Backstab Upon Backstab (5)
"Hyaaaaah!"
Kanna, who had gone down from a brutal blow to the solar plexus, sprang back to her feet and charged at me. Like a creature that simply refused to stay down no matter how many times it fell, she displayed a tenacity that would not quit.
"You still haven't gone down? Tanks really are stubborn, huh. Just stay down quietly like Raziel, would you?"
"Ghk...!"
Kanna crumpled after taking a sideways swing to the head. The way she refused to give up and kept clinging to her enemy was the very picture of what a tank ought to be. Unfortunately, both the situation and her opponent were stacked against her.
She had already been considerably worn down from her fight with Klaxon. The armor, weapons, and shield she'd been wearing had been smashed to pieces by the monstrous strength of a Great Warrior, and though Hisoka had patched her up with a healing skill, that alone wasn't enough to purge the fatigue accumulated in her body. And in that state, she'd tried to stand in my way. Honestly, just lasting this long was worthy of a round of applause.
"Kh, khhhh...!"
"Whoa~ You still haven't lost consciousness?"
I was genuinely impressed by Kanna's desperate struggle to get back on her feet. That last attack had been swung with every intention of knocking her out cold, and my fist had landed squarely on her head. And yet she still hadn't lost consciousness, still straining with everything she had to fulfill her role.
"Just pass out. It'll be easier that way."
"Sh-Shut uuuup!"
Kanna finally managed to haul herself upright and charged at me again. I twisted my body to slip past her punch, then coiled my arm around her neck like a snake.
"Ghk, ghhhk!"
As her airway was cut off, Kanna thrashed and writhed, but my forearm wouldn't budge. After struggling for about thirty seconds, she finally lost consciousness and went limp. I set her down on the ground and looked at Hisoka.
"Now you're the only one left... Huh? What are you doing?"
"Nnh..."
Hisoka flinched when I looked at her. But she didn't stop what she was doing. She was healing someone — specifically, Avalon, who was currently getting the living daylights beaten out of him by Nemea.
"Graaaaaagh!"
Having received ample healing from Hisoka, Avalon seemed to have recovered from his injuries. He exploded with demonic power and shoved Nemea off of him — Nemea, who had been straddling him and continuing her assault. The price of shoving her away was one of the horns sprouting from his temple, the very horn she had been gripping. It snapped with a sickening crack.
"You pushed Nemea off? Hisoka, you... you even buffed him."
"Urgh..."
Confirming that the power Avalon unleashed was far stronger than before, I realized Hisoka had even cast a buff on him. When I looked at her with a chilling expression, her face crumpled into a tearful grimace.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuck!"
Every fairy except Hisoka had lost consciousness. Nemea and I, with our far higher stats, were perfectly fine. Realizing he was at a disadvantage, Avalon spat a thick string of curses, spread his wings, and soared into the sky.
"Hmph. Too late."
Nemea, who had been sent flying, hurriedly ran over to grab him, but he was already airborne.
"Damn."
Avalon, with his wings, could fly. Unfortunately, neither Nemea nor I had any flight capability.
"Textbook sore loser."
Avalon, burning with the will for revenge, flew off into the distance. Amazingly, the bastard abandoned his own fairies and fled alone.
"Ah, shit. This is a real problem."
I frowned as I watched Avalon disappear into the far sky. I'd let an enemy I couldn't afford to lose slip through my fingers.
Avalon couldn't grow stronger through combat and Growth Stones the way other Masters could. Instead, he grew stronger by offering sacrifices to demons. Unlike in Fairy Masters, he didn't even need to sacrifice his own fairies. This world was crawling with Masters and fairies — he could simply kidnap them and offer them up as sacrifices to his demon. To Avalon, this entire world was a dungeon.
There was no telling how strong that guy could become if he put his mind to it. I already had plenty of enemies I needed to take down, and now Avalon — an enemy with enormous growth potential — had been added to the list. This wasn't part of my plan.
"Hey, Nemea. How could you let him get away?"
"Nngh... Forgive me. I let my guard down."
When I grumbled at Nemea as she trudged over, she apologized with an awkward smile. She readily admitted her own mistake, so I couldn't really chew her out any further.
"Tsk. Well, what's done is done."
I'd captured all of Avalon's fairies, which was what I'd wanted. And that wasn't all — I'd killed Klaxon and stolen the attribute he'd possessed, evolving my own. On top of that, our ambush wasn't over yet. There were still plenty of enemies left to take down. By the time tonight was over, I'd reap a harvest even greater than everything I'd gained so far.
Right now, I needed to move to gain even more rather than dwell on the regret of letting Avalon escape.
I'll leave Avalon to Montblanc.
Chasing after Avalon myself would be worse than leaving it to Montblanc. Unlike me, who hadn't built up much of a force yet, Montblanc's influence stretched quite far. She'd be able to find Avalon in no time.
"Master."
Confirming the battle was over, Sonic approached me, carrying the unconscious Izabella.
"Ah, Sonic. Well done. The fight went a lot smoother thanks to you."
"I merely did what needed to be done. But Master."
