Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!-Chapter 278: Turning point (9?!?)

Despite standing a few steps away and having her back turned to the man, when the meaning of this strange man's words rang all the alarms in Madam's head…

The vanished.

Or, to be more precise, by concentrating an unnatural amount of her own aura between two points in space, she abused the qualities of her domain, forcing her entire self to slip from one place to the other without making even a single move.

For Madam, it felt like surfing through instance, crossing space as their creator intended for her species. The ultimate reward for reaching the highest form of creation.

And an intoxicating side-effect of an ability… Madam mastered two hundred years before giving birth to her one and only daughter.

This strange, vile man moved his mouth, ready to utter the second word of the forbidden sentence.

'Damn son of a traitor,' Madam squinted her eyes, twisted her lips in a disgusted grimace, and lashed out with her hand, slamming her fangs right into the princess' escort's mouth.

"Lo…"

Stopping the man right in time by grasping at his entire jaw and covering his mouth with her palm, Madam stared down into his eyes with a sense of wicked satisfaction.

"No, you don't!"

Tightening her fingers and driving her nails through the skin of the man's jaw, Madam ripped into his mouth, severing all the joints and tendons this vile soiled blood needed to move his taboo-breaking lips.

"Wha…?!" The golden lass jumped up. Her ability to hold back degraded as more and more of her simplistic aura rose up to resist the pressure of Madam's domain.

"I had my doubts about you for a while now," Madam spoke, as calmly as if she wasn't ripping the man's mouth just by clenching her fist. "I've never heard of the pureblood imperial moving around without their mate, you see."

The golden princess's face contorted, suddenly warped by several more emotions than before. Yet, as Madam took a look to the side and stared right into the lass' golden eyes…

There was one emotion that she noticed missing.

"Wait, you have no idea, do you?" Madam stared wide-eyed at the princess… before breaking out laughing.

"No idea about what?!" Etaria barked, lowering herself to her knees and gathering her aura, readying herself to pounce.

"You have no idea who this guy is… Or who your people are either!" Madam continued to laugh with her entire body shaking… save for the arm she held Zanba's devastated and bloodied mouth with. "Say," Madam turned her eyes back to the man.

By now, he was struggling to grasp at Madam's arm with one of his hands while fruitlessly trying to move his right one to push the blade it held just a little bit further…

But it was of no use.

Now that she decided to make the move, Madam dropped the pretense, casually flooding the entire area with the ocean of her own aura.

The power she gathered in silence, stopping herself from getting in Loraz's way, polishing her skills during her exile…

All of the might she suppressed has now returned, blowing off Etaria's domain in practically its entirety, leaving the princess with just a shallow field directly over her own flesh.

Madam flooded the area with her own aura, infusing it into the very fabric of her domain… But she didn't bother to actively use it for anything else but holding the son of a soiled bloodline up in the air with the fingers she ripped into the man's jaw.

"Say, kiddo, how long has it been since that Hecalion brat went and died?"

Zanba's eyes fired up.

As if the pain of having his jaw ripped into pieces and foreign fingers dig into the flesh of his mouth was nothing out of the ordinary for him, his eyes burned with clear, unbridled, and perfectly focused wrath and hate.

A fire that took even Etaria by surprise.

Only now realizing the man couldn't answer her while she brutally blocked his mouth, Madam spat to the side and threw Zanba aside like a senseless doll.

"Tsk," the old fox clicked her tongue, watching the young man stumble on the ground. "Your bloodline isn't even pure enough for you to invoke the creator's name. So," Madam squinted her eyes, "just don't."

For a moment, silence reigned in the air.

Done with her scolding, Madam seemingly lost her direction.

Devastated by the unexpected attack and overwhelmed by righteous hate, Zanba struggled to gather himself from the ground.

Stunned by the development, Etaria simply couldn't find the right words to express any of the thousand questions shooting through her mind.

The imperial soldiers and Etaria's private guards could only wish and pray for some miracle to take them as far away from where supremes dealt with each other.

Mere mortals had nothing to do and nothing to defend themselves with once the supremes' domain started to clash.

"Honestly, I knew there had to be something wrong with this entire situation, but I just couldn't put my finger on what was really going on," Madam finally broke the silence with an exhausted mutter and a shake of her head. "But now things are finally starting to…

"I invoke Lo'Atkar!" Etaria screamed out, seemingly making some fragmentary sense out of the words that Madam casually threw around.

And those words… led to absolutely nothing happening. Nothing but Madam turning her head over and giving the princess a sympathetic look.

