With her job finished, Katarina took a deep breath. Glowing white lights began to circle around her, obscuring her in a blinding brilliance that hid her entire body for a few seconds.
Then, the light subsided. And suddenly, all the pressure inside the room disappeared. Michael found respite in the air, feeling his muscles relaxed and all the tension released.
Katarina returned in his vision, with her dazzling diamond armor gone and replaced with her casual attire of a white tunic and pants. Michael almost wanted to laugh. The contrast between her ethereal Nascent Spirit form and her regular attire was even more disparate than night and day. Looking at her now made him think she was a normal human, as if she wasn't a demigod that could control an atomic explosion within the palm of her hands.
"Whew, that was close," he said, breathing a sigh of relief. "You got here just in time."
Katarina turned around, her countenance serious and confrontational, making him freeze up. "What happened here?"
He shrugged, trying to keep his composure as he lied. "What? They appeared out of nowhere and suddenly exploded."
She crossed her arms against her chest, askance. "You're not telling me the whole truth. They wouldn't have self-destructed without reason."
She stared at the blast mark on the ground, analyzing where the Artifice released their subatomic explosion.
Truth be told, she was unable to catch a glimpse at the hooded figures. She only felt their signature Aubility Power spike up at the penultimate moments right before they exploded, which led her towards their location. Thankfully, that was just about enough time for her to arrive and contain it.
But judging by the power of the explosion, the Artifice they used must have been at least at the 5th stage level. That was weird. 5th stage Artifice users were no longer just pawns that could be sacrificed whenever they wanted. They were a critical part of their organization akin to platoon leaders.
They wouldn't have triggered their self-destruction unless they absolutely had to.
But… Why?
The only one here was Keo. Only he could have fought against them. And by her estimation, there must be about three or more of those guys here.
Keo faced an elite group of assassins savagely trained with the subconscious intent to kill anything and everyone who got in their way. Their rigorous training would have allowed them to overcome any difference in cultivation just through pure teamwork.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that their group could have defeated a 9th stage Maugnetic under the right circumstances.
Now, she originally believed that Keo was nothing more than a defenseless geek like her father. But the fact that he was able to survive against an onslaught of this magnitude meant that he was a lot stronger than he was letting on.
He must be a Maugnetic with a pretty considerable cultivation realm.
This surprise was easy to digest. After all, there must have been a reason why her father chose him as his protege. Strength and wisdom went hand in hand in tumultuous times like these.
But that still didn't make sense. If she were to assume Keo to be in the 9th stage of the Body Formation realm (which was already quite absurd given his age), it still wouldn't have explained what had happened.
For those assassins to self-destruct, they must have felt that their doom was all but guaranteed. They must have been forced into a situation where escape was nary an option.
Yet they should have been able to, if they were only dealing with a single 9th stage Maugnetic.
This was impossible… unless Keo's strength exceeded that of the 9th stage.
"You're not just a history student, are you?" she asked him.
Michael took a deep breath and stood up, standing face to face with her.
"You're right. I'm not telling the truth about myself. But you're not either."
She kept silent, indignant and cagey.
"They? So you know about them. You know about the Artifice."
Her eyes widened. She didn't expect to hear those words from him. Did her father tell him that?
"You've got a lot of secrets up your sleeve, so it's only natural that I keep my secrets hidden too. Tell me about them, and I'll tell you what you need to know," he said, his hands in akimbo.
A secret for a secret. That was the only proper exchange for information of this magnitude.
Katarina, caught off guard by his aggressiveness, turned silent for a moment. Her curiosity burned thinking about how he defeated those assassins, but her logical reasoning suppressed that desire.
She can't tell him about them. It's too dangerous.
"So you're not going to tell me?" Michael asked again.
Katarina stayed taciturn, letting the moment pass.
…
…
…
After the tumultuous first few minutes of the hooded figures' assault, the Elven Village began to rally themselves into recovery.
Lady Farren was at the forefront. With her arrows, the fires spreading across the gargantuan Acacia forest began to be quelled. She and the rest of her guards worked in perfect synchronicity, extinguishing one patch of fire after another.
The reason why it took this long was because they first made sure that the fire wouldn't spread outwards any further. They contained it in the vicinity of the village before extinguishing the rest of them.
And it worked. Tens of minutes after the initial explosion shook the village, there were no fires left to extinguish.
White smoke and mist rose to the skies, signalling the infernal fire's defeat.
"Take stock of our villagers," she commanded her guards. "Make sure no one was hurt."
Even after extinguishing the fire, the turbulent times were not over. Lady Farren immediately got to work on recovery, making sure that each and every villager was accounted for. She didn't care that the beautiful barks of their Acacia forests turned into coal. All that mattered was everyone's safety.
Then, she remembered her guests. She immediately rushed towards the Municipal Hall, seeing it strangely devoid of any burned marks and charred wood.
She opened Michael's room, seeing an awkward stand-off between him and Katarina.