So the witch had blocked it. So what?
The poison had already been laced with Bella's psionic will—she could still control it.
"Think I'm just some kid? Look down your nose at my spells? Ride in on that lofty pride of yours? You're exactly like that—that what's-her-name. Same arrogance, both of you!" Bella traced a spell-sigil in the air with one hand. The heart poison the White Witch had forcibly suppressed inside her body suddenly erupted.
Heart poison didn't belong to the natural world, nor to the elemental realm. It was a deeply mind-based force—threaded through with layer after layer of Bella's suggestion magic. Suggestion of Death, Suggestion of Paralysis, Suggestion of Madness—a toxic compound brewed from many negative emotions in the mind, mingled, fermented, and sublimated into their most potent form.
The White Witch had no defense. Going from overwhelming victory to catastrophic defeat had sent her mental state on a roller coaster. Between the Ashina samurai ambushing her, the killing intent saturating the battlefield, and the poison gnawing at her psyche, it all compounded. She knew her state was wrong, but her mental defenses still collapsed. To put it plainly: she snapped.
When it came to fighting, they were equally bad. But when it came to playing with minds, she was no match for Bella the psion.
Her eyes flushed red. Her face twisted with venomous rage. Composure gone, the veneer of nobility impossible to maintain, the White Witch let out a wild roar and launched into a frenzied assault on Bella.
Ice cones, ice arrows, hundred-square-meter ice detonations, ice tornadoes, ice spears—faced with this onslaught, Bella just held her defense and kept taunting.
"Hey old woman, take a look at yourself. Queen of Narnia? You? Seriously? You think you qualify?"
"You're just a malevolent thought given form—you don't actually believe you're an Arcane Master, do you? You can't even beat me, and you've got the nerve to crown yourself?"
"You old hag! You—ow! Okay, that one was actually nasty..."
Was the White Witch rational at this point?
Rational, her ass! She was the incarnation of a malicious thought to begin with, a creature forged from accumulated negative emotion. Once the heart poison dredged up every dark feeling buried inside her, she could no longer contain the savagery in her heart.
The White Witch attacked like a woman possessed, no longer minding her mana expenditure, no longer keeping a cool head. Her spells were frost magic, yet she pressed forward in an overwhelming, surging offensive, like a howling storm breaking.
Bella went one strike of offense to nine of defense. Ice shield, Misty Step, Mirror Image—low-cost psionic spells cycled in and out of her hands. She fought and retreated at the same time, drawing the furious White Witch toward the river mouth.
Along the way she kept passing allied troops.
They saw her getting pummeled and moved in to help.
Bella waved them off. "It's fine, don't worry, don't worry—this is nothing I can't handle!"
"You lot, head to the north bank of the river. The Centaur General is prepping a counterattack—yes yes, go!"
"You little turtle, what are you running around for? I don't need your help. Go!"
Bella chucked the little tortoise—which had actually responded to her command and was projected to 'catch up' with the enemy in about three days—off into the distance and kept dragging the White Witch along behind her.
Cold. Absolutely freezing. That was the unanimous verdict across the battlefield—allied troops, evil army, dwarves, Ashina samurai alike.
The White Witch was firing on all cylinders, and Bella was returning fire when she could. The battlefield's ambient temperature had dropped another ten-plus degrees on top of the baseline.
Except for Aslan the Great Lion and a few giants with Frost Giant blood in their veins, everyone was freezing.
Even a heavy hitter like the Centaur General didn't dare approach the core of their duel. He stepped just two paces in and felt his armor starting to ice over. There was no way to tank that. He wanted to help, but he simply couldn't get close, and he wasn't about to throw his life away for nothing.
"Little bitch, where do you think you're going! Run, I dare you, keep running!" The White Witch's poise had been chucked out the window long ago. Her face was contorted now, and the sustained high-intensity magical output had her panting too.
Bella had it much better. She'd been hounded like a stray dog, but her psionic reserves were still above sixty percent.
She snorted. "Old woman, how much mana have you got left?"
The White Witch sneered. "You want to bleed my mana dry? Foolish child, you don't understand anything. You have no idea how power actually works!"
She raised both hands. The ice mountains along the coast shuddered violently. Enormous slabs of floating ice rose into the air. The tides along the entire shoreline surged upward like a storm surge, rearing up more than ten meters (over thirty feet) high.
"These waters, these ice mountains—they're all mine. Narnia is mine! You think you can contend with me? Where's your poison now? Is your poison inside these mountains of ice too?"
The White Witch glared at her, teeth gritted, convinced she had the win in hand.
Bella tried to wrest away a portion of the seawater's control, but the White Witch had locked down every drop of moisture in a thousand-meter radius. Bella couldn't grab a single particle.
In pure magical craft, in mastery of frost specifically, she was outmatched.
"Die, little bitch. I'll turn your head to stone and set it on display in my collection. Die!"
The White Witch had decided she was done toying with her. So what if she'd burned through too much mana? She was still Queen of Narnia. The seas and glaciers here had only one master, and that was her, the White Witch.
"You're the one dying, old woman. Fire!"
Ice mountains floated in the sky. The seawater rolled back. The ghost ship beneath the surface rose fast, and twelve pitch-black cannon muzzles swung into line on the White Witch.
Two decks, twelve guns total, all locked on.
The Flying Dutchman didn't fire the kind of antique ammunition you'd expect. With Jason and the Snake Eyes clan manning them, the twelve side guns fired in rapid sequence.
The shells screamed through the air and exploded around the White Witch in a relentless rhythm. She blocked some. Others got through.
A ghoulish rig like the Flying Dutchman could hardly be expected to carry anything wholesome. The shells were heavy with necromantic energy, and Bella had planted this killing blow early—of course they also carried her heart poison.
Poisoned hit after poisoned hit, the White Witch was in bad shape. Her mana flow stuttered inside her, and her soul felt as if it had been slashed seventeen or eighteen times with sharp little knives. Her head swam. Spells she knew cold slipped her mind.
Wailing ghosts filled the air around her, along with the mind-twisting poison.
The White Witch badly wanted to ask Aslan the Great Lion where exactly he'd recruited this so-called savior from. What kind of a savior was this?
Bella was having the time of her life. "Old hag, why aren't you laughing now? Hahahaha—keep firing! Blast her! Fire! Fire!"
When the Flying Dutchman ran out of shells, Bella swept her arm down. "Charge! Kill her!"
Pyramid Head waded in first, chanting his sutras. Jason and Wolf closed in from left and right with weapons drawn. The Snake Eyes clan hefted their musket-style firearms and opened fire one after another.
With her mana nearly spent and poison piling up inside her, the White Witch's state was disastrous. Even so, she wiped out every last one of Bella's subordinates except Pyramid Head.
Pyramid Head hacked off her left arm. Her injuries reached their absolute limit.