"Great God of Fire above,"
"Please allow me to borrow your authority for a moment."
"Let the flames cling to me."
"Armament!"
After Bishop Eugenia chanted the final two words of the spell, spiraling flames erupted from beneath her feet and instantly ignited. In moments, they wrapped around the woman's entire body.
The strongest magic of the "third tier," the "mortal" level, differed for every element. Wind magic, for example, had the tornado spell, "Gale, heed my command," an area-of-effect spell with an enormous range.
Earth magic had the sealing spell, "Heavy Rock, eternal since ancient times," the most infuriating silence spell of them all. Water magic had the healing spell, "Rainfall, let all things grow," a must-have for any healer.
As for fire magic—
As anyone could see, it specialized in single-target enchantments: Armament magic.
The first thing to step out of the flames was the woman's bare feet.
Right behind them, the once-glamorous bishop's robes had vanished. In their place was a scarlet coat that seemed to burn constantly, woven entirely from flames.
And that wasn't all.
Most eye-catching of all was the terrifying fire whip that the woman drew from the void with one hand. It was more than a dozen meters long, and molten lava seemed to flow quietly within it.
"Boss... b-boss, that crazy woman looks, uh, a little bit too strong." The players inside the iron cage were utterly stunned.
They were still playing with mud, so how had these NPCs already started descending like gods?
"Boss, d-do you think your Goddess can beat her?"
The players in the iron cage had been brimming with confidence in Vivian before, but after seeing Eugenia like this, every one of them began to waver.
"Hmph! J-just kidding! Who does my Goddess think she is? Vivian definitely has a trump card!" Chang Lu Man Man secretly swallowed and stubbornly pretended to be full of confidence.
"B-but Boss, you're st-stuttering too."
"Are you the only smart one here? That's what you get for talking so much! That's what you get for talking so much!"
So what was Vivian actually like?
When Eugenia had shamelessly begun chanting third-tier magic, Liao Zixuan had already sent the girl the thought several times: Do you need help?
But the answer the girl gave Liao Zixuan was—
"Wait a little longer."
Wait a little longer?
What exactly was Vivian waiting for?
Perhaps only the girl herself knew.
"Heh... hehehe." Holding the flaming whip and resembling an infernal queen, Eugenia laughed in anger.
She was furious because even now, Vivian still showed no sign of repentance. She was continuing to divide her magic power to keep the heavy iron cages imprisoning the Outlanders suspended in midair.
What Bella—meaning Eugenia—had originally thought was this: if the girl became frightened and chose to abandon the people in the cages, letting them fall into the magma and die, then she would use Magic Shield to resist with all her strength. In that case, Bella would restrain herself appropriately and stop once the point had been made. She would not truly injure this future Witch candidate.
But now, less and less rationality remained in Bella's eyes. Madness and chaos were gradually taking over.
That was because Bella saw the shadow of her former self in the frail girl before her.
They were both exceptionally talented magical prodigies. Both were poor girls born into poverty. And when faced with powerful enemies, both had chosen to help the weak.
But Bella remembered clearly that her own ending had been to be drugged unconscious by the villagers she had personally rescued from the hands of a wicked noble, then delivered to that noble's castle.
That night, the entire castle was devoured by flames.
Devoured along with it was the heart of the innocent girl once named "Bella."
"Since you're so determined to help them, then you can go with them."
"All of you, go to hell!!"
Whoosh!
The fire whip, more than a dozen meters long, rose high in Bella's hand. Molten lava crawled across it, and its terrifying heat distorted the surrounding air.
Bella did not unleash her full strength at once.
Instead, she chose another method—one that was even more torturous and, in a sense, gave Vivian one final chance.
Crack!
The fire whip struck the girl's Magic Barrier with a casual swing, yet the damage it caused was no weaker than that of a complete second-tier Flame Spear Technique.
More deadly still, Bella gave Vivian no time to repair the barrier.
After the first lash, the fire whip curved slightly in midair. Then the second lash came sweeping in with a howling wind!
Snap!
Boom!
The Magic Barrier, already at its limit, shattered the instant it met the second lash. The tremendous impact sent Vivian flying backward.
The iron cage, suspended in midair solely by Vivian's magic power, immediately plummeted once its support vanished.
