The man quickly jumped backward, trying to dodge Seraphina's successive dagger strikes. Her movements were fluid and lethal, as if performing a dance figure. Each of her moves was a preparation for the next one, leaving only millimeter-wide gaps between them.

  She made a sudden move toward the man's left side. Seraphina, as if expecting this, turned and thrust her dagger toward his throat. The man tried to duck at the last moment but was too late. The dagger touched his throat, but the nanomachines instinctively hardened the throat area. It only left a slight red line as it grazed past.

  He made a move to grab the woman's wrist, but Seraphina pulled her hand back with a snake-like agile movement. The man's fingertips barely touched her wrist, but this contact wasn't enough to grab hold.

  "My Lord, take the crown to a safe place," said Seraphina, without taking her eyes off the man. "I'll join you once I finish my business here."

  Lord Thorne didn't respond. He stood motionless with his back turned. The man moved to strike, but Seraphina's dagger cut through the air, blocking his path.

  "You can't reach him without getting past me," said the woman, with a thin smile on her lips.

  The man quickly assessed the area around him. The room was spacious with high ceilings, but the furniture restricted movement space. Seraphina's advantage was clear - with her smaller and more agile build, she could maneuver more easily in this narrow space.

  "Why are you so loyal to him?" asked the man, slowly changing his position. "If Thorne's plan succeeds, thousands of innocent people will be harmed."

  Seraphina's expression hardened. "Innocent? Are those who feast in their palaces while Hatrugar's children die of hunger innocent? Are the wizards who hoard healing spells for themselves while our people struggle with diseases innocent?"

  She continued her attack even while speaking. Her dagger was dancing around the man, leaving bright traces in the air. The man was blocking every strike but couldn't find an opportunity for a counter-attack.

  "Lord Thorne gave me a purpose," Seraphina continued, her voice trembling. "He showed me the way to bring justice!"

  The man finally caught an opening and made a move toward Seraphina's arm, but it was a trap. The woman changed direction at the last moment and thrust her dagger toward the man's ribs. The man instinctively jumped back, but he was too late. He had survived thanks to the hardening of the nanomachines. The dagger hadn't gone too deep.

  "You've died twice already."

  "You see," said Seraphina, "no matter how strong you are, I'm faster. Sooner or later, you'll make a mistake."

  The man was thinking while maneuvering between the furniture. Seraphina was right - if this continued, he would eventually tire and leave an opening that the nanomachines couldn't stop. He needed to change his strategy.

  "Geminga?"

  "I'm trying to think!"

  Suddenly he jumped onto the table and made a move toward the wall. Seraphina's eyes widened - this was an unexpected move. The man bounced off the wall and lunged toward the woman.

  Seraphina dodged at the last moment, but the man had anticipated this. He completed his landing with a controlled roll and immediately kicked at the woman's legs.

  The kick found its target and Seraphina stumbled. However, as an experienced warrior, she immediately regained her balance and back-flipped to create distance.

  The man stood up, his eyes tracking every movement of the woman.

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  She attacked again, more aggressively this time. Using her dagger like an instrument of death, she was testing the man's defenses with each move. The man was forced to keep retreating, but this was part of his strategy.

  As they approached the corner of the room, the man suddenly stopped and threw an obvious left punch. This move would leave his left side vulnerable, but the man had taken this risk.

  Seraphina instinctively started to turn to protect her right side, then thrust her dagger toward the man's ribs.

  This was exactly the man's plan. All the nanomachines in his body had moved from his back to the front. His back was completely vulnerable, but the defense on his front body had become much stronger.

  Seraphina, thrown to the other end of the room and hitting the wall from the impact, gritted her teeth. Her injured shoulder was now worse. As she forced herself to get up, Lord Thorne spoke.

  "That's enough, Seraphina. Don't get up. I'll handle this myself."

  Lord Thorne turned to face the man. The spiral in his eyes was still turning, but in his right eye, at the center of the space-like vortex, a purple gleam had appeared. When the man looked at the table, he saw the crown wasn't there. What they had heard was true, the crown really was inside the man's eye.

  He raised his fist and ran toward the man. But as he advanced, the world around him began to spin. At first, he thought it was simple dizziness, but soon he realized something different, more dangerous was spinning.

  With each step toward the old man, reality began to twist in spiral patterns around him. Finally, he lost his balance and collapsed. The man before him now stood like an unreachable point at the end of an infinite tunnel.

  He tried to stand up, but his perception of reality was completely distorted. He couldn't even tell if he was on the floor or the ceiling. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get up.

  "Stop looking at the man's eyes! Pull back and gather your thoughts!"

  Following Geminga's warning, he threw himself backward. As the distance between him and the old man increased, his vision began to clear. He took a deep breath and stood up.

  "Have you ever heard this saying? 'if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you' Well, looking into my eyes is just like that."

  Following Geminga's words, he grabbed the heavy chair beside him. With a quick movement, he lifted it from the ground and threw it at the man with all his might. As the chair glided through the air, the spiral in Lord Thorne's eyes began to spin faster. As the chair approached the man, its size began to change strangely - slowly at first, then increasingly faster. Finally, shrinking to a point as small as a grain of sand, it disappeared into the infinite void created by the man's spiral eyes.

  "You can't touch me. You can't harm me. No one can. Kneel before your new king!" he said and took a step toward the man.

  As the old man approached him, everything started spinning again. His eye had an effective range. If he could stay outside this range, he would be safe.

  "Fifteen meters. We're safe if we stay outside of that. But how will we respond?"

  "I'm still thinking!"

  "Think faster, I'm running out of ideas!"

  The only thing he could do was retreat as Lord Thorne approached. With his backwards steps, he had already left the room.

  "After I'm done with you, I'll deal with your friends. Opposing your king's words is treason! And the price of treason is death."

  The spiral shape in the old man's eye suddenly stopped, and the purple light shining in its center began to glow like the sun. The light was so intense that even the shadows in the room had vanished. The universe inside the man's right eye was exploding from inside out, like a star going supernova.

  The purple beam that shot from his eye advanced through the air in a spiral motion. Around the beam, small cracks formed as if space itself was breaking. Through these cracks, the dark and starry view of another dimension was seeping through.

  The man instinctively held his arms crossed in front of his face. The nanomachine defense in his body had reached maximum power, but even this wouldn't be enough. The moment the beam hit his arms, the nanomachine shield shattered like glass. The purple energy wave lifted him off the ground and launched him outside the factory, pulverizing the wall behind him.

  As he glided through the air, the spiraling beam continued to damage the man's body. With each rotation, microscopic black holes opened and instantly closed in his skin. Though his nanomachine defense had collapsed, it was still active enough to keep him alive.

  He flew about fifty meters through the air until he crashed into a black vehicle parked across the street. The impact set off the car's alarm. The metal body had taken the shape of the man's body as if it were made of paper. The metal wrinkles extending outward from the point of impact on the car's side resembled a spider's web.

  A thin trickle of blood came from the mouth of the man lying on the ground as he coughed. The nanomachine activity in his body had dropped to minimum levels. On the left side of his chest was a deep burn mark created by the purple beam. The wound spiraled up to his shoulder.

  Lord Thorne's attack had opened a perfectly circular hole in the factory wall. The edges of the hole still glowed with purple energy, and darkness seeped from its edges as if space itself had been wounded. The old man looked out through the hole, a satisfied smile on his face as the spiral in his eye slowly returned to normal.