Empress vs. Hero (1)
Apiel Bayern. As the Iron-blooded Empress at the head of a vast mercenary company, she had stacked achievement upon achievement of formidable scale.
Perhaps Darin had been born not with blessings meant for herself, but with the power to bestow them upon her children. Apiel had entered the world in barbarian lands, yet the talents she carried were so abnormal they seemed utterly out of place there.
Personal conviction and circumstance had kept those gifts hidden for years, but by the time she turned twenty, her martial power rivaled even that of the Northern Grand Duke—the Empire’s foremost swordsman.
This was no idle guess. Her own father, Viscount Bayorn, had acknowledged it as plain fact. As a warrior of Bayorn, he had crossed blades with his liege more than once.
Apiel’s monstrous strength and magical gift approached the near-mythic leaps of the heroes of legend. That same power formed the bedrock of her bold, unshakable confidence.
When she hurled a spear with her full might, towering cliffs crumbled. When her greatsword split the earth, craters opened in its wake. Strength that so thoroughly outstripped common sense could fairly be called the pinnacle of a once-in-an-era genius—and even that felt insufficient.
Apiel herself found it faintly strange that she had been born with such gifts. Even granting the northern barbarian blood in her veins, a search through the entire history of her house turned up no one who could stand beside her.
She did not dwell on it. Her attention belonged first to her mother, and after that, to battle. The tedious chores of Bayorn’s household affairs had always fallen to her older brother anyway.
The notable figures she had hunted down and felled beyond the Empire’s borders already numbered in the dozens—named dragons among them, and more than a few renowned powerhouses said to be worth a thousand men. And Apiel had never once needed her full strength to bring them down. It was not that she had underestimated them; they had simply become corpses before she could pour that much power into the fight.
“Hah—!”
That same mighty hero now hurled her greatsword with everything she had. Before she was a warrior of monstrous strength, she was a mage who commanded fire. Savage flames surged along the blade as it tore through the air.
The greatsword, launched with overwhelming force, slammed dead-center into the Hero’s solar plexus. Lucas’s face twisted slightly under the brutal impact. Bare fists had meant nothing to him—but a magical assault that fused raw power with sorcery seemed capable of drawing real pain.
Watching Lucas show barely a flicker of reaction even to her magically reinforced fists, Apiel knew at once that the fight would not end in a single exchange. That was why she had sent the Hero flying far away with the greatsword. The aftermath of their battle could easily have reached her mother.
Thrown with her full strength, the Hero hung in the air for a considerable time. Apiel took to the sky and pursued him. For a high-ranking mage like her, a flight spell was hardly difficult.
“Fly Weapon.”
At her incantation, the halberd that had grazed Lucas’s cheek moments before came screaming back and began to butcher his body with savage precision. Apiel had not the slightest intention of leaving alive the man who had dared lay hands on her mother. The halberd, charged with her will, whirled like a storm bent on tearing the beast’s cub limb from limb.
It was a bizarre sight. Even as he flew with a sword buried in his chest, the Hero swatted aside the blazing weapon with his bare hands. Whether it was the privilege of an otherworlder blessed with a status window, his face held only irritation—no real sign of suffering.
Apiel scanned her surroundings. After several minutes of high-speed flight, a quiet stretch of forest came into view. A place this remote would spare her mother any harm. She nodded as if settling on the Hero’s grave, then clenched her fist.
A hammer of human bone crashed down on the Hero’s crown. Under that abyssal strength, his body was driven into the ground, gouging several meters deep into the earth.
“Hoo…”
In the brief lull, Apiel steadied her ragged breathing. Superhuman physique or not, the weapon techniques she had just unleashed demanded extreme concentration and were performed without drawing breath.
Monster bastard…
She could not even register the Hero as human. The arms she wielded radiated extreme heat as a matter of course—heat that even dragons armored in steel-hard scales could not touch with bare hands.
And yet what had the Hero just done? He had watched a greatsword crush his vital point as if it were nothing, then swatted away a magically searing halberd with his bare palm.
From what I know, an ordinary Hero isn’t supposed to be on this level…
However much Apiel despised book learning and played the tomboy, she knew the chronicles of the Heroes well enough. Otherworlders who crossed over typically carried special powers, yes—but nothing that so thoroughly shattered every expectation.
