Through the magnified optical scope, the horrific reality of the situation locked into place. It was no longer a mere suspicion. The Secretary was staring directly into her eyes across two point four kilometers of empty air. Rina watched the woman's lips finish shaping the final syllable of the ancient chant.
The suffocating pressure in the atmosphere suddenly snapped.
Genuine panic, a completely foreign and bitter sensation, flared deep in Rina's chest. Her raw survival instincts violently overrode her spatial focus. She abandoned the heavy steel trigger, planted her hands on the floor, and threw her entire body backward into the darkness of the room.
She clicked her tongue. Too late, she thought, gritting her teeth.
The burst of energy did not cross the city like a conventional missile. It simply erased the distance. A colossal, spiraling root forged from violently compressed mana pierced the freezing night sky, traveling at an impossible, hypersonic velocity. It struck the abandoned high-rise a fraction of a second after the Secretary whispered her command.
The massive, jagged construct of magical timber did not strike her directly. Instead, it violently arced downward at the last possible millisecond, completely bypassing her line of sight. It plunged directly into the deep concrete beneath her feet. It was a perfect, calculated strike aimed straight at her blind spot.
The heavy, cold black steel of her sniper rifle stood no chance against the archaic magic. The weapon instantly warped, groaned, and detonated under the overwhelming force. A violent shockwave of shattered metal, hyper-compressed raw mana, and explosive magical force blasted through the tight confines of the office.
Before Rina could regain her footing in the dark, a deafening crack echoed through the building. The concrete floor completely shattered, and the entire ceiling above her violently ruptured in response. Massive slabs of rock and twisted metal rained down, instantly filling the room with a choking cloud of thick, gray dust.
Rina landed hard on the rubble but immediately rolled into a defensive crouch. She kept her ethereal blue eyes wide open, staying on high alert, while pressing her gloved hand over her nose and mouth to block out the suffocating smoke.
As the dust began to slowly clear, a massive shadow dropped silently through the shattered ceiling.
It was the figure of an impossibly tall man. He stood slowly amidst the ruined concrete as pale moonlight shone through the jagged hole above him. The smoke settled just enough to reveal the thick, twisted roots of the syndicate's signature tattoo crawling up his exposed neck.
Impossible, Rina thought, her eyes narrowing. Why did I not detect him?
Her Tattoo Finder was absolute, yet this massive man had completely bypassed her detection magic. As her glowing blue eyes quickly scanned his towering figure, her gaze locked onto a heavy, metallic necklace resting against his chest. It hummed with a violent, unnatural energy. An artifact.
Without a second thought, she gathered her raw mana, rapidly compressing the heavy energy into her right palm to launch a point-blank attack.
"Formula..."
She did not even get to finish the activation phrase.
A blinding arc of crimson lightning erupted directly from the heavy necklace. It completely ignored the physical distance between them, striking Rina straight in her raised arm.
The crimson lightning violently surged through her flesh, ruthlessly frying the glowing mana circuits tracing up her skin. Her gathered spell instantly shattered into a shower of useless blue sparks.
Antimagic, Rina realized, as the blue glow of her magic violently flickered and died.
The massive Executive did not waste a single second gloating. Knowing her primary weapon was temporarily disabled, he immediately closed the distance with a brutal frontal assault.
He threw a devastating straight right punch. Rina reacted purely on instinct, slipping fluidly to her right side to evade. But the giant had anticipated the movement. Seamlessly shifting his massive weight, he raised his leg and swung a vicious roundhouse kick aimed squarely at her head. Rina read the slight twist of his hips just in time, dropping low and ducking under the heavy strike.
Seizing the opening, she stepped forward and drove a flawless right cross directly into his core.
It was a perfect, bone-rattling hit. Yet, the towering man did not even flinch. It felt like punching a solid vault door.
A trap, Rina realized, her eyes widening in horror. He had left himself open on purpose.
Before she could pull her fist back, the Executive chambered his right arm and unleashed a terrifying straight punch directly at her chest. With no room or time to dodge, Rina violently crossed both of her arms to brace for the hit.
The impact sounded like a cannon detonating.
The sheer force of the strike lifted her completely off her feet. She was launched backward with unstoppable momentum, crashing straight through the thick concrete wall of the room. The stone shattered around her as she tumbled violently through the air, skidding across the debris-covered floor of the adjacent room.
Rina choked on the fresh cloud of dust, gritting her teeth against the agonizing strain in her bruised forearms. He is monstrously strong, she thought, struggling to push herself up from the rubble.
Heavy boots crunched slowly over the broken concrete. The giant stepped casually through the massive hole in the wall, shaking his head in sheer disappointment.
"Do not underestimate her, he said." The man finally spoke, his deep, rumbling voice echoing through the ruined floor with mocking amusement. "Taproot is actually scared of a weak little fang like you?"
Rina did not stay on the ground. Ignoring the agonizing pain radiating through her bruised forearms, she instantly forced herself up from the rubble and bolted toward the shattered stairwell leading down to the lower floor.
Her external magic circuits were completely fried, but the Executive had made one critical miscalculation. Antimagic destroyed complex magical frameworks and spells woven into the atmosphere. It could not touch internal mana enhancement. By flooding her raw magic directly into her biological muscle fibers, she bypassed the need for circuits entirely.
As she plummeted down the dark, ruined stairwell, she cranked her internal enhancement to the absolute maximum limit. Her physical speed and strength skyrocketed, but it came at a terrifying cost. Flooding her human biology with that much raw, unformatted energy was playing with a ticking time bomb. The violent pressure of the mana would eventually tear her muscles apart from the inside out. She only had a few minutes before her own magic crippled her.
Up above, the giant did not chase her immediately. He simply stood at the edge of the shattered floor, looking down into the darkness.
"Run away, little Fang!" his deep voice boomed down the concrete stairwell, accompanied by a cruel, echoing laugh. "You will be dead tonight either way!"
Rina landed heavily on the next floor down, her chest heaving as she slid behind a collapsed concrete pillar. She was a perfectly capable modern mage, an absolute anomaly of spatial calculations. Yet, there was one singular flaw keeping her from being a perfect weapon.
Her mortal body bled.
Without access to the divine healing magic strictly hoarded by the Bishops, her physical endurance had a hard limit. She could not just regenerate torn ligaments or shattered bones. If she pushed her mana enhancement for too long, or if that giant landed one more solid strike, she would bleed out on this cold concrete floor.
She had to end this fast.