Trapped in Another World With No Magic
Chapter 171: To Break an Ambush…

Zuzia cautiously watches the soldiers holding Wulfsten, Halkadon, and Verbert hostage against her, each with two separate daggers pressed to their throats. She is powerful, but she can’t move quickly enough to rescue all three of them before the soldiers holding them captive can move.

And, facing her from behind is an officer that matches what she would envision as a mid-ranking fantasy noble in military armor. He has the posture and good looks of a long line of good breeding and stern upbringing. She wonders if she could capture him alone and strong-arm the others into cooperating, but given the strategy seems to have been employed explicitly against her, they’re likely prepared for that possibility.

“We need to have a brief discussion, Otherworlder Summon,” states the man in the Japanese-that-isn’t-Japanese of this world, and after a brief pondering, Zuzia replies, “You have me at a disadvantage, Sir…?”

She’s fishing for his name, but she isn’t expecting what he says next.

“So, your people are capable of human speech, are you, Zuzia?”

She is nearly fooled, twitching when her heart begins to race. Her instincts scream that she should be terrified and angry, but she realizes there’s one more person not in her immediate field of view; the merchant they were travelling with. Since they know ‘Zuzia’ and not ‘Zuzanna’, he didn’t magically discern her name. He simply questioned the merchant right after launching the ambush.

“That was the problem,” retorts the Polish woman dryly. “If your guys spoke human speech when I was kidnapped to another world, I probably wouldn’t have panicked.” She knows she’s being extremely rude. There are lots of non-humans capable of speech on this world, and she speaks Polish and a fair amount of English, with phrases of other languages she’s picked up from her travels. But, this guy started it, and she’s trying to bide her time for an opening to save her travelling companions and escape.

Her retort upsets some of the soldiers, but the commandant holds his hand up, silencing the complaints with a definitive loyalty to his authority.

“Perhaps… I was mistaken…” counters the officer with an eye roll, which prompts his solders to snicker. Wulfsten tries to urge Zuzia to do something, but his mouth is gagged, so it only comes out as an urgent series of hums.

“Idioci…” grumbles Zuzia sourly, still studying her enemies for any weak points. “Ale dupki…” She has an even greater appreciation for her mother tongue of Polish at times like this, since it means she can voice her thoughts out loud without her enemies understanding. Though, if she was able to learn their language through magic, it’s probable they can learn Polish as well. She’ll need to be mindful and keep her grumblings in private. Or, at most, in conversation with Amalaskae.

She keeps mentioning restrictions… I wonder if she can help me here.

Amalaskae clenches her fists, doing her best to stay calm. “I didn’t catch your name yet. I don’t mind calling you Idioto z Dupkowa, but…”

The man finally introduces himself, speaking in a tone that is condescending and a bit perturbed. “I am Burgrave Nesparu pel Contarro, lord of Contarro and Commander of the Imperial Grand Army’s Fourth Battalion. And, I have come for you, Zuzia of the Otherworld.”

“Ah, right, my turn.” Zuzia makes the most sarcastic curtsy she can manage, which is further emphasized by the fact that she’s wearing denim hiking shorts, hiking boots with crew socks peeking out, and a sweat-stained pink tank top. “I am Zuzia z Polski…a. Zuzia z Polskia, Ronin of the Highlands and Grand Odkrywca of the Plains of Fire.” She says this proudly with her hands on her hips, blending a mix of proper and improper Polish into her illustrious-sounding gibberish titles to mock him.

If only she knew how this world worked…

“Very well, Zuzia Spolskia,” replies Nesparu. Zuzia realizes her native Polish doesn’t emphasize the syllables the same way, but she decides not to correct him. All the more misinformation he creates himself, the better it is for her. He continues his thought, “But, as you can see, we have a bit of a problem.”

In the background, Zuzia can hear the soldiers mocking her, saying something about, “Does the Otherworld simply have no nobles?” “Seems that is the case. I heard the traitor Daniel didn’t even have a family name.”

Zuzia ignores them. These people aren’t interesting enough to her to care about their condescending thoughts. “I agree. I’d appreciate it if you’d let my escort go and apologize. Preferably with a bag of gold coins.”

Some of the soldiers spit and suck their teeth, expressing their frustrations as they keep their blades drawn and the group surrounded.

“I’m afraid you’re not in a position to make demands. You see, these three are wanted men.”

“HMMM!?” hums Verbert against his gag, struggling violently to no avail in sheer anger from the insult.

