Chapter 151: Epic Evolution (1/2)

“Do the both of you yield?”

With enchanted blade in hand, Numila swept her smug eyes over her half-kneeling foes.

“How could you suddenly become so strong?” Eugenia slowly climbed to her feet. She had barely suffered any damage, instead it was the shock of her complete loss that inflicted the most damage on her. Until now, she still couldn’t accept that their foe had trounced them so thoroughly.

“Hah, you want to know why?” A trace of elation could be heard within her voice. Having gained such a treasure, she naturally wanted to show it off; thus, without giving it much thought, she shoved me right into the spotlight and said: “Naturally, it’s because of my dear fiance!”

“Impossible,” Elena chimed in abruptly in a rare break from her usual silence, her eyes casting a doubting pall over the bragging witch, until finally, her eyes settled on the blade in her hands. “That blade!”

“That’s right, that’s the gift my fiance gave me! It’s precisely because of this blade that I was able to get so strong!” As if to prove her point and leave a deeper impression on them, she activated the magic engraved onto the blade, despite never being taught how to do so. In an instant, over ten flame arrows fanned out in a row, spanning from side to side in an orderly fashion. Yet, instead of firing off like what she had intended, they actually combined together into a never-before seen form: a pair of wings made of actual flames.

While these were only wings in appearance, the fact that it broke free from Numila’s control was still astonishing.

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A shocking amount of heat radiated from the wings the very next instant, at the same time sucking in the fire mana within Numila like a voracious beast. Immediately, the wings began to grow from the infusion of mana until finally it wrapped around the entire blade. This looks…it’s almost like a cocoon.

“What’s going on? What is it doing it? It…it seems to be absorbing my mana…” She immediately tried to toss away the blade, but it stuck to her hands as if it had taken root. No matter how much she shook her hands, the blade refused to budge and even began to rapidly wrap her hands in flames. At this rate, it would only take a few more seconds before it completely swallowed her whole in its fiery maw.

This was too much of a shock for the harpy witch who threw me a panicked look as if looking for help: “Dearest…the blade…there’s something wrong with it…”

Truth be told, I was just as shocked by this turn of events as she was. Even though her feathers still weren’t something I could digest, she was, in the end, my fiance. If she were to be burnt to death like this…wait, a flame harpy witch like her being burnt to death? That’s not even a funny joke.

“Oh yea, it’s burning! It’s burning!” Not too far away, Mimiya, the little devil who couldn’t wait for the world to crash and burn, was already beside herself in excitement as she pumped her fist into the air and cheered. Looking at her jump up and down like an excited child, she almost looked like a jester invited by a monkey.

“Hahaha, let’s see how you brag while on fire.” Seeing her foe in danger, Eugenia couldn’t be any happier as she guffawed. “Burn faster! Burn that witch to death!”

Next to her, Elena was just as entranced by the strange sight of a flame harpy being burnt as her companion. She shook her head emotionlessly and with the radiant sight of Numila burning still reflected in her white pupils, she softly declared: “It’s useless.”

Did she mean that struggling was pointless, or was she talking about something else?

Not willing to stand by idly anymore as her fiance, I promptly rushed forward to save her from this predicament. Yet just as I took the first step forward, Habona’s claws grabbed onto my shoulders: “Wait, observe the situation carefully for a moment.”

“But Numila’s in grave danger right now!”

“I already said to wait, just have a proper look.”

“…” I was still as confused as ever by her words but their calmness did have an effect on me. I squinted my eyes and peered at the burning mess.

She wasn’t burning! Was it safe to assume that those flames weren’t harmful to her then?

Slightly befuddled by this strange sight, I tried asking Numila about this: “Numila, do you feel any pain?”

“Oh…now that you mention it, I feel nothing except that my mana is still being drained…” Hearing my question, she seemed to have calmed down as well and noticed that this out-of-control fire wasn’t actually trying to harm her. Realizing this, she lowered her head slightly in embarrassment as she apologized: “Dearest…because this one suddenly lost control of her flames…she got scared and…you know…”

Though she didn’t finish that sentence, I roughly got the gist of it. In her defense, this whole incident must’ve been a great shock to her. Being a flame harpy witch, she was born with an innate ability to control flames. Flames were basically like a friend to her, a friend that would never hurt her and would listened to her whims. Having such a friend suddenly “turn on” her, it wasn’t hard to imagine why she would show such a panicked side.

Seeing that she finally calmed herself down, I breathed a sigh of relief as well. “Just as you were then, oh right, how much mana do you have left?”

“Over half of my mana…but this one has this feeling that the blade hasn’t eaten its fill yet…”

Hasn’t eaten its fill…meaning it still required more mana? I guess it was rather common to see magical implements draining their owner’s mana once they ran out of charges but the fact that this wasn’t planned was concerning. Would she even have enough mana?

Most of the time, such mana charging was done with ample preparations since a person’s mana pool had its limits after all. In the past, there were cases of mages being turned into a dry husk by some exceptionally powerful magical arrays. Once a person’s mana was used up, any further attempt to drain his or her mana would forcefully convert their lifeforce into mana. In other words, the mage was playing with their life when they pushed past their mana limits.

Want to experience the sensation of growing old in a day? All you needed to do was sign up over here right now, just place your hand right on top of this magical tool!

Didn’t that mean that Numila was in grave danger right now? Heavens only knew what that blade was planning to do with all that mana! Was it storing it in a bank somewhere or was it snacking on it?

“It’s definitely an evolution, there’s no mistaking it.” Unlike my pointless tsukkomis, Habona’s observations yielded a much more useful conclusion of ‘evolution’.

“Evolution? What evolution?”

Throwing me a placid look for a second, she turned back to the harpy who was engulfed in flames from the neck down and waist up: “The blade you gave to her is about to evolve.”