Aria didn't hesitate. The moment Leo gave the command, she drew her glowing bowstring back to her ear. Thanks to the active **Synergy Link** and Leo's packet-injection hotfix, her bow was practically overflowing with a blinding cocktail of her own violet elven fire and Leo’s sapphire-blue system mana.
The air around her warped, distorted by the sheer density of the magical pressure.
"This is for my vanguard, you human parasite," Aria whispered, her eyes locking onto Julian.
She released the string.
*THWIP—FROOOOOM!*
The arrow didn't just fly; it tore a physical trench through the snow. Because Leo's zero-friction zone had stripped the ground of all traction, the sheer recoil of the shot pushed Aria back an inch, her boots carving smooth lines in the stone.
Julian, realizing the absolute disaster unfolding before him, snarled. Despite his arrogance, his instincts as a Level 18 Gale Knight were sharp. He slammed the hilt of his rapier into the ground, channeling his wind-attribute mana to its absolute limit.
"**Gale Aegis!**" Julian roared.
A violent, howling dome of pressurized green wind erupted around him, spinning at speeds high enough to deflect iron ballista bolts. It was his ultimate defensive skill, a high-tier martial art inherited from the main line of the House of Vermis.
```
[Target: Julian Vermis]
-> Active Spell: 'Gale Aegis' (Level 4)
-> Physical Deflection Rate: 98.7%
-> Magical Resistance: High
```
"A standard projectile would be pulverized by the wind shear," Leo analyzed, his high-intelligence processing speed making the spinning vortex look as slow as a ceiling fan. "But we aren't firing standard projectiles."
```
[Projectile Properties: Aria's Glitched Arrow]
-> Active Flag: [Ignore_Collision = TRUE]
```
The violet-blue arrow collided with the howling dome of wind.
Under normal laws of physics, the kinetic energy of the wind should have ripped the arrow apart or sent it spiraling into the sky. Instead, the moment the arrow's tip made contact with the outer boundary of the *Gale Aegis*, the system's collision coordinator registered a null value.
To the wind shield, the arrow did not exist.
To the arrow, the wind shield was nothing but empty coordinate space.
The arrow slipped cleanly through the roaring vortex without losing a single frame of momentum, emerging on the inner side of the dome directly in front of Julian’s pale, horror-stricken face.
"What—?!" Julian’s scream was cut short.
*BOOM!*
The arrow detonated directly against his chest. Because Leo had throttled Aria's output to ten percent to keep her curse from triggering, the explosion didn't vaporize Julian entirely. Instead, the raw kinetic feedback of three hundred points of true damage slammed into him like a runaway carriage.
```
[Collision Event: True Damage Applied]
-> Julian Vermis suffers 310 Magical Damage (Defense Ignored).
-> Active Status Effect: 'Stunned' (Duration: 3s)
-> [WARNING]: Target's passive item 'Aegis Pendant' has shattered to absorb fatal damage.
```
Julian was blasted backward out of his wind dome, his elegant silver armor dented and smoking with violet embers. He tumbled across the zero-friction snow, sliding like a thrown stone for nearly thirty meters before crashing violently into a frozen pine trunk.
"My lord!" the tangled pile of guards shrieked, still flailing helplessly on the frictionless ground.
Julian coughed up a mouthful of dark blood, his rapier slipping from his trembling fingers. He looked down at his chest, where his family's priceless, high-grade magical amulet—the Aegis Pendant—now lay in blackened, shattered pieces. If not for that heirloom, his chest would have been a hollow cavity.
He looked up at Leo, his eyes wide with a primal, suffocating terror. This wasn't the weak, magic-less bastard he had starved in the cellar. This was a monster wearing his brother's face.
"You..." Julian wheezed, his voice trembling as he tried to crawl backward into the snow. "What... what did you do to me? What kind of dark magic is this?!"
Leo walked calmly down the stone steps of the cave, stepping onto the frictionless snow. His boots gripped the ground perfectly, a visual anomaly that made him look like he was walking on solid concrete. He stopped a few feet away from the shivering, bleeding noble, looking down at him with cold, uncaring eyes.
"It's not magic, Julian," Leo said, his voice quiet, almost conversational. "It's just a hotfix. And honestly? You're lucky we're still in the pre-alpha testing phase. If I had deployed the full patch..."
Leo glanced at the shattered pieces of the Aegis Pendant.
"...you wouldn't have had enough code left to beg."