“I assume there’s a crime they’ve been accused of committing?” asks Zuzia, not letting her guard down, but keeping her posture somewhat neutral.

“Indeed. These men have stolen a highly valuable asset to the Grand Zenkon Empire.” He snaps his fingers, saying sternly, “Search the camp. Zuzia Spolskia, if you move, we will cut them down without hesitation before dealing with you.”

“If you cut even one of them down, you’re going to need to pray to God that you can stop me,” warns Zuzia.

The men chuckle, while a number of them tear apart the simple camp and the wagon, leaving no stone unturned, as it were. Nesparu presents a scroll, adding, “Do you know what this is, Zuzia? It’s a warrant for a fourth arrest to be made today.”

She hardens her glare at him. Any idiot can guess that he’s implying she’s suspect number four for the dubious crime of stealing from the Empire. She’s not sure of the power structure of this world, but as far as she knew, she’s not in actual Imperial territory. That said, Halkadon mentioned something about the Empire holding a sort of agreement between the kingdoms of the east, at which the Empire is the head, so if these men really do represent the Empire, and not a band of brigands, then they may have some, albeit corrupt, authority here.

Frustrated, Zuzia snatches the scroll from Nesparu, taking the ribbon off. She doesn’t really notice the desperate hums from all three mercenaries, since they were already growling and grumbling through their gags.

Unfurling the scroll catches Zuzia completely off-guard. She expected a warrant for her arrest, and instead, a massive burst of light explodes out of the innocuous seeming old-timey paper. She caught a glimpse of some geometric shapes, rather than normal writing, like some sort of fantasy.

The burst of light caused her to instinctively recoil and shield her eyes as she cries out. She flings the scroll away, but the effect is already done.

It’s only after she tightly closes her eyes and braces for pain that she realizes none has come. The light was bright, but she has experienced more pain when switching from a dark tab to a white tab on her internet browser. 

Somewhere in the momentary stun caused by her instinctive recoil from an otherwise harmless flash of light, Zuzia heard what sounded like Nesparu’s voice shouting out, “Now!”

That said, the voice was distorted by something, but not unintelligible.

The ‘Now!’ seems to have been signalling an attack, though, as Zuzia is slammed by a heavy weight from a large something or someone.

Arms wrap around her, and she realizes she has been tackled in the style of American football by someone at least three, maybe even five times her size and weight.

Unfortunately for her enemy linebacker, her vision and hearing are already completely clear, and she is easily able to keep  her footing. She lost her balance briefly from the impact that she wasn’t expecting at all, but once she plants her feet, she brings the massive charger to a halt, studying the person with especially hairy, or rather, tough hide-covered arms.

Between Verbert and Halkadon, Zuzia is not surprised by the fact that there are fantasy races consisting of partially-animal people. Verbert has the ears, tail, and a few patches of fur reminiscent of a cat, and Halkadon has a canine head, including a muzzle and large, carnivorous teeth, a bushy wolf-like tail, and sharp claws on his fingers and toes.

The person trying to flatten the young Polish woman is neither a gatonine nor a shenwulf.

She’s easily 320 kilograms (~700+ pounds) of wholly balanced muscle and fat to sum up to a freight train of a woman with cow-like features, including rather large hooves for feet at the ends of powerfully muscular legs, a long, slender tail ending in a tuft of hair, large, thick hands, and cow ears and horns protruding from the sides of her head rather than human ears. Her face also slips a bit into the uncanny valley with its shape, possessing somewhat of the muzzle shape of a cow, but not fully elongated nor distorted from human-like features. She’s wearing heavy armor, but the chest plate alone speaks volumes. Each of this cow-like woman’s breasts seems to be almost as large as Zuzia’s entire torso, let alone the similarly largely-proportioned body.

The cow woman towers over Zuzia, even in the lowered tackling charge she’s attempting. But, Zuzia’s God-given strength from the magic summoning ritual grants the human the advantage in raw power by leaps and bounds. She could snap this large woman’s forearms like tiny twigs, but she’s not trying to be especially violent if she can help it. The brunette just wants to relax.

Zuzia having succeeded in halting the cow woman seems to have startled the others briefly, but it won’t last. The Polish woman yells, “Nie zbliżaj się! [Don’t get close to me!]” She plants her feet, wrapping her arms around the massive, muscular woman soldier. Because of the fleshiness of her body packed around her muscles, Zuzia can feel the cow woman’s body shift under her armor, and the latter grunts in frustration, trying to dig her hooves in as several other soldiers close in to capitalize.

