Klaus had graduated from the Imperial Military Academy with top marks.
So Klaus knew.
Tactics were never built on the gut instincts of battle-hardened old men.
They were cold statistics and probabilities derived from tens of thousands of battles—their outcomes, reports, and assessments.
The reason the Empire had been able to keep expanding was precisely because of a field manual written in blood.
So Klaus could not understand what he was seeing.
No—because he couldn’t understand it, he could analyze it all the more clearly.
His mind was busy calculating the margin of error between each clause of the field manual and the bizarre antics of the sharp-tongued Witch before him.
And that margin of error had long since blown past anything a human being could produce.
Principle One of the Imperial Individual Combat Manual: secure space.
Yet Sirin had charged straight into the club, voluntarily surrendering her own space.
A suicidal move, by any measure.
And yet Sirin had slipped into the blind spot of the attack and created a paradox—the narrowest space becoming the safest space.
Principle Two of the Imperial Individual Combat Manual: break through at a single point.
When surrounded, the only way to survive was to concentrate all force on the weakest point, crack the encirclement itself, and escape through the gap.
That was the manual’s teaching, and an iron rule proven by countless real engagements.
Yet Sirin had laughed in that iron rule’s face without a second thought.
Instead of breaking through the enemy at the center, she had *used* him.
She had grazed past the attacker’s body and flowed around behind him, then with a single casual kick sent the enemy crashing into another enemy.
Turning the encirclement itself into a chain of obstacles that tripped over each other and collapsed…
This was not tactics.
This could not be codified as tactics.
This was… yes.
This was not tactics.
It was something that could only be called an *art*.
Finally, Principle Three: efficient movement.
Klaus felt as though he could hear the manual being torn apart.
Beyond the manual—an illusion that the very laws governing the physical limits of the human body were being denied.
Sirin was dancing in the wind.
Klaus wasn’t the only one who felt it.
Bewilderment rose in the eyes of the thugs who had been charging at her.
“Crazy bitch, who do you think you are—a bird?!”
“Hehee! Flap flap!”
Someone screamed it desperately, but Sirin cackled in response as if answering the call.
The moonlight glinted off her hair as it streamed in the wind.
“…..”
Klaus realized that the field manual simply did not apply to Sirin.
The afterimage of her scattered hair.
A dance that filled the narrow alley to the brim.
This was not the affected elegance of a salon ball.
Raw.
Primal.
A beauty that bloomed at the border between life and death.
Klaus felt a strange sense of déjà vu in those dazzling movements.
That strange beauty blooming in a desperate situation with no retreat and no weapon—
It was like something blooming in full in the dark…
Sirin’s movement suddenly stopped.
“Ah, damn. Ah, hold on. Ah, ugh… shit…”
“!”
Every grand impression and image that had been forming in Klaus’s mind crumbled at that single groan from Sirin.
And in its place, a different kind of terrible premonition flashed through his mind.
Klaus saw the future.
That grotesque writhing of her body right now, the color draining from her face, the cold sweat pouring off her as she clamped a hand over her own mouth—
No. Please.
If she throws up here…!
“Ah… hoo… it’s fine. It’s fine. Huuu… not dizzy. Not dizzy… hoo…”
“….”
The first to read the situation was the last thug still standing.
The fear in his eyes vanished, replaced by contempt and certainty.
“Ha, woman! You’re out of steam!”
The others who had been sprawled on the ground heard that and groaned as they hauled themselves upright.
Klaus understood it too.
Sirin had no decisive finishing blow to overwhelm her opponents.
Everything she’d done had been nothing more than desperate evasive maneuvering just to stay alive.
“That’s how it is with women. Talented, sure—but that’s where it ends.”
The ringleader sneered as he closed in.
“I’m going to enjoy watching that pretty face of yours get rearranged. Don’t even think about walking away clean.”
Sirin barely choked back the dry heave.
Then she muttered, sounding like she couldn’t be more annoyed.
“Ah, forget it. Done with the Plum Blossom Shadow Step.”
Done with what, exactly?
Was she going to run—
[ Dragon-Subduing Eighteen Palms ]
“DIE!!!!!”
[ Unyielding Force ]
“BEGGAR’S PUNCH!!!!!”
—*CRACK.*
“GYAAAAAAGH!!!!!!”
The scream packed the narrow alley.
#
“Ggghh…”
The groans of the thugs echoed through the alley.
Klaus couldn’t tear his eyes from the surreal scene.
