Chapter : 235

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Zinia stepped forward and drove her fist into the ground at the tree’s roots. A spike of solid rock erupted upward, piercing the trunk from below. The tree screamed again, louder this time, and a crack appeared in the bark. Dark sap oozed from the wound, thick and foul-smelling.

“It can be hurt,” Zinia said. “Hit it again.”

Laxmi and Zinia attacked the tree together. Fire and stone. Flame and rock. The tree thrashed and screamed, its branches whipping through the air like tentacles. One branch caught Laxmi across the shoulder and sent her spinning. Another tried to wrap around Zinia’s waist, but she crushed it with a stone gauntlet.

Back in the village, the effect was immediate. The enslaved tribesmen stumbled. Their movements became jerky and uncoordinated. The purple glow in their eyes flickered, like a candle in the wind.

“It is working!” Iris shouted. “The signal is destabilizing!”

The skeleton warrior noticed it too. For the first time since the battle began, it moved. Its massive body turned toward the eastern edge of the village, and its burning purple eye sockets locked onto the source of the disruption.

It took one step forward. The ground shook. It took another step. The air grew cold. The dark mana in the clearing intensified, pressing down on everyone like a physical weight. This was the full power of a Black Magic guardian, and it was angry.

Ira stepped into its path. Her water whip was gone, replaced by a massive serpent of pressurized water that coiled around her body. Her pale eyes were flat and emotionless as always, but her stance was rigid with determination.

“You will not pass,” Ira said.

The skeleton swung its massive clawed hand. Ira’s water serpent struck back, meeting the claw with a burst of steam and pressure. The impact sent shockwaves across the clearing. Ira slid backward five feet, her boots gouging trenches in the dirt, but she held her ground.

In the jungle, Laxmi and Zinia destroyed the first tree. It exploded in a shower of dark sap and purple sparks, and the shriek it let out was deafening. They immediately ran toward the second tree, which was visible a hundred yards away through the undergrowth.

The second tree fell faster. They knew what to expect now. Laxmi burned the branches while Zinia shattered the trunk. The purple veins died and went dark. The screaming stopped.

In the village, the effect was dramatic. Half of the enslaved tribesmen collapsed where they stood, their eyes rolling back in their heads as the mind control loosened its grip. The remaining villagers moved slower, their attacks clumsy and unfocused.

The skeleton warrior roared. It was a terrible sound, like bones grinding against bones mixed with the howl of a thousand trapped souls. It raised both arms and channeled every ounce of its dark mana into a massive attack aimed directly at Ira.

A column of dark purple energy erupted from the skeleton’s hands. Ira met it with everything she had, her water serpent pushing back against the tide of darkness. But the skeleton was stronger. The dark energy was pushing her back, inch by inch, foot by foot. Her water was evaporating under the sheer pressure of the attack.

Then Laxmi and Zinia destroyed the third tree.

The skeleton’s purple shield flickered. The dark mana column wavered. For a single, precious second, the skeleton was vulnerable.

And in that second, Ken moved.

Nobody saw him move. One moment he was crouching behind Naomi with his hands over his head. The next moment he was standing in the open, between Ira and the skeleton warrior, with his hand raised in front of him.

His eyes were open. Not half-closed and sleepy. Wide open. And in that brief flash, before he let his hand fall and his body slump back into its usual lazy posture, something impossible happened.

A wave of invisible force rippled outward from Ken’s raised hand. It was not fire or water or earth or wind. It was not light or dark. It was something else entirely. Something that the skeleton’s magic could not touch, could not block, could not even comprehend.

The wave passed through the skeleton’s flickering shield as if it did not exist. It struck the skeleton’s body and the Black Magic that held it together simply... unraveled. Like a ball of yarn being pulled apart By invisible fingers. The purple fire in its eye sockets guttered and died. The dark mana that animated its bones evaporated like morning dew.

The skeleton warrior fell apart. Its bones clattered to the ground in a heap, nothing more than ordinary, lifeless remains. The dark magic that had given it form and power was completely, utterly gone.

At the same moment, the purple glow in every enslaved villager’s eyes went out. All of them. Every single one. The mind control shattered like glass, and the tribesmen dropped their weapons and fell to the ground, unconscious but free.

The clearing fell silent. The battle was over.

Naomi stared at Ken. She had seen him move. She had seen his hand raised. But her brain was refusing to process what she had just witnessed. It was impossible. Ken was useless. Ken was lazy. Ken could not possibly have done what she thought she just saw him do.

Ken was already back in his crouching position, his hands over his head, his face wearing the same terrified expression as before. “Did we win?” he asked in a small, shaky voice. “I was hiding the whole time. I did not see anything. I was very brave about hiding though.”

Naomi opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again. “You...” she started.

“I hid extremely well,” Ken repeated firmly. “Top tier hiding. Possibly my best hiding ever.”

Sayma was looking at the destroyed skeleton with wide, disbelieving eyes. She had sensed the wave of force. She had felt it pass through the air. And she knew, with the cold certainty of a trained mage, that what she had felt was not normal magic. It was not any kind of magic she had ever studied or read about.

But Sayma was also smart enough to know that some questions were better left unasked. For now.

Princess Iris rushed to the fallen tribesmen. She knelt beside the nearest one, a middle-aged woman whose purple eyes had faded to a dull brown. The woman was breathing. She was alive. She was free.

“They are alive,” Iris reported, her voice thick with relief. “Unconscious, but alive. The mind control is completely gone.”

Laxmi and Zinia returned from the jungle, both battered and exhausted. Laxmi’s shoulder was bruised from the tree branch, and Zinia’s hands were scraped and bleeding. But they were grinning.

“Three trees down,” Laxmi reported, cracking her knuckles. “Those were the weirdest things I have ever punched, and I have punched a lot of weird things.”

“The magical network is destroyed,” Sayma confirmed, scanning the clearing with her mana senses. “No dark mana signatures remaining in the village perimeter. The Thousand Tree Prison is broken.”

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