The Divine Beast Defects
“Hah! Hah!”
Meanwhile, Camibarez was sprinting through the dark, Sasha's hand clutched tightly in her own.
Above them, an Efnel girl came bounding over the treetops in hot pursuit.
“Hand over the girl. I'll only ask nicely once!”
The night sky flashed, and a stream of pure white light came crashing down—the infamous holy pillar spell, Exorcism.
KWARURURUNG!
Camibarez wrapped her arms around Sasha and hurled them both into the grass. The pillar of light slammed into the ground, sending up a geyser of dirt and shattered stone.
'Ngh!'
Camibarez scrambled to her feet and tried to run—but before she knew it, a translucent wall had spread itself across her path.
“Run all you like. You're still in the palm of my hand.”
With those words, the Priest descended from the trees to the ground.
Camibarez pushed Sasha behind her and drew up her jet-black.
'I have to fight. I have to protect Sasha!'
Only one Priest had caught up to them. Simon had been the first of their allies to fall behind, and then Meilin had broken off to intercept another pursuing Priest.
Camibarez and Sasha had escaped safely in the meantime—but one enemy had come right on their heels, and this one, at least, she had to bring down herself.
'I'm worried about Simon and Meilin, but those two will be fine.'
Steeling her resolve, Camibarez turned around.
“Sasha. Stay back, okay?”
“Okay.”
Sasha nodded and retreated. Efnel's objective was securing the Saintess Candidate, so they wouldn't attack her outright.
“You look healthier than I expected, for a necromancer.”
The Priest shrugged, as if surprised.
“Same with that boy who stepped out in front of us alone.”
Camibarez's eyes went wide. The person he was talking about had to be Simon.
“Wh-what did you do to him?”
“I'm sure our sisters have skewered him by now.”
Her lips curled up at the corners.
“Sister Lirinet is strong, you know. I'd bet his core's already cracked.”
“Like that would ever happen!”
Camibarez pressed her palm against her abdomen, then swung it sideways.
“Gone!”
Clack! With that sound, the Ursula family's blood seal partially released.
Her eyes flooded crimson like blood, the bat wings on her back grew larger, and her pointed fangs gleamed with a razor-sharp light.
“Now you're looking a bit more like a monster.”
The Priest spread both arms wide and crossed them.
GRGRK!
Without warning, transparent walls came pressing in from either side of Camibarez. She leaped upward to escape, and the two walls met in the middle with a resounding CLANG!
Camibarez looked down at the sight, letting out an internal sigh of relief.
WHAM!
“Ah?”
Pain erupted from the top of her head. It was barely visible for being transparent, but the Priest had pre-placed a wall in the sky as well.
“Gotcha!”
The Priest swept her arm down swiftly.
The wall descended with Camibarez pinned inside it, smashing her flat against the ground.
“Caught you, monster!”
The Priest spoke in a chilling voice and raised both arms overhead. Above them, an Exorcism magic circle began to form in the sky.
'I can't get out!'
The pressure of the wall was so immense that Camibarez's body was steadily sinking into the earth beneath it.
Then she heard Sasha crying out desperately—'Unnie!'
'Hnngh!'
Camibarez snapped her focus sharp, planted both palms flat against the wall, threw her head back, and drove her sharp fangs into it.
CRACKLE-CRACK!
The strength of her fangs, combined with the wall's own descending force, sent fissures spidering out from the points of her teeth—and then the wall shattered with a CRASH!
Camibarez rolled clear immediately, and Exorcism came down a hair's breadth too late.
“And here I thought vampires were creatures of fairy tales.”
The Priest's expression turned intrigued as she conjured several holy arrows at once.
“Why don't you vanish back into your storybook?”
SHWUNG! SHUNG-SHUNG-SHUNG-SHUNG!
Gasping for breath, Camibarez weaved and dodged the arrows, then leveled at the Priest a hand clenched like a pistol.
