Isabelle then suddenly remembered something. Her face lit up with nervous excitement."Oh! Right! Before I forget—" She stepped forward, rummaging through her spatial ring. A moment later, she produced a handkerchief and a pen, holding them up with trembling hands.
"Could I possibly...get your autograph?"
Ragnora stared at her.
"When I go back home and show this off to all my friends and family, they’ll absolutely die of jealousy!"
"Of course, I’ll cherish it every single day. I’ll look at it before I go to sleep. So please—can I have your signature?"
She looked so earnest, so genuinely thrilled by the prospect, that Ragnora couldn’t help but feel a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
"I’d love to." She said. Then she glanced down at the worms still struggling in her grip. "But first, I should deal with these."
Isabelle immediately turned sheepish.
"Oh! Right! Sorry! I completely forgot about them!" She paused, then added: "Do you need any help? I can—"
Her invisible appendages shifted, ready to assist.
But Ragnora shook her head.
"No need. I can handle it myself."
She looked at the worms for a moment, assessing.
"It’s just that my methods can be quite...messy. Especially with three of them. I’d prefer if everyone backed up first. I don’t want to accidentally get blood on you."
The soldiers immediately began retreating.
"You heard the Commander! Move back! Give her space!"
Isabelle grabbed Cassius’s hand. He was still staring at Ragnora with that dazed, captivated expression and pulled him backward.
"Come on, darling! We need to give her room!"
Once everyone was a safe distance away, Ragnora let out a slow breath.
Then she looked at the two worms pinned beneath her hands.
And squeezed.
SKREEEEEEEECH!!!!
SKRAAAAAHHHHH!!!!
The worms thrashed, their bodies writhing in agony, their circular mouths gaping in silent screams.
But Ragnora’s grip was absolute. She pressed down harder, harder, until—
CRACK!
Both skulls shattered simultaneously. The worms went limp, their bodies collapsing into the dirt.
Ragnora pulled her blood-soaked hands free and grabbed the third worm That had been gnawing on her back.
KREEEEEEE!!!!!
It thrashed in her grip, its circular mouth gaping and closing, its body coiling around her arm in a desperate attempt to escape.
’Let go! LET GO!’ It seemed to scream.
Ragnora looked at it for a single moment.
Then she tore it apart.
PACHUK!
The sound was indescribable—a wet, ripping, tearing noise that made even the battle-hardened soldiers wince. The worm came apart in her hands like wet paper, its body splitting into pieces that rained down across the battlefield.
She then lowered the remains carefully, arranging them in neat piles. Then she nudged the other pieces together with her feet, making the cleanup crew’s job easier.
Even in the midst of slaughter, she was thinking about others.
The soldiers cheered.
Isabelle stared in awe.
And then, slowly, Ragnora began to shrink.
The twenty-meter titan gradually reduced in size, her muscles relaxing, her body returning to its normal proportions.
Her armor shrank with her—some enchantment, Isabelle assumed and within moments, the godlike giant had become merely enormous rather than impossible.
Still, even at her normal height, Ragnora stood over three meters tall—towering above everyone around her like a crimson monument.
She walked toward the group, her footsteps heavy but unhurried.
"I hope none of you got any blood on you."
"Not a drop, Commander!" Brenda called back.
Ragnora had already confirmed that her troops were unharmed, and a quiet sense of relief settled over her features.
She turned toward Isabelle, her mouth opening as if to speak—
Then she stopped.
Her expression shifted. Not alarm, exactly. More like...puzzlement. The kind of look a person might wear upon discovering something slightly out of place in an otherwise orderly room.
"Lady Isabelle." She began slowly.
Isabelle waved her hands frantically.
"Please, just Isabelle! There’s no need for formality, Commander. Truly."
"Right. Isabelle." Ragnora cleared her throat. Her golden eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "Why exactly is your partner looking at me like that?"
Isabelle blinked. "Huh? Like what?"
She turned around.
And nearly jumped out of her skin.
Cassius was not standing there with his usual confident poise, looking handsome and composed as he always did.
Instead, he was frozen in place, his mouth hanging slightly open, his eyes practically oozing with undisguised adoration. A thin trail of drool had escaped the corner of his lips.
He looked like he’d been placed under a spell.
Which, in a sense, he had. Just not the magical kind.
While Isabelle had been falling deeper into her idol worship, Cassius had been struck even harder.
The sight of Ragnora—towering, powerful, utterly composed had shot and arrow through his heart.
Everything about her appealed to his deepest preferences: the broad shoulders, the sculpted muscles, the commanding presence, the way she had bisected an S-class monster without even seeming to try.
He had been staring at her ever since she’d shrunk back to her normal size, utterly incapable of looking away.
And the quality of that stare was so intense, so naked in its appreciation, that even the mighty Commander Ragnora was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable.
"Darling!"
Isabelle hissed, grabbing his arm and yanking him down to her level.
"What are you doing?! Please don’t embarrass me in front of Commander Ragnora!"
It was no use. Even as she pulled him down, his head swiveled to keep Ragnora in view, like a sunflower tracking the sun. His eyes never left her.
"Darling, snap out of it!" Isabelle patted his cheeks rapidly, her palm making soft pap pap pap sounds against his skin. "Come on! Wake up!"
The patting accomplished nothing.
Ragnora herself had stared down monsters that invoke calamities and walked through battlefields that would break lesser warriors.
But Cassius’s gaze? That made her deeply uncomfortable.
Isabelle, meanwhile, was scrambling for damage control. She grabbed Cassius’s wrist, turned back to Ragnora, and forced a bright, brittle laugh.
"I-I’m so sorry about this, Commander!" She said, her voice pitched a little too high. "You see, my husband here has accidentally been struck by a spell I’ve been working on recently."
