“Ready—!”

When the target closed within a hundred paces of her army, Katyusha lifted her right hand.

That one motion sent the signal flags rolling in waves, surging like a storm-tossed sea.

One rider after another gripped their horses only with their legs.

No matter how the mounts jolted and bounced, their upper bodies stayed perfectly steady.

Each of them bent their bows and nocked their arrows, drawing their horn bows until they formed a perfect crescent. Then they raised their arrows high, aiming at a patch of empty ground up ahead.

Right now, a single figure was flashing through that very spot.

Fifteen thousand soldiers held bows and crossbows at the ready.

When the target came within fifty paces, a powerful command rang out:

“Fire, all of you!”

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—

With countless shrieks of arrows tearing through the air, shafts rose and fell over the capital. Their shadows crisscrossed in the sky, so dense they even blotted out the sun.

The storm of arrows let out a sharp collective howl, casting a huge swath of darkness over the ground below.

Just as the rain of arrows was about to fall, the figure on the ground still hadn’t fully left that area.

When the countless arrows finally descended, the racing shadow raised her hand once, and twin flashes of cold light sprang to life at her sides.

At the moment ten thousand arrows came down, a lone figure stood like a solitary leaf in a storm, meeting the raging onslaught head-on, trying to overturn it by sheer frontal force.

Two short swords swept around Qiuyan, tracing a fan-shaped arc.

Every outward or inward swing of her blades had the air of a noble lady gliding in with a folding fan, smiling with effortless grace.

Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang!

Each ringing impact snapped an arrow. A thousand rings, a thousand shafts shattered.

The arrows that fell harmlessly around her body, she ignored. Even the thousand deadly bolts that might’ve truly hurt her never managed to touch so much as a fraction of her flesh in reality.

Behind her, the Murin soldiers who saw this scene were so stunned they couldn’t even react, let alone form a single word.

With that, the first volley was over. The Meser soldiers realized:

Their barrage just now had only served as the enemy’s warm-up.

And once the warm-up ended, the blood in their veins, still carrying heat, was about to turn ice-cold.

Sensing her troops’ wavering, Katyusha used her authority to issue another order:

“Fire!”

No matter how their eyelids twitched, they still couldn’t disobey their commander.

With no choice, the soldiers once again drew their bows and set their strings. But before they could get fully ready a second time, a white flash cut across their vision.

Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack!

Following that trail of white light, a row of heads shot straight up into the air. Headless bodies toppled from horseback one after another.

An entire line of archers was wiped out then and there. The ones in front of them met almost the same fate, with only one slight difference:

The archers’ heads snapped off at the same moment their bowstrings did.

As for the shield-bearers, their bodies and the greatshields in their hands were both cleaved neatly in half.

There were several full ranks of shield-bearers, and the archers standing behind them also took losses. Which meant:

With that one swing, Qiuyan had killed every last shield-bearer and dragged a whole rank of archers down with them as grave companions.

That all-out strike had cost Qiuyan a lot of stamina, of course.

But the result she earned more than justified the price she’d paid.

Nine thousand Meser soldiers died in an instant. Before the army of fifty thousand could do anything, their numbers had already dropped by almost a fifth.

Qiuyan’s feet slid and turned across the ground as she closed in on Katyusha. Her flaring maid skirt now looked like a battle robe whipping in the wind.

Carving a path through ten thousand troops to reach the enemy commander, Qiuyan’s goal was simple: take that beautiful head.

Once this woman died, the opposing army would collapse. Then her mission—guarding the prisoner—would be complete.

With that thought burning in her mind, Qiuyan drove her short sword straight toward her target, while Katyusha swung up her giant axe to block.

Clink!

Sparks burst as the force from Qiuyan’s strike knocked Katyusha’s body off-line, flipping her from her saddle to the ground.

The instant their weapons clashed, both sides’ rank-and-file understood they were useless here.

So the fifty-thousand-strong army obediently fell back. Both sides pinned their hopes of victory on their own strongest fighter.

A battle that would decide the fate of tens of thousands now came down to two young girls.

Flinging away the short sword with brute force, Katyusha couldn’t hold back her curiosity.

“How did I never hear someone like you existed in this den of weaklings?”

“Because you live under a rock, obviously.”

Qiuyan pouted, but her gaze tracked along with her moving hands.

The short sword in her left hand began to spin, repeatedly slicing along the haft of the axe.

Normally, both sides in a fight aimed their attacks at each other’s bodies.

Even if someone targeted the enemy’s weapon, it was only to knock it out of their hands.

Qiuyan didn’t think like normal people. She didn’t mind spending time breaking the enemy’s weapon before she cut the enemy themselves.

In the blink of an eye, dozens of shallow cuts appeared along the surface of Katyusha’s battle-axe.

Unlike glancing blows that just bounced off, every time Qiuyan’s short sword fell, it left a mark or two that couldn’t be smoothed away.

Raw strength wasn’t her specialty. But in terms of destructive power, she had more than enough.

