Extra: Yandere Milfs Obsessed with me!-Chapter 172: The Perfect Trap

<Reflection of the Moon on the Water>

The arrows already in the air began to vibrate at a harmonic frequency. Around each projectile, the humidity in the air and the aqueous mana injected by Lynn condensed, forming twenty watery, shimmering silhouettes of Jasper.

Each liquid double, perfectly synchronized, nocked and fired in turn an arrow of pure energy. It was a deluge, a storm of real and magical shafts that converged toward Zak Van Spina, overwhelming his last vine defenses.

Faced with this crushing attack, Zak, already badly hurt, was in mortal danger.

Jezabel, busy containing Katrina’s revitalized assault, turned her head, her face twisted with frustration. "Rosalinda!" she shouted toward the young woman still kneeling and trembling beside the wounded. "What are you doing?! They’re going to kill your brother! Wake up!"

Before she could finish her sentence, a thick black thorn, emerging from nowhere, wrapped around her throat with terrifying speed, choking her and forcing her to interrupt her incantation.

The silence that followed was more frightening than the screams. Then a voice rose, soft, almost melodic, but of an absolute coldness that froze the blood.

"Who do you think I am?" The voice belonged to Rosalinda, but it no longer had anything of the frightened young woman. She was now floating a few meters off the ground, her long green hair undulating like algae in an invisible current.

Her eyes, an intense emerald green, shone with calculating and cold intelligence. Hundreds of vines, thick as arms, bristling with sharp blackened thorns, had burst from the ground to form a mobile and deadly forest around her, burying the area under a hostile vegetal dome.

"You dare give me orders?"

The mana emanating from her now was colossal, crushing, of a density that made the knees of the weakest fighters from both camps buckle.

Jasper, still in shooting position, frowned behind his hastily readjusted blindfold, his left eye hidden once again. He felt this power. "Rosalinda was actually a... seventh-circle mage?" he murmured, incredulous.

Lynn’s voice, still in Jasper’s mind, answered, tinged with rare worry.

"No, darling. This isn’t Rosalinda. It’s her alter ego... Her latent personality, the one that emerges when fear and pressure break her shell of timidity. When she unleashes her full power like this... she no longer makes any distinction between allies and enemies."

Jasper let out a long sigh: "So she’s bipolar?"

"In this form, we no longer call her Rosalinda... We call her Lady Spina. She’s the true sixth in the rankings."

Katrina was gravely wounded with thorns piercing her flesh.

"Jasper! We should call your cousin, only she can handle her."

Jasper clenched his teeth: he struggled to admit it. But his cousin was the true heir of the Luna clan. Talented with her reflection magic.

"Just hold on a few minutes, darling. I’ve already informed her, Sierra Del Luna is on her way."

***

The next day, the expedition resumed its ascent toward the mountain summit. The air, saturated with ash and heat, made every breath painful. Their progress along a narrow ledge overlooking a lava ravine was suddenly interrupted by a new wave of Lava Gargoyles, more aggressive and coordinated than the day before.

The fight raged. Isabella, at the front, raised Stalagmite Walls to cut off the creatures’ charge, while Kris, galvanized by his pent-up anger, shattered them with blows from his flaming lance.

Olivia used her Slow Fields to disrupt the aerial attacks, and Kaiser, in the rearguard, sliced with deadly economy of movement the gargoyles that tried to flank them.

It was then, at the height of the melee, that a shrill whistle, coming from nowhere, cut through the volcano’s roars. A lance of pure energy, shining with a scarlet glow, streaked across the sky for several kilometers. It wasn’t aimed at them, but exploded against the rocky wall just above their heads.

The impact was cataclysmic. The cliff shook, and an entire section of the ledge disintegrated in a cloud of dust, pulverized rock, and incandescent debris. The ground vanished beneath their feet.

By a survival reflex, Olivia, at the precise moment of the explosion, completed an incantation.

<Temporal Imprisonment: Personal Stasis!>

A bubble of distorted time enveloped her, holding her in suspension, frozen in a micro-instant, at the edge of the new abyss.

The others were not so lucky. Isabella, Kris, Kaiser, and Zane were swept away by the collapse, hurled into the void before crashing heavily twenty meters below onto a rocky spur. The fall was brutal, abruptly ending the fight against the gargoyles, most of which were also buried.

When the reddish dust began to settle, giving way to a sinister clarity, the four survivors rose painfully, dazed and covered in dust. It was then that they realized their situation.

They were surrounded.

On the upper edges of the ravine, on the natural rock bridges, about fifty silhouettes appeared. Students dressed in uniforms but bearing the colors and insignias of Pendragon factions. Cold, contemptuous, or excited gazes fixed on them. Nobles, for the most part.

The trap was perfect.

It was at that moment that Zane, who had risen without a sound, stepped away from the group. He bowed slightly to Isabella, his usually impassive face displaying cold courtesy. "I’m sorry, Miss Isabella."

Isabella, short of breath, a gash on her forehead, stared at him, understanding flooding her mind. "So you were in league with Pendragon."

The tension rose another notch. Isabella quickly assessed the situation. Fifty opponents, probably all competent.

The real problem wasn’t the numerical strength, but the consequences. Killing someone in Tenebris was easy to justify: monsters, accidents. But if fifty noble students, including heirs of counties and viscounties, disappeared here, when no open war opposed their factions...

The reprisals would be immediate and terrible. The Academy would be forced to investigate, and evidence of deliberate assassination would eventually emerge.

Kris, foaming with rage, pointed his lance at Zane, almost ignoring him. "Traitor!" he spat. "And here I thought it was Kaiser who would pull a low blow. I should have watched out for you, you’re truly the worst kind!"

Kaiser, for his part, had remained strangely silent since the fall, analyzing the scene. Zane’s betrayal made no apparent sense with Godwin’s plan, unless... there was a variable he didn’t know.

The puzzle piece clicked into place in his mind. In the novel, Isabella died here, and Kris awakened his Pendragon lineage in the fury of grief. If it wasn’t Godwin directly, then had Ariana delegated Zane to ensure the outcome?

’She never really trusted me,’ he realized.