From Slave to King: My Rebate System Built Me a Kingdom With Beauties!-Chapter 247: Seraphel Makes Her Move! [FIXED!]

Seraphel stood perfectly still in what remained of the clearing, silver hair whipping in the wind she’d summoned. Ten paces separated her from Kragg—or what remained of him, corrupted beyond anything she’d seen in decades.

The orc warlord stared back with eyes that had become bottomless black voids, empty of everything that made someone living. His scarred face hung slack in a way that made her skin crawl, muscles relaxed even while standing upright. Living flesh didn’t move like that. Dark mana poured off him in thick, oily waves that she could practically taste. Worse than the sight or smell was the recognition—this corruption matched the signature she’d tracked on that goblin boy, Byung. The same twisted energy. The same impossible origin.

She understood the danger immediately. If the dwarf perched on that nearby boulder like some vulture waiting for scraps managed to absorb even the smallest fragment of her elemental magic, everything would fall apart. He’d become something far more dangerous—a walking tear in the barrier.

But Seraphel didn’t feel afraid. Fear had been burned out of her centuries ago. She trusted her control completely. She believed in the purity of her power, in the fundamental truth that darkness had never withstood her when she truly committed.

Kragg’s head tilted to the side in that slow, deliberate way that sent wrongness crawling down her spine. Too controlled. Too precise for anything natural. The dwarf’s red eyes practically glowed with satisfaction, his lips pulled back to show far too many teeth. Disgusting. Whatever he’d orchestrated down in those tunnels had clearly gone according to plan.

Neither of them moved.

Then the earth itself turned traitor.

Mud exploded upward beneath their feet without warning—sudden and violent, grabbing at their ankles like starving mouths. Seraphel felt the trap snap shut around her in an instant. She had maybe half a heartbeat to catch the dwarf’s smug expression before the mud solidified into stone shackles, locking them both in place.

She reacted on pure instinct.

Her right fist drove downward into the ground with everything she had. The earth responded with brutal efficiency.

A column of raw force erupted straight up from the impact point, concentrated like a spear thrust through the planet’s core. The ground collapsed inward before exploding outward in the same impossible moment—rock turning to vapor, dirt flash-heated into glass, a perfect circular crater spreading outward with surgical precision. The blast wave hit like a physical wall but stayed exactly where she directed it. Trees standing fifty paces away barely trembled. The destruction remained precisely contained.

Kraghul’s sisters had seen enough. Thulga, Roktha, and Mazga were already scrambling onto their horses at the crater’s edge. Mazga clutched the bloody stump where her right arm used to be, her face drained of color, but she was alive. They’d all witnessed the lightning strike earlier, watched this corrupted version of their brother simply shrug it off. Now they were seeing an elf who could make the ground devour itself on command.

This wasn’t a demon. This was something that belonged in the kind of stories told to keep children from wandering into dark forests.

Thulga yanked hard on her reins. "Move!" she roared at her sisters.

They didn’t waste time looking back. Hooves pounded against stone as they carried the youngest sister to safety. Mazga had lost an arm—a terrible price—but watching how this fight was developing, losing just an arm made her fortunate.

Smoke and ash hung thick in the air for several long seconds before finally beginning to clear.

Seraphel stood completely untouched at the crater’s center, her armor catching the dim light, breathing perfectly even. Across from her, the dwarf sat comfortably perched on Kragg’s broad shoulder like a child riding on their father’s back. Faint scorch marks decorated his armor, superficial damage at most. Kragg himself didn’t have a single fresh scratch. Whatever was controlling that body simply refused to let it break. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

The dwarf made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a cough—low, wet, deeply amused. He flicked his wrist almost lazily. A jagged shard of blackened iron shot toward Seraphel’s face, trailing dark mana behind it like dirty smoke.

She pursed her lips and let out a single sharp whistle.

A lance of wind answered her immediately. It mirrored the projectile perfectly in size and shape, spinning in the opposite direction, edges sharp enough to cut light itself. The two forces collided midair with a sound like breaking bones. Both shattered into harmless dust that drifted away.

