"Holy Maiden!" Lily and Liyan rushed forward. Lily caught their mistress, supporting her slumped body, while Liyan reacted with defensive instinct. She whipped out a thick coil of energy rope and lashed it toward Leyvi, sending his body flying dozens of meters away to put a safe distance between them.
"Holy Maiden, are you alright? What is happening?" Lily asked, her voice tight with worry as she cradled the dazed woman.
Her question went unanswered. Something critical was unfolding within the Pink Enchantress's own sea of consciousness.
At that same moment, clarity flooded back into Leyvi's eyes. The strange paralysis broke, and he could move again. After a quick, internal inspection, he let out a sharp, relieved sigh. Nothing felt wrong or altered within his body. He pushed himself to his feet and fixed his gaze on the three women, his expression a mix of profound annoyance and simmering anger, all of it directed squarely at their so-called Holy Maiden.
While he generally avoided killing, it did not mean he was completely detached from the idea. There was a line, and this bewitching, crazy beauty had just vaulted over it with malicious intent. The sickening humiliation she had described, the lifetime of torment she had planned for him… it made his blood boil.
The killing intent radiating from Leyvi was palpable, a cold, heavy pressure that washed over the clearing. Sensing it, the two maids were immediately terrified. Their first instinct was to grab their mistress and flee, but they knew, with chilling certainty, that they could not outrun him.
Each of them possessed a single-use emergency escape spirit artifact, a last resort for survival. But with their Holy Maiden still unresponsive and disoriented, they were trapped. The artifacts were designed to carry only the person who activated them, a safeguard to prevent accidentally transporting an enemy along during escape. If they used theirs now, they would have to abandon her, which made the entire notion of fleeing utterly pointless.
So they could only stand their ground, weapons at the ready, and buy whatever precious time they could for their mistress to regain her senses.
Lily reacted swiftly, retrieving another set of array disks from her space ring. With practiced precision, she scattered them around their small group. The disks activated instantly, humming to life and weaving together a shimmering, multi-layered barrier of protective energy.
Leyvi did not break his stride. He moved closer and swung his leg in a powerful, contemptuous kick at the glowing barrier.
CRASH!
The formation dismantled itself upon impact, its complex structure unraveling without any suspense.
Lily frowned deeply, a fresh wave of frustration washing over her. Her formation, a product of meticulous craftsmanship and complicated principles, had been dealt with as if it were a child's toy. Watching the man advance slowly toward them felt like staring at the natural-born enemy of every formation expert in existence.
If this ability truly stemmed from a Unique Heavenly Body, as Liyan had guessed, then it was likely the first of its kind to ever appear in their continent's history. If that knowledge ever got out, he would be sought after by countless powerful organizations, all desperate to recruit or control him.
Leyvi took another deliberate step forward. As he did, two massive hands materialized on either side of him, their forms rippling with intense, fiery Qi. These were his invisible hands, conjured through Spiritual Touch, now made visible by the coating of flame.
The two maids, of course, did not know this secret. To them, it appeared as though he had simply conjured two gigantic hands of pure, destructive fire.
Their panic intensified.
Under normal circumstances, even without their assistance, their Holy Maiden could easily charm any man. Those rare few with strong enough willpower to resist her initial allure would invariably choose to flee immediately, before they succumbed.
But this man was different. He had not shown even a flicker of that predictable reaction upon witnessing their Holy Maiden's ethereal beauty. He had called her ugly, a shocking insult that had visibly shaken her. Then, he had not only endured her touch, he had been kissed by her. By all logic, the charm should have taken root irrevocably.
Yet the opposite had occurred. The country bumpkin seemed to hate her even more, his gaze now filled with a cold, unambiguous killing intent.
Lily and Liyan could not comprehend it. Every one of their methods, every trick and technique, had failed spectacularly against this man. A situation like this had simply never happened before.
The two maids' reactions were entirely justified. How could they have possibly anticipated that Leyvi had access to the Handsomeness Slider benefit, that he had already glimpsed what peak physical attractiveness truly looked like? He had developed an incredibly high resistance because of it. Mere mortal beauty, no matter how breathtaking, could no longer sway his mind or cloud his judgment.
"Lily, take the Holy Maiden and run to our base! I will hold this man off!" Liyan said, her voice urgent with finality.
Lily gave a sharp, grim nod. "Take care of yourself!" Without another word, she scooped up the limp form of the Pink Enchantress Rose and sprinted into the darkness.
