The older man dashed forward while gripping the sword tightly in his hand, and the younger woman braced herself, quickly unsheathing her katana.

The sudden illumination of sparks playfully danced as they flew from the scraping collision of the two blades.

Jolene Aurora was pushed back, despite meeting the attack perfectly, and the anxiety that seemed to overwhelm her mind just could not fade away as she weakly stared straight into the eyes of her father, Hitaju Aurora.

Her instincts naturally told her to run away from this fight, to flee, and to never return. Yet, that was impossible to do here.

After all, there was only so much land that she currently stood on to escape.

"Have you trained hard enough to defend yourself against my lashings, darling?" the man scornfully said, causing her to shudder. "Let me see for myself, Jolene!"

In a flash, he moved with precision and agility, swinging his sword straight at her neck with no mercy and he planned to kill his only daughter. Jolene parried the attack with her katana.

Then again, she repeated, then again, as she could barely defend herself against the onslaught that was aimed at her.

"S-Stop this!!" she screamed fearfully. "Stop trying to kill me, dad!!!!"

"I thought you said that I'm not real, that this entire scenario isn't real!!" he mockingly replied. "In that case, you should be fine, right!?"

"STOP!!!"

Hitaju raised his right arm to swing forcefully, but then he spun around instantly, catching Jolene off guard with a feint attack and sending a spinning kick towards her as it landed cleanly on her side, before swinging his sword with all his might.

The tip of the blade whizzed past Jolene's right pupil, missing her eye just barely by a fraction of a millimetre.

Jolene stumbled back, but she had no time to counterattack at all. Quickly spotting the lapping figure of her opponent, she sidestepped the attack, and took several steps back, trying to distance herself from him in a rare effort of focusing mostly on protecting herself.

It was not as if she did not want to kill the person in front of him. In fact, she absolutely wanted to. However, she struggled ever since the fight began, fearing for her own life due to what she had experienced in the past by this man.

I-I'm stronger now, she tried to convince herself. You can stand up to this fucker. He has to pay for everything that he fucking did, Jolene. So, come on!!"

With all of her assassination skills and training under Matsuo Yamamoto, she had to stand a chance now, but even so, she was currently being bested. How? There was absolutely no way that her father was someone who was proficient at swordfighting.

Unless…if her research on the Paradisus Legion was correct…

"Don't stare off into space now, Jolene."

"-hk, shit."

Her focus on what was in front of her returned swiftly as she eyes the older man slowly but surely walking towards her in a casual, bored manner.

She swallowed hard, gripping her katana even more tightly. While she spoke up.

"You're not my father. You're definitely the result of the black haze in the third layer's Dungeon District, making people go crazy and letting people experience visions that affect their reality through magic."

"..."

Hitaju stopped.

"...I was most likely transported randomly into the Dungeon District by that fucking mist close to the Waterfall of Hell. That must mean that the mist must be concentrated mana, which can be processed into magic by itself.

"..."

"The black fog in the Dungeon District signals the close proximity of one who is close to the Heart of the Paradisus Legion, right? And if magic only comes from mana and Magical Beasts, and there's no concentrated mana in the black fog as it looks completely different to the mist…

"..."

"...Then what I am experiencing, what I am seeing, who I am fighting, is…"

"..."

"...A powerful Magical Beast, one that is so incredibly strong that it possesses magic that can do something like this. And there's only one beast that I believe can possess this much power, while still unhatched-"

"-You need to die."

Without any more delay, Hitaju Aurora, or rather, the thing that cosplayed him, mentioned those words, and his eyes began to glow with a sizzling red, stunning Jolene as he began to walk with pure killing intent.

"You're running out of platform to work with, Jooooleeeene," the man teased, cornering her as she stood near the edge of the floating land, with a sharp drop into nothingness behind her. "I'm gonna make sure that I torment you nice and slow."

Jolene's left eyebrow twitched, and then she side eyed the void that lay behind her.

No matter what, she had to come out of this alive, even if she was now faced with an opponent that she had not realized was one hundred times more dangerous than what she had initially thought.

I have to keep living, in order to be with him again.

She pictured Liohime Kitagami in her head for a split second, and sighed.

She had survived all of her problems, trauma, worries, and more just to be here at this moment, and now, she had to make sure that she kept going until the end.

Therefore…

"Hitaju Aurora," she called out, despite knowing that it was actually not him, "you are a horrible person, and I will never forgive you. I will defeat you here and no, even if you are merely a figment of my imagination propelled by a Magical Beast. You hear me!? This is the end for you!!!"

With that, she pointed at the man with a defiant manner as she was now fully convinced that she was up against a Magical Beast, the strongest of them all.

Somehow, her fear had heightened even more as the revelation was set, but even so, she tried to keep a smile, while thinking of a way out.

Just what the fuck do you have us trying to retrieve, you damn client!?

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