She should have been dead by any reasonable calculation—yet there she stood, perfectly intact, in the middle of five broken thugs.
Sirin glanced around at the bodies strewn across the ground, then flicked up a rusty dagger one of them had dropped with the tip of her foot and caught it lightly in her hand.
She walked over to the nearest one—the man who couldn’t even manage a proper groan—and pressed the blade to his throat.
“…!”
Klaus thought Sirin was about to deliver the finishing blow.
He tried to force his mouth open.
No matter that the thugs had attacked first, he could not allow a murder to be committed in front of the Imperial Security Force.
But the words that came out of Sirin’s mouth were something else entirely.
“Alright, survey time.”
She said it with the same enthusiasm as a part-timer handing out flyers.
“Has anyone here ever engaged in a physical act with another person without obtaining their consent? Raise your hand.”
“Wh—what are you… talking about…?!”
The thug with the blade at his throat rasped.
Sirin clicked her tongue like she was dealing with idiots.
“I’m asking if you’ve ever raped anyone, you dense morons.”
At the blunt word, the faces of the other groaning thugs went chalk-white.
Even scum like them weren’t too stupid to understand what Sirin was getting at.
Answer yes here, and this wasn’t going to end as a simple matter.
Klaus broke into a cold sweat too.
He felt a distinctly chilly sensation between his legs.
The first man questioned screamed desperately.
“N—no! I! I’ve never done anything like that! I swear!”
“Shut up. Unless you want your skull rearranged.”
“!!!”
Sirin said it quietly.
“I didn’t say you could open your mouth.”
“…!!!”
Klaus, flat on the ground, was dumbfounded.
Then why did she ask in the first place?
She hadn’t asked because she wanted to hear an answer.
Sirin didn’t trust words.
She trusted bodies.
Over the past year, she had roughly developed her own method of interrogating criminals using the Mind Enlightenment system and her sharpened perception.
*No one’s avoiding my eyes.
No one’s thrashing around pointlessly.
They’re just scared of getting cut for something they didn’t do.
It’s not the fear of a guilty conscience.
They’re clean, in their own way.*
In that case…
*Looks like they haven’t gone that far.*
—*Ding!*
[ Your understanding of others has increased! ]
[ Deepen your understanding to acquire Mind Enlightenment! ]
“Hmph.”
Sirin gave a satisfied nod.
“There’s at least some room for leniency in your conduct.”
At Sirin’s verdict, the thugs were seized by a terror far greater than any relief at being spared.
They recalled the horrifying rumors about a certain *Witch*.
“W—Witch…! I’ve heard about her…! She beats you half to death and always asks that…!”
“Whether you answer or not… she cuts it off anyway, they said…!”
The thugs’ fear crossed some kind of threshold.
—*Ding!*
[ The effect of the title ‘Witch’ activates! ]
[ Males who perceive you as a ‘Witch’ become consumed by the delusion that their ‘masculinity’ is under threat, experiencing overwhelming fear alongside a sense of helplessness. ]
[ Your existence now transcends simple terror, becoming an object of perverse reverence in which certain desires and fears are inextricably intertwined. ]
The thugs let out shredding screams.
“W—Witch! It’s the Witch! That Witch is after my—my third leg!”
“D—don’t neuter meeeee!!!!!”
“KYAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!”
They fled in a bizarre posture, both hands clutching between their legs.
“RUN!!!!!”
In an instant, silence descended on the back alley.
Sirin was speechless.
“Third leg, my ass. Delusional idiots.”
More like a tumor.
She muttered that under her breath.
Sirin dropped the dagger on the ground and walked over to Klaus.
Her shadow fell over him completely.
“Get up, Mr. Stalker.”
A cold, clear voice whispered at Klaus’s ear.
“You owe me a debt. This is something I absolutely cannot let slide.”
“……”
Sirin looked down at Klaus with icy eyes and spoke.
“Go get your captain. I need to have a little parent-teacher conference.”
Klaus felt a chill run down his spine.
#
“…Say that again.”
“Captain, you heard me perfectly well. I said I need to borrow this stalker for a while.”
“What exactly is your intention with a statement like that?”
Sirin smiled coldly at the security captain.
“His stalking ability is exceptional, isn’t it? Should be useful for finding people too.”
“…”
To the flabbergasted captain, Sirin gave a self-satisfied nod.
“Putting a wicked talent to use for the benefit of humanity. I really am a genius at *employing people*.”
She added one final thing.
“Call me the Saintess of Everland.”
“…”
The captain felt a powerful urge to bash his own head in.