In the last few minutes, under the relentless pressure of Pandora’s ghost-like speed, precise counters, and the cold elimination of his crew, Iron Hand had been pushed to his limit. He was running on overdrive.

  But the contrast between them couldn’t have been starker.

  While he stood there, disheveled, heaving, and boiling over with exhaustion and rage, Pandora was another story.

  Her clothes were a bit messy from all the dodging. A few spots were grazed by bullets, leaving blackened marks and shallow cuts beading with blood.

  Yet her overall condition was still high. Her breathing was steady and deep. Her eyes were bright, almost sparkling with a barely contained… thrill?

  Beneath the calm surface, her Witch-blood shimmered—a thirst for the fight.

  She didn’t look tired at all. Instead, she seemed like a killing machine that had just finished its warm-up, now operating at perfect efficiency.

  The next moment, Pandora vanished from the spot without warning.

  Like she’d never really been there.

  Iron Hand had no chance to track her. All he felt was an icy, deathly edge stabbing silently toward the back of his neck.

  Every muscle in his body locked. Instinct screamed. With a desperate twist, his bone-scaled right fist tore through the air with a shriek, smashing toward that flash of cold steel.

  Clang!

  A sharp, ear-ringing metallic shriek.

  The black sword was knocked aside, the blade humming.

  But that was just the start.

  Pandora’s assault came like relentless waves, one crash after another.

  Her form flickered in the dim light. Each time she reappeared, it was with a vicious, cunning strike—a thrust, a slash, a hook—from angles he couldn’t predict, at speeds that defied sense.

  The flashes of her blade were almost continuous, weaving a lethal, dark-silver net in the air, trapping his bulky frame completely.

  Iron Hand could only rely on his inhuman reflexes and the bone scales covering his body to block.

  His arms flailed like windmills. Each parry landed with a heavy, drum-like thud, yet each time he barely managed to intercept the worst of the blows.

  Again and again, sharp points of sword-light still darted like serpent tongues toward his stomach, his lower ribs, his joints—places where the bone scales were thinner, or harder to defend.

  Whenever that happened, and his fists couldn’t swing around in time, the bone scales under his skin in those spots would instantly bulge and harden, thicker and faster, forming rough, emergency plates of armor.

  Ting! Ting-ting-ting!

  A rapid series of impacts, dense as rain on a broad leaf.

  Pandora’s blade landed again and again on that pale bony defense, leaving white scratches of varying depths, but never quite breaking through.

  Gasping under the pressure, a wild, crazed grin spread across Iron Hand’s lips.

  He could hold. As long as he could hold…

  But in that exact moment, as his focus wavered just a fraction after another successful block, Pandora’s left hand darted out from among the sword strokes like a phantom.

  She wasn’t holding another blade.

  She was gripping the large-caliber backup pistol, which she’d drawn at some point without him noticing.

  The black muzzle moved with a speed and angle he couldn’t follow. It seemed to appear, and press against his right eye—which had widened in shock—all at once.

  Cold. Unyielding.

  The sensation of imminent death exploded up his spine.

  Survival instinct crushed all fear and calculation. At the last possible second, his body moved on pure instinct, throwing itself desperately to the side.

  Boom!

  He crashed straight through the rotten wooden door of the adjacent, open florist shop. The force sent him tumbling into the absolute darkness inside.

  Splinters of the door flew everywhere.

  Pandora stopped her pursuit. She stood at the edge of the dim light outside, looking into that deep, light-eating blackness.

  The corner of her mouth lifted in a faint, almost inaudible, icy smirk.

  Then, with a flip of her wrist, she smoothly slotted the black pistol back into the holster on her waist—the one meant for her primary gun.

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  Truth was…

  That pistol’s magazine was empty.

  She’d used all its bullets clearing the second-floor gunmen, and hadn’t had a second to reload.

  That move had been a bluff.

  Another layer of the game.

  If the other man hadn’t been completely unnerved, if panic hadn’t driven him to blind flight into that dark room…

  Maybe, relying on that turtle-shell defense, he really could have held out longer. Maybe even found a slim chance to strike back.

  But…

  He chose wrong.

  “The line between living and dying,” Pandora murmured, her voice soft as a sigh but carrying a bone-deep chill in the empty street, “often comes down to one choice.”

  “A shame. You chose wrong.”

  She stepped forward without hesitation, into the thick darkness.

  It swallowed her whole.

  Inside the shop, it was pitch black.

  The air was thick with dust, the sour smell of rotting plants, and… Iron Hand’s heavy, suppressed panting. He sounded like a wounded animal.

  Pandora’s spiritual power expanded silently.

  This darkness was no different from daylight to her.

  She could “see” the hulking, scale-covered outline curled in a corner. She could “hear” his heart hammering wildly. She could “sense” the faint tremor of muscles pushed to their limit.

  Just as she took a step forward, ready to end this, the shadow in the darkness moved.

  Not to flee further.

  With a desperate, last-ditch ferocity, it launched from the corner shadows like a cannonball, crashing toward where Pandora stood with devastating force. It was as if he’d packed all his remaining strength and despair into this one lunge.

  Pandora’s sword glimmered soundlessly in the dark, meeting it with precision.

  But the expected heavy collision didn’t come.

  The force transmitted through the blade was far weaker than it should have been.

  Instead—

  Right before impact, Iron Hand’s swung, scaled hand suddenly flicked upward.

