Inside the ruined temple, Gubraithian Fire burned steadily, casting its everlasting light across the dark, vast altar.
A valiant young man awoke from his stupor.
He first felt at his waist, where a broken little wooden stick seemed utterly laughable compared to the massive, polished shield at his side.
“Pick up your sword,” she said urgently.
The voice echoed suddenly inside the warrior’s mind, accompanied by eerie laughter rebounding off the walls of the temple.
Unwillingly, the youth set down the snapped wand and searched among the scattered stones, retrieving an enchanted sword.
The face carved into the stone—it was their guide.
The youth remembered now.
They were wandering wizards of this land, each possessing unique magic passed down from parents, relatives, or masters, brought together by an equally passionate drive.
Upon hearing that a monster capable of petrifying anyone with a glance was wreaking havoc on this volcanic island, they had come to slay it and take its head as proof of their prowess.
They never anticipated that the monster had once been a mad witch.
Even after transforming herself into a half-human, half-snake creature, she retained her ability to cast spells.
Once the group entered the temple, she immediately sealed the entrance, taking advantage of the darkness and complex terrain to pick them off one by one.
His companions had been turned to stone, shattered and discarded like rubbish by the snake-witch.
Despair consumed the young man.
It was his insistence that had led his friends into the temple; he had failed to break the seal on the entrance in time, failed to protect the companions he spent day and night with, and now, even as a sole survivor, he was about to become just another statue beneath the witch’s gaze.
“Believe in yourself, Perseus!
You can do this…
She’s coming!” It was the girl’s voice.
She was the one who had knelt before their party, begging the wizards to rid the land of this scourge, and she was the one cursed by the snake-witch—possessing immense magical power, yet unable to step foot into the temple, left only to warn Perseus at this dire moment.
Mason snapped back to awareness, only to realize he had become the young man from the vision—Perseus of legend.
He possessed an agile, muscular build entirely unlike that of a fragile little wizard.
Wearing a short tunic with basic leather armor protecting his vital points, a single sheet of metal reinforced his chest.
Sensing danger, Mason ducked low.
A heavy serpentine tail lashed through the air, crashing against the stone wall beside him with a deafening explosion.
Flying rock splinters gouged bloody gashes across his body.
“Medusa?”
As a gamer accustomed to dealing with high-mechanic boss fights, Mason was no stranger to creatures like this.
Suppressing his instinct to look directly for the enemy, he grabbed the massive, polished shield amidst the chaos.
Transferred memories informed Mason that the witch outside had entrusted this to Perseus.
*It will be a key weapon against the snake-witch.*
Mason raised the shield effortlessly while tightening his grip on the short sword in his right hand.
After missing its stroke, the massive serpent tail vanished.
Inside the temple, the chilling slither of scales rasped closer and then faded away.
Tilting the mirror-like shield slightly, Mason used its reflection to scan the area ahead and above—and sure enough, he spotted a blurry silhouette.
“What is she doing?”
The snake-witch held a heavy bow, its enchanted string allowing her to shoot powerful arrows with ease.
Perseus’s companions had not been helpless; at the cost of their lives, they had destroyed the witch’s formidable wand, preventing her from killing Perseus easily with magic.
Mason tossed the shield to one side and tumbled hard to the left.
The two simultaneous targets threw off the witch’s focus for a split second, causing her arrow to miss its mark.
It punched straight through the stone pillar as if it were tofu, embedding itself deep in the temple wall.
Mason hunkered down along the maze-like perimeter of the temple, staying as far from the open central altar as possible.
Enraged, the snake-witch stood her ground and continuously drew her bow like a stationary turret, blasting away every hiding spot Mason could utilize.
The thin walls were no match for the empowered arrows, and she was on the verge of leveling the ruins in the southeast corner.
“Magic Missile!”
Having retrieved the mirror shield, Mason finally found a clean angle and timing.
As the snake-witch drew her bow, he unleashed his spell.
A glowing purple orb of arcane energy hurtled toward her at moderate speed, exploding directly against her right eye under her astonished gaze.
The snake-witch and her hair of writhing vipers screeched in agony.
The Magic Missile left a horrific burn mark across her face, blinding half of the petrifying eyes she took such pride in.
Mason wanted to follow up, but her shriek acted like an instinctual spell.
Sharp psychic shockwaves stabbed into his mind from every angle, throwing off the trajectory of his second Magic Missile.
The missile slammed into the witch’s bow instead, shattering it in two.
Past her initial agony, the witch realized this wizard could still cast magic.
Twisting her serpentine body, she moved at terrifying speed, vanishing from Mason’s line of sight in an instant.
Then came her weeping—a sound echoing the pain of a wounded beast licking its wounds, the loneliness of an outcast rejected by the world, the despair of a mother cradling a stillborn child, and the desperate plea begging a distant traveler for mercy.
Unconsciously, the weeping chipped away at Mason’s fighting spirit, causing his grip on the sword and shield to slacken.
*Yes…
they were merely outsiders.
How could they understand the plight of a tragic witch who hid away in a ruined temple, turning herself into a half-snake monster?
They were just companions met along the road and a local guide…
Perseus, you survived.
Isn’t that enough?*
“Bullshit!” Mason roared into the void.
Though he cursed aloud, he had still lost his focus for a crucial instant while fighting off her spell.
Seizing her chance, the witch struck with her tail from the darkness, shattering the mirror shield—already riddled with arrow holes—into pieces. This chapter was copied from NovelPing without permission.
Mason instinctively closed his eyes and squeezed his sword tight, but lost his footing in the dark.
A thick serpentine tail coiled up from his feet, wrapping tightly around his entire body.
The witch’s weeping turned into a sharp, terrifying laugh—a sound filled with gruesome relish at the thought of slicing Mason into clean strips of flesh to savor piece by piece.
“You are the finest wizard I have ever seen,” the snake-witch hissed, pressing her face close.
Her tail constricted further, squeezing the air from Mason’s lungs.
Her scaly hands pinned his arms down; Mason could feel her hair of writhing snakes hissing directly against his face.
“I won’t let you die so easily,” she whispered, her right eye mangled beyond repair.
“I will keep you alive and use your blood to hunt down your family.
I will rip their bellies open in front of your eyes, letting you listen to their dying gasps of horror…
and only then will I slowly swallow you whole, bite by bite…”
Mason remained unmoved.
He had a plan, but it required the witch to look away momentarily.
He couldn’t cast magic faster than light, so he needed to trade the resilient stamina of this body for exact spatial awareness of his surroundings.
“Time’s up,” Mason mumbled, expelling what little air remained in his lungs.
“Shield!”
“What?”
A magical Shield slammed down from above at a forty-five-degree angle.
Facing the incoming barrier, Medusa reflexively opened the petrifying eye on her left side.
As expected, stone textures quickly swept across the physical construct of pure magic.
But she had forgotten one thing: the shield was suspended in midair.
Transformed into solid stone, it crashed down with terrifying weight.
Instinctively, the witch hurled Mason aside, whipping her tail up to shatter the descending boulder.
“You despicable little—” *BOOM!*
The stone shield pinned the human upper half of the snake-witch flat to the ground.
Mason, having rolled a dozen times across the floor, didn’t waste a split second.
Scrambling to his feet, he aimed straight for the snake head beneath the stone shield and plunged his sword down with every ounce of strength he possessed.
A deluge of crimson fluid—whether human blood or snake blood—gushed out from the cracks in the stone shield.
Thanks to Perseus’s warrior physique, Mason’s blade impaled the witch’s throat and spine clean through.
“Finally…
it’s over…”
Mason collapsed onto the temple floor, letting the blood pool past his ear.