A girl was falling. She was over three kilometres in the air, moving falling at speeds faster than fifty metres per second.

  She only wore a customized military uniformed, with a silver-coloured bracelet on her right hand. She had no parachute nor any other equipment to slow her fall.

  Any regular person would presume that the girl would die as soon as she hit the ground in less than a minute.

  Despite the precarious situation, the girl wasn't afraid. She had a bored look on her face. She knew would be completely fine.

  As she looked down, she could see a forest stretched out beneath her as far as the eye could see. As she approached the ground, she directed herself to an empty clearing.

  A second after she positioned herself, the girl crashed into the ground creating a massive dust cloud and leaving a small crater behind.

  A fall like that would be lethal to any other human. Yet she stood up completely unscathed, not a single scratch on her. She moved her hands to shake off the numbness.

  Even though she was physically fine, the impact still shook her entire body. Then she just patted away the dust on her clothes as if she hadn’t done something extraordinary.

  After climbing out the crater, she scanned the area around her. She had landed in a small clearing in the forest. It had been untouched by human hands for nearly 200 years.

  Overgrown shrubbery had taken over and erased any presence humans had on this land. This land been reconquered by nature.

  In the distance, she could deer running away, startled by noise from her impact. Birds soared over ahead in flock.

  But she shook her head and ignored the distractions around her. She wasn't here just to view the sights. She had a mission to complete.

  She expanded her senses, letting her observe her surroundings. She could sense all life in the nearby area.

  From the ants crawling on the ground, to life in the trees. She found the deer who stopped to drink water at a nearby lake and sensed a pack of wolves getting ready to hunt them.

  However, none of these were her target. It was a massive mana signature that overpowered all other mana signatures in the area. It stood out like a sore thumb, signalling its presence to everyone nearby.

  That was her target.

  After detecting her opponent, she dashed towards its direction with speed nearly imperceptible to the human eye.

  Despite her speed, she easily weaved through the trees, without letting a single stray leaf hit her. She leapt from branch to branch, barely making a sound as she crossed the distance. It was as if she was a blur.

  Within 15 seconds, she arrived at the target location. It was a small clearing, with all the trees upturned.

  Standing before her was a giant Cryptid, the otherworldly monster that was her target. It was a golem over 10 metres tall and was composed entirely of rocks.

  It had giant arms and legs with a small torso and tiny head. She almost found it comical. In place of eyes, it had several glowing holes over its body that it used to observe the world around her.

  All the grass nearby had withered away, revealing the exposed earth where it lived. It destroyed the forest nearby to create the rocky terrain. It was obvious that Cryptid in front of her was the reason for this destruction.

  The girl immediately recognised the species of the Cryptid she had to face. It was a Level 5 Terragor. It was incredibly dangerous creature. The bare minimum to defeat it was a platoon of triple digits mages led by a double digit. And even then, most of them were expected to die.

  Yet a young girl, not even an adult, faced it alone. Many other Cryptids surrounded the Terragor, but she dismissed them as irrelevant threats. They all resembled mutated animals.

  They were only Level 3 Cryptids and below. They were much weaker than Cryptid before her. She also noticed three Level 4 as well, but she placed them in the same category.

  The three Level 4 Cryptids resembled tigers, but were several times bigger, with blood red fur and extremely long claws. Their tails were pitch black with a sharp blade-like end. They were Level 4 Blood Tigers.

  The giant cryptid swung its massive arm towards the girl. Despite its size, it moved extremely fast. The arm collided with the girl, resulting in a resounding bang.

  The impact was felt by earth as the trees nearby shook from the impact of that blow.

  A fist of that size and that much velocity should have crushed the girl. Yet when the dust cleared, the first had collided with a thin, smooth, silver shield. The girl behind it was completely fine, without so much as flinching.

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  She calmly used the silver shield to swat away the massive arm as if it were a minor inconvenience. The Cryptid was astonished that a small human girl was able to block it so easily.

  However, that didn't phase the creature. It brought its other arm up, into a fist and swung the down at the girl.

  She calmly avoided it by jumping backwards, with the fist leaving a crater where she previously standing. While she was midair, two Level 3 Cryptids tried to attack her from behind.

  The were about the sizes of wolves but, resembled wolverines with claws sharp enough to slice through steel.

  "Boring."

  She had seen those attacks from a mile away. In a flash of silver, a thin blade sliced their cores. They died before they could register what even occurred.

  "I should stop playing around."

  She muttered to herself to no one in particular, ignoring the Cryptids around her.

  She focused her mana through her into her silver-coloured bracelet. From, it a similar silver metal being was produced. It spilt out like a liquid, flowing similar to mercury. As the girl ran mana through her bracelet, more liquid metal was being created.

  It spread out like a fountain of water, covering a forest floor. The Cryptids started to back away in far, with some even thinking of running.

  She controlled the liquid, forming it into giant silver tendrils that she could manipulate at will. This was her Mercury Scribe.

  She glanced at all the Cryptids around her, identifying the cores and aiming the tendrils at them.