The dwarf began clapping slowly, deliberately. "I see now," he called across the crater, his voice carrying easily despite the distance. "You command all the elements. Very impressive. Even the High Priestess rarely demonstrate such complete versatility."

Seraphel’s eyes narrowed as something cut through the chaos—clean and urgent, like a bell ringing through fog.

A direct command from her queen, delivered straight into her consciousness:

Retreat.

The single word carried absolute authority. This wasn’t a suggestion. This was an order, backed by whatever intelligence the council had gathered through scrying in the last few minutes. They’d seen enough to make their decision.

But the command arrived just a fraction too late.

The dwarf’s grin stretched wider across his face. He leaned forward, resting one hand casually on Kragg’s bald head like it was an armrest. "Too slow, elf."

Kragg moved.

Not with ordinary muscle and bone. With something fundamentally worse.

The dark mana surrounding him flexed like a living creature—coiling tighter, growing denser, then snapping outward in a wave that reeked of wet decay. This wasn’t an attack aimed at her body. It targeted the space itself, trying to tear apart the fabric where her elemental control anchored. Seraphel felt the pull instantly—a sickening wrench against every spell thread she held taut.

She countered without thinking. Both hands came up, palms facing outward. Lightning arced between her fingers, but not the single bolt from earlier. This was a complete net of white-blue fire that wrapped around the incoming darkness and burned it backward. The collision lit up the entire crater like midday sun. Thunder rolled inward from all directions, contained by her iron will.

Kragg staggered back—one heavy step, then another—before finally steadying himself. The dwarf’s laughter got louder, more genuine.

Seraphel’s mind raced through possibilities and consequences, calculating risk against necessity. She could end this right now. She knew she had the power coursing through her veins. A full invocation—earth and wind and fire and lightning all braided together into one devastating strike—would erase this abomination and the dwarf controlling him in a single stroke. Clean. Permanent. Final.

But the queen’s command echoed through her thoughts again, louder this time, edged with something that felt uncomfortably close to panic.

Retreat.

She understood the reason behind it now. If she unleashed everything she had here, the barrier would scream in protest. Every thread of her power that made contact with this dark mana would widen the cracks that Byung had already created. The dark continent would sense the weakness and push harder. More things would find ways to slip through. She’d been sent here to retrieve one goblin anomaly, not to trigger the beginning of the end.

Still, retreating felt like admitting defeat.

Kragg advanced toward her again, moving slower now, more deliberately. Each footstep cracked the stone beneath his weight. Dark mana dripped from his fingers like melted tar, hissing where it touched the ground.

The dwarf slid down from his perch to stand beside the corrupted orc, still wearing that smile. "You can’t kill what you don’t understand, Warden. And you can’t seal what’s already bleeding."

Seraphel’s jaw tightened. She hated that some part of what he said rang true.

She took one measured step backward—her first voluntary retreat in decades.

Wind began rising around her, lifting dust in a perfect spiral pattern. Light gathered at her feet, pale and cold as winter moonlight.

"I’ll remember your face," she said quietly, her voice carrying absolute certainty.

The dwarf bowed with exaggerated courtesy. "I look forward to our next meeting."

Seraphel turned away from them.

Wings of translucent light snapped open from her shoulders—smaller than her earlier display, carefully restrained to conserve power. She launched herself upward in one smooth motion, the air folding around her body like water parting for a blade cutting cleanly through it.

Behind her, the crater continued smoking. Kragg stood watching her ascent, his head tilted at that same deeply unnatural angle. The dwarf’s laughter drifted up after her—soft and deeply satisfied.

The queen’s command pulsed through her consciousness one final time:

Return. Immediately.

Seraphel climbed higher and faster until the ruined ground below became nothing more than a dark spot against the landscape. She didn’t allow herself to look back.

But she carried the taste of that dark mana on her tongue like bitter poison she couldn’t spit out. She held the memory of Byung’s new powers in her mind. And she knew with absolute certainty that this was just the beginning.