"A mind-numbing enchantment. Terribly experimental, really. It’s why he’s acting a bit...goofy right now."
She laughed again—a strained, desperate sound.
"I hope you don’t mind his silly behavior!"
Brenda’s brow furrowed. "A spell? But just a moment ago, he was speaking to us perfectly normally. We had a whole conversation about—"
"A delayed spell!" Isabelle cut in, her smile straining at the edges. "Very delayed. The effects take time to manifest. It’s a complicated bit of magic. Very complicated."
Ragnora studied Isabelle for a moment, then nodded slowly.
"I see. A misfired spell from an archmage of your caliber...yes, that could certainly cause unexpected effects."
She glanced at Cassius with something approaching sympathy.
"I hope your husband recovers swiftly."
"Oh, he’ll be fine! Completely fine! No need to worry at all!" Isabelle waved her hand with exaggerated casualness. "Right, darling? Darling?"
Cassius finally reacted.
But it was not the reaction Isabelle had hoped for.
"Woof!" He said or rather barked
Isabelle froze.
"Woof, woof, woof!"
"Woof, woof, woof, woof!"
Cassius, heir to one of the most powerful bloodlines in existence was barking. Like a dog. At Commander Ragnora.
Isabelle’s face turned the color of a ripe tomato.
"Stop it!" She whispered, grabbing his arm. "Stop it right now! I’m begging you! Please!"
But Cassius, still in his lovestruck daze took it a step further.
"Step on me, mommy."
The area went absolutely silent.
"Step on me..."
"Abuse me..."
"Please. Use those long, muscular legs of yours to discipline this bad boy...."
A soldier near the back dropped his spear. Another choked on his water bottle. Whispers erupted across like wildfire.
"What did Sir Cassius just say?!"
"Did he say step on me?!"
"Is that part of the spell?!"
"What kind of mind-numbing enchantment makes a man bark and ask to be stepped on?!"
Ragnora’s golden eyes blinked once. Twice. Her expression, usually so composed, so unshakeable had shifted into something that looked remarkably like bewilderment.
"Step on him." She repeated slowly, as though tasting each word. "Bad boy. I don’t...I don’t understand. Is this a symptom of the spell?"
She looked more concerned now than she had when facing three S-class monsters simultaneously.
Isabelle was dying inside. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole.
Instead, she smiled. A forced, terrible smile that looked more like a grimace.
"Like I said, Commander Ragnora!" Her voice cracked. "The spell! It’s working on his mind right now! Nothing to worry about!"
She seized Cassius in a headlock, clamping her hand firmly over his mouth. His eyes, of course, never left Ragnora for even an instant.
Ragnora, clearly deciding that this was simply a problem she would not be able to solve, moved on. She fixed Isabelle with a peculiar look.
"So. This man is your husband?"
"Yes, Commander!" Brenda answered brightly, jumping in. "And honestly, he’s the main character of the day! He’s the one who’s going to solve all our problems!"
Ragnora’s brow rose.
"He’s a mana researcher." Brenda continued eagerly. "Specializes in the study of mana itself rather than physical offensive combat. He’s going to be the one who gets to the root of the monster surge!"
Ragnora’s calm expression brightened—just a fraction, but enough to notice. Relief, perhaps. Hope. She knew better than anyone how desperately they needed someone like that.
"His name is Cassius Sinclair." Brenda finished with a flourish. "Husband of Lady Isabelle Sinclair."
"...!"
The moment the name left Brenda’s lips, Ragnora’s entire body went rigid.
Her fists clenched at her sides. Her heart stalled in her chest. Her golden eyes, which had been calm and composed just seconds before, suddenly blazed with an intensity that made several nearby soldiers take an instinctive step back.
Cassius.
The name echoed through her mind like a thunderclap.
Cassius.
In that single instant, a flood of memories crashed over her.
A baby with bright crimson eyes and dark hair, wrapped in swaddling cloth.
A child she had only seen once, held in the arms of a woman she had loved like a sister.
A boy she had sworn to protect—but had failed, utterly and completely, when it mattered most.
Her nephew.
For one wild, irrational moment, she thought that Cassius himself had actually come.
But then she looked at the man before her, and reality reasserted itself.
No. Impossible.
The Cassius she remembered had been marked by the most striking features.
Crimson eyes. Raven-black hair.
Features so distinctive that some had whispered he was demon-touched, cursed from birth.
The man before her had snow-white hair and ice-blue eyes. The exact opposite.
And more importantly: her nephew had no mana. None whatsoever.
It had been confirmed by multiple healers and mages in the days after his birth—a complete absence of magical ability that was virtually unheard of in noble bloodlines.
But the man before her was supposedly a mana researcher. Someone who studied magical energy with academic precision.
That required at least some capacity to sense and interact with mana, even if not to wield it directly.
And then there was the simplest, most obvious fact: her nephew had no reason to be here.
He was back at the Holyfield estate, living his life as a noble—probably in luxury, surrounded by servants and comfort.
Why would someone like that travel to the most dangerous territory on the continent, without guards or escort, to solve a problem that wasn’t even his responsibility?
It made no sense.
Not to mention, if it truly was Cassius, Julie would have informed her. Surely. She would have sent word, a letter, something.
Little did she know that her younger sister had betrayed that trust long ago, for the sake of the man she loved.
So Ragnora shook the thought away. Dismissed it. Filed it under coincidence—a strange one, perhaps, but a coincidence nonetheless.
Still, the thought of him left a complicated expression on her face. A flicker of melancholy. A shadow of grief that no one else could see.
’He was almost the age of this man now.’ She thought. ’Big Sis Florence’s child. I wonder what he looks like. I wonder if he’s well.’
’I wish...I could meet him.’
Chapter 963: Step On Me!
10 min read