That is until the Polish otherworlder hefts the woman up into the air with relative ease. With her new power, Zuzia has no sense for how much things actually weigh, but she can feel the soles of her boots flexing under their combined weight, and the two and a half meter tall woman (~8ft) begins to squirm and try to pry herself free of the brunette.

Zuzia screams, “DEBILEEE!” as she throws the woman. She has enough presence of mind even in her anger not to launch the woman into low orbit, nor to paint a faraway mountain with an unrecognizable paste. Instead, the 320+ kilogram woman sails through the air far enough to plow through her comrades like a gigantic bowling ball, and she stops a merciless tumble when she smacks into a tree, collapsing.

Zuzia is making a concerted effort not to kill anyone if she can help it, but if it’s between her and her friends, she doesn’t care if these alleged Imperials die in the process.

“Wasn’t a strike, but I’ll take it for now!” taunts Zuzia, still speaking in Polish. Her emotions are high and the adrenaline is pumping. Her left hand already moved into her next stage; her anti-bear pepper spray. There isn’t time for the cloud to reach everyone, but she’s not average-girl-Zuzia of Earth anymore.

She is Magic-Isekai-Hero Zuzia now.

The backpacker lightly pops the can up in front of her to free both of her hands, and she claps her hands together on the can with every bit of strength she can muster, like a comic book sometimes-hero. 

With a boom of thunder that startles even the girl doing it, a shockwave flashes outwards in all directions while a channel of even higher pressure air forms a cone in front of her, stained orange with a combination of high-potency pepper spray fluid, vaporized metal, and flash-condensed water vapor in the air.

And, with the force of her clap, it’s possible other gasses were briefly condensed into their non-gaseous states.

The shock cone loses force rather quickly, in the grand scheme of things, but the entire group of soldiers and the mercenaries they’re holding captive which Zuzia aimed for are all smacked head-on by Category Five or even hypothetical six or seven hurricane-force winds that tumble them in a mess of bodies across the ground.

Steadying herself as the shockwave echoes deep into the distance, the Polish woman mumbles as humorously as she can, “Zuzu miażdżyć. Heh heh heh.” She snaps out of it, crying out in the Eastern language, “Guys!” She dashes to Verbert first, who is writhing on the ground in pain. The sound was likely super loud, and if he got any of the metal shrapnel or pepper spray embedded in his skin or eyes, it’ll only be made worse.

She breaks the bindings holding him quickly, lunging to Wulfsten and finally Halkadon to do the same for them.

Once they’re free, she hefts them to their feet whether they’re ready or not, urging them, “Go! Run!”

“Not without you!”

“They’re here for me! You have to run! I’ll deal with them! Please go!”

Zuzia whirls and does her best crescent kick, which is a little clumsy, but gets the job done thanks to her seemingly impervious skin. A spear breaks in half as it flips clean out of its wielder’s hands, stumbling a human trying to close in.

In his stumble, his chest comes into range of Zuzia’s grip, and the brunette snatches his armor collar, pivoting in a full circle to catapult the hapless soldier into a bunched up group of other Imperials trying to close in.

“Please! I’ll buy you time and catch up!”

Wulfsten finally nods in agreement, and he pats the others, signalling them to leave. They’ve seen Zuzia’s speed and strength in action, or at least some of it. They’re liabilities if they can’t escape, and since she can outrun all of them, their best chance is to flee.

A whistle comes from somewhere, and Zuzia grabs the closest Imperial who is still trying to climb to his feet, launching the man through the air in the direction of the whistle to try to disable whoever it is.

She can feel a somewhat static-like tingle splash across her as her attention now turns towards a fading glow coming from a different, more lightly-armored Imperial.

Magic? What was I hit with, then?

As if prompted by her very thoughts, the mage calls out, “I caught her with Fade! Restrain her before she…”

Zuzia’s lips part in a toothy and devious grin. The mage flinches, and she kicks forward. The dirt and grass splash like water when a micro shockwave propels her forward. The Polish woman closes the distance on the mage in seconds, and in his panic, he cries out, “Fi-Fire Pillar!”

Again, Zuzia’s Earthling instincts cause her to halt as a massive column of fire erupts around her, and Nesparu’s voice calls out, “NO!”

The Fire Pillar is a powerful spell and covers a large area. It’s difficult to cast with so little preparation, and the mage who cast it drops to his knees as his wobbling legs give out, spitting up blood. The cost of that lack of preparation is a heavier burden on his mana, and even then, was only possible because of a great deal of intense training.

