Since We've Started, Might as Well Take the Boss (3)
Pshhhhhhh!
Bang bang-bang!
Dark spears and magic bullets collided countless times in midair. The fact that her spears could even hold against basic magic bullets already showed that this woman was at the end of her rope. She only survived because she was a complete lunatic.
Who would have thought that the scrap we had at Eldacrad’s mausoleum would end up giving me her weakness like this.
“Damn it. You fucking bitch. Where the hell did you even… Even that fake lord wasn’t this strong. How the hell can a whore like you—!”
Could this bitch not even do basic math? Eldacrad had faced the Demon King’s army and Seto single-handedly. In other words, two of the Four Heavenly Kings plus the entire demon army. Even setting aside Berna, who had only just become a Heavenly King at the time, he had still unleashed that kind of power right on the Demon King’s doorstep. There was even a saying that the only reason he never received the holy sword was because he was fated to die.
And these two had struggled against him, no less. Come to think of it, I could probably finish her off just fine even with this body. With the gap this wide, a little taunting wouldn’t hurt.
“Aren’t you the one who’s just too weak?”
“Do you even know who you’re talking to? I’m Berna of the Demon King’s Four Heavenly Kings, wielder of the Authority of Fall!”
Dark spears blanketed the sky. The taunt worked perfectly.
From Eldacrad’s memories, the Saint had been a sharp-minded woman right up until her fall. She had lived with the will to sacrifice herself for others, and Eldacrad had valued that about her. But look at her now—casually murdering people and taking pride in being one of the Four Heavenly Kings. Throwing her weight around with that title at this point just felt pathetic. I had gotten mine from Pector for free, after all.
“Whether you’re Berna or Bernoa, I don’t give a damn. Did that big mouth of yours make you a Heavenly King? Why are you talking so much?”
I grinned as I said it. Truth was, I loved chatty opponents in a fight. The more they talked, the more openings they showed. Even Pector wasn’t this bad. Of course, anyone who wasn’t a complete rock-head might realize she was deliberately stalling to recharge her demonic energy—but I decided to wait her out.
I did feel a little sorry for the humans below whose bodies were being used as pure magic circuits—no, demonic energy circuits—but that was their fate. I needed a bit of recovery time myself. Whatever demonic energy that fallen bitch regained, I regained right along with her. On top of that, she still hadn’t fully recovered the power she used to control Eldacrad. If she was struggling this hard against this weaker body of mine compared to when I was Noah, that said everything. Even in death, Eldacrad was still helping Ashtar.
But even if we both recovered here, how much could she really get back?
“You never should have shown up at that mausoleum.”
If she hadn’t, we might have been evenly matched by now. The fact that she had gone there—already a traitor once—and then, in her madness, wanted to keep even a fake lord beside her, lying next to Eldacrad’s sarcophagus… it was almost funny. What a stupid bitch. Why were all the Four Heavenly Kings missing a few screws? Except for Pector, of course.
“Die!”
This time she hurled a massive clump of pure darkness. Hmm. So that was the one said to have wiped out an entire village. I didn’t know the exact principle, but wherever it landed, the ground became as barren as the Demon Realm—and that included every living thing. In short, an ordinary person would vanish on contact.
The countermeasure was simple. Almost too simple: just teleport in and smash her.
I teleported straight to Berna’s side and—
Whack!
—slapped her across the cheek.
“Kyaaah!”
Boom!
Mid-technique, Berna took the hit and went flying, slamming into a building. Well, it was a building she had made, so who cared. For a Heavenly King, she sure screamed the moment she got hit. The black sphere floating in the air vanished.
“You know what’s pathetic? A bitch who gets her face caved in the second we close the distance still acting tough. Still, looks like you managed to recover a bit after all that.”
I was going to show her that no matter how much she recovered, she still had a limit.
“What kind of brute-force bitch are you…”
“Brute-force? So who the hell is supposed to go ‘Oh please, throw that at me, I’ll take it nicely’? Are you a rock-head? Ah, right—you’re a rock-head, which is why you can’t even tell apart the person you used to love, you brain-dead freak.”
I said I would give her time to recover demonic energy. I never said I would stand still and take her hits.
“You’re dead.”
“And if I am, what exactly are you going to do about it?”
“You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead. You’re dead.”
Berna waved her hand. In an instant, countless demons appeared behind her. Wait—no. Something was a little different. The demons she had summoned were carrying tattered Imperial flags. Former Imperial soldiers, then.
“These were the fake lord’s subordinates. And now they have sworn loyalty to the true lord and serve under me. Are you still going to claim you’re in the right?”
So that army had once been Eldacrad’s men—humans corrupted by the Authority. A real shame. What exactly was she expecting me to do about it? There wasn’t even anything worth arguing over. The answer was almost insultingly simple.
I answered flatly.
“Yeah.”
I would say it again: this bitch was completely insane. If I had still been plain Noah, she probably wouldn’t have reacted this strongly. It was because I—because Olivia—was of Eldacrad’s bloodline that she was so sensitive about it.
The woman I had already smacked around a few times barked an order at her corrupted army.
