Morwenna was forced to rapidly release Aeliana’s leg and violently back-step to avoid getting her face completely melted off.

The output of the Tier 3 flames forced the Dread Queen to completely abandon her defensive anchor and retreat.

"Hehe... I like it, give me more!"

She slid backward through the mud, creating a desperate ten-yard gap between herself and the burning chains.

It was the exact specific trap the women had set for her.

"Now, Rowena!" Aeliana shouted, micro-warping backward to clear the blast radius.

On the far edge of the muddy field, Rowena stood perfectly poised.

The mage had already completely bypassed her incantation time.

She stood with her feet planted firmly in the mud, raising the violently glowing Sapphire-Core World Weaver high above her head.

The brilliant, blinding blue crystal core pulsed with a high level of condensed arcane energy.

Rowena locked her targeting reticle directly onto Morwenna’s exact physical coordinates.

She channeled her mana directly through the mythic staff, manipulating the fundamental laws of physics.

"Even the deepest oceans must inevitably bow to the weight of the stars..." Rowena delivered a completely flawless quip that she had seen in her Academy textbooks.

She slammed the butt of her white mythril staff violently into the mud.

KRA-KOOM!

The spell activated instantly.

A massive fifty-yard-wide circular runic array flared to life directly beneath Morwenna’s boots, glowing with a deep volatile purple light.

Morwenna felt it immediately.

The gravitational constant inside the glowing array violently shifted.

The surrounding gravity didn’t just double... It didn’t just triple...

The gravity instantly increased by a factor of exactly 10x!

The physical effects were immediate and horrifying.

The remnants of the freezing rain falling inside the fifty-yard array suddenly accelerated to the speed of fired bullets, slamming into the mud and instantly vaporizing.

The thick wet mud itself violently compressed, sinking two full feet into the bedrock under the unyielding atmospheric pressure.

Morwenna was caught dead in the center of the well.

The massive crushing gravitational weight slammed down onto her shoulders like a falling mountain.

Her knees buckled slightly.

The oversized dark canvas coat she was wearing actively groaned as the fabric strained against the artificial G-force.

The cheap basic iron longsword in her right hand instantly became too heavy to lift with the steel visibly warping and bending toward the earth under its own newly magnified mass.

On the sidelines, the girls completely erupted into wild, triumphant cheering.

"They got her!" Fenna yelled, pumping her fist in the air.

"Nobody can physically move under a 10x gravity well!" Maren cheered enthusiastically. "The new girl is completely locked down!"

Silas stood on the sidelines, completely silent.

He didn’t cheer.

He just stared analytically at the woman trapped in the center of the glowing purple crater.

’The synergy is actually incredible,’ Silas analyzed with a sense of pride. ’Tasmin provides the overwhelming suppression fire... Aeliana provides the unpredictable spatial disruption to force the target into a designated kill zone... and Rowena drops the inescapable crowd-control nuke to finish the job.’

It was a flawless execution of high-level RPG raid mechanics.

’But...’ Silas thought with a simple shake of his head. ’They are applying mortal raid mechanics to an entity that literally doesn’t operate on mortal biology...’

Inside the crushing 10x gravity well, Morwenna was completely immobilized.

The weight pressing down on her spine should have instantly pulverized her internal organs into paste.

It should have shattered her femurs and entirely flattened her against the mud but Morwenna wasn’t a mortal.

She had a baseline Vitality of 160.

She had spent the last five centuries entirely submerged at the absolute bottom of the Abyssal Trench which was a sunless void where the natural atmospheric pressure was easily a thousand to a million times stronger than the spell Rowena had just cast.

To the Dread Queen, a 10x gravity well didn’t feel like a crushing mountain.

It felt like a slightly heavy nostalgic blanket.

Morwenna didn’t scream in agony.

She slowly lifted her head.

"Heh..."

Her stormy gray eyes locked onto the three girls standing triumphantly at the edge of the crater.

A low terrifying chuckle vibrated out of her chest.

The chuckle quickly escalated into a loud booming laugh that easily overpowered the sound of the rain and the grinding magic.

The cheering on the sidelines completely died.

Rowena’s aristocratic smile instantly vanished. Aeliana’s pointed ears drooped in sheer, unadulterated horror.

"Is... is she laughing?!" Tamsin gasped, freezing her spinning chains.