"Your bloodline is certainly pure enough for that. And given how fast you guys are cursed to die off…" Madam continued to mutter some nonsense under her nose, shaking her head with renewed pity directed at the two she was confronting. And as she raised her eyes to look at the princess again…

The look of pity grew an underbelly of distant disgust.

"It's a pity you don't even know the words, have no faith, and lack the calling to invoke."

Madam smiled at the princess, now giving her a look of superiority.

"But you are more than welcome to try it, young lass. You will just make my job easier."

"So it didn't work," Etaria summed up before clicking her tongue. "I guess I should do things the old-fashioned way, huh?'

The gold of Etaria's eyes suddenly exploded with intensity as her aura exploded, pushing against the pressure of Madam's domain.

With the influx of her own aura, Madam's domain nearly sniffed out Etaria's… But the princess wasn't going all in either, not before now.

"Are you really sure you want to do that?" Madam asked, leaning her head over her right shoulder while watching the princess with amusement. "What you are trying to do won't be an invocation but rather a direct…"

Madam's eyes twitched. She looked over at where Zanba desperately tried to put the pieces of his mouth back together in their original places. Her eyes moved over the pitiful man and all the way towards the imperial soldiers.

Caught up in the moment, all they tried to do was to vanish, disappear from view, not to be noticed by any of the three monsters ahead.

But looking at them, Madam squinted her eyes.

"Oh, I get it now," the mature fox's face changed again, this time filled with a different sort of disgust that she showed when she realized how Etaria's lineage could remain so pure over the centuries. "You have no idea why your empire is doing everything it can to get back to the forest. For you, this is all about culling down the armies of those who could threaten you once the empire collapses!"

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Etaria's eyes twitched. Her aura convulsed before collapsing down on itself…

Yet, it didn't implode. Instead, once reaching its greatest possible density, Etaria's golden aura bounced back up, aggressively pushing away at Madam's domain.

For a second, the two domains clashed, fighting for supremacy with nothing but the quality and quantity of the auras supporting it. And while Madam was clearly much stronger than anything Etaria could ever hope to imagine…

Suppressing that damned fox's domain was never the princess's goal.

Expanding her own influence just far enough to encapsulate all the soldiers who were anywhere near to witness this exchange was her actual objective.

"I wonder what those guys will do once they realize your very goal is to let all of them…"

"Die?" Etaria asked as she jerked her aura, releasing the power hidden within.

In a single instant, the situation escalated from the two supremes measuring each other to one of them actively using their aura.

But Etaria didn't attack. Or, at the very least, she didn't attack Madam. Instead, with a flick of her consciousness she formed a strand of condensed aura running through the middle of the soldiers' bodies, her own private guard included, before releasing it from her hold, unleashing the potential energy it held.

BOOM!

Spheres of golden light appeared all over the area, spreading out like a shockwave from the very core of the mortal bodies of the imperial soldiers, consuming everything in their path as they expanded to their full shape.

"Killing the armies of those who could threaten my clan was my goal before," Etaria spoke, not letting go of her activated aura even once she achieved her purpose of wiping any and all potential witnesses of the encounter. "But now, my goal changed."

Etaria's aura swung about, before bending over and changing its flow trajectory right back to the young woman. And as more and more of the princess aura started to orbit around her, the power she drew upon changed.

Now, rather than using her aura to invoke her influence, Etaria moved one step up and used her aura's momentum instead.

"Impressive," Madam smirked

"I…"

"It's not every day that you see a mere human reach that…

"… invoke…"

"…that kind of…" Madam squinted her eyes and looked over to the side.

"Lo…"

Right as her eyes reached Zanba, Madam's face tensed up.

His jaw was still bloodied and broken all over… But it was clearly moving. And she could even make out what the man was trying to say!

'He shouldn't be able to do it, but just in case…'

Daring not to leave things to a chance, Madam started to turn as she grasped her aura, ready to slingshot herself through space to step down on the man's jaw and sever his spinal cord, putting an end to the sinful line that branched out from her very own clan.

The disgrace that Madam's uncle brought upon her generation.

But right as Madam mobilized herself, Etaria advanced, ripping the stabilizing agent of her aura's flow and sending it hurtling right into Madam's domain, cutting her loose influence open and rapidly advancing through what should be an impenetrable barrier.

'Shit,' torn between the two dangers, Madam gritted her teeth and turned towards the one she judged to be more grave.

"…'Atkar's…"

'Scatter!' Madam thought, using a mere sliver of her own aura to put Etaria's flow into disarray, splitting it into a thousand tiny beams of foreign aura that couldn't hold its ground against the onslaught of Madam's everpresent domain.

"Law of Authority!"