Don’t tell me it’s because he’s a Transmigrator?
She had heard that this Hero was the first ever assigned as a Transmigrator. From birth, their kind were superhumans handed absurd advantages. Add a god’s blessing on top of that, and their potential would sit well beyond ordinary monsters.
Well. That would explain it, then.
Turning the background over in her mind, Apiel managed to accept the Hero’s ridiculous durability.
Fuck. This is some bullshit.
In her head, at least. Even unfairness ought to have limits.
Still. Nothing changes.
Right. Even if a gap in power existed, it would not alter what the child of the vermilion-haired girl had to do.
Her left hand closed around the halberd, her right around the greatsword, gripping until her palms flushed red. Each was a massive weapon meant to be held in both hands—but to someone of her strength, that meant nothing at all.
The barbarian kicked off empty air and rained alternating blows of greatsword and halberd down upon the earth. The living ground screamed again and again under transcendent destruction. Five times. Six. A meteor that bore the name of Empress hammered the surface without end.
And then—
A blade-shaped surge of steel erupted from dozens of meters beneath the earth and punched clean through the woman’s shoulder.
“Ghk—!?”
Sensing the sword tear through living flesh, the Hero slowly crawled up out of the ground. The smirk on his face was thick with leisure.
“Wow~ Where did a mage of this caliber come from? Even the Tower Masters weren’t quite on this level.”
Lucas, for his part, was quietly startled. The unidentified woman barring his path was clearly stronger than the Demon King had been.
She had given him something close to the sensation of being reached. Considering the last Demon King had been reduced to dust without so much as a whimper…
“Even the Northern Grand Duke probably couldn’t take you.”
Excluding himself, he thought, she might well deserve the title of strongest on the continent. Akael had never shown his full strength in front of him, true—but Lucas did not expect much. The man was nothing but a brute who swung an axe.
“…You’re not enough for me either.”
“Heh. Arrogant little bitch, aren’t you. This can’t be all you’ve got, right?”
The Hero’s eyes narrowed. She was impressive, fine—but that was from ordinary people’s perspective. To bare this much attitude in front of the Hero himself, her ability still fell far short.
Yet the Empress only clutched her bleeding shoulder and lifted her chin higher. What need did a person have to show courtesy to a beast?
“Go on. Find out for yourself.”
She tilted her head with a cold little smile of her own—a clear invitation to come and try.
She wore the face of a beautiful young woman, but she was a conqueror who had dominated war after war. Something like this would not diminish her presence. If anything, facing a true “challenger” for the first time set the barbarian blood in her veins boiling.
Perhaps he understood that further talk was useless. Lucas let out a shallow sigh and raised a sword blazing with divine power.
The ability granted by a noble and merciful god could heal everything it touched—or annihilate it. And that will had been entrusted entirely to the Hero. The god of the heavens regarded him as a divine proxy. Perhaps the Creator simply had a tragic eye for character.
A cold cutting sound split the air as the Holy Sword swept a vast arc. Hundreds of trees began to topple in its wake. But even that failed to reach Apiel.
The storm of divine blades, raining down with excessive authority, was blocked by the halberd and greatsword soaring through the air. She handled weapons, yes—but at her core she was a magic swordsman, with no obligation to fight as straightforwardly as a knight or a warrior. All the more so when her opponent was the bastard who had toyed with her mother.
“You rat-like bitch.”
With superhuman dynamic vision that defied common sense, Lucas tracked Apiel’s body floating through the sky. He was not incapable of flight himself—but the halberd drove him back whenever he tried, and the moment he moved to swing the Holy Sword, the greatsword slipped into every opening.
"Nuclear Blast!"
⟨ Nuclear Blast ⟩
The thermal beams lancing in from the front were equally maddening. Whether the magic swordsman meant to erase this entire area along with the Hero, she poured out high-tier fire magic without pause—and the Hero was slowly being swallowed by the unending vortex of flame.
Roaring fire turned the land into a hellscape. Even as she unleashed magic from both hands, Apiel used the recoil to put more and more distance between herself and the Hero.
And when she judged the range sufficient—
A vast crimson magic circle unfurled from one end of the horizon to the other.
"Meteor Strike!!!"
⟨ Meteor Strike ⟩
The ultimate hellscape came pouring down from beyond the sky.