Morwenna slowly straightened her spine.

The bones in her neck popped loudly as she rolled her shoulders against the crushing 10x gravity.

She casually let go of the warped, ruined iron longsword.

The useless weapon hit the compressed mud with a heavy thud.

She didn’t need it anymore... It was time for school...

"You girls have excellent raw instincts!" Morwenna praised them loudly from the center of the gravity well with her voice carrying the terrifying authority of a seasoned drill instructor.

She slowly took a single step forward through the crushing pressure.

The ground violently cracked beneath her boot.

"But your foundational mechanics are completely sloppy!" Morwenna lectured them aggressively, ignoring the spell meant to paralyze her.

She pointed a pale, water-logged finger directly at Tasmin.

"Huntress!" Morwenna barked at Tamsin. "Your flames are too wild! You are wasting massive amounts of thermal energy heating the ambient air! Focus the mana strictly onto the very tip of your blades to maximize armor penetration, instead of just waving a torch around like a blind drunk!"

Tasmin violently flinched with her pride completely taking a critical hit.

Morwenna immediately turned her terrifying gaze toward the Royal Elf.

"Elf!" Morwenna shouted at Aeliana. "Your spatial shift is highly effective, but it is incredibly loud! You practically broadcast your exact landing coordinates a full second before you materialize! Mask the mana signature of your exit point, or a real monster will simply leave a blade waiting for your neck when you arrive!"

Aeliana’s jaw completely dropped.

’But I did all of that work...’ She thought.

Finally, the Dread Queen glared directly at the human mage currently sweating profusely as she tried to maintain the massive gravity spell.

"And Mage!" Morwenna critiqued Rowena mercilessly. "Your spell-craft is arrogant! This gravity well is massive, but it is completely leaking energy at the outer edges! If you condense the radius of the array by exactly twenty percent, you could completely double the atmospheric crush without spending an extra drop of mana!"

Rowena visibly trembled with her grip slipping slightly on the Sapphire-Core staff.

"I am currently holding you inside a 10x gravity field!" Rowena yelled defensively, desperately trying to salvage her authority. "How are you even speaking?!"

"Because I am the Queen of the Abyss, you little upstart," Morwenna sneered, her feral smile turning to one of a predator. "And your gravity is weak."

Morwenna didn’t take another slow step.

She aggressively surged her 4500-point mana pool.

" Anchor!" Morwenna commanded.

CLANG!

A massive thick spectral iron chain entirely materialized out of the thin air wrapped around her left forearm.

She didn’t throw it at the girls as she forcefully swung her arm in a massive upward arc, throwing the heavy spectral boarding anchor high into the rainy sky, completely outside the radius of the gravity well.

The spectral anchor violently hooked onto the empty air itself, biting into the spatial fabric of the realm.

CRUNCH!

"Heave!" Morwenna roared.

She violently, aggressively yanked the spectral chain backward.

The physics-defying kinetic pull of the Anchor instantly launched Morwenna’s body completely out of the glowing purple crater.

She shot through the air like a fired cannonball, entirely bypassing the 10x gravity well in a single unstoppable arc.

Morwenna landed heavily in the slick mud directly in front of the three Vanguard girls.

The impact shook the ground.

"Class dismissed," Morwenna whispered with her stormy eyes glowing.

The Vanguard girls didn’t even have a microscopic fraction of a second to react.

Morwenna moved with SSS-Rank fluidity.

She stepped completely inside Rowena’s guard.

With a precise open-palmed strike, she hit the exact center of the mage’s chest.

She didn’t use lethal force.

She used the Tidal-Blade Arts to send a gentle wave of phantom water pressure directly into Rowena’s diaphragm, completely, instantly knocking the wind out of her lungs.

Rowena’s eyes rolled back.

She collapsed instantly into the mud, completely unconscious before she even hit the ground.

’Fucking hell!’

Aeliana tried to panic-warp away.

Morwenna smoothly swept her heavy boot through the mud, catching the Royal Elf perfectly behind the ankles.

Aeliana’s spatial cast was violently interrupted.

She was swept off her feet, suspended horizontally in the air for a fraction of a second.

"Nooo running!"

Morwenna casually reached out, tapped a nerve cluster on the back of the Elf’s neck, and let her fall harmlessly into a puddle, completely knocked out.

Tasmin was the last one standing.

