Chapter 284: S Rank Adventurers Party vs. Chimera Mother, Round 2!? — Part 6.
Before Ed or Lita could even process her words, Maddy focused on the most immediate threat to her flank. Zaun, despite his shock, was already recovering his footing. His assassin instincts told him that with Erwin down, he had to create a distraction.
"I have to break her line of sight," Zaun thought, his heart hammering against his ribs as he stared at his paralyzed captain. "If I don’t blind her right now, none of us are walking out of this alley alive."
He reached for a hidden smoke pellet at his belt, intending to vanish.
He was too slow.
Maddy used her Thumping Locomotion to close the distance instantly, appearing right in front of him like a shadow tearing through the dark. Zaun’s eyes widened as he tried to drive his backup dagger toward her throat.
"What?"
Using Reflexive Body Control, Maddy caught his wrist mid air. Her grip, enhanced by Constricting Strength, locked like an iron shackle. With a fluid, sweeping movement, she twisted his arm down and delivered a swift, precise strike with the flat of her round shield against his solar plexus.
"GAAAH—!"
The blunt impact instantly short circuited his nerves. Zaun’s posture crumbled, his daggers slipping from his fingers as his limbs went completely numb. Maddy caught him before he hit the ground and slid him gently against the wall right next to Erwin. He remained conscious, his eyes tracking her in sheer terror, but he couldn’t move so much as a finger.
"Zaun!" Lita shrieked, her panic finally breaking whatever composure she had left. Her eyes flared with a desperate, wild fury as she gripped her staff. "That’s it! I don’t care about the noise anymore! I will decimate you! I’ll show you my true power—"
"Lita, no! Don’t you dare!" Gela countered immediately, her voice sharp with frantic alarm as she grabbed Lita’s arm to pull her back. "Do not ever do that! That is the absolute last thing we can do right now, we can’t make that mistake! That is not why we came here—"
Before Gela could finish her sentence or explain what they were hiding, Maddy moved to secure her next target. She had zero interest in waiting for them to argue or unleash whatever hidden card they were holding.
Using Serpentine Locomotion, Maddy bypassed the distracted front line entirely, her hooded figure blurring through the shadows as she closed the distance to the remaining members.
Maddy targeted Gela next. As the party’s primary support mage, Gela was the one keeping the remaining members anchored. If she fell, the rest of their coordination would completely collapse.
Before Gela could even release her grip on Lita’s arm, Maddy materialized directly in front of her. Gela’s eyes widened in sheer panic, her breath catching in her throat. She instinctively tried to raise her wooden staff to form a desperate, short range kinetic barrier, but Maddy’s Reflexive Body Control left no room for a response.
"If I’m going to die again..." Gela whispered, "then I’ll make sure... I die as this woman."
With a precise, fluid motion, Maddy swiped her left hand forward, striking the center of the staff. The sheer force shattered the wooden weapon instantly, sending the broken fragments clattering across the wet cobblestones. In the same breath, Maddy used two fingers to tap the precise nerve clusters at the base of Gela’s neck.
A sudden, painless numbness washed through Gela’s torso and limbs. Her knees instantly buckled, and her strength drained away. Maddy caught her by the shoulder before she could hit the ground harshly, guiding her form down gently until she was propped against the stone wall next to Erwin and Zaun. Gela remained completely conscious, her chest heaving as she stared up in absolute disbelief, entirely immobilized.
Lita stared at her three immobilized teammates lined up against the wall. Tears of sheer frustration and anger welled up in her eyes, blurring her vision.
"This is exactly why I hate everyone who sticks to the damn rules! We always follow what everybody says, we always play it safe, and look where it got us! Now they’re all down! Argh, I hate this! I hate what I am right now, and I hate how weak this body is!"
Maddy didn’t hesitate. Stepping deep into Lita’s guard, she swept her leg forward to disrupt her balance while simultaneously delivering a swift, blunt strike with the flat of her shield to Lita’s midsection. The wind was instantly knocked out of the mage.
As Lita stumbled backward, Maddy applied a quick pressure point strike to her shoulders, neutralizing her nervous system. Lita slid down the wall, completely paralyzed from the neck down, wide awake but unable to lift a finger.
Four down. Only one remained.
Maddy slowly turned her head toward the back line, her violet eyes locking onto Ed, who stood frozen with his trembling hands still hovering over his useless musket.
"Please... please, spare me," Ed stammered, dropping the mangled weapon to the stones. He stumbled backward, his knees shaking violently. "My parents are sick... if I were to die here, there’s no one else to help them. Please, just stop this. I’m begging you!"
Maddy took a slow, deliberate step forward, her greatsword resting casually against her armor. "I am not the type of girl who can be pleased by tears," she said coldly, her voice entirely unmoved by his desperate pleas.
"No... you don’t understand," Ed whispered.
Suddenly, his panicked breathing stopped. The terrified, shaking marksman vanished, and his posture straightened into something completely unnatural. The cowardice in his face melted away into a chilling, blank expression.
"What I am pleasing... is for you to stop now, because..."
Ed’s voice completely shifted, disrupting into a strange, buzzing frequency that sounded less human and more like the unnatural drone of a monstrous swarm. His eyes clouded over, reflecting a hollow, dead light.
"...you messed with the wrong ones."
Before Maddy could execute her final strike to incapacitate him, a sudden, violent instinct screamed inside her mind. Her Acute Predator Awareness and Vibration Sensitivity flared with a level of danger she hadn’t felt since entering the city.
A heavy, oppressive weight dropped over the alleyway, so intense that the air itself felt thick and suffocating. It was an ominous, kingly aura—the presence of an absolute alpha monster.
