Severed? Not even close.

The spatial rift only split the insectoid Monster’s shell, like a crack in kiln-fired clay, exposing flabby meat that quivered like dough.

Veins bulged under its skin like twisted vines, and nameless fluids surged out like a scattered stream.

Without its shell, the insectoid Monster drew back, like a crab losing its carapace.

But those scythe-like forelegs still swung like reapers’ blades, a real threat to Moon Owl and Yuan Dai.

The Eye Orb lay on Night Frost’s shoulder like a watchful sparrow, staring down the street.

The battle there paused, like waves pulling breath before the next break.

Only one Chapter Two in this wave.

Luck in a storm, a single gap in thunder.

Night Frost and Chen Xiaoyin together spent blood and breath to bring it down.

If there’d been one more, the street would’ve become a grave.

“Can the Order Keeper win?”

Night Frost panted, blood-slick fingers gripping a Magic Stone like a talisman.

She followed the Eye Orb’s gaze.

Below the deep fissure, two figures slammed into a Monster like clashing boulders, evenly matched.

“Right now, it’s dicey.

I haven’t touched a Magic Maiden’s Chapter Three for real, but look.

The one commanding the White Knight is near her limit.”

Night Frost nodded, mind like frost settling on glass.

The Eye Orb had a point, and she felt the same thrum.

The White Knight’s movements no longer had that hammer-blow force.

“When that pale knight falls, what can a guy who just stepped into Chapter Three even do?

If it were an old hand, maybe the Order Keeper could—mff!”

Chen Xiaoyin grabbed the Eye Orb off Night Frost’s shoulder and stretched it like firm putty.

It was an eye, yet it yielded like tough clay.

“Help…”

The Eye Orb looked to Night Frost like a stray in rain, but she looked away.

He asked for it—badmouthing the Order Keeper in front of Mutual Aid Society and reserve members.

And Night Frost was on good terms with Hao Wenqian and Chen Xiaoyin.

The Eye Orb would have to suffer a bit, like a kite left to the wind.

“I believe the Order Keeper wins.

But you—who are you, really?

I feel like I know you well.

Yet there’s no you in my memory.”

Chen Xiaoyin’s words cut like a cold knife.

Night Frost’s heart thudded, and she turned her head, guilty as a fox near henhouse.

She coughed lightly, giving mist to air, and chose not to answer.

She couldn’t just say, I’m your beloved little brother.

“Sorry.

Something shameless just crashed your quiet.”

They’d driven back the first wave, a breath between tides.

But rest ended with a single leap.

Hao Wenqian dropped from a rooftop like a hawk and brought the news.

Chen Xiaoyin looked at Night Frost’s turned back and sighed like wind over reeds.

She didn’t expect useful answers anyway.

Qianchun stood behind Night Frost, small as a shadow.

She’d handed over the Key entrusted by Director Hao.

It was meant for Night Frost, but once Night Frost took it, the Key stayed mute, like a cold stone in a quiet well.

Everyone was frayed.

The last fight left cuts like paper-thin winters.

Worst off were Night Frost and Chen Xiaoyin.

They’d held the front, keeping Hao Wenqian and Qianchun safe, like shields in rain.

Hao Wenqian, a Chapter One, and Qianchun without a Magic Stone had spent their Mana dry like a pond in drought.

Bodies heavy, spirits thin, yet skin mostly unmarked.

The Eye Orb had said this:

If the horde flows one way like a river with a will, there’s a leader above the Monsters.

It has wit.

It drives the rest like a shepherd with wolves.

Cut the head of the snake, and the snakes scatter like frightened birds.

The threat thins to smoke.

The last wave went just so.

Night Frost and Chen Xiaoyin slew the Chapter Two, and the rest blew apart like ash on wind.

Seconds later, not a shadow left.

And now, the pattern repeated.

Deep in the horde, amid two Chapter One Monsters, a small thing drifted along like a leaf in flood.

Miss it, and you’d miss the kill.

“The fringe is cannon fodder, like straw thrown into fire.

They can’t break the orphanage’s ward or your shield.

We’ve got no backup.

Let’s grab the king instead of bleeding out in the wheat.”

Chen Xiaoyin agreed, her voice steady as an iron bar.

They were few.

How to face hundreds, maybe thousands?

They were fodder, sure, but with enough gnawing, the blade dulls.

They’d be spent before they reached that Chapter Two at the core.

So strike for the heart.

It was the best move on a board of fog, with one flaw—a blindfold toward the enemy.

No better path lay open.

The Eye Orb could only judge by scraps of limbs surfacing like fish backs in a black tide.

It guessed at type and power, but the picture stayed smeared.

“Two, three dozen fit the signs.

We’ve got to get closer to know.

Before that, remember the three Chapter Ones’ tricks.

Hit their weak spots, strike clean and fast, don’t linger!”

Night Frost knew those last words were meant for her, like a bell rung near the ear.

“Relax.

My head’s calm, like frost on a lake.

That’s good, right?

For once, I’m behaving.”

Behaving…

The Eye Orb remembered the Key Qianchun gave Night Frost.

Could it be the Key’s doing?

It pulsed with rich Mana, like incense thick in a shrine.

Its owner had to be strong.

The Eye Orb couldn’t be sure.

Still, a calm blade cuts best.

Good omen.

Night Frost could fight with Lingchen Yao’s habits humming like a steady drum.