The players' weightless screams rang out at the same time.
Just as the cage was about to touch the boiling magma bubbling below, and the heat was scorching their backsides, its descent suddenly stopped. Like a horse reined in at the edge of a cliff, it miraculously halted.
A miracle?
No. After rolling across the ground several times, Vivian—covered in dust and injuries—had gotten back up. The first thing she did was stretch her hand toward the iron cage again.
Chang Lu Man Man was moved.
Many of the players in the cage who had previously felt indifferent toward Vivian were instantly won over, moved beyond words.
As bystanders, they would probably have looked down on the girl's stubborn behavior to some extent.
You can barely protect yourself, yet you're still worrying about others.
But as the people involved—
Damn!
They almost knelt down and kowtowed to the girl.
Unfortunately, their emotion could not turn into strength and improve the situation. On the contrary, Vivian's action completely enraged Bella.
"Good. Very good."
A crimson light flashed in Bella's eyes.
It was true that the Witches lacked fresh blood, but that was only if the other party had the potential to grow into a Witch.
"I'll ask you one more time."
"Will you let them—"
"Go, or not!"
Bella truly did not care about the Fire God Cult, Purple Crystal Grass, or the ritual to accelerate growth. After all, she was not really Bishop Eugenia.
The only thing she cared about was the girl before her. She wanted to know whether Vivian was willing to abandon the iron cage and the ridiculous kindness Bella saw in her eyes.
But the usually polite Vivian did not answer her this time.
Or rather—
She had already given her answer through her actions.
Just as before, the girl used one hand to hold up her Magic Shield and the other to maintain the magic keeping the iron cage suspended. The only difference was that Vivian looked far more miserable now. Large portions of her clothes were torn and covered in burn marks and scratches. Combined with her already thin, frail body, she looked as if she might collapse at any moment.
Two of the five attacks agreed upon remained.
But Bella no longer wanted to waste time. Having become thoroughly disappointed in Vivian, she no longer needed a fifth attack.
She completely stopped holding back.
Bella gathered all her strength into her arm. She raised the fire whip high above her head, like an executioner carrying out a death sentence, and began the girl's final judgment.
The flying fire whip coiled like a viper around a treetop, waiting for the final moment before diving from above to bite the prey below to death.
No!
At this rate, it's over!
Even Chang Lu Man Man, who had the utmost confidence in Vivian, could no longer sit still. Players had countless lives, but when an NPC died in this world, they really died.
"Damn it, let's do it!"
"Eugenia, you stinking—****! I'm going all out against you today!"
"I've got a dick too! If you've got the guts, delete your accounts!"
After Chang Lu Man Man roared inside the iron cage, he proved himself a man of courage. To keep from becoming a burden to Vivian, he actually chose to delete his account.
That way, even if the female Bishop had somehow bound their respawn points to the iron cage, their characters would naturally disappear once their game accounts were deleted, completely escaping her control.
If this had happened a few minutes earlier, they would have hesitated for a long time over deleting their accounts, even though Chang Lu Man Man was their boss.
But now...
Looking at the burning lash marks across Vivian's body, at the girl's dirt-covered yet unwavering eyes, and at the small figure that stood before them like a mountain protecting them from behind—
In reality, they might have been selfish cowards. But in the virtual world, they wanted to be heroes for once, even if only for a moment.
Whoosh!
The second person vanished from the iron cage.
Then it became an unstoppable trend.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
More and more white lights symbolizing deleted accounts connected into a dazzling chain inside the iron cage.
The commotion was so great that Bella had no choice but to halt her brewing attack. She turned around and frowned at the iron cage, now completely empty and desolate.
What were these Outlanders up to now?
She had clearly sealed their souls with a Witch's secret art. Escape should have been absolutely impossible!
How had they done it?
No!
Bella suddenly raised both hands like claws and clutched her head. She had realized something even more terrifying—something that caused her to lose her rationality once more and fall into chaos.
Why had these Outlanders done this?
What were they after?
If they had possessed a way to escape, why had they not used it earlier? That meant the method must have been extremely harmful to them as well, to the point that they would rather remain imprisoned than use it.
But—
But, but, but, but, but!
Why?
Why were they willing to use it now?
Why?!
