Third Person's POV

It was so fast that it blurred, and before she could react, it coiled tightly around both of her legs and locked them together with crushing force.

Her balance was destroyed immediately.

Arlene screamed in fear and anger as her hood flew backward, revealing her shining blue hair that scattered wildly through the air while her beautiful eyes widened with raw terror filling them.

She could do nothing.

The green appendage, which she now realized was some monstrous vine, tightened around her legs and yanked downward with brutal force.

She was dragged toward the snow-covered earth while a scream erupted from her mouth.

Everything had happened so quickly that not even a single full second seemed to pass.

One moment, she had been walking, and in the next, she was helpless prey.

As she was dragged downward and saw the white ground rushing toward her, a dreadful thought seized her heart.

She was about to be pulled alive beneath the frozen earth by an unseen attacker.

But just as despair began to rise, an explosive slicing sound tore through the air like thunder.

At the same time, a flurry of dark blue aura light flashed beside her vision.

Before her fear-filled eyes, the severed upper half of the green vine spun through the air in writhing pieces, spraying frozen sap across the snow.

The immense downward pull vanished instantly.

She was still falling from the interrupted drag, her body tumbling in disarray, and she did not even need to turn to know who had acted.

Only the armored aura master possessed such decisive speed, strength, and sharp force among her group to save her from this powerful enemy.

Yet Arlene had no time to steady herself, much less thank her savior, as the snow-covered ground around her suddenly erupted once more.

Dozens of thick and thin green vines burst outward from every direction like serpents waking from beneath the earth.

Some were as thin as fingers.

Others were as thick as arms.

All of them whipped through the air with terrifying speed and converged toward her helpless, falling figure from every side at once.

But this time, unlike the earlier moment where her actions had barely managed to keep pace with the sudden danger and her instincts, Arlene's reflexes finally caught up with her survival instincts.

In one swift motion, she unsheathed the two short swords strapped along her thighs and brought them up in a crossing arc as she slashed outward with all the strength she could muster toward the incoming wave of vines that surged toward her from every direction.

Though she was a pure mage and had never cultivated her body through aura techniques like the armored aura master, leaving her physical strength far inferior in a direct hand to hand confrontation, she still placed absolute faith in the weapons she wielded.

These were no ordinary blades.

Each of them had been carefully inscribed with specialized runes of sharpness and had been crafted through the finest techniques of her clan, while their bodies were forged from a rare and precious metal known as Cobalt Blue Cold Iron.

This metal was not something easily obtained or traded.

It was mined only from the deepest and most dangerous veins hidden within the Aurora Frost Mountain range, and even Arlene herself did not know the exact locations of those mines, as such knowledge was guarded as a top secret within her royal lineage.

With such weapons in her hands, she expected no resistance or at least expected at least some degree of dominance, yet reality struck harshly.

Her blades met the green vines, but instead of slicing cleanly through them, they only managed to carve shallow cuts across their surfaces.

The vines trembled, split slightly, and bled faint green sap, but they did not break apart as expected, while her blades almost fell from her grasp as a powerful shock hit her wrists, making her frown in pain.

The difference between the toughness of the vines and her strength was now clear to her.

Even so, her desperate resistance bought a fraction of time and that fraction was enough.

In the very next instant, the armored aura master arrived like a storm.

He swept through the air in a wide arc, his weapon trailing a surge of dark blue aura light that cut through the converging vines with overwhelming force.

This time, he didn't hold back in the fear of hurting the princess unintentionally, as she was about to be fully covered in a vine wave.

The entire wave of vines was shredded into pieces mid-air, and its fragments scattered across the snow before they could close in on Arlene.

Without wasting a single heartbeat, he reached forward and seized the princess by the scruff of her neck, gripping her firmly without ceremony.

In the next moment, he leapt into the air with explosive force and retreated rapidly away from the ambush point.

Having already detected the general direction of the attackers through his soul sense, he did not linger and instead created a safe distance before landing once more on a higher stretch of the uneven mountain slope.

His posture remained tense, and his gaze sharp as he was fully prepared for a follow-up attack.

Yet to his slight surprise, the chain assault he had expected did not immediately come.

The forest grew momentarily still.

On the other hand, Arlene, who was still caught in his grip, gradually steadied her breathing as she looked around at the uneven terrain they now stood upon.

The sudden silence only made everything feel more dangerous.

At the same time, she became acutely aware of the way she was being held.

The armored master's rough grip at the back of her neck made her uncomfortable, as no man had ever handled her so bluntly before, and no one had ever dared to treat her with such disregard for her status.

A faint blush of anger and embarrassment rose within her as she struggled slightly to free herself while trying to express her displeasure.