It was an attack meant to physically bisect a solid obsidian boulder.

The air pressure generated by the falling blade parted the raindrops before the metal even hit but Morwenna didn’t dodge.

She didn’t even widen her stance.

She lazily raised the mediocre cheap iron longsword with a single hand.

"Heh..."

She didn’t try to block the overwhelming force head-on as that would have instantly shattered her cheap sword and pulverized her wrist.

Instead, she effortlessly engaged her passive Tidal-Blade Arts.

As the massive mythic axe descended, Morwenna’s iron blade precisely caught the outer edge of the weapon at a flawless angle.

Morwenna didn’t push, instead she pulled.

She generated a highly condensed burst of phantom heavy-water pressure directly from her wrist and she perfectly redirected Brida’s overwhelming apocalyptic downward momentum completely to the side, allowing the Captain’s own physical mass to work against her.

CLANG!

The deafening ear-splitting sound of mythic deep-iron clashing violently against standard cheap steel rang across the muddy field like a literal cannon shot.

The energy of the redirected attack completely missed Morwenna.

The axe slammed violently into the ground directly next to the Dread Queen’s boots.

The impact was catastrophic.

A violent massive gust of compressed wind exploded outward from the point of impact in a rapid 360-degree shockwave, tearing the top layer of mud completely off the field.

The force of the blast swept directly across the sidelines.

Every single girl standing in the Vanguard ranks shrieked in collective surprise.

The sudden, violent updraft of the shockwave aggressively blew their newly acquired, auto-fitting canvas skirts and tactical tunics entirely up around their waists, completely exposing their thighs and standard-issue cotton undergarments to the freezing rain.

Silas stood perfectly still on the sidelines.

He didn’t politely avert his eyes and he didn’t blush furiously and turn his head away like a flustered generic light-novel protagonist.

’Just focus on what’s ahead of you Soldier... the temptation in this place is truly too much.’ Silas thought, he would have looked but Eluned was currently glaring at him.

Back in the dead center of the sparring ring, Brida’s eyes widened in shock.

Her massive attack had completely missed.

The head of her mythic axe was buried two feet deep into the solid mud and her entire body was heavily pitched forward, dragged down by the momentum of her own missed swing.

"Ugh! The hell?!"

She was off-balance and her guard was completely wide open.

Morwenna didn’t use the cheap iron sword to counterattack as she didn’t need a weapon to finish this.

She fluidly dropped her stance, moving with the silent grace of a shark slipping through deep water.

She stepped cleanly and directly into Brida’s personal space, completely bypassing the haft of the buried axe.

Morwenna calmly clenched her free left fist.

She didn’t rear her arm back for a massive telegraphed haymaker and she didn’t yell an attack name like some stupid people.

She simply delivered a short and terrifyingly precise one-inch punch directly into the dead center of Brida’s completely exposed stomach.

The initial impact was incredibly quiet... It sounded like a heavy textbook dropping onto a desk but exactly a fraction of a microscopic second later, the true physics of the Tidal-Blade Arts engaged.

A massive conical shockwave of pure force erupted entirely out of the back of Brida’s spine.

The invisible wave of pressure violently tore through the ambient air, completely throwing all laws of aerodynamics to the wind.

BOOM!

The shockwave shot diagonally upward into the atmosphere with a deafening sound that rattled the iron torches on the barracks walls.

The atmospheric force punched a massive circular hole completely through the heavy, ash-choked gray storm clouds hovering high above the territory.

The storm was instantly cleared.

A brilliant uninterrupted beam of pure silver moonlight shined directly down onto the muddy sparring ring, illuminating the two women.

Brida stood completely frozen for a single, agonizing second.

Her massive durability was incredibly impressive for a frontier mercenary but it absolutely wasn’t designed or scaled to casually tank an SSS-Rank mythic brawler’s armor-penetrating heavy-water strike.

But she didn’t physically explode...

