Gardenia’s Heart

It had sensed them from the moment they entered the tree, but it made no move to attack.

There was no need to leave its place to face them. If they couldn’t even reach it, they were not individuals worthy of a battle.

Anyone who couldn’t stand before it wasn’t worthy of its attention.

A weak and fragile being brought it no thrill—didn’t even deserve to die by its claws.

They would fight and fulfill their final order. That alone was necessary—this was their duty.

Contrary to appearances, the creature did not enjoy unnecessary roars or pointless noise.

However… that feeling…

It was something it hadn’t experienced in a long time.

There was delight in it.

Enough to make it laugh.

Destroying them wouldn’t be bothersome.

The archer had a few tricks. She could predict her actions and dodge them by a fraction of a second—but she wasn’t a threat.

The one with the shining crown seemed to be the most experienced. Her attacks were heavy, but that was all. As long as she remained standing, she could keep healing—so fighting her wasn’t entirely dull. She was a minor problem.

The sorceress created several unique and distinct spells. She seemed to regenerate in her own way, and among them, was the one paying the most attention to its every move. She had less power than the warrior and had to rely on instinct to dodge. That alone didn’t make her a threat.

But the portals…

That thing that kept teleporting them from place to place again and again… was irritating.

And that marked her as the first one who needed to be eliminated.

---

That sound could not be ignored.

“Ah… Ah…”

Nia didn’t need to breathe, but her body was reacting without her consent. Each attempt to face the being before her made the next breath longer than the last.

All of its bloodlust was aimed at her now.

The weight of that killing intent was enough to hold her in place, cold sweat dripping down her neck.

She couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of existence could radiate such overwhelming thirst for chaos.

But Nia understood she could no longer remain still.

An intense violet-red aura burst from her body, clashing with the creature’s presence. Gripping her sword, the girl with violet hair took a deep breath and faced her enemy.

What she had to do hadn’t changed.

She had to eliminate the being before her.

Dark mana vibrated in the air as multiple tentacles emerged from her back, alongside a pair of black wings.

She took flight—and in response, the creature charged.

A burst of wind marked the girl’s acceleration skyward, black thunder pulsing with each violent beat of her wings.

Torment, leaping up the ruined pillars with powerful strides, followed her relentlessly.

From all their previous clashes, Nia had come to understand two things about this absurd battle.

The first: engaging that thing in melee combat was far too dangerous.

Her reflexes, enhanced by dark mana, were sharp enough to track its movements. She could defend against its strikes and even counterattack. But every time—at the very moment she went for the decisive blow—Victory slipped through her fingers.

Which led to her second, bitter conclusion:

That monster was toying with her.

If that thing wanted to, this fight would already be over.

The thought sliced through her mind like a blade of ice.

“Intangibility? Invisibility? No…” She kept murmuring at high speed, her mind racing to pull together everything she knew in a desperate attempt to find an answer.

She wasn’t missing her attacks. But she couldn’t make them hit.

What was that monster’s innate ability?

Nia kept thinking, obsessively.

Nothing in any volume of the Book of Truth she had absorbed contained any record of anything like this.

And that discomfort…

She had to figure it out. She had to think.

But the creature wouldn’t give her the time.

Raising her sword in front of her, she conjured a black shield with all the power she had and blocked the claw aimed directly at her heart.

Torment had launched itself skyward with such force that the air boomed behind it, once again trying to catch her in midair.

She couldn’t let it try to slam her into the ground again.

She had already calculated the strength of its claws and tail—her black sphere could only last for one second, but that was enough.

A portal like a starry sky began to form behind her, and she started to let herself fall into it.

“—!?”

But then, violet blood burst from the base of her stomach and sprayed from her mouth.

Her red eyes, now disoriented, scanned the surroundings with laser focus, trying to understand what had just happened.

Small obsidian-like fragments floated through the air.

The black sphere had already been shattered, and now a massive claw-shaped wound stretched across her abdomen.

How? She hadn’t felt Torment increase its strength—he had simply broken through the shield before she could even realize it.

“Argh!”

Nia spat the blood pooling in her mouth and gripped her sword tightly.