When the flames subside, the Imperial soldiers watch in quiet disappointment. Their immediate belief is that they failed their mission in the worst possible way; their own utter incompetence.

That moment is broken when a female cough comes from the rising smoke still lingering in the wake of the spell.

The mage cries out in terror before falling silent.

With the night time air finally clearing, the Imperial soldiers bear witness to their target standing over the mage. She has her chest covered with her left arm as she slings the fallen sorcerer’s robes over her body. Her shirt was incinerated, and her shorts are partially scorched, leaving new patches of soot-marked skin visible beneath.

In stark contrast, her hair, face, skin, eyes, and even her eyebrows are unharmed.

For her part, Zuzia is frustrated. That was her favorite tank-top, and she’s not foolish enough to believe she can readily and happily begin wearing clothes made in this world as opposed to her 21st Century-era cotton tee shirt. 

Even the mage’s cloak she’s wrapping herself in now feels closer to a burlap sack than actual human clothing.

Yeah, if only you morons had any idea how far behind you are, your arrogance wouldn’t last so long.

She clutches the collar of the cloak, lest her personal secrets get exposed to a bunch of barbaric kidnappers.

“So, who’s next?” taunts the brunette, finishing her makeshift outfit by using the man’s belt to keep the front of the loose-fitting garment bunched up and closed at the front like a kimono.

A really ugly, really uncomfortable kimono.

Forgive me, Japan, for even remotely comparing this thing to your works of art.

With that, she cracks her knuckles.

Commander Nesparu finally tries to regain control. “Stop this at once, Zuzia Spolskia!”

“Are you kidding!? I’m being attacked by bandits posing as Imperial soldiers! If anything, I should be going further to stop you from endangering others!”

She bolts forward, and a shield bearer lunges in close, using some sort of skill to defend the Commander.

Feeling like making a point that shouldn’t need made, the brunette hops so that she’s hanging from the tower shield, and she uses her right hand to punch straight through the metal. There is a terrifying shriek as some of the toughest bonds in any world are broken. There’s also an unnerving crunch, and the shieldman grunts before screaming.

Sucks to be you, but you bandits deserve worse, thinks the otherworlder a little mercilessly. Maybe being kidnapped to another world and chased out of a castle has made her a little numb, or it has started to really sink in.

It’s them or me… They were ready to kill Wulfsten and the guys.

Two more spear-wielders close in, and Zuzia grips one, yanking it away from its wielder in a tight spin, slamming the other one away with the first. She twirls the spear like a massive, clunky baton. She had a brief phase in her youth where she participated as a baton twirler for her school’s marching band, though it was short-lived due to a health-scare with her grandpa that led to their frequent excursions as he denied Death’s hand.

Zuzia uses the back end of the spear to club the first spearman in the chest, and he rockets through the air briefly before tumbling to a stop in the overgrown roadside.

“I hope you brought some man catchers or a retiarius on your side. Because…”

Zuzia trails off as two men, a shenwulf and a human, jog into view. Each is carrying a medieval-style man-catcher, a long polearm with a lobster claw-like head meant to pull people off horses, primarily, but have been adapted and used to capturing people without getting close for fear of melee weapons.

“Hah! Try it, I dare you, you idioci! Bla-HAGH!”

She is suddenly speared from behind by something that slides rather gracelessly across her neck on either side, locking in as soon as the narrow part is past. She is pulled backwards, and it takes everything she has to stumble and stay on her feet, even with her impressive strength.

The other men roar and charge in with their man-catchers, doing their best to capitalize.

Unfortunately, they missed a crucial detail.

Zuzia already knows her skin is tougher than at least some metals now.

Even with the soldier behind her trying to keep her off-balance, the young woman rips the metal claws off of her neck, diving clear as the claw snaps under the merciless force of her strength.

Recovering from her tumble, Zuzia looks at the stumbling human that successfully surprised her. He tries to recover the offensive, but Zuzia lunges in close and kicks his legs out from under him, toppling him to the ground with a “Grah-boof!” the he grunts out.

Just as she’s about to throw him at the other two man-catchers, a weight lands on her back, wrapping arms and legs around her with light patches of fur on the forearms. The fingers have sharp claws that she can feel poking her skin, but they aren’t enough to pierce and draw blood.

She doesn’t have long to think, though. Three more bodies pile onto her, trying to pin her down.

“Get away from me, you crazy stalkers!”

Zuzia stands up in spite of them, and two lose their grips on her torso. They desperately try to cling to her legs, while one of the two on her back tries to put her in a sleeper hold.

