Joy's breathing was slow and shallow, her body limp beneath the shelter of the large tree. The wind, which rustled the branches violently overhead, whipped her wet silver hair across her face. The thick canopy caught most of the rain, leaving her in a fragile pocket of relative dryness.

A gust of wind exploded as Tyler returned, skidding to a halt. His eyes darted to Joy, and a cold dread seized him. *What was I thinking? I almost forgot.*

He knelt beside her, the scaled armor on his knees pressing into the soft, wet earth. A potion materialized in his hand, the glass vial cool against his palm. It glowed with a faint, greenish light from the liquid within. His hands, usually steady, fumbled as he pressed the vial to her lips.

The green liquid trickled into her mouth, but her throat didn't move. It simply spilled out the side, tracing a glowing path through the crimson blood staining her chin.

"Shit," he breathed, the word tight with panic.

He placed the vial firmly on the ground beside her. Two more vials materialized next to it with soft, shimmering pops of displaced air. He leaned close, his voice a raw, "Please... please drink this when you gain consciousness."

Then he was gone. He couldn't spare another moment. The skill's 30-second duration was evaporating, and Anna could wake up and rush there any minute. And Anna was the exact same speed as him.

He became a blur, his feet tearing through the short grass of the plain. Each powerful stride ripped up the turf, leaving a torn path of churned soil and flattened grass in his wake. He ran until the familiar, scarred battlefield came into view.

And there she was.

Anna was standing, her sword held at her side. Her movements were deliberate, almost methodical, as she flipped a stray strand of her hair back over her shoulder. She let out a shaky breath, the sound barely audible over the wind, and her gaze lifted to meet his.

Tyler saw her look, and it gave him pause. Strangely, she didn't look enraged. Her face was pale, her features set in a stark, unreadable seriousness.

"So, you decided to take her away from me," Anna said, her voice cutting through the steady hiss of the rain. Her gaze on Tyler was unblinking.

Tyler's scaled fists clenched, the white plates creaking with the tension in his hands. "I won't let you hurt her."

A cold smirk touched Anna's lips, there and gone in a heartbeat. "It doesn't matter. You can run to the ends of the world. I will still find your little companion." Her eyes narrowed, the words precise and sharp as a blade. "You can't hide it from me."

"Why?" Tyler's voice rose, raw with a frustration that warred with his fear. "Why do you want to kill her so badly?"

Anna's sword arm extended, the point aiming directly at his heart. Her face was a mask of pure, unadulterated revulsion. "That *thing* does not belong with a human. I asked you why you took in a humanoid pet, and you didn't answer." Her knuckles were white on the hilt. "Simply put, I find it disgusting. Taking such an abomination as a pet is the most despicable thing a hunter could do." She paused, and a shudder ran through her frame. "Honestly, I could just puke while staring at it."

Tyler gritted his teeth, the sound loud in his own ears. He saw it then, the smirk was gone, replaced by a stark, chilling seriousness. She truly meant every single word.

"But… why?" The question was a muted breath, a whisper stolen by the wind and rain, yet it reached her.

Anna's breath hitched. She couldn't answer. The question struck something deep and personal, a wound that had never healed. It reminded her of a face she hated with every fiber of her being, a presence that had thrived in her powerlessness.

The way Joy looked, her human-like expressions, her palpable concern, it all made Anna's stomach churn with a nausea that was more memory than sickness. She didn't want to see it. She couldn't stand the ghost it resurrected. The disgust was a shield, and behind it was a pain as sharp and cold as the steel in her hand.

Tyler suddenly launched at her, his sword a blur of crackling blue. *Damn it! There isn't even a scratch on her!* The thought was a furious scream in his mind. *How did she not get hurt? What type of class is she, a swordsman?!*

Then, something defied logic. Anna vanished. Not with speed, but like a snuffed-out candle flame. Tyler skidded to a halt, his boots digging into the mud. He spun around, his heart hammering against his ribs. *What the hell just happened? She's gone!* His eyes, wide and frantic, darted across the empty, rain-swept field. *Did she teleport?*

He blinked.

In that split-second of darkness behind his eyelids, the world changed.

When his eyes opened, she was everywhere.

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More than twenty Annas surrounded him, a silent, perfect circle of white coats and cold, identical faces. They stood motionless, their collective gaze a physical weight. His breath caught in his throat. *What the hell is this? She's everywhere.*

As one, they moved. All the Annas ran at him, a converging wave of lethal intent.

A wave of pure, icy overwhelm crashed over Tyler. His mind went blank. There was no strategy, only instinct.

Immediately, the white scales erupted from the ground around him, not from his body, but from the earth itself. They shot upwards, interlocking with a sound like shattering ceramic, forming a solid, domed wall that sealed him inside. He shut his eyes tight, his body braced for the onslaught, the world reduced to the sound of his own ragged breathing and the drumming of rain on the outside of his shell.

But the impact of swords never came.

Instead, a profound silence, followed by a high-pitched whine that pierced his ears.

*Huh?*

Then, the world turned to gold and fury.

