When it comes to killing each other more efficiently, you can always trust human ingenuity

With the Abyssal One's departure, Teresa was finally alone beside the campfire.

Out of caution, she first searched her surroundings with her extraordinarily powerful senses before asking tentatively, "Are you still there?"

She received no response beyond silence.

Clearly, Allen was no longer anywhere nearby.

Once she realized this, Teresa visibly breathed a sigh of relief, her entire body rapidly relaxing.

If possible, she hoped he would never appear before her again.

After all, anyone would feel immense psychological pressure facing a "monster" they could neither defeat nor kill nor escape, day after day.

By comparison, Teresa preferred her usual quiet life of accepting commissions and slaying Yoma.

Though monotonous and tedious, it somehow gave her a sense of security.

But this "Goddess" clearly had no idea that Allen had suddenly left because, far to the west, Artoria had inexplicably started fighting Riful, one of the Abyssals.

And her very first attack had been a slash imbued with terrifying Holy Light energy, reducing the self-satisfied Abyssal to a heap of mangled flesh. She was now just one step from death.

As for the cannon fodder and lackeys around her, they had long since turned into dust too fine for the naked eye to distinguish and dispersed into the air.

Even her "old flame," Dauf, lay dying nearby, half his body completely erased by the terrifying Holy Light, unable even to regenerate.

"Y-you... who are you?"

Riful forced herself to endure the excruciating pain of having over eighty percent of her body destroyed, along with the intense burning caused by the Holy Light energy, and asked in a trembling voice.

As the former No. 1 of the first generation of female Warriors, she could scarcely believe that such a powerful, terrifying being existed in this world.

The energy radiating from Artoria's