"Hm?"
"Who is that person?"
Sonic asked, looking at Nemea with a wary gaze. Ah, come to think of it, I hadn't introduced Nemea.
"Sorry. I forgot to introduce her. This is Nemea. Nemea? This is Sonic, my fairy. Introduce yourselves."
"So you are Sonic. I have heard much of you through Alan. He is quite fond of you, you know. I am called Nemea."
"...A pleasure to meet you, Nemea. I'm Sonic."
Even after exchanging greetings, Sonic didn't drop her guard toward Nemea. It wasn't the look of someone regarding her as a threat — it was the wary gaze of a rival competing for the same man. This was a situation Masters with many fairies often encountered. It made sense. There was only one beloved Master, and the more fairies there were, the harder it was to receive his love.
A simple analogy would be a king with many concubines. Every concubine wants the king's favor, but the king has only one body — he can't embrace them all. The appearance of a new rival was not a welcome development from Sonic's perspective.
"As for how this happened..."
I told Sonic about how I'd acquired Nemea. Her expression turned bitter.
"I thought I knew Master better than anyone, yet it seems there's still so much I don't know about you."
"Sorry I didn't tell you about Nemea sooner. I kept meaning to, but honestly, I just forgot."
"It's all right. Things worked out more easily because of it. But Master, didn't you say you were going to join forces with the enemy Masters to take down Avalon?"
"I did say that."
Honestly, I was a bit surprised myself. I'd judged that just the three of us — me, Nemea, and Sonic — wouldn't be enough to take down Avalon's party. Their composition was that perfect, and Avalon himself, fused with a demon, was a genuine powerhouse. So originally, I'd planned to use the Blood King's subordinates to capture them.
But what do you know? Once we actually got into combat, I was stronger than I'd expected. And with Nemea sharing my stats, it was essentially like having two of me. I'd encountered so many people stronger than myself — Ouroboros, Montblanc, Zoldik — that I hadn't properly recognized just how strong I actually was.
"Games and reality really are different."
In a game, you can easily tell how strong you are without even fighting your enemies. But reality isn't like that. You have to fight with your own body to know what level of powerhouse you actually are.
"More to the point — the one who consorted with a demon has fled. What dost thou intend to do now?"
"What do you mean, what am I going to do? We keep fighting, obviously. You think opportunities like this come around often?"
This was war. If you won a war — if you survived — you could gain a great deal. I had absolutely no intention of letting a golden opportunity like this slip away.
"Let's head back to the others first. We'll be safer moving as a group."
"Yes, Master."
"Very well, then."
"Ah, before that, let's collect these guys first."
"Eek!"
I looked over at Avalon's unconscious party. Hisoka, the only one who hadn't passed out, flinched and trembled.
Something massive came screaming down from the sky and slammed into the earth. The being had enormous bat wings on its back, like a demon, and goat horns sprouting from its temples. Originally there had been two horns, left and right, but the right one had been brutally snapped off, leaving only the root.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuck!"
The demon — no, the demon worshiper Avalon — landed on the ground and spat curses. He was furious. He had never lost a fight against anyone. Granted, he'd never fought anyone stronger than himself, but he had an undefeated record nonetheless.
Today, for the first time, he had been defeated. And it wasn't just a defeat — he'd lost all four of the fairies he'd raised to 6-Star max level. A complete and utter defeat.
If his opponent had been someone like Montblanc, he wouldn't have been this bitter. Montblanc was a Master so strong you couldn't even see the ceiling of her power. But the one who had inflicted this humiliation upon him wasn't Montblanc. It wasn't Montblanc's fairy, nor a subordinate of the Blood King.
Alan.
He'd been defeated by that detestable bastard who was publicly known as a 5-star. Alan was even the one Avalon had marked as a sacrifice to offer to his demon.
"Goddamn it..."
That son of a bitch Alan, as expected of someone Montblanc had personally brought in, had cunningly hidden his true power. Thanks to that, Avalon had let his guard down and been thoroughly wrecked. But there was one thing he couldn't understand.
How did that bastard know about me?
Not many people knew about demon worshipers. In all his life, Avalon had never met a single person who knew of their existence. Demon worshipers operated from even deeper shadows than Palos's Bird, hiding their identities as they went about their work.
"...I will repay today's humiliation. Without fail."
How Alan knew about him wasn't important. What mattered was that the back of his head still stung from that bastard's blow — stung something fierce. He would definitely pay this back.
"Uuuugh..."
"M-Master..."
"Hup?!"
Avalon, who had been imagining chewing Alan to pieces, walked into a wheat field. There, Masters and fairies who had lost their limbs were lying. They were the Blood King's subordinates that Avalon had captured earlier.
"It's feeding time, Baphomet."
Meeeeeeeh—
Baphomet, the mid-rank demon fused with Avalon, tore its way free of his body.
"Aaaagh!"
"Help me... Gyaaaaah!"
Baphomet began devouring the immobilized Masters and fairies.
You too... I'll do the same to you, Alan!
Avalon watched the scene, his rage toward Alan growing ever deeper.