This wasn't how it was supposed to be! It absolutely wasn't! Kindness would never be rewarded! Goodness was nothing but self-deception! All of this was fake! Fake!
Something must have gone wrong somewhere. Yes, that had to be it!
Witches were avatars of chaos. They created chaos, and their own minds were exceptionally prone to disorder. Clearly, Bella had now fallen completely into madness.
"Die."
"Die, die, die! All of you, die!"
Amid her furious screams, a magical chant suddenly rang out, causing Bella's shrieks to abruptly stop.
Just as the players had broken through her defenses and she had fallen into a fit of madness, a familiar fluctuation suddenly came from Vivian's body.
"Great God of Fire above,"
"Please allow me to borrow your authority for a moment."
"Let the flames cling to me."
Impossible.
This was absolutely impossible!
Bella's expression became several times more shocked than when the players had suddenly disappeared from the iron cage. Her eyes widened as she stared at the girl chanting the spell, causing the elements to surge violently.
Bella recognized this chant. Liao Zixuan, who had been silently observing the battle from behind, recognized it as well. Even Big Watermelon and Melee God of Magic, the only two player Seeds of Fire present, recognized it.
Because this was the strongest power available at the "mortal" level, the third-tier magic that the woman herself had chanted just minutes earlier—
"Armament!"
The final two words of the spell came from the girl's lips.
In an instant, flames rose from the ground and wrapped around Vivian's entire body in the blink of an eye. Moments later, they transformed into a burning cloak, and—
A scarlet great scythe.
Bella gradually regained her composure and began analyzing the situation. She quickly noticed the flaw. Although Vivian had also chanted a third-tier spell, its momentum was clearly much weaker than Bella's. Rather than third-tier magic, it looked more like—
A cheap, inferior imitation?
But even an imitation was astonishing enough.
"When did you..." Bella demanded coldly.
Hearing this, a certain Wolf Cub shook his head.
Unbelievable.
Absolutely unbelievable!
He had originally thought Vivian was just a foolish girl. Yet this foolish girl had actually managed to fool a real Witch, keeping her in the dark the entire time without arousing even the slightest suspicion.
Amazing!
Oh no. This girl's growth rate really was getting a little damn fast.
As a bystander, it took Liao Zixuan quite a while to finally understand what Vivian had been waiting for when she told him to wait.
Bella had been wrong from the very beginning. Vivian had not been multitasking with two things, but three!
It seemed Bella had suddenly realized this too.
The expression on her face began to shift unpredictably.
She recalled a detail: when she had sent Luo Er to intercept and kill the girl, Vivian had not known Flame Impact at first. Yet after Luo Er used it once, the girl had used it herself at the end.
"You can imitate other people's magic!?" Bella's brows drew together tightly.
An ability to imitate required time, and it also required that she not be discovered. So Vivian had turned the situation to her advantage, deliberately targeting Bella's weakness and using her hatred of evil to keep the Outlanders constantly drawing her attention!
At the same time,
She had made Bella believe she was a foolish, innocent girl, allowing her to lower her guard completely. Bella had never considered Vivian's true intention. It turned out Vivian had never intended to play some game with her or passively endure her attacks behind a defensive barrier.
She had intended to—
Counterattack!
Liao Zixuan silently added the final piece of the puzzle in his heart.
"Heh heh."
"Heh heh heh."
"Vivian, I have to say, this is the first time I've ever misjudged someone so badly."
"You're impressive."
"But I still have one last question." Bella raised her blazing whip high.
"From what I've observed, you don't know the slightest thing about fighting. You have no experience or talent in this area whatsoever. Even if you can cast the exact same magic as me, so what?"
"You—how could you possibly defeat me?"
When the lofty Bella asked this question, Vivian, standing below her, revealed a happy smile beneath her hood. Her little face, which had turned ashen because of what had happened earlier, brightened at last.
She proudly lifted her little head and looked at Bella—in other words, Bishop Eugenia.
Then the girl spoke softly, as if she were addressing Bella, yet even more as if she were
talking to herself.
"Then, just as we agreed earlier."
"From here on..."
"I'll be counting on you, another... me!"
That was right. Even Liao Zixuan had guessed wrong.
Vivian had never been using three minds at once. From beginning to end, she had been using one mind... for four purposes!
Before you continue