The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

Adrian instantly sent another message through the strand.

”This is a direct order, Claire! Just run!”

The authority in the command made Claire freeze in place.

But there was absolutely nothing Adrian could do about Gabriel’s speed. The Apostle dashed directly toward Claire, with all his strength.

Adrian desperately rushed behind him. He pumped a lot more mana into his Gust spell than he usually did. This time, he didn’t just cast it under his boots. He cast continuous blasts of wind from the palms of his hands as well.

He was practically soaring through the air, using his feet and palms like literal jet thrusters to propel his body forward.

It worked like a charm. Even though he wasn’t exactly adept at full-flight magic, flying in a straight line close to the ground essentially turned his dash into a massive, low-altitude leap that gave him a ridiculous accelerative boost.

He quickly reached Gabriel and tried to overtake him, but Gabriel instantly sensed him coming.

Gabriel abruptly stopped his dash, spun around on his heel, and sent a devastating fist flying straight at Adrian’s head.

Adrian, fully expecting a counterattack, already had his left arm raised in front of his face to block. At the exact same time, he fired another burst of Gust from his right palm. The recoil forced his body to rapidly rotate mid-air.

He narrowly dodged the punch and used the rchance to completely overtake Gabriel.

Adrian landed directly in front of Claire, shielding her from the Apostle.

Gabriel stopped his charge and just casually walked closer to Adrian, a smug smile on his face.

Adrian kept his eyes glued on Gabriel as he spoke to Claire. He didn’t use his mana strands this time, and just spoke out loud.

”Claire, please listen to me and rush back right now,” Adrian said. ”If you do not, then I will be forced to fire you from your position as General. Do not make me do that.”

But Claire’s logic had completely failed her. Her emotions took over entirely. She refused to run, and she refused to follow his orders.

She just silently walked around to his side, took a step forward, and then took another step until she was standing directly in front of Adrian, shielding him instead.

Seeing this, Gabriel threw his head back and laughed.

”It doesn’t matter which one of you stands in front of the other!” Gabriel mocked. ”You will both die anyway! Every single person on this battlefield will die if they try to defend you!”

Seeing that Claire was flat-out refusing to listen to him, Adrian let out a deeply frustrated sigh.

He reached out and placed his hand firmly on top of Claire’s shoulder, grabbing her armored pauldron tight.

Gabriel’s body suddenly tensed up as he prepared to dash forward and kill at least one of them.

But Adrian was faster. He instantly opened up a Dungeon Portal directly behind him, used all of his strength, and yanked her backward.

He quite literally tossed his own General backward into the portal.

Claire was caught off guard by the throw, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She couldn’t even fight back since her feet weren’t even on the ground.

As she flew backward helplessly through the air toward the glowing portal, she looked like she had made up her mind on something.

She raised her hand. A sudden, deep reddish glow erupted from her body, covering her completely. A fraction of a second later, the exact same reddish glow materialized around Adrian’s body.

Right in the next moment, she fell through the doorway, and the portal snapped shut.

At that exact same second, Gabriel closed the distance and his knuckles connected with Adrian’s raised guard.

Adrian was instantly launched backward. His blocking arm went completely numb from the impact before the agonizing feeling eturned.

At the same time, he heard a loud, ’DING’ echo inside his head.

He didn’t check the system notification right away, but he already knew exactly what had just happened just by looking at the faint reddish glow fading from his armor.

He was genuinely too scared to open the full details of the notification because he could see Gabriel already sprinting toward him for a strike.

Adrian rapidly fired Gust from his palms multiple times in mid-air just to force his body into an upright position. His boots hit the dirt, and he immediately dashed to the side right before Gabriel’s next punch got to him.

It was an incredibly narrow miss.

But Adrian didn’t just dodge. He countered.

He twisted his hips and threw a punch straight toward Gabriel’s exposed stomach. But it wasn’t just a regular physical strike.

Violent, freezing frost energy erupted from Adrian’s fist the second it connected with the Apostle’s gut.

Gabriel immediately felt a chilling, agonizing cold inject itself deep into his body. He could feel his blood, his muscles, and even his internal organs rapidly dropping in temperature.

Before Gabriel could even react to the sudden internal freeze, Adrian stepped forward and slammed another frost-infused punch directly into the other side of his torso.

The cold spread incredibly quickly.

This wasn’t just a basic-level Frost spell. This was Adrian’s Iceburst spell completely condensed into a single punch.

Gabriel felt his body slow down. He desperately churned his mana inside his body to produce some heat and counter, but he wasn’t fast enough to stop the assault.

After the second punch came the third. Then the fourth, and then the fifth.

Adrian unleashed a flurry of punches, raining them down on Gabriel’s chest and stomach. Every single strike increased the level of cold inside the Apostle’s body, pummeling his core temperature down and slowing down not just his reflexes, but his cognitive thoughts as well.

But Gabriel’s countermeasure had already been prepared.

Golden mana inside his body violently churned with burning, hot energy. It took him some time to get it going but now, it began to fight back against the invasive frost, and soon, it began to completely overpower the freezing temperatures.