At last, a flicker of emotion appeared in the woman's eyes—a hint of near-contemptuous amusement. She tilted her head slightly, her pure white hair cascading like a waterfall, gleaming with a metallic sheen beneath the moonlight.
Sagreles smiled as well. There was a predator's cruelty in his smile.
"Looks like you need a lesson."
Before the words had even faded, Sagreles abruptly raised his wand.
A heavy surge of magic erupted from him, and countless sharp cracks like shattering glass rang through the air—the invisible threads of magic were all severed.
The woman staggered back a step. Her already pale face turned even whiter, while her blue eyes glowed strangely beneath the moonlight.
But Sagreles gave her no chance to catch her breath. His wand drew a dazzling arc of lightning, its tip pointing straight at the night sky.
"Thunderbolt!"
In an instant, a bolt of lightning as thick as a barrel tore through the sky and crashed down with a deafening roar.
The blinding white light turned the entire forest as bright as day, and the instant the lightning struck the ground, it unleashed a terrifying shockwave.
The ancient trees nearby were carbonized by the heat, while the ground was blasted into a huge crater three meters wide. Crimson magma churned at its bottom, and the air reeked of ozone and scorched earth.
Sagreles stood atop a boulder, his black robes snapping in the heatwave.
His instincts told him that she was not dead...
The woman's figure vanished amid the lingering shockwaves of the explosion, but his magical senses clearly caught her presence—like a venomous snake slithering through the shadows, ready to strike at any moment.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
A red spell streak suddenly came from behind and to the side. Its magical fluctuations were so powerful that even the