Torment wasn’t going to let her escape through the portal again—she understood that now.

The impact of the strike was so intense that her wings vanished.

Her mind had instinctively prioritized regeneration over maintaining the spell, which caused a problem.

Now falling, Nia was once again within range of the creature’s claws.

“Paper-Eater!”

A shout echoed across the ruins, and a green-tinged arrow streaked past her vision.

An emerald flash exploded in the air, and a powerful gust of wind pushed both Nia and Torment in opposite directions.

Nia curled into herself to soften the impact, her tentacles wrapping protectively around her as she hit the ground hard.

Cracks spread across the floor from the force until she finally came to a stop and immediately pushed herself back up, gritting her teeth.

“Lady Gardenia!”

Running to her side, an elf wearing an orange scarf gripped a bow in trembling hands.

Her face was soaked in sweat, and her flushed skin showed clear signs of a fever.

Thelira had long since exceeded the safe limits of her mana containment—it was almost a miracle she was still standing.

“I’m fine…”

Nia replied as she pressed one hand against her stomach.

The wound, deep enough to kill a human, wasn’t enough to end her—but that didn’t mean she was unscathed.

Every time she regenerated, Nia had to use her gelatinous material to repair her body.

However, that consumed an enormous amount of vitality, and fatigue was beginning to take its toll.

Worse still, her gelatinous material wasn’t infinite.

She could replenish it if she rested, but not quickly enough for it to matter during battle.

She swallowed hard as the realization hit her: one more blow like that and she was dead.

“How recovered is she?”

Shaking her head to push the thought aside, Nia looked toward the queen, who was now clashing her amber axe against the monster’s claws.

“My sister had to regenerate multiple organs. She doesn’t have the mana left for large-scale spells,” Thelira answered, gripping her bow tightly. Her fingers trembled, but she could still fight.

“I have an idea.” Nia held the stardust blade tighter in her grip. “But I need you both to immobilize it for me.”

Her words came out heavy, and Thelira’s heart skipped a beat.

“What does Lady Gardenia plan to do?”

Nia closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

When she opened them, a massive pulse of dark mana radiated from her body.

”I’m going to cast a spell that defies the laws of the world.”

The whisper—so serene despite the chaos of the battlefield—made the air leave Thelira’s lungs.

To defy the laws of the world…

It meant violating the natural defenses that form when casting a spell, in order to force an outcome of devastating power.

“No matter how powerful their defenses are, if I cut the space they occupy, they will be killed.” Nia’s voice rang firm and clear, her crimson eyes sharpening as they locked onto her opponent.

There was no need for more words.

They had to act.

Thelira clenched her teeth and ran, the golden shimmer in her eyes flickering as she tried to glimpse the future, just long enough to aim.

She pulled her bowstring taut with practiced precision, summoning glowing blue arrows between her fingers. Her target: the wolf’s head.

A sharp hiss cut the air as multiple jets of high-pressure water exploded from the indigo arrows and struck the monster.

She knew her attack wasn’t powerful.

The slicing water wasn’t even strong enough for Torment to bother dodging—but causing damage wasn’t the point.

”Sister!”

Thelira shouted, the single second her strike bought enough for Elarielle’s gaze to lock with hers.

A smile tugged at the queen’s lips.

For someone of Elarielle’s caliber, one look was all it took to understand the plan.

After all, even she felt a chill down her spine at the abyssal surge of dark mana building up inside that girl.

”Hey, you worthless hunk of shit!”

Elarielle shouted, pointing her axe at the creature.

“Looks like someone wants to go all out—so come play with me for a bit!”

Half her armor was destroyed, and nearly all her mana was drained, but the hero refused to fall.

Her sharp teeth showed in a widening grin as she bent her knees and charged.

A black tail lunged in response—but Elarielle was already in the air.

With a powerful leap, she soared over five meters high, spinning her axe and shifting her body weight to use it as a lever.

Torment, having lost its target, instinctively leapt back to avoid the counter.

And in that moment—when its eyes followed her mid-air movement—a putrid green aura flooded Elarielle’s weapon.

It was never the true target.

An explosive crash thundered across the field as Elarielle struck the ground.

