Every time Lilith inhaled the disgusting purple poison that burned her lungs, she felt her mana pool dry up a little more and the blood in her veins grow heavy.
Her flawless blue armor was crushed, and the warm blood trickling down her forehead obscured the vision of her left eye.
She swung her sword desperately once more.
However, the creature's skin was natural armor. None of her attacks were working.
Her muscles no longer obeyed her. When the deadly scythe arm tore through the air and came at her, she tried to leap back with a final burst of strength, but the poison had taken over her body.
Her foot caught in that disgusting, sticky black sludge, and she collapsed onto her knees. She forced her arms to lift her sword, but it was in vain.
They were trembling.
Seeing its prey fall, the creature let out that creaky, blood-curdling sound of satisfaction. Its massive shadow descended upon Lilith. The angel of death's scythe rose into the air.
Lilith raised her head. There was no fear in her ice-blue eyes.
Her rational mind had already accepted the situation; this was it.
But the death she expected did not come.
Instead, an earth-shattering sound of collision echoed in the forest.
A blinding explosion of golden light cleaved through the suffocating darkness surrounding her and the purple poison burning her lungs like acid.
Lilith opened her heavy eyelids in astonishment.
While she had felt the cold breath of death on the back of her neck seconds ago, a massive figure in a black robe was now standing in front of her, his back turned to her.
The golden flames erupting from the pitch-black sword in the man's hand shone almost like a sun thrust into the heart of the dark forest.
These flames had locked the creature's massive, crushing scythe in the air, stopping the deadly blow at a millimeter's distance.
The knees of this stranger, who looked as if he had jumped out of a fairy tale book, were trembling under the creature's immense physical strength.
The squishy mud beneath his feet was caving in under the effect of the pressure, causing him to sink into a black sludge.
The air around him fluctuated due to the collision of two opposing forces; the purple miasma and golden flames were trying to swallow each other.
But the man didn't step back even a single pace. He was like a plane tree that had taken root in the soil.
The man turned his head slightly over his shoulder.
The expression on his face was as calm as ice, there wasn't the slightest crumb of fear in his eyes, but the gravity of the situation he was in was evident in his every demeanor.
A drop of sweat trickling from his temple dripped down his jaw.
"Are you okay?" His voice was cold, completely contrasting with the deadly storm raging around them and the deafening roar of the monster.
Lilith couldn't hide the astonishment on her bloody and mud-covered face. Her heart was beating as if it would tear her ribcage apart.
How could this stranger stand like this in the face of this overwhelming power that even her own ice magic cracked against?
"You..."
Before she had the chance to finish her words, Aren suddenly pushed his sword forward violently, parrying the creature's scythe.
A terrifying screech, reminiscent of the sound of metal scraping against metal, echoed in the forest. His free hand grabbed the collar of Lilith's armor and pulled her to her feet in a single move.
"Go."
Aren threw her backward like a sack.
Tossed in the air, Lilith groaned in pain as she fell hard into the mud.
The ache in her ribs was unbearable, but at least she was out of that deadly range. As she sat up with difficulty and began to watch the battle, her breath hitched in her throat.
Aren was caught right in the middle of the purple gas the creature spewed out in anger, which melted even the soil like acid.
Enraged that its prey had escaped its grasp, the creature let out a shrill screech and brought down that massive scythe with all its might for a vertical death blow.
Instead of dodging, the man gripped his sword with both hands and met the blow head-on.
The shockwave created by the collision blew the black sludge around them into the air like a crater, as if a meteor had fallen.
As a rain of mud fell upon Lilith, the girl's eyes widened like saucers.
'How?' she thought to herself.
The limits of her own logic were being pushed. For Aren to meet that blow head-on was pure madness. With the creature's level and physical strength apparent, it should have been impossible for a human to withstand this pressure.
She could see Aren's face contort in pain, lock his jaw, and hear him let out a muffled groan
His hands holding the black sword were trembling violently.
The golden flames had flickered; he was surpassing his limits.
The creature increased the pressure even more.
As its eyes shone with a red savagery, the purple gas intensified and completely swallowed the man. Aren's golden flames turned into a dim candlelight within the gas.
Lilith saw Aren begin to cough violently, staggering backward out of breath as if suffocating from the poison.
He was trying to open the distance with clumsy, desperate, and unbalanced steps. He seemed to barely hold his weapon.
The creature did not forgive this weakness.
To finish off its prey, it swung its scythe on a horizontal axis once more. The wind from the scythe tearing the air blew Lilith's hair.
Jumping to the ground at the last moment, Aren saved his head and got slathered in mud.
He now looked completely exhausted.
He stumbled while getting up; the tip of his sword scraped the soil.
The creature raised its massive foot and cast its shadow over the man to crush him like a bug.
'No!' Lilith wanted to shout.
For the first time, that cold, calculating logic inside her had given way to pure panic, but her voice didn't come out of her dry throat.
Then, something incomprehensible happened.
Aren's tired, exhausted body suddenly blurred a second before the monster's foot descended.
While the creature's foot only crushed empty mud and caused the ground to shake, Aren had already appeared in its blind spot on its right side.
The golden flames on his sword suddenly flared up, turning into a miniature sun. The heat was so high that the poisonous gas in the air evaporated instantly.
