CHAPTER 491: CHECKMATE GAME

Morpheus’s sudden warp startled Arabella. One blink, and he was already at her front. She barely managed to raise her arm in defense, their clash sending a pulse of energy that rippled through the air. His hand shot forward, aiming straight for her throat, pure anger driving each strike.

Arabella twisted away, her boots scraping against the invisible water beneath her feet as she dodged, again and again. A strand of her hair lifted with the movement— and something brushed the back of her neck. Instinct kicked in. She jerked aside just in time to see a hand sweep through the space where her head had been.

But that shouldn’t have been possible. Morpheus was still in front of her.

When she turned, she saw another arm— his arm —emerging from behind her. Her eyes widened. He hadn’t multiplied his limbs, nor bent the laws of nature to grow another. No, something far stranger was at play.

His hand slashed through empty air, and Arabella caught the faint shimmer— a red slit, like a wound opening across reality. When his arm entered it, it disappeared, only to emerge from another slit behind her. He wasn’t teleporting himself anymore; he was creating portals.

Arabella’s body moved on instinct. She spun, ducked, flipped backward to avoid the next strike. His hands came from every direction— front, side, behind, above. Each attack forced her to read the air, to listen to the ripples his power created. One wrong step, and she’d be caught.

Morpheus advanced without pause, his control terrifyingly precise. Every movement dragged another red slit across the sky, like streaks of blood splitting open space. His eyes glowed faintly, his breathing ragged but relentless.

Arabella swept upward, gliding across the air, avoiding a dozen hands at once. The portals opened faster, multiplying, twisting the battlefield into a maze of invisible doors. She ducked under one, then twirled and kicked off a current of air to dodge another strike that sliced inches from her cheek.

For a full five minutes, the fight became nothing but speed and instinct— a storm of red flashes and blinding motion. Sparks of raw mana flared wherever their powers collided, and each near miss drew gasps from the onlookers below.

Still, Arabella refused to strike back yet. She was studying him, every gesture, every pattern in his magic. Her mind pieced the puzzle together even as her body screamed to keep moving.

From afar, murmurs rippled through the crowd:

"I don’t think Lady Arabella can avoid this much longer— look at her! She’s getting slower!"

"No, maybe she’s waiting for him to lower his guard!"

"I don’t see how she can win against that. She looks exhausted— cornered, even! Those portals... they’re impossible to predict!"

"Then isn’t it over? I doubt she’ll outlast Lord Morpheus this time."

"Still— what a fight! Even if she loses, to have lasted this long... that’s no small feat. She flies, for heaven’s sake! No witch has ever done that, not even Lady Circe!"

"True enough," another agreed, voice tight with awe. "Maybe we should retire now that the victor’s clear—"

Cassius scoffed, the sound sharp and unimpressed. The so- called experts around him were speaking as if they were war scholars, as if they could actually read the flow of battle better than him. Fools. If they had half a brain, they’d see it clearly— Arabella wasn’t losing. She was winning, quietly, cleverly, by bleeding Morpheus dry of strength.

He leaned back, arms crossed, eyes gleaming. "Amateurs," he muttered under his breath.

Because unlike them, Cassius noticed the most important detail. That Arabella had never once attacked.

For the entirety of the fight, Morpheus had been the one on the offensive— relentless, aggressive, drawing deeper and deeper on his magic. Arabella, on the other hand, hadn’t even tried to strike back. Not once. She evaded, shielded, observed. Every movement was deliberate. Every retreat was a calculation.

And that wasn’t fear. That wasn’t hesitation. That was patience of someone who knows the right time to strike is what was going to make this spar a difference.

She was waiting.

Waiting until his power truly put him into the brink of exhaustion. Until the blood coating his hands turned his palms crimson, his fingers trembling, his nails slick and blackened from the layers of blood magic he had been forcing through them.

Yes. That was her moment.

Cassius’s smirk deepened as he saw it— the faint curl of her lips, the spark in her green eyes. Arabella had found her opening.

In the next breath, she raised her hand.

The world... stilled.

It wasn’t time stopping, not truly, but it felt like it as Arabella had ceased to move while Morpheus in front of him had suddenly fell into a dead quietness that only grave would have offered. The wind also stopped billowing its wind, the sound of magic in the air abruptly vanished. Even the faint crackle of Morpheus’s portals died away.

For a heartbeat, nothing existed but silence.

Morpheus froze mid-step, his body locked in place, arm half-lifted as if held by invisible chains. His eyes darted, his jaw twitched, but the rest of him refused to move.

From the stands, murmurs flickered into confusion. The audience didn’t understand what they were seeing— why the great Morpheus had suddenly gone still, why the magic around him had dimmed like a dying ember.

But Cassius knew first, smiling gleefully at what was about to take place as the blood from Morpheus’s hands suddenly raised from the ground up, and those drops of blood stopped mid air, flowing toward her palms as if it had came to life.

As Arabella had never once dropped blood from her skin, it was only the blood that Morpheus had furiously dropped from his palms that began to quiver and followed the order of a witch.

Morpheus watched as his blood suddenly made his fingers froze in place while the fresh drops from his fingertips begun to raise to the sky, moving like red living creature made out of water.

Then it slowly morph, slowly changing shape into what look like a sharp blade, pointing towards him.

"Blood?"

"Blood are mostly water," Arabella smiled as she suddenly raised both hands to the sky and the blood from all over the ground, the very ones that Morpheus had carelessly swept all over the place rose from the ground and floated to the sky, slowly gathering behind her back, forming more sharp arrows that point sharply toward his neck and head while keeping her arm that had dried with blood settle in place.

"It’s not too hard to control them," she snapped her finger for Morpheus to suddenly feel a force that made him clasp his two hands over his own chest unconditional, keeping his arms stretched forward and as if bound, he couldn’t move a single muscle, preventing him from using any magic circle.

Morpheus’s face turn ashen as he tried to move his fingers only to realize that some of the blood Arabella had controlled swift [ast through him, shredding his sleeve and all the other magical circle that was sewn and stitched on it.

It wasn’t enough. Not yet.

Arabella continued to muster the rest of the blood and looked down to Morpheus, her head wondering what was it that could make Morpheus furious, furious enough that he would do anything so he could break free from the blood that she had used to control his arm in place.

Circe? Her?

She could see from the corner of her eyes Esme moving, her face colored with anger when seeing how Morpheus’s magic hadn’t won against her, as if startled by the fact that Arabella could even turn the tide against him. She could also see how faintly, Esme had moved her hand but before she could use her power to mutter magic, Isaac suddenly appeared in front of her, smiling wide which could seem harmless if not for the fact that he had moved to hold Esme’s hands in place.

"Hands of me, you brute," Esme demanded but Isaac didn’t move and annoyed by his disobedience, she slowly mustered magic under her hands only to feel a sudden zap that cause for her fingers to singed and her body to move backward in surprise.

She eyed Isaac, wide and confused, her entire face questioning what had happened as the next time she tried to use magic again, it didn’t work. No it couldn’t work.

"What did you do?!" Esme demanded but Isaac only smiled.

"Turns out I have good talent when it comes to magic. Surprised?" He questioned Esme who frowned with gritted teeth but Isaac only pushed her hands aside, "You see, I was already warned that you will pull a trick and I don’t want that to happen. Or perhaps you believe that the Lord won’t be able to go against my mistress in a fair competition?"

"You’re deluding yourself," Esme clicked her tongue. "Of course the Lord will take care of that woman easily."

"Oh yeah? Then why don’t you watch and stop your meddling?"