"The Severance Spear is not meant to be used like that."
After casually sweeping out a slash that crushed Anna's Severance Spear, Laiya's voice slowly rang out across the shattered battlefield.
She looked at Anna ahead of her, who had barely dodged the flawed Severance Spear and now appeared utterly bedraggled.
Laiya's gaze settled on the other woman's silver hair, so identical to her own, and a flicker of realization passed through her eyes. Though she intended to steer her away from the wrong path, her voice remained as cold as ever:
"You took the wrong direction in developing the Binote Family's formulas."
Anna did not respond.
As she used her formula to strip away the all-too-familiar corrosive power lingering on her body, she stared unblinkingly at the figure ahead.
Feeling the strange force that, after grazing her with its residual might, had begun corroding the magic circuits within her like maggots clinging to bone, she drove it out with her formula. Yet more than anything, she was overwhelmed by disbelief.
She had never imagined that after over two months of special training and research, even after unleashing that terrifying blow capable of instantly killing a High Mage, she would fail even to ruffle her opponent's clothes before being utterly defeated!
It was as if she—a dazzling genius of the new generation, someone who had graduated early at merely twenty due to her exceptional performance and now served as the captain of the Allied Special Operations Department with the rank of lieutenant—
Was nothing more than an utterly ordinary person before this woman, who claimed to possess Binote Family blood and looked to be about the same age as her.
"What kind of joke is this?!"
Anna roared unwillingly, then launched herself at the figure before her without hesitation.
She