"I channeled the force through your physical body," Morwenna explained casually, slowly lowering her fist and adjusting the collar of her oversized coat. "So your internal organs weren’t immediately eviscerated into paste... You’re very much welcome."

Brida’s eyes rolled entirely into the back of her head.

The towering infantry commander completely, totally fainted on the absolute spot.

She collapsed straight backward like a felled redwood tree, hitting the wet mud with a heavy undignified splash.

She was completely down for the count.

Total silence fell over the girls.

The sixty-eight girls standing on the sidelines stared up at the massive perfectly circular hole punched into the storm clouds, and then slowly looked back down at their strongest commander lying unconscious in a muddy puddle.

The fight had lasted exactly four seconds.

Morwenna didn’t gloat and she didn’t strike a victory pose.

She casually shrugged her shoulders, stepping neatly and precisely over Brida’s muscled body.

"Alright, who’s next?"

She looked up at the remaining three challengers standing at the edge of the ring.

A feral excited smile stretched across her pale face. She spun the cheap iron sword in her hand, fully warmed up.

Before Morwenna could even verbally call for the next opponent to step into the mud, the ambient air violently warped.

A rapid blur of dark leather and highly condensed killer intent entered her peripheral vision.

Tasmin had already closed the distance.

The lethal dual-wielding Wilderness Huntress didn’t waste a single microsecond mourning her fallen comrade.

In the brutal unforgiving logic of the woman, Brida getting casually one-shot by the new recruit was just a massive glaring opening waiting to be exploited.

Tasmin moved like a shadow detached from the physical world.

Her footwork was entirely silent against the slick mud.

She exploded into Morwenna’s peripheral vision with her dark mythril Eclipse-Thread Vambraces absorbing the ambient light.

She didn’t announce her presence nor did she roar a battle cry like the heavy infantry tank had.

She simply threw a blinding, hyper-lethal combination of dagger-piercing techniques directly at the Dread Queen’s vital organs.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

The heavy iron daggers blurred into a flurry of gray steel.

Tasmin aimed for the carotid artery, the floating ribs, and the unprotected liver.

It was an assassination sequence designed to completely dismantle a humanoid target in under a second but Morwenna didn’t panic.

She didn’t even shift her boots in the mud as she stood her ground, her stormy gray eyes tracking the incoming blades with terrifying precision.

"Hoho, I like you!"

She casually raised her cheap mediocre iron longsword.

Morwenna engaged the passive flow of her Tidal-Blade Arts. Instead of rigidly blocking the strikes, Morwenna’s wrist became completely fluid.

She met each of Tasmin’s lightning-fast thrusts with the exact perfect amount of phantom heavy-water pressure.

Cling! Clack! Cling!

Sparks flew wildly in the freezing rain.

Morwenna effortlessly parried the barrage, smoothly rolling the momentum of the daggers harmlessly off the edge of her own blade.

"Excellent entry speed!" Morwenna praised loudly over the sound of clashing metal as a genuine approving grin stretched across her pale face. "You completely masked your bloodlust until the exact moment of the strike! Quick thinking!"

Tasmin’s dark eyes narrowed.

She wasn’t used to her targets casually critiquing her assassination forms while actively parrying her to death...

’She’s too fast in close quarters,’ Tasmin’s brain calculated in a fraction of a second. ’Her parry timing is flawless so I need to force her out of her optimal range.’

Tasmin aggressively pushed off her front foot, back-stepping completely out of the Dread Queen’s immediate striking distance.

With a sharp violent flick of her wrists, Tasmin depressed the hidden mechanical latches on her dagger hilts.

Click-clack!

The iron chains violently came loose.

Tasmin instantly transitioned from a close-quarters knife fighter into a mid-range chain-whip specialist.

WHOOSH!

She began aggressively spinning the heavy iron chains through the freezing monsoon rain with the dark metal whistling dangerously as it cut through the air.

She didn’t just spin them defensively. She fought with them, launching a relentless sweeping barrage of erratic unpredictable chain-strikes.