  A large cloud of gray-white powder, sharp and pungent, exploded toward Pandora’s face like a cheap smoke grenade.

  He must have noticed something—noticed that the absolute darkness wasn’t hindering her at all. So he’d tried this, a last-ditch effort to ruin her “sight.”

  To be fair, if Pandora had been relying on exceptional darkvision or some night-eye ability… it might have worked. It could have created a fatal moment of blindness.

  But…

  Just as the cloud was about to hit her, Pandora closed her eyes.

  The powder settled on her eyelashes and hair, useless. It couldn’t touch her psychic perception at all.

  Iron Hand’s attempt fell utterly flat.

  His face, slightly twisted in shock within the haze, his posture still caught in the lunge but now stiff with failed planning, even the final flicker of horrified panic in his small eyes—it was all perfectly clear to her.

  “One strike.”

  Pandora whispered the word into the dark, cramped room. It sounded unnervingly distinct.

  Her body trembled slightly. Not from fear, but from a pure, sharp thrill—the excitement of cornered prey, of an ending finally in reach.

  She adjusted her breath for the finishing move, gathered her focus, and tensed every necessary muscle.

  At the same time, she noticed Iron Hand tremble violently too. Then he became eerily, completely still.

  Hmm.

  Seemed he had the same idea now. To decide it all—victory, life and death—with the next move.

  But…

  She had Elsa’s Sword.

  What did he have?

  A flicker of curiosity passed through her, but she didn’t wait. She didn’t give him time to gather strength, prepare, or play some hidden card.

  She took a deep, pulling breath.

  The air in the room seemed to thin for a second.

  Then—

  Crimson light coalesced, extended, and solidified out of nothing into her empty left hand.

  A longer, broader, more menacingly ornate crimson greatsword. Its blade looked like flowing, congealed blood, radiating an abyssal, heart-shaking aura.

  Elsa’s Sword.

  The moment it touched her palm, an icy, violent power rushed up the hilt like a breached dam, flooding into her arm, her torso, through her entire body.

  The force met and fused perfectly with the explosive strength gathered from her Witch-blood.

  She bent her body slightly, a bowstring drawn to its limit. Every muscle and bone hummed faintly, ready.

  Power, like boiling magma, saturated every part of her built to deliver force.

  And then—

  The bowstring released.

  Whoosh—

  Her form vanished completely in the dark.

  Not moving fast, but as if she’d blinked, teleporting from her spot to a position directly in front of Iron Hand.

  The instant she reappeared, it was accompanied by a deep, soul-shaking THUD!!!

  The crimson greatsword slammed home—no flourish, just violent, direct force—deep into Iron Hand’s chest, through the layer of pale bone scales.

  The impact was irresistible. It felt like being hit by a high-speed train.

  Iron Hand had no time to block or dodge. His whole body was swept up by that invincible force and thrown back like a ragdoll, smashing solidly into the thick brick-and-stone wall behind him.

  The reinforced concrete groaned a low, pained sound. Dust shook loose, raining down over the bloody scene.

  Iron Hand’s posture was almost absurd. His arms were spread wide as if to embrace something, but clutched only empty, cold air. The crimson greatsword, like a fang from hell, was driven through the center of his chest, through his body, deep into the stone, pinning him there.

  Unthinkable pain and the weakness of rapid blood loss flooded his fading mind. But the last glimmer of animal ferocity in his eyes wasn’t gone yet.

  With the final breath left in his lungs, he let out a wet, gurgling death rattle and violently clamped his pale, scaled arms together toward the center.

  Whump! The air stirred by them gave a dull burst.

  But…

  He caught nothing. His palms slapped together with a hollow echo. His fingertips were still half a meter from Pandora’s neck.

  The last, desperate struggle was a clumsy joke. His final breath left with it.

  His face twisted in agony, but in his quickly dimming, unfocused eyes, there was mostly an incomprehensible, desperate confusion.

  He’d half-expected to miss. This whole fight, the number of times he’d actually landed a solid hit on her was pitifully small. Pandora’s combat instinct, her sense of timing, distance, even attack patterns, was beyond normal. It was like she always saw his moves one step ahead.

  Most of his good hits had required desperate gambles or leaving openings on purpose.

  But…

  He couldn’t understand.

  He could have blocked it! He had absolute faith in his bone-scale defense, refined through several mutations. Her sword, from start to finish, had never truly broken through it.

  To kill him… to kill a seasoned second-ranker built for defense and power like him, shouldn’t it have taken at least… third-rank strength?

  Why…

  “To kill you…”

  A calm, clear, almost emotionless voice sounded at the edge of his dissolving consciousness.

  “Third rank isn’t necessary.”

  Pandora stated it flatly, answering his final confusion.

  As for why she’d waited until now to use this strike…

  Partly, it was because Elsa was still far off, handling the sniper threat. She needed to be sure that threat was completely gone before she could safely recall the sword using the system’s materialization function.

  And partly…

  She didn’t want any unnecessary “eyes” witnessing her cleanly executing a veteran second-ranker with this very distinctive crimson greatsword.

  Iron Hand’s own panicked crash into this derelict building had been… convenient.

  So that earlier “mistaken” dodge hadn’t been entirely a fear-driven error on his part.

  It was her, controlling the whole fight’s rhythm, nudging, pressuring, and narrowing his choices until he “actively” picked this particular shortcut to death.