Seeing this, Leyvi could not just let them escape. He burst forward, a blur of motion as he gave chase. But Liyan materialized directly in his path, blocking his way. She hurled a dense, tangled bundle of energy ropes toward him, aiming to ensnare him. Yet this method was pitifully inadequate against his current strength. These girls truly were nothing formidable in direct combat.
Leyvi simply swung one of his massive, fiery hands. The ropes evaporated upon contact with the blazing Qi. Without breaking stride, he swung his other hand in a wide, backhanded arc, directly into Liyan's defending form.
The impact was brutal. Her body was smashed aside and sent flying like a broken kite, tumbling hundreds of meters away into the deep, consuming darkness of the colossal shade.
"Liyan!" Lily's scream tore through the air, a sound of pure horror as she watched her best friend be swatted away. If Liyan was not dead from that blow, she was certainly grievously injured and in desperate need of help.
But Lily did not have a single second to spare. Leyvi had already closed the distance, appearing before her with terrifying speed.
"Stop! Please!" Lily cried out, her voice cracking with fear and desperation. She clutched her unconscious mistress tighter. "Let go of my Holy Maiden! I will give you everything we have. Just spare our lives!"
At this point, stripped of all her tricks and formations, begging for mercy was the only thing left she could do.
"Now you want mercy, is that it?" Leyvi's voice was cold, his anger undiminished. "I am not the type who kills lightly, but your bunch crossed a line and deserve nothing less. Trying to turn me into a love slave? To humiliate me for the rest of my life? Do you honestly think this wicked bitch deserves any mercy at all?"
"Please, spare us! We were wrong! Please, we were wrong!" Lily begged even more fervently, prostrating herself before him and smashing her forehead against the ground. It was the only act of contrition she had left.
"Get lost!" Leyvi snarled, and with a sweeping motion of his fiery, giant hand, he slapped her aside.
Just like Liyan, Lily was sent hurtling through the air, vanishing hundreds of meters into the darkness. Whether she lived or died was now unknown.
With the two maids gone, only Leyvi and the Pink Enchantress remained. She lay on the ground, still dazed and unresponsive. Her pose was unconsciously alluring, her silken outfit in disarray, revealing enticing glimpses of pale skin. Leyvi paid it no mind. He had seen such poses from his own wives many times before.
What is going on with her? He wondered briefly what internal turmoil had left her so incapacitated.
But it did not matter anymore. The concept of mercy had evaporated for this woman.
He raised his massive, fiery hand high, condensing it into a solid, blazing fist.
With a single, devastating smash, the defenseless, wicked beauty would be crushed beyond recognition.
"You have only yourself to blame for this," Leyvi stated, his tone final.
He brought the fiery fist down.
But out of nowhere, his own legs moved of their own volition. They jerked backwards with explosive speed, carrying his entire body away. Because of this sudden retreat, his gigantic fist slammed into nothing but empty earth.
BANG!
The ground where the Pink Enchantress had lain a moment before was pulverized into a smoldering crater. The dazed woman ahead, however, was completely untouched.
"What?" Leyvi gasped, shocked. "What happened? Why did my body move on its own?"
His spiritual sense flared out, scanning the immediate surroundings in a frantic sweep. There was no one else. No hidden attacker, no external interference.
A bad feeling crept into his heart.
He burst forward again, launching another massive, fiery punch directly at her prone form. But his own body rebelled. It twisted violently at the last possible instant, wrenching his trajectory so the punch sailed through empty air just above her head.
Leyvi stumbled past the woman and landed hard on his back, frustration boiling over.
"What is this?" he shouted into the gloom, confusion warring with anger. "Why is my body moving on its own to stop me from hitting her? This is ridiculous!"
He tried again. And again. Each attempt met with the same maddening result. Whether it was a punch, a kick, or a swipe of his giant hand, his limbs would jerk, his stance would shift, or his momentum would divert at the critical moment, always ensuring the attack missed its mark. His own flesh had become a traitor.
Finally, he stopped, chest heaving, and stared down at the unconscious Pink Enchantress.
"Don't tell me..." he muttered, a horrible suspicion dawning. "Her spell was supposed to affect both my mind and my body? My mind countered it, but my body did not? So now it instinctively tries to protect her from any harm?"
The hypothesis fit the bizarre, infuriating facts.
"Damn it!" he cursed, running a hand through his hair. "What kind of twisted method is this? What am I supposed to do now?"