Everything her decomposition touched turned to ash, and a massive cone-shaped crater erupted outward from the impact point.

Dust, stone, and debris flew high into the air as the shockwave tore through the battlefield, destroying the ground in its relentless spread.

Even Torment’s many eyes were useless against so much airborne debris.

Forced to retreat blindly, the creature didn’t even see the brown-colored arrows slicing through the dust clouds—striking the ground a moment before he would land.

”Explode.” The word was whispered—and a spark flared in the haze.

From the circle that had formed around Torment, countless stone stakes erupted from the earth, impaling and locking down his massive body.

And finally—

On the opposite side of the battlefield, crimson and violet lightning-like tendrils coiled around a girl in a black dress.

She could only use this spell once.

She had only one chance.

A lone sword was held delicately, pulses of dark mana reverberating throughout the entire floor as the girl’s most powerful spell was channeled through it.

The blade, once black, now resembled a vast purple sky encrusted with stars.

The wind vibrated—as if even the air understood the threat it represented.

Cracks began to form around Nia, ethereal rifts widening as more dark mana poured into them.

Torment was struggling to break free, the stone restraints shattering as its limbs began to move—

But before it could fully escape, a girl with violet hair appeared directly beneath it.

The blade struck.

The fractures splintered as if reality itself were cracking, all converging into a single point.

From the massive tree that formed the labyrinth, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say the world itself trembled from the impact.

”[Cosmos Rupture]”

The attack that cleaved through space tore apart everything in its path, sparing nothing.

The ground split beneath her feet, distant trees bent under the sheer force of the blast.

All of Nia’s dark mana had been poured into that strike.

The stardust-forged sword, which had once survived a clash with the Seed of Chaos, shattered under the weight of the spell—splintering into fragments from the strain of channeling such magnitude.

And Nia collapsed.

Her knees hit the ground. Her trembling, bloodied right hand opened slowly—letting the broken hilt slip from her fingers, the blade’s remnants falling one by one.

For a moment, there was only silence.

No sound. No movement.

Only dust suspended in the air.

Every inch of her body throbbed in pain.

She didn’t even have the strength to stand.

But she believed she had won.

Because she was absolutely certain… that nothing could have survived that.

And then—

A laugh. Wet. Ragged. Echoing.

Cold rushed down her spine before her eyes could even lift.

”No...”

The whisper escaped her lips, a wish—desperate—that she was wrong.

One step followed another, and from the settling dust emerged a black wolf.

Slow. Deliberate.

Its fur pristine. Not a single scratch.

Even after taking her spell point-blank.

It hadn’t worked.

The thought echoed, hollow, through her mind.

Her most powerful spell… hadn’t worked.

She blinked.

And it was already in front of her.

The claws raised—and came down.

Their aim: to shred her body beyond any possibility of repair.

She had no energy left to regenerate.

Not enough to cast even a single portal.

Not even enough dark mana to coat her body as armor.

Elarielle and Thelira, injured though they were, seemed to be running toward her.

But it was useless.

Her accelerated cognition, the ability that let her process all this even as the claws fell toward her, gave her one final truth:

There wasn’t even a fraction of a second left.

No matter how fast they ran—

They wouldn’t make it in time.

Nia closed her eyes.

For the first time in a long while, the thought crossed her mind again…

Death.

Is this it? she wondered.

In the end, even as pain flooded her body—she didn’t feel fear.

Because in that emptiness, the only thing that filled her thoughts… was her wife.

And so—

In that final, fleeting instant when her life was about to be taken—

Death never came.

”Sorry I’m late.”

Because when her eyes opened—

She saw silver.

A black dress swayed in the wind, and silver hair shimmered in the light of dusk.

Two eyes—one blue like the sky, the other a deep crimson like a rare gem— reflected her tear-stained face.

”You fought well, Nia. You can rest now.”

A girl was holding her in her arms, hundreds of meters away from where the creature’s claws could ever reach.

Nia didn’t even know how she had gotten there so quickly—but it didn’t matter.

The presence that held her with such profound care whispered words that made everything feel safe.

”I’ll take care of this.”