Chapter 365: Saved at the Last Minute

Dalia looked at the reaper, then at the giant skeleton, and finally at Mark, but not one of those things managed to draw the slightest trace of fear from her.

Her answer came when she opened her stance, bent her knees, and readied the spear.

"Then that’s how it’s going to be..." he said, shaking his head. "Don’t say I didn’t give you options."

Dalia was the first to attack. She crossed the distance between them in an instant, pushing off with such force that the path cracked beneath her boots, and thrust straight at Mark’s chest.

He didn’t need to move.

One of the giant skeleton’s enormous arms came down in front of him and took the blow, the crimson tip striking the bone with a loud CLANG!

Dalia had barely registered that her attack hadn’t gotten through the defense when the reaper appeared on her left and swung its scythe at her neck.

She reacted by leaning backward and avoided the blade by a hair, though it managed to graze the pauldron of her trench coat.

There was no blood and no visible cut, but a black symbol resembling an eye appeared on the metal and began to glow faintly.

[Mark of Death applied.]

Mark saw the notification float at the edge of his vision and dismissed it with a glance.

Then he extended his hand toward the ground, and black chains erupted from the cracks, shooting toward Dalia’s ankles.

She leapt before they could catch her, spun in midair, and cut two of them with her spear, but a third wrapped around her ankle and yanked her down violently.

Then Mark closed his hand, and four spears of shadow formed in the air around him and shot at her one after another.

Dalia deflected the first with her spear and dodged the second, the third hit her square in the chest, and the fourth struck her thigh.

And although neither pierced the armor, the force of the impact hurled her against the garden wall.

Dalia ended up on her knees, leaning on the spear, and rose to her feet again in almost the same motion.

Mark watched her as she recovered her stance.

That equipment was still as absurd as he remembered.

Anyone else in this world would already be dead, but Dalia had barely a few scratches after everything she’d taken.

The problem was that all that durability seemed to be practically the only thing in her favor, because since the fight began she hadn’t managed to get close to him even once.

Still, Mark couldn’t shake a strange feeling.

It wasn’t worry, because the fight was still easy. It was simply odd to be the one fighting directly.

Ever since arriving in this world he had gotten used to staying in the back, giving orders while his wives dealt with the enemies.

Even when he stepped in, it was usually just to settle some loose end.

Not even his training in Mary’s dream world had been the same. The summons he’d faced there had no strategy and no fear; they just charged at him until they died.

Dalia was different. She thought, she watched what he did, and she changed her way of attacking when something didn’t work.

She wasn’t simply another enemy.

She was someone actively searching for a way to kill him.

But luckily for him, his body responded extraordinarily well.

He saw every movement coming before Dalia finished it. He knew exactly where she would be a second later. As if he had been doing this his whole life.

’I guess this is what being level 99 means,’ Mark thought.

Dalia lunged at him again.

This time it wasn’t a single thrust but a chain of attacks, so fast that the crimson tip of the spear seemed to be in four places at once.

The giant skeleton blocked the first three with its forearm, and the reaper caught the last one with the shaft of its scythe.

Dalia had barely finished recovering her spear when Mark found the opening and drove his fist straight into her side.

BOOM!

The blow didn’t break the armor, but it didn’t need to.

The negative energy seeped through it and exploded inside her body, abruptly disrupting her mana flow and causing a sensation so unpleasant that Dalia felt as if an invisible hand had twisted her insides.

The impact threw her several meters back onto a flower bed, where she rolled through the dirt before ending up on her hands and knees, coughing blood.

The guard on her shoulder, right where the reaper’s mark still glowed, had cracked.

Dalia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked up.

Mark was still exactly where he had been at the start of the fight. He hadn’t retreated a single step and, worse still, didn’t even seem tired.

That was when Dalia understood that the situation was far worse than she had thought.

If she was still alive, it was only thanks to the gear her father had given her before they left.

Any one of the blows she’d taken would have been enough to kill her without that protection, and now the armor was already showing clear signs that it wouldn’t hold much longer.

That man was, without a doubt, the Death Emperor, and from what she had seen so far, the title was no exaggeration. He was as strong as her father.

Maybe even stronger.

Dalia tightened her grip on the spear as she thought of Rose.

Her sister wasn’t being held against her will in that palace, but married to Mark and expecting his child, so bringing her home was no longer a real possibility.

Even if Dalia could defeat him, something that now seemed practically impossible, Rose would hardly agree to leave with them, much less let herself be dragged off by force.

She also had no reason to think Rose would intervene to save them if the fight went badly, because Rose had never been especially attached to anyone, not even them.

The mission had failed.

And if they could no longer take Rose with them, the only thing left was to get out of there alive.

Dalia shifted her gaze to the broken fountain, where Lily was still unconscious, propped against the stone.

In the pocket of her dress was the teleportation stone their father had given them before they left, a last resort Dalia had sworn they would never need.

She only had to reach it.

Dalia got to her feet with difficulty, slid a hand along the edge of the spear until she cut open her palm, and then flung the blood to both sides.

The drops that splattered the ground began to boil and swell almost immediately, rising until they took on her same form.

And in barely a second, five identical copies of Dalia had appeared around her.

Then they all launched into the attack at once, each from a different angle.

For an instant, Mark didn’t know which one to follow, until a detail caught his attention.

Only one had the black mark glowing on its shoulder.

And it wasn’t any of the ones coming toward him, but the one running diagonally, straight for the fountain.

’Gotcha.’

Mark didn’t even bother reacting to the copies coming at him.

The giant skeleton blocked the first two with one of its enormous arms, while the reaper kept the others busy.

And in the midst of all that, Mark raised his hand toward the real Dalia.

The shadow spear that burst from his palm was far bigger than the earlier ones.

Dalia caught it only out of the corner of her eye and tried to dodge, but the blow of negative energy had left her mana flow unstable, and her body didn’t respond in time.

The projectile pierced the crack in her pauldron and sank completely into her left shoulder.

Dalia barely managed a cry before the impact lifted her off the ground and threw her several meters back, pinning her against the fountain right beside Lily.

The moment she fell, the five remaining copies lost their shape and dissolved into puddles of blood.

Mark began to approach without hurry, accompanied by the giant skeleton at his back and the reaper floating at his side.

Dalia tried to rise, though her left shoulder was completely destroyed and the arm was barely still attached to her body.

Ignoring the pain, she stretched her right hand toward Lily’s pocket, but Mark was faster and planted his foot on her wrist, pinning it to the ground.

"Game over," Mark said coldly. "Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a quest--"

"Get away from my sister!"

Mark turned his head.

Lily was already conscious.

Her red eyes burned with fury, and a crimson sphere was compressing between her outstretched hands, growing so fast that he barely had time to see it before she fired.

BOOOOM!

The detonation hit him square in the face.

He felt no pain, just a wave of heat, but the explosion tore up chunks of stone, flung up the fountain’s water, and filled the air with a thick mix of steam, dust, and smoke.

"Shit!"

The giant skeleton swept the air with one of its enormous arms, and the gust cleared the cloud at once.

But Dalia and Lily were already gone, leaving behind only a puddle of blood and the last remnants of a white glow that faded before Mark’s eyes.

For a moment he said nothing.

Then he exhaled hard and ran a hand over his face, clearly irritated with himself.

All his attention had been on Dalia because of her gear and the threat she posed, while Lily had been forgotten beside the fountain simply because she was unconscious.

And that oversight had just cost him both of them.

"I should have killed the unconscious one when I had the chance..."