And just like that, as if a switch was flipped, she changed. The gentle aura surrounding her was gone, replaced by an alert aura.

Her eyes glinted as if a blade had caught the light, and she smiled like a cat. "Oh? No answer? How are you going to kill me?"

Stallus gestured at her. "How did you get here? How did you become a prisoner of Crypt Master?"

She looked confused. "Crypt Master? Who’s that? The one who caught me was one of the Inferno Legion."

Azaroth stiffened as he heard that. She is a prisoner of the Legion? Are they using the crypt as a prison too? It should have been expected that maybe they didn’t use it only for training. That was the type of things the Legion will pull.

"Inferno Legion... so you are a prisoner of the Legion," Alex said.

She waved as if it didn’t matter. "Yes, yes, yes. They tried to get information out of me but failed. I’ve been useless to them and honestly, I’ve been waiting for them to kill me. I just didn’t expect they would send children."

She smiled faintly. "Kind of humiliating, you know." She stood, went to the table, dragged it away from its current position, bent down, and reached with her hands for a small trapdoor that was there. She opened it and brought out a sword.

It was a short sword, looking ordinary with nothing special, but the old woman stared at it with adoration. She slowly drew the blade, and the silver it was made of scattered light. She then pointed the sword at them. "Are you ready?"

Are they ready? Azaroth had never been asked this by an enemy before, but still, he brought up his sword. The old woman didn’t look threatening, but the first rule to any fighting was not to underestimate your opponents. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

So Azaroth took the first move. They might not even need their essence shield here. He ran forward and thrust at her head, intending to take her head clean off her shoulders, but with a flick of her hand, her sword stopped him cold.

She was smiling now as she moved back and then slashed at him, but Azaroth’s feet had already carried him back. "You are fast, aren’t you? But not fast enough!"

Then she disappeared in a puff of air. Azaroth’s eyes twitched, but she was already behind him. He hurriedly turned and brought up his sword.

Their swords clashed, and the force behind her blow sent painful vibrations up his arm, sending Azaroth flying back. The old woman made to follow, but Stallus was there, her flurry of thrusts sending the woman back and forcing her to focus on her.

"Oh! You’re also fast!" the woman said, then increased her speed, and Stallus struggled to keep up. It was as if she was using two swords to fight as she drove her back.

Azaroth, now back on his feet, joined them, but the only thing the woman did was increase her speed. A blur of rapid clashes kept the two of them at bay without even trying.

Alex and Caten could only watch, waiting for an opportunity to use their skills since they could not keep up with her speed like the others could.

"You have potential. But sadly, you are Awakeners who are bent on using their skills. Actually, I am surprised you are able to keep up at all," the old woman casually moved into Stallus’s space after directing her sabre away. She kicked her, sending her back, and turned just in time to use her sword to hold down Azaroth’s.

"The Inferno Legion focuses more on their skills than sword skills."

Azaroth shrugged to remove his sword from under hers. She was holding her weapon only with her right hand while he struggled to pull his out with two hands.

It was as if monstrous strength was trapped inside her. She released her hold, and Azaroth stumbled back.

"Oh my! I haven’t had this much fun since my apprentice days!" She smiled at them.

And then a white streak of lightning flew out of the air, coming straight at her. She looked at it slowly and then... what happened next was almost impossible.

She was standing there, then her form flickered as she moved forward, cutting the lightning in two.

"What the..." Alex opened his mouth in shock.

He wasn’t the only one. Azaroth was looking at the whole thing as if from a distance. What they just saw was incredible speed that left the woman’s echo behind as she moved forward to cut the lightning, only to return to her original position as if nothing had happened.

Stallus cursed; that was the type of speed she wanted.

The old woman laughed. "Oh, come on! You’re making me blush! But how would you have reacted if you saw me at the peak of my power! I can’t use many martial arts techniques now, and the ones I can use cost a lot of energy."

Azaroth straightened. He understood now why Crypt Master asked them to use their shield when fighting her. There was no way they would be able to hit her for sure.

"Who are you?" Azaroth asked her.

"An Awakener, of course! I belong to the other side of the continent, and I’m one of the thousands of apprentices of the Heavenly Thunder God. I rank at two thousand, six hundred and fifty-seven. That is pretty impressive, isn’t it?" she asked.

Stallus exchanged a glance with Alex, her brows raised. Then she said to the woman, "Yes... that’s impressive. From one, right? One is the strongest to..."

"To ten thousand. That’s the last it was counted, of course. And then there are the unnumbered ones. It is a whole lot of competition to get as close to Master’s martial arts as possible. I was pretty strong at my peak, you know. Even more impressive because I learned martial arts when I was eighty-four!" She smiled warmly at them.