"Ehhh?"

Lucien's eyes widened and trembled. The snake and the man had also heard the voice—it resounded across the entire forest, so they whipped their heads around, searching.

Before they could pinpoint where the voice originated, the entire forest convulsed.

The ground beneath Lucien's feet suddenly liquefied into quicksand, clawing to drag him down while massive tree roots erupted from the earth like spears.

Of course, he wasn't the real target. The snake was. Lucreatia had no choice but to quickly uncoil herself and spring away from the assault.

The tree roots halted as they nearly reached Lucien, then pivoted and lashed violently toward the serpent.

The white snake retreated with tremendous speed. It was the first time Lucien had ever seen a snake slither backwards—he never knew snakes possessed such magnificent survival instincts.

Then, with the grace of an angel, a resplendent lady with blonde hair landed before him. He could only see her back, so he couldn't tell what kind of twisted expression she wore.

Her cool voice cut through the air the next second.

"Don't think I've forgotten about you."

She extended her hand toward the man, and tree roots twisted into vicious javelins and shot at him.

He casually stepped aside to dodge them, but Gaya seemed to have anticipated his move already.

The air itself crystallized into razor-sharp shards that shot toward him from every angle, followed immediately by a barrage of stone projectiles torn from the nearby cliff face.

The man spun his stick in a lazy circle, creating a barrier of blue energy that deflected everything effortlessly. But Gaya wasn't finished—not even close.

"Endless Cascade."

Suddenly every water source within a mile radius—streams, morning dew, even moisture from the air—converged into massive torrents that hammered down on him like liquid sledgehammers. The moment he dispersed the water with a gesture, she transmuted it into scalding steam, then flash-froze it into ice spikes, then melted it back into acid rain.

The man actually had to take a second step and regarded Gaya with a different smile.

"Resourceful… these are not the skills of a child."

Gaya didn't respond. Lucien had every reason—judging from how ominous her silence felt—to believe she was absolutely furious.

The earth shuddered again, and something about the mana surrounding Gaya thickened and stretched. Lucien could sense it because he could now use Mana Resonance.

The man was in serious trouble.

Boulders erupted from the earth and flew like cannonballs. Lightning crackled between her fingers and arced in impossible patterns. The very air pressure around the man fluctuated wildly—crushing him one moment, creating a vacuum the next.

What made her truly dangerous wasn't any single spell, but the sheer relentless nature of her assault. She turned fallen logs into battering rams, transformed pebbles into bullet-fast projectiles, made the very ground beneath him shift and buckle constantly. Every element within her considerable range became a weapon, and she wielded them all simultaneously with the practiced ease of centuries of experience.

The man found himself in constant motion for the first time, his stick moving in fluid arcs to deflect, disperse, and neutralize the magical onslaught. His expression remained calm, but Lucien could see that he was actually having to concentrate now.

"Persistent…"

The man murmured as he casually swatted away a tree trunk that had been launched like a javelin, only to immediately duck under a follow-up blast of superheated sand.

"And wasteful. Can a human like you afford to squander mana so recklessly?"

Gaya didn't respond. Instead, her eyes glowered with a cold and menacing amber light.

The temperature around them began to fluctuate wildly as she pulled thermal energy from the environment, creating pockets of intense heat and bitter cold. Ice and fire danced together in impossible harmony, while the earth continued its relentless assault from below and the air pressure tried to crush him from above.

It was like watching a force of nature given form and purpose—raw, elemental magic wielded with surgical precision but overwhelming volume. Even though the man was deflecting everything she threw at him, Lucien could see that the constant barrage was at least forcing him to exert effort.

For the first time since the fight began, the mysterious man actually looked mildly inconvenienced.

The man's stick began to glow with a deeper blue radiance, and for the first time, his casual demeanor shifted slightly. He planted the weapon firmly into the ground.

"Enough games."

A pulse of energy rippled outward from where his stick touched the earth. Gaya's relentless assault suddenly met an invisible wall—her projectiles simply stopped mid-air, her elemental magic dispersing like smoke against an unseen barrier.

But Gaya had been fighting for far longer than this stranger realized. The moment her direct attacks failed, she changed tactics entirely.

Instead of attacking him, she attacked everything else.

The very ground beneath the entire clearing began to sink and shift. Trees groaned and toppled in a carefully orchestrated domino effect that would crush him through sheer mass rather than magic. She wasn't trying to pierce his defenses—she was trying to collapse this entire portion of the forest.

Lucien's eyes widened as he struggled to find purchase on anything solid. The ground slid beneath him while trees were slowly wrenched from the earth as the wind picked up its pace rapidly.

He bent down, clutching a huge rock that had burst from the ground.

'Damn it! She's lost all sense of reason.'

The man observed Gaya as he dodged the falling trees. He leaped gracefully onto a toppling trunk as if it were solid ground, his gaze fixed intently on her.

"You are a very reckless human. Do you not care that the man you're trying to protect might become collateral damage in your wild assault?"

He raised his stick skyward, and the blue energy expanded into a dome that caught and suspended every falling tree, every sliding boulder, every cascading stream of earth. For a moment, the entire forest hung frozen around them like a crystallized explosion.

Then Lucien saw something that made his blood run cold. The mana from every suspended tree was flowing through the blue energy and streaming into the stick.

He narrowed his eyes as he watched the stick begin to transform as more mana poured into it.

'Is he… evolving the stick?'

He chuckled dryly.

"Certainly not…"

However, before his very eyes, the stick sharpened and transformed into a sleek long staff, smooth and green in color. The man examined it and skillfully spun the staff with practiced ease.

He laughed.

"Aha… looks like this one's true potential has finally awakened."

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