“Kill that bitch! Prove that I was right!”
My very existence was living proof that she had been wrong, so Berna tried to crush me with the fallen army. I casually flicked my sword.
Shhhhhhhh—
Pector’s Authority—no, the Authority of Justice that was now mine—reduced the corrupted army to powder. My presence alone was making her self-destruct. I hadn’t even used any real power, and she was suddenly losing her mind all by herself.
“Don’t look at me with the same eyes as that fake lord! Don’t come at me with the same power!”
“I’m not really doing either of those things, though?”
Did this face really resemble Eldacrad that much?
“You Ashtar bitch. You’re far too much like the fake lord. So much that I want to kill you. Just die already!”
The world began to dye itself black. This was a technique I had never seen before.
Rrrumble—
The moment a bit of that blackness brushed my fingertips, they turned black. Ah. Demonic energy again. And the kind that corrupted mana itself. So this was the basic technique Heavenly King Berna used to corrupt entire armies? Witnesses had said black energy wrapped around the troops. For a body that had undergone mana fusion, absorbing this raw would be a critical hit.
“Mm. This is a bit of a pain.”
Was the mana fusion a mistake after all? No—the advantages still outweighed the drawbacks. Besides, only a slimy bitch like Berna used techniques like this.
“Ahahahaha! Even with a mana-fused body, you’re finished!”
She had at least used her head. She wasn’t just a pure madwoman; she had put some thought into it. She had calculated quite well—so why couldn’t she ever consider the opposite possibility?
Before I knew it, that mass of darkness was covering not only my surroundings but the entire castle.
“Hahahaha! Why don’t you just teleport away? Oh wait, impossible, right? The whole place is sealed with barriers.”
The moment she said it, I understood. This bitch really was an idiot. Trying to trap someone stronger than herself? She never even considered that she might be the one to die. So I kindly did the opposite for her.
“Looks like you’re flooding a limited space with thick demonic energy.”
More precisely, demonic energy with an extremely high corruption rate—horrific stuff that turned the mana in the air into demonic energy in an instant. Of course, the reverse was also possible. I poured mana straight at the demonic energy that was trying to devour every scrap of mana floating in the air. All I had to do was feed it as much mana as it was spreading and swallow it whole.
“Did you really think I was just going to sit still?”
Berna formed another dark spear.
“A Saint originally wields divine power. When a Saint falls, of course she ends up using black magic.”
“What exactly are you trying to say?”
“And someone who has reached the extreme of magic can also turn demonic energy back into mana.”
Fwoooooosh—
The demonic energy that had been polluting my body was gradually purified back into mana. It was the same principle as the fragment—just a difference of whether it was inside or outside. Naturally, before she could even throw those dark spears, the darkness met its end.
Shhhhhh—
The darkness receded. Berna was stunned once again.
“What the hell even are you? How can you possibly…?”
“I’m an archmage. A completely different league from a lunatic who’s been high on borrowed power for decades and is still throwing tantrums. League.”
Now it was my turn. She kept pulling annoying stunts, so it was better to finish this quickly. Was that the end of her? No—looking into her eyes, they were trembling with fear. The gaze of someone staring at something terrifying. A rabbit frozen in terror. That meant the fight was already over.
“How the hell are you even standing there?”
Talking was too bothersome.
“Why am I standing here? In what sense are you asking that? As Noah? Or as Olivia?”
I sneered at her—deliberately, with the most vicious smile I could manage—and closed the distance. Of course she couldn’t run. Whatever trauma it was, when she froze like this was the time to beat her down. I sheathed my sword. I was going to hit her for real.
Whaaack!
First the face. I wasn’t going easy just because she was a woman. In the old days Mariana or Ella would have blown up at me first, but right now there was no one around.
Thud!
Annoying woman. For some reason I just felt pissed off. I hit her a few more times—one, two, three—without giving her any chance to resist. As a Heavenly King she would endure it just fine. She only looked like a woman; ordinary force wouldn’t kill her.
“Why… Just why… How can you…?”
“What?”
“Why do you act so much like that fake lord—like you’re always right, like you can do anything…”
She was talking too much. I shoved her down and straddled her. If this reality felt so absurd and infuriating to her that she wanted to pick a fight about it—
Sacred Attribute Imbue
Multi Mana Amplification
I amplified the mana in my fists, loaded them with light that erased darkness, and brought them down.
Whaaack!
“If you didn’t like it, you should have been stronger.”
Kraaack!
“You should have trusted Eldacrad.”
Thuuud!
“You shouldn’t have doubted your own love.”
Craaack!
The ground split. Her face was already a ruin.
“I don’t care! How can you be the lord’s granddaughter?! You who even killed the Demon King!”
It was about time she realized, yet her mind was still broken and she was spouting nonsense. In that case I had no choice but to beat the truth straight into her brain—the facts this lunatic already knew, the reason this crazy bitch had truly gone insane.
“You already know it too, don’t you? That the so-called Demon King was the fake, and that the fake lord you killed was the real one.”
Berna’s face twisted in pure disgust.