Maya extended her senses past throughout the whole world. It was all she could manage right now. She had exhausted her mana, and while she was recovering, she had already constructed a script to convert the air around her into mana, she could not find the Witch of the Black Dragon.

“How did it happen again?” She asked the woman that allowed her to escape.

“I punched her hard into the ground and she went through the magma.”

They had this conversation a couple of times already, but she still needed to hear it and repeat herself.

“Magma. The one place where she thrives. The one place where she will recover.”

“You don’t need to be mean about it.”

“I just want you to understand, I’m disappointed and also blame you,” Maya sighed. She sat down on a rock. “Do you at least have a mana potion on you?”

Ingrid tossed her one. The potion was red, it was made from her blood. Normally witches used a catalyst to create a mana potion. Hers were crystals. She just didn’t have any because she had exhausted her supply from killing those assassins.

Maya downed the potion, and she felt her mana reach half of its capacity. The potion wasn’t tuned to her mana, it wasn’t incompatible, but it did cost at least a third of what it could provide her to convert it into mana she could use.

With that done, Maya tossed the bottle in her item box.

“So, one of us will have to stay here to deal with Yome.”

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Ingrid crossed her arms and turned her head. “That would be you.”

Maya forced herself to smile. She could feel the vein on her forehead bulge. “I wasn’t the one that allowed her to escape.”

“My magic is a bad matchup with hers. Most of my abilities are close quarters. It’s hard to fight a dragon that can just fly away and snipe you with their flame breath.”

“That. Is. Not. My. Problem.”

The ground underneath her cracked.

“It is.” Ingrid vanished from the rock she had been sitting on top. Her form appeared in front of Maya. She was a head shorter than her, but the pressure she exhorted would crush any normal man like an ant. “When I called you to come here, I told you that Yome would be here. You did not arrive with any mana potions, you were half exhausted, and worse yet.”

Her hand grabbed at Maya’s side. She winced.

“You’re also injured.” Ingrid pulled out two bottles from her item box and handed it to Maya. “You know who is down there right? You can feel it. The Milkman.”

Maya’s lips twisted as the pain was replaced with wrath. “You know what he did,” she whispered.

“Reina should have never underestimated the assassin, just like you are now.” Ingrid huffed. “That’s the problem with being a Star Witch, you feel like a god, but we’re not. We die. Reina’s death should have been an alarm bell. You can’t beat him with injuries like that, so why don’t you go and have a tea party with Yome.”

“You think leaving me with Yome will be a tea party? She’ll kill me.”

Ingrid waved dismissively. “You know she won’t. She does this every few years. She doesn’t want to kill you, she just wants to be better than you. Dalton just got in her crosshair because you’re bad at apologizing. Just apologize.”

Maya narrowed her eyes. “Says the woman who pretended to be a ninja just so she could be with the man she loves.”

“This and that are different.”

“You’re worse than I am,” Maya sighed finding a nicely shaped rock to sit on. “Go ahead then, save my husband.”

“He’s your boyfriend.” She corrected her.

“I know what I said.”

Ingrid jumped down the hole in the mouth of the ruined tower. As Maya looked up at the sky, she could feel a distant but growing heat originating from the planet’s core.

She kept her eyes on a cloud that reminded her of ice cream.

“Of course you’re there,” she whispered under her breath.