Selena reached the edge of the forest in no time, and the first thing she saw was two figures locked in battle.

It didn’t take her long to realize they were the two brothers.

Just as it didn’t take her long to notice Percival’s strange appearance, not that it mattered to her. One way or another, she was going to kill him today. His current state was of little importance.

With that settled in her mind, she wasted no time examining the situation any further and threw herself straight into the fight.

Percival, already on the verge of delivering the finishing blow to his brother, sensed the new arrival, but didn’t have time to figure out who it was before he noticed the attack closing in. With an unnatural burst backward, he pulled away, parrying the strike.

His attention snapped immediately to the figure that had just arrived, and his expression darkened.

"So it’s you. And here I thought I’d have to go hunt you down myself, guess this saves me the trouble," he said.

Selena didn’t answer. She looked at the two of them, one half-dead with an amputated arm, the other something she wasn’t even sure still counted as human.

Seeing that she said nothing, her face still locked in that same cold expression, Percival didn’t seem bothered. If anything, it only made him smile wider.

"You treated me like a punching bag for our entire time at school, even when I never did a damn thing to you. You went out of your way to make my life hell, and now look, the roles are reversed. I’m the one who gets to take it out on you."

"I already took care of your little friend, you know." A grin spread across his face, something satisfied and cruel all at once. "Shame you weren’t there to see it."

Percival had learned from Adrian that Lirien had fallen into the hands of the Forsaken, which meant she was as good as dead. Part of him wished he could have finished her off himself, but using her death to hurt the girl in front of him was just as satisfying.

Either way, he would finally repay everything he had suffered.

Selena, who up to this point hadn’t shown much of a shift in expression, felt something in her crack at those words.

’Lirien... is dead?’

They were just words, no real proof behind them. But somehow they hit harder than she expected them to.

Who would have thought that cold, unshakeable Selena, the one who never let anyone in, would find herself grieving over a lost friend like this?

Certainly not her. And now the rage that had been simmering underneath finally broke loose, her expression twisting from ice into something feral as she stared down Percival, and without a shred of hesitation, she lunged with everything she had.

"You won’t get a quick death." she said, closing the distance in an instant, her blade already cutting diagonally toward his chest.

But Percival wasn’t the weakling he used to be.

His old E-rank self was long gone, he’d since successfully broken through to C-rank.

That should have given him a decisive edge over anyone here, his brother included. And yet, faced with the sheer ferocity of this attack, he had to reconsider everything he thought he knew. That kind of speed had no business belonging to a D-rank.

’Shit-’ He’d underestimated her. He threw his claws up on instinct to deflect the trajectory of the strike, managing it, if only barely.

But there was no time to breathe before Selena, twisting her torso in a move that barely looked human, drove a devastating kick straight into his face, sending him flying backward several meters until he slammed into a tree.

Percival felt a sharp burst of pain rip through his back and immediately tried to recover, furious, when he noticed, a beat too late, a thin, long shard of ice already screaming toward him. Without hesitation, he pulled on the mana in his body, calling on the earth element around him, forcing pillars of stone to erupt from both sides to block the strike.

The pillars shattered instantly, but they’d bought him just enough time to avoid the spear’s path.

"You really think—"

He didn’t even get to finish the sentence before another spear was already coming. Then another. And another.

’Fuck,How the hell can she create so many attacks at once?’ he cursed, startled, a flicker of real fear creeping in. He knew better than anyone that D-rank was still early stages when it came to elemental manifestation.

Creating attacks through an element was difficult and required a certain level of mastery, not only over the element itself but also over mana control.

Otherwise, maintaining multiple attacks at once would quickly exhaust the user.

Yet she ignored all those limitations.

One attack after another.

A continuous barrage.

Within moments, Selena had already launched countless ice spears toward him.

Percival, empowered by the crystal’s energy, manipulated his earth element to block them one after another, the ground rising and twisting beneath his control.

He caught a brief opening and slammed his palm into the earth, sending two massive stone arms erupting from either side of Selena, closing in on her like a pair of giant hands trying to crush her between them.

"Let’s see you dodge this!"

She vanished with a sharp sideways leap, slipping free by the barest margin.

Percival pressed on with more attacks, the ground rising, twisting, grasping for her again and again. But every time, she was already gone, always a step ahead, and with every exchange she closed the gap between them just a little more.

"You’re just a D-rank. How the hell are you—"

He never got to finish the question. As he raised his hand to summon another attack, she was already right in front of him.

His eyes widened in shock.

An instinctive fear crawled down his spine as he saw the ferocious gaze on her face. A gaze so intense that, for a brief moment, it almost froze him in place.

A moment he would come to regret.

Without the slightest hesitation, Selena cut his arm in half with a clean slash.

"Argh—!"

A scream ripped from his throat, rage and pain tangled together, but before he could even react, another ice spear, already prepared, pierced straight through his chest.

The force sent him flying backward several meters before he slammed into a tree, the ice spear driving through his chest and deep into the trunk, leaving him pinned in place.

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