The Polish woman jumps out of the grips on her legs with relative ease, and she can hear the soldiers grunt and call out as she sails over another one’s head. She intentionally swallows her fear and pivots so that she comes down on her back, landing on the two gatonines as they cough and cry out in pain.

Zuzia then curls her legs back and leaps to her feet, ignoring the dazed and stunned soldiers she just incapacitated.

Someone calls out, “Commander! We’re no match for her!”

Zuzia scans until she finds Nesparu in the dim light of torches being held by soldiers, the remnants of the campfire, and the moonlight. Genuine fear seems to have covered his face.

“He’s right, Commander Nesparu. You don’t have the rizz to capture the Grand Odkrywca. Hahahaha!” Dear God, what am I saying? Do I have fantasy-world disease? Well, whatever. There’s no way he even knows what my cringe nonsense even means.

Nesparu is quiet for a moment, studying his surroundings. Several soldiers are gravely wounded or unconscious, and Zuzia hasn’t even broken a sweat yet.

After having been caught in an upper-tier fire spell.

The Imperials are running out of options quickly.

“Serrentuk…” murmurs Nesparu.

It doesn’t translate into anything that Zuzia’s magically-gifted language knowledge can decipher.

Her answer comes soon enough.

As if emerging from shadows behind the Imperial officer, a figure with unkempt shining white hair with milky-white eyes possessing no light appears. He has a lifeless expression that stains a once-ethereal beauty of a man. Zuzia is a bit of a Tolkien fan herself, and the long, leaf-like ears that taper to a soft point could only be taken as a fantasy reader to be those of an elf. Her instincts also tell her that he is on a different level of power than everyone she has faced so far. He has more mana than anyone present combined, but something feels off.

That said, Zuzia hasn’t faced anything that could challenge her yet, or her instincts would be tingling like they are now.

Amalaskae did her best to make Zuzia as invincible as possible, but that notion is relative at best. A human’s body can adapt to a great deal of magical changes, but she’s still fundamentally human.

The Polish woman’s heart begins to beat even faster as the adrenaline ramps up once more.

The elven man lifts his staff, and Zuzia braces herself to dodge.

When he taps the bottom end to the ground, a pitch black circle extends out away from him, covering roughly the space of a baseball diamond directly under Zuzia’s feet. She tries to leap backwards even as several of the Imperial soldiers caught inside the radius of the circle sink into it like a magically-summoned marsh.

Zuzia’s footing doesn’t release, using her own momentum to topple her as if she were stuck in the mud. And, she can feel it once the sensation is now grabbing at her elbows and posterior. It’s not mud by any stretch of the imagination, but the ground is no longer completely solid. It has a sort of give like quicksand or boggy marshland, pulling her weight down while resisting her pulling herself free, unlike water. She is able to pry her arms up and struggle out of the solid grip of the spell, but she is still sinking as magic crackles and sparks around her skin.

Unlike her, the soldiers vanish inside rather quickly, crying out before their faces disappear beneath the ethereal pseudo-bog.

So, you’re going to try to sink me into the ground at the cost of your own men, huh? Well, I know who my next target is, then!

Zuzia manages to painstakingly crawl before she can get her footing again, slogging through the quag-like magic. It may not be the muddy slop associated with swamps and pigpens, but she has to walk like it is. Each time her feet break free of the sticky black spell, there is a crackle and pop similar to a static discharge, though it doesn’t cause her any pain. If anything, she might actually exhaust herself fighting the cursed magic.

Her efforts seem to have a direct effect on the elven mage as well, with him beginning to show signs of strenuous effort, and Nesparu and the other soldiers outside of the spell’s artificial ‘floor’ express fear and alarm.

“Commander! She’s breaking free!”

“How is this possible!”

“Commander, what do we do!”

“Stop her!” orders the human Imperial commander. “Stop her at all costs!”

Mages launch spells at her, but she simply shields her face with her forearm, focusing on maintaining her footing and her trudge forward. If she loses momentum, she might sink beyond the point of escape, and she’s only two meters away from reaching the elf himself.

Zuzia reaches out her right hand, closing in on ending the spell. Her target is the staff. She’d be a fool to believe breaking the staff would eliminate a powerful mage from the fight, but it may just shut out his most powerful and dangerous spells, like the mystic marsh he’s casting now.

“MOVE!” shouts a deep woman’s voice. The brunette becomes aware of stomping, and Nesparu is forcefully battered aside by a freight-train of a monstrous being.

With black hair flapping behind her and breasts the size of beach-balls, Zuzia is briefly distracted from the threat that the returning challenger poses.