Her odds climbed, a few grains more in the scale.

Chen Xiaoyin slid her shield over Night Frost like a sheen of ice.

Flame in Night Frost’s palm roared like a red river and hacked a path through the horde.

Chen Xiaoyin stepped up, shield raised like a wall.

She swapped with Night Frost, boots tapping on Monsters’ backs like stepping stones.

The moment the fire thinned, fangs opened like bear traps, a hundred maws lunging at the girls.

They smashed into a pale-blue shield and skidded like hail on glass.

Fire raged behind, and wind swept ash like long sleeves scattering dust.

A slender white blade sank straight into concrete, easy as into wet loam, pinning a few unlucky weaklings.

Not far off, the White Knight was forced back by the insectoid’s scythes, step after step like a ship in rough tide.

Her pure white armor was scarred, that snow shell shaved away by a grinder.

The armor was hollow, an empty suit, yet it was Yuan Dai’s umbrella against a storm.

Now the umbrella was torn.

Everything of the White Knight rose from Yuan Dai.

The armor on the outside was her stored Magic Layer, layer upon layer like rings of a tree.

The sharp sword was solidified Mana, heft thick as stone, a gift she was born with.

In battle, the hardened Mana tied to her body like veins to heart.

Pain fed back into her flesh like echo in a canyon.

The Magic Layer on her skin resonated with the Magic Layer within, two strings sharing one note.

Put simply:

If the White Knight’s outer Magic Layer broke, the inner Magic Layer shivered too.

Losing plates from the armor meant Yuan Dai’s own Magic Layer was shaved down, like bark stripped from a trunk.

Exposed to air, she drew the mad rush of same-tier Monsters, death ignored, like moths to flame.

She tried to fix the Magic Layer, hands working like a seamstress in battle.

She swung the greatsword to hold them back, but the Chapter Three trading blows with Moon Owl suddenly turned.

A scythe dropped like a guillotine and chopped off the White Knight’s other arm.

Moon Owl, just free of the swarm, moved to help Yuan Dai, wings in mind if not in body.

A tail with hard shell whipped out like a flail and hurled her back into the swarm.

Moon Owl’s body was already at the breaking point, a clay jar full to cracking.

The Chapter Three’s charge hit head-on.

Her skin couldn’t hold the flooding Mana, and chaotic space fissures spiderwebbed over her body like frost cracks on glass.

“Shield! Bless the pure, bless my friend!”

Moon Owl threw up a shield, muscles steadying like roots in a storm.

She took the next hit.

The invisible barrier shattered in an instant—crack, like thin ice under a boot.

And with it, Chen Xiaoyin’s shield up front split too, a mirror breaking in two places.

Chen Xiaoyin slammed Monsters off her shield like swatting crows.

The fractured shield flared into flying Blades, thin as crescent moons, and slit weak throats clean.

She and Night Frost pushed forward, slow as a glacier, into the horde’s middle.

“See it?”

The Eye Orb, nestled in Night Frost’s gray-soft hair like a nestling, strained its gaze.

At last it caught the shape of the thing surrounded by three Chapter Ones.

Its pupil shrank tight as a pin.

“That’s not a Monster.

It’s… a trap!”

There was no core Monster, only a dead thing, weak as dust.

In midair time, the Eye Orb flashed through a thousand outcomes, like lightning across a cloudbank.

The three Chapter Ones ringed that dead lure and snapped their heads up to the Eye Orb in sync, like statues coming alive.

The dead thing moved, then crumbled to ash, a puff in wind.

A figure shot from the horde like a thunderbolt, skimmed past Chen Xiaoyin, and drove straight at Night Frost mid-swing.

Night Frost hadn’t even reacted.

A force hit her gut like a battering ram.

She flew with her shield, a broken kite in gale.

Chen Xiaoyin poured strength to hold Night Frost’s shield together, knuckles white as bone.

That last impact almost cracked it like an egg.

Before she saw the attacker’s shape, the Monster blurred again, a shadow erasing itself into the tide.

Night Frost pushed up, limbs tingling like a foot gone numb.

She coughed a mouthful of bright blood, a flower on snow.

The shield had held her tight, but the shock rattled her organs like drums in a storm.

“Cough… this Monster… Eye Orb!

You got any— any clue?”

No Eye Orb in sight.

Only endless Monsters, black as a raincloud.

Dark shadow flitted through the horde again and slammed Night Frost away like a log hit by a wave.

Chen Xiaoyin was sure now.

This Chapter Two had one target—Night Frost.

What on her drew it, like a moth to a lantern?

No.

Focus on the Monster first, like a hunter setting sights.

Its speed was real, a hawk strike, but not invisible.

She could catch the afterimage, a smear of dusk.

Once, twice, it could blind her.

The third time… it wouldn’t.

A strong enough shield turns a charge into ripples.

She was an enemy, sure, but she was worth guarding.

Chen Xiaoyin’s will said so, steady as a bell’s ring.

Chen Xiaoyin reached out.

The shield fell onto Night Frost like a winter veil.

In that instant, Night Frost’s mouth opened in a silent cry.

Terror and helplessness flooded her eyes like a storm-tossed sea.

Blood splashed across the gray-white-haired girl’s cheek like red petals on frost.

In Night Frost’s dark-gold eyes, she saw it—Chen Xiaoyin’s body falling limp into a pool of Blood.