Quivertertar circled Eni like a starved vulture tracking a wounded beast. His movements had become twitchy and fragmented, and behind the jagged shards of his mask, his eyes flickered with the realization of his own growing impotence. He breathed in heavy, whistling rasps—the first anvil had left behind more than just bruises; it had clearly splintered his ribs, turning every lungful of air into a jagged agony.
"Li-i-isten," he suddenly hissed, a slick, sycophantic note creeping into his tone. "How about this... a partnership? You are astonishingly strong... well, with those endless consumables of yours. I could supply you with tons of them! I have connections, cellars overflowing with alchemy! Why must we slaughter one another?"
Eni didn't even break her stride. her gaze remained cold, predatory, and locked on target.
"No. I don't want your handouts," she snapped. "If I need something, I’ll steal it from marauders or take it from the cold, dead hands of people like you. No offense, but I only kill monsters."
Quivertertar flinched, his face contorting with a flash of fury, but he made one more desperate attempt as he continued to back away toward the exit of the throne hall.
"Fine... fine! How about this: I’ll provide you with criminals? Real scum! You can execute them, harvest your experience, your 'points,' or whatever it is you seek... and everyone wins!"
Eni cut him off again, her voice sounding almost bored:
"Nope. Doc told me to gain real combat experience. I’d rather hang by a thread in an honest fight every time than become some slow, fat bear accustomed to easy prey."
The Crimson Lord froze. For a second, it looked as though he had surrendered, but it was merely the prelude to one last piece of treachery.
"Fine... then I offer you... DEATH!"
With a sudden, violent motion, he drove his staff into the floor. A crimson shockwave rippled through the hall, and the dead cultists littering the marble began to twitch and rise. These animated husks, steered by the dregs of blood magic, lunged at Eni. Quivertertar himself let out a nervous, nearly hysterical shriek, spun around, and bolted in the opposite direction.
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"Forward! Attack, you nobodies!" he wailed, vanishing into the depths of the palace corridors.
The undead were slow and brittle—a pathetic obstacle meant only to buy seconds. Eni dismantled them in minutes, methodically taking heads and shattering ribcages. Without losing a beat, she gave chase.
The pursuit was brief. A hundred meters later, well beyond the palace walls in the thick twilight of the surrounding park, Quivertertar finally bottomed out. He slumped against an old, gnarled tree, gasping for air as if his lungs had turned to scorched sand.
"Stop... wait... I have... one last offer..." he wheezed, his frame racked by coughing. "I... I surrender. I swear... that’s it, I’m empty... the magic is gone..."
He looked pathetic. Limping, bloodied, stripped of his majestic aura. Eni believed him for a heartbeat—or rather, she allowed herself to relax, assuming the enemy was truly broken. She stepped closer, raising her sword for the final blow to put him down at last.
It was a mistake.
In a blur of motion, Quivertertar whipped out a jagged piece of bark he had torn from the tree and, with a wild scream, slashed it across Eni’s eyes. A blinding explosion of white noise and searing pain plunged her world into a darkness flooded with red. Eni cried out instinctively, clutching her face as she tried to focus on regeneration and protect her most vulnerable point.
Quivertertar erupted in a triumphant, demented howl of laughter.
"YES! I ALWAYS KNEW YOU WERE ALL STUPID!" he roared, swinging his staff with all his might into Eni’s stomach.
The blow folded Eni in half, sending her crashing to the dirt. Quivertertar was on top of her instantly, not giving her a chance to recover. The tip of his bone dagger flashed twice—and Eni felt her arms fall limp. He had severed the tendons in both her wrists, robbing her of the ability to fight back or even push him away.
He pinned her with the full weight of his body against the damp earth. His breath, reeking of rot and copper, burned against her neck.
"Now you're mine..." he hissed venomously, his voice stripped of everything but bestial lust and spite. "I won't just kill you. I'm going to break you piece by piece. You'll wish you were never born, you bitch."
In a panic, Eni tried to buck, her legs jerking convulsively to reach him, but Quivertertar used his weight and leverage to pin her down. Suddenly, Eni heard a distinct, bone-chilling sound—the sliding of a belt. His cold, clammy hands reached beneath the hem of her uniform.
Eni’s heart hammered against her ribs, a wave of terror and revulsion drowning her mind, but in that abyss of despair, one sharp, cold thought surfaced.
Inventory.
To activate items from the inventory beneath her uniform, she didn't need working tendons—she only needed a mental impulse and the physical presence of the object in the magical pocket.
There was a sudden, heavy, "iron" sound. Directly above Quivertertar’s lower back, materializing out of thin air from beneath the folds of her uniform, the second anvil appeared.
Driven by gravity and the momentum of magical summoning, the hundred-kilogram block of steel plummeted with terminal velocity. There was a sickening, wet sound of tearing flesh, the unmistakable crunch of a spine shattering, and a strangled, terminal gasp from Quivertertar. His body went instantly limp, a heavy, lifeless weight pinning Eni to the ground.
She lay there beneath the corpse of her enemy, feeling his hot blood soaking through her clothes. Her sight was slowly returning—spots still danced before her eyes, but the silhouettes of the trees were sharpening. Regeneration was already beginning to pull the incisions in her wrists back together.
Eni took a ragged, shuddering breath.