Swung from bottom to top with incredible speed, the sword sliced through that hard, chitinous skin which Lilith could only scratch even with her strongest ice spears like wet paper.
The golden flames cauterized the inside of the wound and severed the massive scythe arm from the shoulder. The black blood spurting into the air evaporated instantly with the heat of the flames.
The creature's painful, ear-piercing screech echoed around.
But Aren did not stop.
Drawing strength from the muddy ground, he leaped into the air; his body stretched in the air like a flexible bow.
With all his might, adding momentum and gravity, he brought his sword down on the creature's thick neck.
A golden crescent was traced in the air.
The headless body staggered on its knees for a moment, blood poured from its neck like a black waterfall, and then it collapsed onto the volcanic ground with a loud crash.
As splashing mud scattered around, a heavy deathly silence suddenly descended upon the forest. Only the sizzle of burning flesh could be heard.
The black-robed Aren fell to his knees the moment he landed.
With one hand resting on the mud, his shoulders rising and falling violently, he was taking deep, ragged breaths. With a flick of his hand, he sent his sword back to his inventory as if he didn't even have the strength left to hold onto it.
After staying there like that for a few seconds, he began walking toward Lilith with limping steps, dragging his right leg with difficulty.
Sitting right there in the mud, Lilith looked at him as if mesmerized. That final martial arts technique Aren had executed, that flawless control of mana...
It was all top-tier.
'How... How can he be better than me?' Lilith thought.
Aren stood in front of Lilith, who barely stood up by leaning on her broken sword.
Despite her own tall stature and upright posture, Lilith involuntarily felt small in front of the man's broad, mud-covered, exhausted figure.
"Why?" Lilith asked.
She tried to keep her voice cold and calm as usual, but that slight tremor in her tone gave away the shock she was experiencing.
Why had he put himself in so much danger?
"Because I need a reliable ally." Aren said. His voice was breathless, but every word was clear and resolute.
Lilith paused at this direct answer she heard.
Was it such a pragmatic, such a simple and selfishly honest reason?
"Still... Risking your life this much for someone you don't know... It's not very smart, you know. You could have waited until it finished me off, then attacked while it was distracted."
Aren straightened up slightly and said in a serious voice, "Sometimes actions prove much more than words ever could."
He tossed one of the two small glass vials filled with a glowing green liquid, which suddenly appeared in his hand, into the mud at Lilith's feet.
The vial stuck into the sludge with a light 'plop' sound.
"Antidote." he said in a tired and raspy voice.
Then, he opened the stopper of the other vial remaining in his hand and downed it without hesitation.
Lilith looked at the vial in the mud, then at the man's deep, shadowed, and tired eyes.
The purple poison coursing through her veins was burning her body from the inside as it advanced toward her heart. With trembling hands, she bent down and picked up the vial.
As someone raised in the world of nobles, her logic told her not to accept anything from strangers, especially not from anyone in a place like this.
Still, she decided to trust this mountain of a man in front of her. She pulled the stopper and finished the potion in one gulp.
As the liquid slid down her throat, a refreshing wave of mint and ice spread through her body.
While the potion's strong effect instantly extinguished that scorching fire in her veins, the pressure on her lungs lifted.
Even the heavy air of the forest began to fill her poison-cleansed lungs like a blessing. She took a deep breath.
As the empty glass vial of the antidote sank into the black sludge, she turned her gaze to Aren, who was still trying to recover.
Aren was gripping the muddy soil with his empty hand, his chest rising and falling heavily.
From the outside, he looked like a man who had consumed his mana to the last drop, had long surpassed his physical limits, and was on the verge of fainting from exhaustion.
"Why me?" Lilith whispered.
That coldness in her voice, that thick ice wall she had built around herself had cracked a little for the first time.
She stuck her broken sword into the mud and stood up completely, using it for support.
Despite her face being dirtied with mud and blood, she hadn't lost any of her nobility. With her ice-blue, intelligent eyes, she locked onto Aren's mysterious hazel eyes.
She was looking for the real reason of the man who went this far to save her.
"Actually, there are a few reasons. First, you are the first person I've encountered in days. Second, I don't think we can survive in such an uncertain place without allies. And finally, out of all these people, you are the only one I truly want to be allies with, because I see you as my equal." Aren said. His voice was quite calm, containing neither praise nor condescension. He was simply stating a fact.
'Equal.'
This simple word echoed in Lilith's mind like a bell. This simple word that overshadowed all the sentences Aren had formed.
Perhaps it was a word used in daily life by ordinary people, but for her, its meaning was much different, much heavier, and filled with loneliness.
Since the day she was born into her well-established and wealthy family, Lilith had always been the 'superior' party.
In school, in sports, in games.
In every environment she entered, in every competition she participated in, the summit was indisputably always hers.
Of course, this absolute superiority had earned her respect, prestige, and fear.
But at the same time, it had built an invisible, insurmountable lonely wall of ice around her.
As people looked at her with admiration, they would inwardly face their own inadequacies, be crushed under her cold perfection, and slowly distance themselves from her.
She didn't have friends walking beside her, only followers trailing behind her.
Throughout her life, she had never been able to find an 'equal' whom she could lean her back against, who could shoulder the same burden.