The heavy daggers whipped toward Morwenna from multiple angles... snapping at her ankles, wrapping toward her neck, and crashing down toward her skull.

Morwenna was instantly, forcefully put on the defensive.

"Fucking hell! You can do that too!"

She was forced to rapidly back-pedal through the mud.

Her cheap iron sword blurred as she deflected the heavy incoming chain-strikes.

The Tidal-Blade Arts kept her safe, but the overwhelming volume of attacks completely prevented her from finding a clean opening to counter but Morwenna wasn’t annoyed.

She was smiling even more now.

’It’s not like I can’t beat them at once but it’s much better this way...’

The feral grin on the Dread Queen’s face only grew wider with every strike she parried.

She was fundamentally in her element as she had spent five centuries chained to a rotting log in a sensory deprivation void.

Now, she was dancing in the rain, clashing steel with a very competent crew.

She briefly, intentionally took her eyes off the spinning chains.

She glanced directly toward the sidelines, seeking out the shirtless Sovereign standing in the rain.

’Look at the crew you’ve assembled, Captain...’ Morwenna thought, her heart hammering with a fierce burning devotion as she met Silas’s golden-ringed eyes. ’They are raw... They are unrefined... but they have the absolute spirit of killers. I am going to forge them into weapons for you.’

Her momentary distraction, however, was a massive error.

Before Morwenna could even look back at the spinning chains, the ambient air directly to her left violently, physically warped.

Vwoom!

Aeliana instantly materialized directly at Morwenna’s side.

The Royal Elf hadn’t run across the mud.

She had utilized a micro-spatial warp, folding the physical distance between her backline position and the center of the ring in a single flawless teleportation step.

’I’m glad I was able to perfect this...’ Aeliana thought.

Silas’s eyes went wide on the sidelines.

’Aeliana just intentionally initiated close-quarters combat?’ Silas thought. ’This seems to be turning out very interesting... I wonder why she’s doing all of that.’

The answer was pure jealousy.

Aeliana was very territorial of her Sovereign’s attention.

She had seen the way the Dread Queen looked at Silas.

She had seen Silas give the pirate his own shirt. The Royal Elf was not about to sit on the backline and let the new girl steal all the glory.

Aeliana pivoted her hips flawlessly.

Her slender long leg wrapped entirely in Tier 2 enchanted spider-silk snapped out in a vicious high-speed roundhouse kick aimed directly for the side of Morwenna’s head.

It wasn’t a standard physical strike.

Aeliana had condensed a small gravity well entirely around her boot, artificially increasing the mass of her leg by a factor of fifty.

’That’s right, I learned this from Rowena too...’

It was a kick designed to completely shatter a castle wall.

Morwenna’s combat instincts saved her.

She didn’t have time to raise her sword so she instinctively snapped her left arm up, catching the incoming, gravity-enhanced boot directly on her forearm.

CRUNCH!

The impact was devastating.

The gravity well violently dispersed upon hitting the Dread Queen’s mythic bone density.

The mud beneath Morwenna’s boots physically exploded outward, cratering under the force.

"Sneaky little Elf!" Morwenna laughed, completely absorbing the blow with her 160 Vitality.

She didn’t even wince.

Before Morwenna could grab Aeliana’s leg and snap it like a twig, the battlefield dynamics violently shifted again.

Tasmin didn’t let up the pressure.

"Burn!" Tasmin yelled over the rain.

The woman forcefully surged her raw mana directly into her Tier 3 Eclipse-Thread Vambraces.

FWOOSH!

The heavy iron daggers at the end of her spinning chains instantly caught on fire.

A thick dark crimson magical flame completely engulfed the spinning metal.

Tasmin aggressively spun the flaming chains in a massive, sweeping figure-eight pattern.

The intense heat radiating from the weapons instantly vaporized the freezing rain as a thick cloud of white steam exploded across the sparring ring as the fire clashed directly with the wet environment.

The flaming chains whipped viciously toward Morwenna’s face, leaving trails of crimson fire in the air.