If Katyusha let this go on, her battle-axe would turn into a “broken axe” before long.

To turn things around, she quickly poured fire-attribute magic into her weapon.

In the next moment, the axe itself—and every swing of it—gained a “high-temperature” effect.

The caster didn’t feel the heat. No one else got that privilege.

“So hot.”

Qiuyan’s expression barely changed from before; she showed almost no emotional ripple.

But even so, the scorching heat flowing from the axe into her blades really did make her hands burn.

The instant her palms flushed red, she unconsciously loosened her grip. Both short swords dropped toward the ground.

Qiuyan knew she couldn’t afford to lose her weapons. So before the swords hit the dirt, she moved to fix it.

She snapped up her knee, kicking one sword back into the air, then thrust out the hand on that side, snatching it back with quick, precise motion.

As one leg came down, the other was already lifting.

The moment she reached for the first sword, her other leg rose, repeating the same motion.

She tried to pull off the trick again—but this time, she failed.

The reason was simple: while she extended her other hand, Katyusha hacked forward with a heavy blow, forcing Qiuyan to pull back and retreat.

As Qiuyan slid back several steps, Katyusha, quick as a snake, claimed the remaining short sword.

Ignoring the searing pain in her palms, Qiuyan flicked her gaze forward. Then she hurled the one sword left in her hand, sending it spinning toward Katyusha.

Her improvisation on the fly outclassed Katyusha’s. The latter only noticed the incoming blade a moment after she’d taken the sword.

Caught off-guard, Katyusha raised the giant axe one-handed. At the exact moment she brought it down, she buried the blade in the ground in front of her, erecting a barrier.

If Qiuyan’s counterattack had ended there, the short sword would never have touched the grand duchess.

Unfortunately—unfortunate for the one being targeted—it didn’t.

Qiuyan had already predicted this defensive move.

Even if she couldn’t make the sword curve on its own, she could still alter its path a heartbeat later.

Whoosh!

With that sound, Qiuyan flicked a throwing dart forward, sending it chasing after the short sword at higher speed. It collided cleanly with the hilt.

Clang!

At the impact, the sword veered along the exact trajectory its owner had calculated, slipping off the front of the axe and curving around to attack from Katyusha’s left.

Right then, Katyusha lashed out with her boot, using sheer brute strength to kick the axe blade out of the ground.

She thrust her hand forward, twisting the axe through a half-arc, then chopped. The blade met the incoming sword not far away and batted it flying.

As the short sword whirled back, Qiuyan darted forward and caught it mid-run.

At that same moment, the sound of steel cutting flesh rang out.

With a sharp hiss, Katyusha’s left hand—the one that had grabbed the short sword—was slashed. The back of her hand blurred, the line between skin and flesh turning indistinct.

The thing that hurt her was that very dart, which had ricocheted off the sword and looped back from the opposite direction.

Qiuyan hadn’t expected that many layers of effect.

But when she’d thrown the dart, she had been thinking “just in case.”

If the sword got blocked, then at least the dart’s edge could still come into play.

From the moment she released her hidden weapon, Qiuyan had gone into a “twin-dragon” attack mode: launch two assaults at once. If one failed, the other would still wound the enemy.

Using tactics inside a life-or-death fight to toy with her opponent in the palm of her hand—Qiuyan was, without a doubt, a battle freak.

One-on-one, even Katyusha, the strongest in the Meser Duchy, was still no match for her.

At the start of the second round, Qiuyan took her earlier lesson to heart. She decided to avoid clashing directly with the weapon as much as possible.

She’d look for an opening, slip past the front, and finish her foe in a single strike.

As she thought it, she moved. In an instant, she was close to Katyusha again.

At the critical moment, a blurry magic shadow lunged in, attacking from Qiuyan’s flank.

The sudden strike disrupted Qiuyan’s plan—but didn’t throw her into panic.

Her reaction was lightning-fast. She slashed toward that direction at once.

Crack!

Her blade cut through an illusory figure. It had only been a decoy, and she didn’t fall for it.

The moment she cleaved the phantom, she spun in place, reversing her facing from the second before.

With a metallic clatter, Qiuyan blocked the magic shadow’s true attack and finally saw her opponent’s face.

A male demon, with features indistinguishable from a human’s.

Back when the Elder Council still existed, he had held the second seat. His name was Ledux.

Qiuyan had considered that an unexpected enemy might show up. She just hadn’t imagined that enemy would be a demon.

While she threw herself fully into dealing with Ledux, a howling battle-axe cleaved in from the side.

Swish!

Qiuyan flipped up and over, narrowly avoiding the blade. In that instant, the hem of her maid skirt was sliced open with a neat cut.

She was still suspended in midair when Ledux fired a beam of magic straight at her.

She kicked off the empty air, using a strange shifting step to change her body’s position mid-flight.

As the beam grazed past her, Katyusha rushed in, whipping a powerful long leg straight into her.

Qiuyan’s body was sent hurtling backward.