Empress vs. Hero (Finale)
"Hryaaaah!"
The Empress's desperate battle cry rang out across the ruined earth. The halberd and greatsword in her hands took turns savagely thrusting at every inch of the Hero's body.
A high-speed barrage of slaughtering strikes. Each time metal collided with the Hero's flesh, it produced not the sound of blade meeting meat, but the bizarre ring of steel striking steel.
Piel poured every ounce of her power into close combat rather than magic. Her mana-based secret arts had proven useless, so she was reinforcing her physical destructive force with the shockwaves of successive explosions. It was an offensive fierce enough to warp the very fabric of space—and yet...
Clang!
The Hero swung the Holy Sword with a single hand and easily swatted the attacks aside.
Thud!
Then, with his free fist loaded with murderous power, he drove a crushing blow into Piel's abdomen.
"Uweeeehk!!"
It was nothing more than a bare-knuckled punch, yet its destructive force was no different from a fully unleashed catastrophe. That single, perfected act of bludgeoning twisted the Empress's organs inside out.
"Augh—uweehk—!"
The unstoppable warrior's advance came to a grinding halt. Thick blood poured from her lips like a fountain.
"Haugh... aaah..."
Was this the Hero's true power? He hadn't even swung the Holy Sword. As nausea surged and she slipped into a groggy haze, Piel felt her hands tremble and an abyss of helplessness open beneath her feet.
"Kh!"
But that feeling lasted only a moment. Once she had resolved to annihilate her sworn enemy, she could not rest her hands until she fell. She bit down on her lip hard enough to draw more blood, forcing the bleeding to stop and swallowing her own weakness whole.
"Uwaaah!!!"
Go, my daughter. Do not stop your advance. Do not hesitate to deliver the judgment of fire upon the man who framed your mother. The blood-kin's conviction to protect her mother became a red thunder that detonated without pause.
Each time the greatsword and halberd floating in the air collided with the Hero's body, violent explosions erupted. Before long, the sword-forms created in her hands were slamming down upon his face again and again, as if determined to split his skull open.
Among the ranks of magic swordswomen, those who stood at the absolute peak could create magic blades in just this way. The weapons blazed with a heat no mortal could approach, burning as fiercely as her own blue eyes.
KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOM!
It was a roar that threatened to tear the eardrums. The shockwaves from the collisions were so intense they were damaging even their caster, Piel—her face, streaming with bloody tears, was proof enough of that.
These magic blades, forged from the very essence of a magic swordswoman, were suicide techniques that carried enough annihilating force to cause internal necrosis even in the one who wielded them.
"Die already!"
Yet even as she felt her body coming apart, Piel refused to release the crimson swords clenched in both hands. Instead she poured everything she had into blooming a flower of slaughter. It was a masochistic wave assault, as if to prove she was a barbarian of Bayorn through and through.
The vast aftermath of the explosions seemed to yield nothing to the rain of holy power. To a third party, the exchange between Empress and Hero might have looked like an even match. In truth, it was nothing of the sort.
The beast called Hero simply swung the Holy Sword with an expression of utter calm. He didn't even seem to be putting real strength into his arm—just lazily batting the blade this way and that.
"Ghhk!"
Unfortunately, it was the Empress upon whom the shadow of death was falling. The Hero allowed the magic swordswoman's triad of divine weapons to strike his skin without so much as blinking. Piel, by contrast, trembled as if an earthquake were running through her entire body from the shockwaves alone.
Even for an Empress who was all but a transcendent being, standing against an otherworldly Hero—the very crystallization of unfairness—was a feat that bordered on the impossible.
And this Hero, strangely enough...
Stroke. Stroke.
...was groping the girl's body this way and that even in the middle of their clash, wearing a filthy smile all the while.
It was a grotesque and horrific sight.
An act that defiled and insulted a warrior's heart.
The Hero seemed to know exactly how to humiliate a stubborn bitch like the Empress.
He pressed and kneaded the breasts hidden beneath thick leather. He tapped at the front of her crotch. It wasn't even groping in the ordinary sense—it was a deliberate act meant to provoke shame in a woman who regarded herself purely as a warrior.
"Uwooooh!!!"
The Empress's voice as she swung her blades was still full of spirit and force, but the life-or-death struggle had already become nothing more than one man's object of mockery.
Piel knew it too, and bloody tears welled up from sheer humiliation. Why, of all times, did she find herself wanting her mother? The girl tried hard to look away from the reason.
Those pussy lips are so plump. Soft and chewy—I bet they'd taste delicious.
Takes after her mother, does she? Even through her clothes I can feel how soft those tits are.
Ah, fuck, look at that—even her cheeks are soft.
The Hero bestowed a bottomless sense of degradation upon the girl who had defied him more than necessary. He was a vicious yet clever beast. Pouring his full power into a fight with a bitch like this would only let her dress it up as a warrior's heart, a desperate struggle. The real cure for her kind was to make her brutally realize that she was nothing more than a powerless bitch in heat.
That didn't mean he could neglect teaching her the gap in their strength, either.
Thud!
