A Frustrating Battle
“What?”
“Or should I just start calling you Mom again?”
The provocations kept coming, and with them Clanis’s rage.
Well, if she crawled over and licked my feet begging for it, I wouldn’t refuse. On the condition that she let me research that body of hers, of course.
Honestly, it was fascinating. Whether it was pure condensed magic or something else entirely. I wanted to dissect it so badly it was like Celia had possessed me.
“Die!”
“Oh? So you can use Void Magic too.”
The fact that she could handle Void Magic meant the Authority she’d received was the real deal. If the Demon King had been born through Seto’s machinations… that meant Seto possessed the power to bestow Authorities on others.
“How dare a filthy Ashtar bitch like you!”
“You’re finally starting to stop seeing me as Noah or the Demon King.”
She just saw me as Olivia herself.
That worked out fine for me. Far better for both of us if she fought a living Ashtar princess instead of clinging to the pant leg of a dead Noah and screaming about the Demon King’s enemy. I got to keep some dignity, and so did she.
“Don’t talk nonsense! Whatever’s inside you, you’re still an Ashtar bitch! Filthy Ashtar bitch!”
She had already crossed the limit of rage.
If she were still human, she might have already coughed up blood and died.
In the end, she was a woman deeply entangled with Imperial history.
Holding a grudge this deep against Ashtar meant she had been watching since long before the Ashtars even settled—back when they plotted with the Ban tribe against Kart.
The only ones who could resent Ashtar this thoroughly were the Ashtars of that era themselves.
Boom!
“I’m not even a little curious who you are. More importantly… you’re way too worked up.”
Stronger than expected. Far too strong. Yeah. That was the problem—she was only strong.
This girl truly couldn’t control her own body.
A light dodge was all it took to avoid every single one of her attacks.
Rumble—crash!
“The Papal Palace is getting smashed to pieces.”
Hopefully the old lady wouldn’t drop dead from a stroke.
I should probably pin this entire mess on William later. Even if he felt wronged, too bad.
If he didn’t like it, he should have won the fight. Or never coveted the papal throne in the first place.
“Hey. You’re seriously pathetic.”
“Die, Ashtar!”
I kept dodging the madwoman’s attacks while thinking more carefully.
Even descendants of Kart came in many varieties. Truthfully, most of the Kart refugees had already mixed with the Empire and become Imperial citizens.
That made it highly likely Clanis belonged to the Kart privileged class that had taken direct damage from the Ban tribe’s Imperial expeditionary forces back then.
The founding of the Empire was a history painted in blood.
Naturally, the Empire had later erased that bloody history so Kart or any other enemy could never claim moral high ground, and they had wiped the records of the Kart nobles who opposed them as well.
If she was one of those, everything clicked into place.
“I see. So our oh-so-great Mom was roughly a Kart noble, huh?”
“Kart. Don’t you dare speak of Kart, you filthy Ashtar bitch!”
I’d hit the exact spot.
She was almost certainly nobility.
I definitely needed to visit the Imperial Library later. I’d been too busy until now, but I had to get in there.
“Did our Ashtar ancestors kill your parents? Or did they violate you, perhaps?”
“Shut up!”
Even her voice had changed long ago.
“But so what? You still can’t take revenge on the cursed Ashtar descendants? How pitiful. Even a bullied little shit should have something to show after fifteen hundred years of bones rotting and crumbling over and over. Instead you’re just getting toyed with by the filthy Ashtar right now.”
“Die!”
I couldn’t finish her with my fists.
Close combat itself probably wouldn’t work against Clanis in that state.
In the end I had to slam magic down on her. And the only thing that would land a real hit was probably magic on the level of what I’d driven into Pector.
One decisive strike. Miss it and even I could be in danger.
I missed the Hero’s Holy Sword. The owner was a total mess, but the sword itself definitely had cheat-level power.
If I just had that in my hand right now, I could probably take this bitch’s head clean off.
“Hmm. Then there’s only one option.”
I might have no choice but to use the same thing I’d driven into the former Demon King.
I didn’t know how well it would work, but it was better than nothing.
“Stop dodging around, you rat bitch!”
“Hmm, being treated like a rat isn’t so bad.”
What does that make you—the one about to get wrecked by a rat?
If the one-shot I was about to fire didn’t finish her, I might actually have to grab her by the hair and brawl it out for real.
So it had to end in one blow.
Taking even a little damage would just make things annoying for me.
“You dirty bitch who only relies on petty tricks!”
Petty tricks? That remained to be seen.
“Mm. Before that, I’m going to catch you.”
I kicked the ground hard and launched myself upward.
This was the first technique I was using as Olivia. Whether I could actually land it… well, I’d find out once I drove it in.
So I cast the formulas on myself.
Formula Reinforcement
I inscribed formulas nonstop onto my palm with mana.
Elemental Reinforcement
To maximize the elemental skill, I pulled up every scrap of affinity I had with nature so I could unleash elemental magic at full power.
