CHAPTER 494: UNBEARABLE PLAN

Arabella didn’t just stop there. Turning one of Morpheus’s hands useless was satisfying, yes, but nowhere near enough. The flicker of victory she felt was fleeting, because she knew all too well that Morpheus could heal, and that his healing power wasn’t derived from normal witchery.

His healing was unnatural, almost grotesque in its efficiency, and she had seen the confidence in his eyes every time he struck her. A man like him who needed her, who knew how to use her, would not attack so carelessly, so relentlessly, unless he was absolutely certain he could mend the damage he delivered. He wouldn’t risk breaking her unless he was sure he could fix her.

That alone was enough for Arabella to know for so certainly that even if she pushed herself beyond her limits, even if she hurt him far worse than before in order to deliver the long overdue lesson she had been itching to give him, it would not be a problem. His body would stitch itself back together, it will allow her to go all out against him.

And so she did.

She moved her other hand, fingers curling with cold precision. The blood dripping from his ruined hand trembled in the air, then rose sharply as if pulled by invisible strings. Morpheus’s own blood hovered in front of him like a living blade, gliding over his skin, following the line of his throat, ready to slice him open as easily as slicing through cake.

But much to her annoyance, Morpheus was quick . He jerked back and the attack narrowly missed him. In the same motion, his counterattack surged forth with kill intent. His shadows lunged for her leg, snaking upward with startling speed, crawling like living ropes toward her arms and waist.

In the blink of an eye, they pinned her down in place, restricting her just enough to make her stay in place for the time being and stopped her from using her blood magic.

And then, instead of ending the second test by simply touching her given the current situation which he could do so effortlessly, he instead raised a finger.

The casual flick from his finger appeared and from behind her, Arabella felt the air shift and a piercing whistle cut through the space behind her. A pitchfork that was settled in the far fence of the training guard shot straight toward her stomach. The sound alone made her flinch; the danger was so close she could practically feel the phantom wound already hollowing her stomach.

But at the last second she forced the suspended blood forward, shaping it into a shield. It clashed with the flying pitchfork, stopping it mere inches before it could skewer her completely.

Isaac, watching from the sidelines, visibly flinched. His eyes widened as the pitchfork struck her shield, and he sucked in a sharp breath at how narrowly it had missed her flesh. The entire training ground itself seemed to tense with him.

The sorcerers wondered what to do as they wasn’t so certain if they could interfere but they all had the same consensus that this had gone too far, far than what they thought had started as a fun spar to watch.

But Morpheus, as if forgetting the real reason of the spar, moved on without a sliver of remorse. His shadows dragged several nearby swords and arrows into the air, directing them toward Arabella’s front in a deadly arc shape. She didn’t even have a heartbeat to dodge. Her mind barely registered the incoming storm of blades before a blur of movement cut through her vision.

Cassius had suddenly appeared.

With a speed that didn’t seem human, he appeared before her, intercepting the attack that would have gone straight through her stomach instead of shielding her. He didn’t summon a barrier with his power. He didn’t deflect. He simply placed himself between her and the attack. And the shattered piece of wood, sharp enough to kill, drove itself into his shoulder with a sickening, wet crunch.

The impact forced him backward and Cassius staggered slowly before falling to the ground, the movement and air had moved much slower in her horrified green eyes. Blood spilled instantly, too quickly, pooling beneath him in a dark, expanding puddle that soaked into the ground full of sands.

Alarm shot through Arabella so violently it stole her breath. Her heart plummeted to the bottom of her chest.

She stared in disbelief, her pulse pounding as she saw Cassius collapsed on the ground, his shoulder still bleeding relentlessly, the red staining down his arm. When she had bent down to shield him from his fall, her fingers felt the slick wet staining her entire palm.

By the time she had lifted her hands up to her face again, what she saw was the grotesque red liquid that felt cold, as cold as her heart that had fell to the pit of her stomach.

Meanwhile, the perpetrator of the attack, Morpheus, was disturbingly unfazed by the fact he had just injured a bystander. He did not even pause and continued his attack, shadows of a smile curling all over his lips as though he was finding relish and joy from all the things he was seeing, the blood, the chaos, and even death.

And in that instant, something surged inside Arabella, something she had never felt before, something wild which consumed her entire soul in darkness. A blazing storm of emotion flooded her, fierce yet terrifyingly destructive and volatile from the bottom of her heart.

No matter how angry she was, she had never thought of killing as a great method to solve a problem. She believed that there must be way, must be another option than to kill others. But seeing Cassius bleeding out, his face harrowing in pain, an undeniable anger clung to her soul and screamed that if Cassius was hurt— if he bled out, if he died— she would never forgive herself. Not in this lifetime, not in any.

From where she stood, that emotion overfilled, turning her sight dark and red. Silence that ensued made all sorcerers tremble and suddenly fell into their knees.

Power exploded from her.

Even Esme who had been grinning when she saw how Arabella had seemed to suffer from loss stopped smiling as she felt an undeniable pressure that came from her blood as a sorceress echoed inside her body, the blood which every sorcerer in this world have received from Circe was now trembling in the presence of an anger that Arabella exuded.

The very air shuddered, the sky turned dark and the trees began to tremble. Birds on the nearby forest seemed to have sensed the danger, the volatile danger that they knew they couldn’t afford.

And the ground beneath her feet cracked wide open under the pressure, splintering like glass as her magic surged free.

Morpheus who was still smiling suddenly failed to continue his smile as he saw blood appearing right before his eyeballs and in the next moment all those sharp blood that had turned shape into hundreds of arrows stabbed through his entire body, leaving not even a single surface to be avoided by the attack.

Arabella didn’t stop.

Moments earlier she had avoided touching Morpheus because she didn’t want to cross that line. But now— now she couldn’t care less. Now, emotion had swept aside hesitation, and instinct had taken command of her body.

Before he could collapse fully, Arabella appeared in front of him in a flicker of movement. Morpheus, blood bubbling at his lips, fell to his knees, gasping. Arabella grabbed him by his long silver hair, her fingers tightening with a cold determination she didn’t know she possessed. Without a single pause, she dragged him across the ground toward the nearby well.

The lid of the well flew off the moment she approached. It clattered onto the ground far behind them, leaving the dark, yawning mouth of the well open.

Morpheus let out a laugh, the sound bubbling thickly from his throat, laced with blood and taunt. He tilted his head toward her, defiant even as crimson dripped down his chin. "Are you going to throw your lover into the well?" he rasped, voice mocking even through the pain. "Is that what this is?"

Arabella refused to answer.

If she were going to speak, it would never be to acknowledge one of his taunts.

"You don’t fear anything, do you, Morpheus," she said instead, her voice low, steady, and deadly cold.

Morpheus paused. Actually paused. Something in him flinched, just slightly, while his eyes stuck to hers, except now they no longer held amusement. The playful glint had drained away entirely, replaced instead by wariness, caution... and something dangerously close to dread.

"You don’t fear that these people," she continued, leaning closer, her grip still anchored in his hair, "these people who look at you with such worship, such trust... have already begun to lose that trust completely. Why? Because you have a better plan than just being the Lord of this castle? Because you plan on controlling the entire world? Perhaps with my power?"

Morpheus’s eyes narrowed as he saw the well approaching him, his throat bubbled as he refused to speak back to her.

When Arabella heard Morpheus muttering something, she frowned.

She leaned closer only to scoff as she could hear that even when his body was giving up, Morpheus was still asking her with such smugness,

"What’s for the third test?"

Arabella smiled back at him, a wide smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

"Fuck you, really."