This time it wasn't the abdomen—it was the solar plexus. A simple punch might have left her winded, but the one delivering it was none other than the Hero. The violence Piel felt from that direct fist strike was immense.
BOOM!
Her slender frame was sent flying for kilometers, slamming into wall after wall, until a massive boulder collapsed and the rocks crushed her body beneath them.
—Riiing.
Her breath was cut off so completely that a ringing filled her ears. Was it her weakened body, or the overwhelming impact? Even here, blood was leaking out.
"Uup!"
She couldn't see.
She couldn't hear.
She couldn't breathe.
All she could feel was a nausea as if her blood itself were flowing backward.
"Uwehk, uweeeehk!!!"
A cruelty beyond measure tore through her body. There was not a single place where blood wasn't welling up from the holes punched through her. Instinctively, for the sake of survival, she clamped a hand around her own throat. If she vomited even a little more blood, she was certain she would lose consciousness and collapse.
"Hahaha~!"
The Hero approached the half-dead girl with light, eager steps. Seeing her so helpless almost made her look a little adorable, and her newfound docility was welcome in more ways than one. He intended to rape her just before she blacked out, so his pace quickened.
"Haa... haa..."
The Empress, who had barely managed to hold on to consciousness, watched the Hero close the distance. What she felt then was a bottomless terror.
The unbridgeable gap in power, no matter how desperately she resisted.
The despair of realizing she might be raped helplessly for the first time in her life.
And with it, the anguish of having failed to protect her mother.
"Ghhk..."
Even as tears fell, Piel shook her head and forced the fear down. She pushed her ruined body upright, wiped her eyes, and drew up both her remaining strength and her mana at once. She meant to resist to the very end, even if it cost her life.
Better to die than fail to protect her mother and become a bitch in heat.
Better to end her life as a warrior than lose her purity while being humiliated by the enemy.
Piel herself knew the truth.
This was nothing more than stubbornness. She had never valued her purity the way ordinary noble girls did. She could simply offer her body once to stay alive, then tell her mother there had been no choice and look the other way.
The gentle Viscountess would surely say the same thing—that she would offer her own body instead, so please, don't touch her poor daughter.
You know, Piel... you're Mommy's one and only treasure.
A woman's soft voice settled into her ears, still muffled by the ringing. That brief warmth was enough for Piel to manage a faint smile.
Mandarin Bayern.
She had always called both her brother and Piel her one and only treasure. Piel had even asked her once—you have two children, so shouldn't that mean two treasures? Why do you say it that way? Her mother had only answered with a silent smile every time.
Heh heh...
Growing older, she had come to understand the meaning naturally. From her mother's perspective, the first child could never replace the second, and the second could never replace the first. It meant that each of them—those treasures—was a precious jewel that no one else could ever substitute for.
She was a girl who had grown up receiving that kind of favor and love.
How could someone like her preserve her life through her mother's sacrifice?
What value could a life obtained that way possibly hold?
"...Mom."
The dejected girl called her mother's name. Every time she felt her mother's presence, the grip on her weapons tightened further.
The blue flames blazing at the corners of the Empress's eyes had lost much of their earlier intensity, but the conviction blooming in her heart did not waver by so much as a hair.
If she had any regret at all, it was only that she had parted too quickly from the mother she had just encountered. If she had known the Hero's power was this overwhelming, she should at least have offered a brief greeting.
Fwoooosh.
The magic blades created in the magic swordswoman's hands blazed with ferocious heat. The swords that had seethed with savage fire first glowed red, then blue, and finally burned a fierce gray.
As excessive heat rays poured from the blades, the Hero narrowed his eyes. Even he could feel on his skin that this strike carried no ordinary power.
Piel gathered every last drop of her remaining mana into the magic blades. The gray flames gathering at the tips of the swords were the crystallization of her strength as a swordswoman and her mana as a mage, concentrated into one.
"Die, you fucking beast."
At last her hands raised the magic blades. To maximize the power of the slash, she contracted the muscles of her grip, her forearms, and her shoulders to their absolute limit.
Moisture gathered in the girl's eyes. Having resolved herself to die, she no longer feared the likes of the Hero—but the thought of someone she would never meet again filled her with sorrow.
Even so.
Piel wanted to be, for her mother at least, a sturdier shield than anyone else in the world.
"Hryaaaah!!!"
With a tenacious cry, the Empress brought the blades down with every ounce of force she possessed.
Crack.
All the space before her was sucked into the thermal pressure, warping gravity itself. A subspace gate opened wide.
"Shit!"
Only then did the Hero cry out and leap backward. Realizing that neither physical force nor magic would work on him, the woman clearly intended to banish him to another dimension.
"Is this bitch insane!?!"
She would be sucked into the spatial vortex just the same—neither of them would walk away unharmed.
Yet on the face of Piel, who had activated the suicide technique, only a satisfied smile floated.
The girl who had already lost consciousness had long since been floating through a flower field with her mother in a dream.
It was already far too late to dodge. The Hero frantically pulled out the Clock of Fate, intending to reverse time—
Slash!
—but the subspace gate savagely opened its maw and swallowed the Hero first.