Mana Stacking
I compressed and stacked an enormous mass of mana so I could forge this magic and drive it straight into Clanis.
Once. Twice. Three times. Four times.
My hands never stopped. I gathered mana, compressed it, remade it, layered it again and again until the mass itself elementalized.
Push this process far enough and a completely new nature of offensive magic takes shape.
An attack only I—who had fused mana and understood the God-Slayer race’s system—could perform.
Kill her. Kill the enemy right in front of you.
Thoroughly annihilate the existence called Clanis. Just thoroughly annihilate the enemy blocking my path. That was all.
A massive light settled into my right hand.
The instant I prepared to drive it cleanly into Clanis—
“Looks more dangerous than I thought.”
Seto appeared.
The atmosphere flipped in an instant with his arrival. Even so, I didn’t pull the punch.
Seto or Demon King, it didn’t matter. Nothing walked away clean from this attack.
If the two of them died together right here, that would be the end of it. Seto wouldn’t even get the chance to gather new Four Heavenly Kings.
That was what I thought. But Seto’s reaction was nothing like I’d expected.
“I can’t die here.”
He grabbed Clanis and vanished on the spot.
“Fuck.”
I had just lost the chance to kill both of them.
What a complete bat bastard.
Should I have just slammed it in half-assed? No. That would have only landed a half-measure and ended there.
I never believed this was the final showdown with Clanis to begin with. I expected something like this… but at this rate I’d probably have to use it during the actual war.
I had no choice but to dissolve the magic that was still forming in my hand into nothing.
Outskirts of the Holy City
Seto returned to the ruins on the outskirts of the Holy City, dragging Clanis with him.
“You crazy bastard! That was the perfect chance to kill that filthy Ashtar woman! And you dragged me out of there?!”
Clanis was seething.
If she had taken that damned Olivia down right then, she could have settled both the Ashtar bloodline and the enemy who killed the Demon King in one stroke!
What the hell was wrong with this guy that he pulled her out?
“Hmph. If you’re going to lose your mind, at least do it properly. You’re no match for that bitch. If you hadn’t run, you would have vanished without a trace on the spot.”
Seto found Clanis pathetic for not even noticing that bizarre magic that could have killed him as well.
Olivia of Ashtar had provoked her, sure, but to lose all reason like that? If he hadn’t interfered, the Four Heavenly Kings would have been down another member.
“What did you just say? Want to die first?”
Clanis’s black claws gleamed a sharp blue.
“Get a grip. We still have work to do.”
“You’re telling me to leave that damned walking pile of enemies alone? You have to kill that bitch before you can do anything!”
You had to kill Olivia first if you wanted to accomplish anything.
“Would that actually satisfy you?”
“Ugh…”
“Pector started moving on his own the moment the Demon King died so miserably. He doesn’t listen to a word I say, and who knows what’s become of Berna. The human scum are gathering at the adventurer guild in Crad Castle that Ashtar set up and threatening the demonkin. In short, the Demon Realm’s very survival is in danger.”
“So just catch and kill the most dangerous one—that Olivia woman!”
Even more absurd. By Seto’s own logic, shouldn’t they be killing even more?
“You can’t kill her. At best you’d take her down in a mutual suicide.”
“If you hadn’t run and had stayed with me… maybe—”
“I would have been in danger too.”
Seto admitted it without hesitation.
If he had faced it head-on he might have landed a counter. But at best they would have died together; there was no blocking it.
“That bitch is stronger than the two of us combined?”
No. Olivia herself could probably be handled by the two of them. More precisely, that final attack was the problem.
“More accurately, her last attack was dangerous. Even I couldn’t have blocked it. You need to learn some discernment. Don’t let rage steal your reason. How do you expect to take revenge on the Empire like that?”
“Urgh…”
Couldn’t even keep her own reason. Tsk tsk.
“Anyway, that bitch is half demonkin like us. Like she said—didn’t you create her? Even if that irreconcilable enemy bastard Noah crawled into the frail body of an Ashtar princess, she might be stronger than before.”
Seto laid the entire cause at Clanis’s feet.
Well, it wasn’t wrong in the slightest.
“You trying to piss me off?”
“I’m not. I’m telling you to watch your actions from now on. The fragments of the Demon King you spread are what led to this, aren’t they?”
Having watched the entire battle between Olivia and Clanis, Seto considered Olivia’s words close to sophistry—yet not entirely false.
The Ashtar young lady’s body had once been caught in a scroll that eroded the Demon King’s magic power—scrolls Clanis herself had spread—turning her into a vessel for the Demon King. This was only Clanis’s personal theory, but in that unstable state Olivia’s body had accepted the soul of Noah that could support it, and somehow took in a fragment of the Demon King as well.
In that case…
The existence called Olivia was more vicious than the Noah of the past.
It would be convenient if she switched sides and joined the Demon King’s army, but that would never happen. That one only ever enforced her own justice.
“So we just leave her alone?”
“At least for now, we have no choice.”
There was still a way back. There was no reason to gamble everything just to take that woman down.