A colossal explosion detonated against his shelter. It was a silent, scorching light that vaporized the dome of scales. A concussive wave blew the remains apart and lifted Tyler into the air. A groan was torn from his lips as a blistering heat scorched the side of his face and arm. He tumbled through the air before slamming into the wet ground so hard the air fled his lungs.

Gasping, he slowly pushed himself up on trembling arms. His skin smoked where the light had touched it. His eyes, watering from the pain, lifted.

Then he saw her, she was floating serenely in the air. But the sword was gone. In her hands was a bow of pristine white, and nocked upon it, drawn fully back and aimed at his heart, was a single arrow, blazing with furious golden light.

"I gave you every chance to reveal your true power," Anna said, her voice cold and flat, cutting through the rain. "I believed you capable of the illusion that consumed the town. It seems the report was... exaggerated." Her eyes hardened. "This ends now."

She released the string. A golden arrow shot toward Tyler, but before it had even crossed half the distance, another was already nocked and loosed. Then another, and another, until a volley of twenty blazing lines of light streaked toward him, painting the gray sky with trails of destruction.

Tyler's eyes widened in raw alarm. He knew a single arrow consumed over 50 points of health, and now more than twenty were screaming toward him.

He couldn't block them all. He couldn't dodge. His only option was to endure.

All the remaining scales in his inventory erupted around him, forming a massive, layered sphere just as the fifth arrow hit. Then the sixth. The seventh. The world dissolved into a continuous, thunderous roar. Explosion after explosion of golden light consumed the sphere, the blinding flashes reflecting off Anna's impassive face and the falling rain. The ground beneath the assault vibrated, churning into mud and cratered earth.

Then, she stopped.

Smoke and dust billowed from the impact site, a thick cloud that the rain slowly began to beat down. A small, satisfied breath escaped her lips as she floated, waiting for the haze to clear.

*Normally, he wouldn't survive that,* she thought. A flicker of doubt. *But I can still feel his aura. He's not dead yet.* Her eyes narrowed, scanning the smoke. *And strangely... it's not here.*

Suddenly, the ground behind her erupted.

Dirt and shattered grass flew into the air as Tyler burst from the earth, launching himself upward with explosive force, his scaled form aiming straight for her suspended back.

Anna was aware of Tyler the instant the ground erupted behind her. Her mind, cold and analytical, processed the impossible. *How did he get there? Did he use the scales to dig? Drilling underground to launch a surprise attack...?* A flicker of clinical admiration surfaced. *That's a clever move. But...*

She was already turning, her body moving with fluid precision.

Meanwhile, Tyler, mid-air, felt a desperate calculation. *Damn it, I lost so many scales in that explosion. I have to make this count.* He felt the Tempest Bracers on his forearms, now burning hot against his skin. They had absorbed all the force they could, reaching a volatile 400% of their capacity.

He thrust his sword forward.

A cataclysm of lightning erupted from the blade. Driven by the bracers' overloaded power, a wave of invisible force surged ahead of it, distorting the space it traveled through into shimmering, water-like ripples. The lightning followed, caged within this distortion, a brilliant blue-white spine inside an invisible serpent. It hummed with a vibration that tore the very air apart, evaporating raindrops in its path before they could even fall.

In the fraction of a second it took to cross the distance, Anna activated a skill.

"Piercing Winter," she muttered, her breath a puff of frost.

The world froze. Instantly, every raindrop within a fifty-meter radius solidified into a suspended, crystalline prison. A shell of instant ice flash-froze over Tyler's scaled skin and wet hair. For a single, suspended moment, time seemed to stop just for him.

In that same moment, the golden arrow nocked on her bow flared into a blinding, piercing light-blue. She loosened it. The frozen air screamed as the arrow tore through its crystalline matrix, heading straight for the heart of Tyler's distorted lightning wave.

The lightning met the chilling arrow mid-air. An explosion of white-blue energy ripped through the space between them, a searing light that consumed both combatants. Then, a blue mist, thick with a biting, icy air, expanded outwards. The very world around them seemed to shudder. The grass below was shredded, as if a colossal scythe had swept through, leaving bare earth in its wake. This bare earth then instantly froze, the ice spreading outwards with terrifying speed. In a matter of moments, a frozen wasteland, stretching for a kilometer in every direction, had been created. A land of sheer, unforgiving ice.

The blue mist, the aftermath of the devastating clash, finally dissipated. Tyler found himself lying on the newly formed, frozen ground. The cold sunk into his very bones, a brutal assault. He blinked, staring up at the sky, his vision blurred with pain. He felt the scales on his body freeze over. The protective layer, now brittle and ice-encrusted, cracked and crumbled, becoming snow dust that swirled around his body, revealing his clothes.

Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, the warm liquid a stark contrast against his frozen face. His vision swam. The system panel, a cold, familiar presence, flickered into existence before him: HP 40/560.

He coughed, the pain a searing fire in his lungs. *Damn… this hurts… I feel so numb… and it's so damn painful…

He blinked again, forcing his vision to clear. And there she was. As if she had teleported directly into his gaze, she hung in the air, unscathed, the faint white glow in her eyes unwavering, her expression a mask of serious intent. The white bow materialized in her hand once more, the shimmering blue light of the arrow coalescing, ready to be unleashed. The icy wind howled around him, a prelude to the next, devastating strike.

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