  Within seconds, Cryptids started being slaughtered, helpless to prevent their demise. In desperation, the Level 3 Cryptids all started attacking her.

  Yet they weren’t even able to come closer than two meters away from her before being shred by her silver tendrils. It was a giant blender. When Cryptid’s cores get destroyed, their bodies start falling apart as they managed the mana flow of their bodies and were the singular thing that allowed them to function.

  With their lessors being killed helplessly, the three Blood Tigers and the Terragor tried to intervene. The girl barely spared a glance at them before using her Mercury Scribe to restrain them. They squirmed as they tried to break free from their confinement.

  With them restrained, the girl focused her attention on the weaker Cryptids. Within half a minute, most the weaker Cryptids were lying dead on the floor, with the remaining running away. Around this time, the ones she restrained broke free.

  "I guess it’s time to deal with you guys."

  She reformed the tendrils into four silver tentacles, slamming them into the Level 5 Crytpid. Within a second, a countless number of attacks hit the creature. The Terragor raised its rocky arms to block the attacks, trying to protect its core.

  While the girl was occupied by the Terragor, the Blood Tigers flanked her from side, their tails which were several metres long now glowing red. They jumped up, launching tens of blood blades from their tails.

  The girl barely registered their attacks and put up a simple multi-segmented barrier to block their attacks.

  Despite their attacks not working, the Blood Tigers, they didn’t approach any closer, still afraid they would be instantly killed.

  “Tch,” she clicked her tongue when she noticed their actions. They were too smart for their own good. It would be convenient if they approached her. The Terragor was taking too much of her attention.

  She couldn’t restrain it like before. The Terragor’s signature ability allow it to manipulate its mana frequency to better resist attacks it has experienced. Now that it knew how to disrupt the liquid metal, it would break out in a second if she tried.

  The Level 5 Cryptid also boasted immense physical abilities to the point even the girl wouldn’t want to take a blow from the creature. Its species was one of the strongest in its class.

  She couldn’t attack the Blood Tigers since they were too far away and most of her attention was occupied already.

  “Let’s do this then.”

  The girl reformed the four tentacles into a giant hammer and swung it at the Terragor. It was caught off guard and was unable to react to such a heavy attack. The force of the blow sent the Cryptid flying back into the forest, crashing into several trees before stopping.

  While the Terragor was out of the picture, she focused her attention the three Blood Tigers. She wouldn’t let them escape.

  Knowing their deaths would soon occur, they rushed at her in their desperation. The girl sent out three tendrils, one for each Blood Tiger. They managed to dodge some of the earlier attacks, but soon the silver tendril caught up to them.

  And soon it made contact with them, it spread around their bodies, encasing them. The Mecury Scribe then pierced the inside of the bodies, accurately targeting their cores.

  It took less then 10 seconds, but all three of them dead.

  The timing was perfect as well, because the Terragor had gotten up and sprinted towards the girl, tearing the ground up, knocking down trees as it moved.

  The Terragor, when it had gotten close enough jumped at the girl planning to crush her with its weight. The girl knocked the Terragor away with a giant silver hand that she had created.

  It promptly stood up and attempted to attack her again, but the girl blocked its charge with two giant hands.

  It wouldn’t hold back the Terragor for long. So, the girl directed a large amount of mana into her fingers.

  She pointed her index and middle fingers in a finger gun hand pose, at the Terragor who managed to destroy the giant silver hands. A small white orb with a radius of a centimetre, with a slight purple hue was created at tip of those fingers. The orb rested just a few millimetres away it.

  Even while the Terragor was charging at her, the girl just stood there unfazed, still pointing at it.

  She then whispered,

  “Manaclysmic Series: Voidline”

  From the white orb, a thin purplish-white laser was shot out. It easily pierced through the rocky body Cryptid exiting its body through the other side. It had surgically destroyed the core of the Terragor, dealing minimal damage to rest of the body and environment.

  Without its core, the Terragor was unable to control it body as it tripped over its legs, crashing into the Earth. The ground shook from the weight of the creature. A dust cloud kicked up, as the Terragor in its last-ditch effort tried to crush the girl with its hands. The girl merely sidestepped away and watched as all the holes around its body stopped glowing.

  From the holes, a green liquid flowed out and evaporated into the air. When Cryptids died, some parts of their bodies would turn to ashes. Those mostly included blood and other internal organs. Other parts such as bone and skin would remain behind. The Blood Tigers and other Cryptids’ bodies seemed to be completely drained of blood, becoming empty husks.

  Nobody had discovered why this would occur and chalked it up to Cryptid physiology. It was too alien to understand. This phenomenon, which defied all convention biology, further proved these creatures were not from this world.

  Yet after facing these abominations of life, she was completely unharmed. She looked like she had barely exerted herself.

  This was Freya Storm, a magus. Out of all the magi humanity had, she stood at the pinnacle.

  The Strongest.

  And she had achieved this feat while merely being 17.

  Calling her talented was an understatement. She was a genius among geniuses.