"Woman, have you gone mad?"
Under the barrage of attacks from Audrey, Malcolm’s tone became frantic.
While loudly scolding, he also began to retreat.
He intended to continue initiating his spells with movements more concealed.
After the use of that ultimate technique just now, the condition inside his body wasn’t good. The idea of competing in physical strength directly with Audrey, as if in a train carriage, was utterly out of the question.
Malcolm had two choices to achieve victory.
Either wait until Ronald and Audrey could no longer move due to their injuries and deal with them to conclude today’s battle,
or find an opportunity to activate his artifact and continue casting spells to completely crush the two people before him.
That choice seemed increasingly unlikely to come.
Before Malcolm, the continuously attacking Audrey was like a Valkyrie on the battlefield.
Her whole being poured into the wielding of her weapon, her attacks stringing one after the other, all movements perfectly and fluidly linked together, as exquisite as a dancer performing on stage.
Seizing upon the possibility of victory, Audrey had no intention of showing mercy.
Or rather, there was only one thought in her mind now.
— To suppress the enemy before her.
— Until the protection spells on the opponent were rendered utterly ineffective.
Facing the ever-pressing onslaught, Malcolm could only keep retreating, ensuring the balance of his body.
After several more passive defenses, Malcolm suddenly roared.
A mix of doubt and wishful thinking entwined in his heart, partly suspecting that the nun before him had seen through his combat style, but also hoping that the other was just desperately struggling before death.
He desperately suppressed the unease in his heart.
After once again blocking Audrey’s assault with his protection.
Malcolm realized he could not go on ; compared to the ease at the beginning, the white glow on his body was now approaching half of its previous brightness.
He couldn’t delay any longer...
With this realization, he called out loudly to the nun before him,
"Having been struck by my spells just now, if you don’t receive healing in time, you only have one path -- death, I..."
Malcolm had only spoken halfway when a blue arc of light once again came smashing down from above his head, causing the words he had prepared to be swallowed back once more.
Audrey continued her relentless assault, heedless of anything else.
The nun’s face might have been pathetically pale, but a serene smile still hung on her face as ever, calmly watching the enemy before her.
At that moment, Malcolm suddenly leaped backward.
For just beneath his feet, two unidentified things had "touched" him!
Hiding within the black mist, Ronald was also controlling two wraiths to launch attacks. He was not a professional warrior after all, and he had the presence of mind not to disturb Audrey’s attack.
Finally, Malcolm’s emotions reached the most delicate state.
Apart from the empty eye sockets dripping with blood, panic began to appear uncontrollably on his face.
The black fog roiled continuously around his body; he couldn’t see the sky above nor discern the directions around him, only the warm earth beneath his feet telling Malcolm that he still stood in the same place as before.
Was there truly no way out...
Inevitably, the Spellcaster thought so.
In his field of vision, he could now only see the church nun in a black robe before him.
Yet it was this only visible thing that kept pushing him toward the abyss known as death with her attacks.
With every strike from the iron rod in the nun’s hand, emanating blue arcs, his heart shuddered.
All the spells he commanded depended on the magical artifacts he had crafted.
Suddenly, as Malcolm kept retreating, he stepped on a pebble.
Although nearly losing his balance, the feeling in his heart right now was one of boundless ecstasy!
His own spell had indeed scoured the ground completely clean before.
But as he moved away from the center of the scorched earth, the surrounding ground finally revealed usable, hard rocks. This unintentional discovery instantly brought with it the possibility of victory for him.
With the nearly completely extinguished white light barely holding off Audrey’s slashing attack, the man grimaced in pain and then knelt on the ground while placing his right hand against the sleeve of his left, forcibly aiming his palm at the nun in front of him.
The next second, the stones on the surrounding ground obeyed the spell’s control and shot up from the ground, hurtling straight towards the nun in front of Malcolm.
His attack was successful.
Audrey’s body was already in a considerably weakened state, and now, due to her relentless attacks depleting all her strength, she had lost the ability to fend off this threat.
In just an instant, Audrey was struck by at least four or more stones. The stones, controlled by magic, possessed destructive power akin to being hurled by a catapult.
Hit so suddenly by the heavy blow, the last of the nun’s strength vanished like smoke.
Even as the smile on her face began to fade, she still threw the iron rod in her hand at the man in front of her with the last of her strength.
However, facing this feeble throw, Malcolm easily sidestepped it.
Subconsciously, the man heaved a heavy sigh of relief.
He then prepared to stand up and reached out to adjust his glasses.
Suddenly, the sound of a sharp weapon piercing flesh sounded at his chest.
Malcolm’s hand stopped right over his chest.
He looked down and saw, with his one good eye wide open, the spectacle of blue arcs of light piercing through his torso.
—It was the iron rod imbued with Audrey’s cursed magic.
Ronald, who had been hidden in the mist, waiting for his opportunity, was also waiting for a moment suitable for him.
And now, the time for him to act had come.
Taking up the spear Audrey had thrown, Ronald expended all his strength to stab at the enemy.
Thus, a drastically different outcome occurred.
Accompanied by a barely audible ’zss’ sound, the faint white light on Malcolm’s body completely vanished with this strike.
After enduring Audrey’s frequent attacks and then being targeted by Ronald’s ghostly attacks, and now the final blow, the protection around his body was finally completely breached.
The next second, the rolling black mist surged mercilessly towards the man.
Enveloping him entirely.
Malcolm didn’t even have time to lift his hand, his body was utterly destroyed by the pure force of ’brutality’ unleashed in its full capacity.
Under the night sky, the black mist gradually dissipated.
Dragging his own equally battered body, Ronald staggered over to Audrey.
The nun, although severely wounded, still retained a clear consciousness.
Lying there looking up at the man, she struggled to lift her palm and pat the ground beside her as an invitation to lie down together:
"Well done, Mr. Ronald."
"Come sit here for a while, the ground is quite warm."
Ronald also smiled, then plopped down next to the nun:
"More than that, I’m concerned about what we’re going to do next."
Audrey immediately answered:
"Just wait patiently, my fellow believers will come."
"Among them are professional Caster specialized in Healing."
Hearing her answer, Ronald pondered for a few seconds, then suddenly, half-jokingly asked:
"Audrey, what if your fellow believers arrive and we’ve already breathed our last?"
Facing Ronald’s jest at such a time, the nun kept the smile on her face and responded in an equally calm tone:
"then the grimoire on that corpse over there would be missing its rightful owner."