornelia broke through a door. The velocity of the water hitting her body was so high that it cut her face, chest and arms.

As she got to her feet again, she was hurting from the cuts caused by the water. Her opponent was not injured like Cornelia, only a few cuts from the water splashing in his direction.

“I can't fight inside here,” she thought. As long as she stayed here she would be at a disadvantage. “Yu will be in danger too, and I must prevent that.”

First she had to find Yurine, Link and Ana. Once she found Yurine, she would have found the roarons who would make up her fighting force. She guessed that they were all with her now.

Then she could try to understand what had happened and make a plan.

“Why do I feel like there's a problem involving the whole castle? Maybe these men have come just for me.”

It was conceivable that they would leave assassins for Cornelia before the nobles who supported the Crown fled.

“But now...” She couldn't think about these things.

She started to run towards him and her opponent responded in kind and started running. If she switched places with him, she might have a chance to get out of the outbuilding.

Since she could not swing her sword, she was in position to thrust. She saw her opponent doing the same. In the worst case scenario, they would both stab each other with their swords, but Cornelia didn't want to think like ‘if I'm going to die, at least I'll kill him too.’

As she ran, she threw herself down, slipped on the ground and hit the man's ankles.

Before the man collapsed on top of Cornelia, Cornelia raised her sword in the air, so that her opponent fell on top of his friend's sword.

“Ah!”

The black liquid flowed over Cornelia as the man immediately began to melt. Cornelia crawled out from under his melting body, but the few drops that fell on her face and clothes were so hot that they burned her skin.

She rushed into one of the rooms of the outbuilding, looked around, saw a jug and, without looking to see whether it was full or not, she took it and emptied it on her face.

She had the same burns on her torso, but her face was more important. When she wiped her face, he was jumping up and down because of the burns.

“Damn it! Shit!”

She began to take deep breaths, trying to use her mana to reduce the pain. “What should I do? What should I do?”

She couldn't be beautiful with a burn scar on her face, Yu wouldn't like her like that.

But if she didn't act now, Yu would enter the castle for Yurine and get hurt.

“Yurine is Yu's daughter. Yu will be happy if I keep her safe.”

Without paying any more attention to the burns on her body, she ran and jumped out of the outbuilding. She still hoped that they were just assassins who wanted to kill her and had nothing to do with the whole castle, but when she saw that the tower she had just jumped from was on fire, she was speechless.

“Master’s Tower, she stays there!”

The Master’s Tower was the tower where the castle's rulers and high-ranking guests stayed. Yurine was also in that tower.

Cornelia ran towards the castle, and the more she ran, the stronger she felt the darkness rising from inside the castle, the clearer she heard the shouts mingling with the bells.