It’s the cow-woman from earlier, having shed her armor and helmet in favor of reduced weight. Her club-like arm was used to bat Nesparu out of her way so that she has a straight shot in the middle of a full-momentum charge…

… Straight for Zuzia.

The giant woman lets out a mighty roar as she lowers her torso in her sprint, dead set on an unstoppable impact.

The Polish brunette doesn’t have time to fully react to the humongous cow-woman diving straight into her. 

Thanks to the cow woman’s height, she is able to reach Zuzia with her feet still on the ground, and her strength is employed at an upward angle, completely throwing off Zuzia’s balance and center-of-gravity.

The otherworlder heroine nearly falls flat onto her back, but her feet ripped free of her boots under the force of the cow-woman’s impact, lifting her up such that she is able to drop back down onto her feet in spite of the cow’s best efforts.

That said, the woman successfully carried Zuzia back several meters, undoing a lot of her painstaking and exhausting effort exiting the sorcerous slough.

The brunette flails her arms briefly trying to keep her balance before bracing against the heavy woman, who is already sunken up to her knees in the black floor of the spell with a firm grip around Zuzia’s chest and biceps. The cow-woman grunts and strains in immense effort, while the Earthling snarls, “Get off of me!”

Zuzia pries her arms away from her sides, rather easily breaking the impressive woman’s grip as the spell pulls the humongous woman downwards several times more quickly than it can draw Zuzia in.

She realizes it’s another benefit of her magic resistance at work. She may be screwed if she ever needs healing magic, but for now, it’s coming to her rescue more often than not.

Just as the self-proclaimed Grand Odkrywca is about to free and arm to shove the cow woman’s head away and, if need be, end her interference once and for all, a much lighter weight lands on the cow-woman’s shoulder before pouncing upwards in a jumping high-knee directed straight into Zuzia’s nose. As with the other attacks, the Earthling’s long-ingrained instincts cause her to flinch, even though the impact isn’t enough to harm her improved body. Her nose barely even flexes under the impact.

Unfazed by the completely negligible attack, the gatonine warrior acrobatically continues his momentum up with his hands firmly grasping Zuzia’s head on either side, claws fully employed but still not piercing her skin.

Damage doesn’t necessarily seem to be his goal, though. His feat of improvised gymnastics continues through to him doing a handstand vertically from his grip on her skull. His grip tightens, still not able to break skin, but ensuring that he doesn’t lose hold of her, and he drops his body as strongly as he can behind her back.

Zuzia rips her hand free of the cow woman, who is now up to her neck and refusing to release the brunette. Though Zuzia’s knees have just reached the level of the magic mire, much further, and she might not be able to escape at all.

She can feel her center of gravity shifting again, and just as she’s trying to balance while gripping the gatonine man’s wrist, she is speared by yet another person, a human this time, diving into her with his full weight, aiming for her neck.

Zuzia is superhuman in this new world of Zenkon, but she is only superhuman.

These men and women seem set on dragging her into this spell regardless of their own lives.

With desperation claiming her as time runs out, Zuzia squeezes the gatonine’s wrist, crunching bones as she screams, “STOP! WHY CAN’T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE!?”

The gatonine screams as his arm is crushed effortlessly, and she casts him like a ragdoll into the devilish false bog at her side, removing him as a threat within seconds.

Her back hits the floor of the black spell, though, and the human wraps his arms around her desperately. “GET OFF!” She shoves him with all of her might, and blood rains on her as one of his arms comes free…

… from him.

She gags and spits as the horror quickly swallows him. The human is launched mercilessly into the sky, less an arm, as his blood rains down.

She panics as the spell mercilessly clings to her back, shoulders, legs, waist, and hair. “NO! NOOO!”

She writhes and pulls with all of her strength, but her hands are captured, and the exertion starts to quickly overwhelm her, since her great strength is requiring every bit of her energy just to gain millimeters of freedom of any one part, while centimeters of ground are lost everywhere else.

She can feel the murky static tingle swallowing her hips and rib area, and her left hand starts to become numb.

“NOO! PLEASE!”

I-Is this it!? Am I going to die!?

The tingle closes in on her neck and chin as she desperately tries to keep her head above the sinister spell’s surface like the unforgiving quagmire that it is.

In her last seconds, her thoughts desperately search for a way out, and she can’t help but think of one person.

“AMALA! PLEASE HELP MEE-...!”

Her scream is abruptly devoured as the darkness quickly swallows her vision.

***