The woman desperately swung her flaming chains directly toward Morwenna’s face but Morwenna didn’t dodge.

She casually reached out her bare hand and completely caught the blazing Tier 3 mythril chain mid-swing.

The dark crimson flames failed to burn her pale highly durable skin.

She forcefully yanked the chain.

Tasmin was violently jerked forward, flying entirely off balance.

Morwenna stepped aside, letting the assassin fly past her.

As Tasmin sailed by, Morwenna delivered a gentle chop to the back of the assassin’s head.

Tasmin instantly went limp, face-planting spectacularly into the mud alongside her comrades.

The devastating counter-attack had taken exactly three point five seconds.

Morwenna stood alone in the center of the muddy field.

Four of Blessed Land’s strongest and powerful combatants were currently lying completely unconscious in the dirt around her boots.

She hadn’t drawn a single drop of blood and she hadn’t used a lethal weapon.

Morwenna had dismantled their raid formation using pure fundamental mechanics and overwhelming physical stats.

On the sidelines, the remaining women were completely silent.

Silas stood with his arms crossed over his bare chest.

He looked quite satisfied.

"Morwenna’s pretty strong, huh?" Silas commented casually, glancing down at the Goddess clinging to his side.

Eluned aggressively puffed her cheeks out, her glowing green eyes narrowing as she glared at the Dread Queen standing victoriously in the mud.

She was violently jealous of the blatant praise her Lord was offering the new girl.

"Yes, she is," Eluned admitted through gritted teeth, unable to deny the undeniable martial display. "She has decent physical stats for a feral trench-rat."

Silas raised an eyebrow with an amused smirk crossing his face.

He decided to poke the divine bear.

"If you two were to actively fight right now..." Silas proposed the hypothetical matchup, fully analyzing the SSS-Rank scaling. "Considering her extreme magic resistance and your overwhelming AoE output..."

Eluned didn’t let him finish the tactical breakdown.

"If we were to fight right now," Eluned interrupted him firmly, crossing her arms beneath her chest to emphasize her point. "It would cause me a little bit of trouble... Her close-quarters speed is very annoying."

Silas looked down at her, perfectly setting up the trope.

"But would you lose?" Silas asked deadpan.

Eluned entirely completely puffed her chest out with her face radiating divine arrogance.

"Nah, I’d win," Eluned declared flawlessly.

Silas smiled.

"That’s my girl..."

Immediately the goddess became a blushing mess.

Out in the muddy field, the silence of the girls finally broke.

It didn’t break with anger or resentment.

It broke with respect! A lot of respect!

"YEAH!" one of the shieldmaidens in the back row screamed, throwing her fist into the air.

"That was incredible!" an archer yelled, jumping up and down.

"Teach us how to punch holes in the sky, Instructor!"

The small army of women completely erupted into wild enthusiastic cheers.

They had seen pure undisputed strength, and as warriors, they respected the absolute peak of the food chain.

Morwenna stood in the center of the mud, listening to the cheers.

A massive genuine smile entirely broke across her pale face.

The heavy crushing darkness of her five-century isolation was completely gone.

She had a ship again and she had a crew that respected her.

’All because of this man...’

She triumphantly raised her empty hand high into the rainy sky, actively cheering for her own flawless victory.

"That’s how it’s done, girls!" Morwenna laughed loudly, basking in the roaring applause.

Silas smiled.

He uncrossed his arms and stepped forward to the edge of the muddy field.

He looked directly at his new SSS-Rank martial arts instructor.

’I should ask her to teach me too...’

He raised his hands and began to slowly clap for her.

Morwenna immediately noticed his applause.

Her stormy gray eyes locked directly onto his as her confident swagger vanished instantly, replaced by a flustered giddy blush.

’The Captain is actively clapping for me!’ Morwenna’s thoughts were white loud in her head. ’He is entirely impressed! I am completely establishing my value as his primary—’

WHOOSH!

The sudden unfortunate laws of physics completely interrupted her victory lap.

Because Morwenna was cheering with her arms raised high in the air, she was no longer actively holding onto the waistband of the garments she was wearing.

The black trousers she had hastily borrowed from the barracks before the fight were entirely oversized for her slender waist as they were the old versions.

They hadn’t been properly tied off.

Without her hands holding them up, the heavy water-logged canvas trousers instantly dropped straight down to her ankles.