A Blood Bullet exploded from her fingertip with a violent recoil—but the Priest casually spread a transparent wall in front of herself and blocked it with ease.
'A Guardian Arts major.'
Just like Simon, Camibarez was putting everything she'd learned in Divine Defense to work.
'A specialty focused entirely on defense. In combat, they trap their opponent in barriers and protective walls so they can't move a muscle, then bury them under a finishing attack.'
Exactly as she'd analyzed, the Priest conjured multiple transparent walls at once and sent them flying forward.
Camibarez hopped and weaved, slipping between the incoming walls.
'!'
She was concentrating on the wall pushing in from the front when suddenly another one dropped out of the sky.
She threw herself backward just in time. The wall came down on the exact spot where she'd been standing, leaving a huge rectangular impression in the ground.
'I-I can't dodge them all!'
As Camibarez stumbled, off-balance from dodging the barrage, one of the walls pushing in from the front finally caught her.
Her body was shoved backward along with the wall, which was now dragging her toward a tree looming behind.
'If she pins me down, it's over!'
Camibarez quickly spread her palm and drew a magic circle on one side of the wall—then smashed her fist into it.
<Blood Strike>
CRASH!
The wall shattered, and Camibarez dropped to the ground.
But then—
“All~ done.”
Before she knew it, a wide, semicircular barrier had spread itself around Camibarez, enclosing her completely.
Humming a little tune, the Priest clenched her fist.
Ssssssssss.
The barrier began to shrink. Camibarez fired Blood Bullet after Blood Bullet against it, but not a single one so much as scratched the surface.
In an instant the barrier had contracted to fit her body's exact measurements, rendering her utterly immobile before it began squeezing her entire frame with crushing force.
“Aaghk!”
“Serves you right, vampire.”
The Priest laughed in delight and raised her hand—and the barrier-locked Camibarez rose into the air along with it.
Perhaps to keep her fangs from shattering the barrier like before, the space around her face was left round and roomy, while the pressure clamped down brutally from her neck down across her whole body.
Camibarez couldn't twitch a single finger.
“Squeezing the whole body like this is one thing—but I can also concentrate the force on specific parts.”
The moment the Priest said it, the pressure intensified around the section of barrier squeezing Camibarez's throat.
She choked and gagged.
“Let Cami unnie go!!”
Sasha screamed. The Priest looked at her, smiled sweetly, and beckoned.
“If that's what you want, come over here, Saintess Candidate~”
“I-I'll never— Aaghk!”
“Suffocate? Or snap her neck? Either way, if we keep this up, that cute little vampire of yours is definitely going to die.”
In the end, Sasha began walking toward the Priest, her eyes rimmed red. The Priest's lips curled upward.
“Good girl.”
Tap.
Camibarez fought against the crushing pressure and managed to raise her hand upright.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Realizing she was up to something, the Priest looked up.
“Struggle all you want, it won't do you any g—”
“Sasha!”
The Priest's mouth hung open, flapping uselessly.
“RUN!!”
FYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
The Priest whipped her head around in shock.
A vortex of blood had appeared out of nowhere and was tearing toward her, swallowing up everything in its path—trees, undergrowth, anything that stood in the way.
Her face drained white.
'While she was fighting me... she was preparing a large-scale dark spell like THAT?'
If she moved, the barrier holding Camibarez would come undone.
The Priest hastily stretched out her arm and threw up a wall behind herself—but the blood vortex swallowed the wall whole along with the Priest, and kept advancing.
<Ursula Bloodline Unique—Call Tempest>
GOOOOOOOOOO!
It was the most powerful dark spell Camibarez could cast.
With the caster neutralized, the barrier binding Camibarez dissolved as well.
“Koff! Koff!”
The moment she touched the ground, she clutched her throat, coughing—then her eyes hardened, and she clapped her palms together.
ZAK!
The vortex dispersed, and from its center, a Priest in her beautifully tailored Efnel uniform—now shredded to ribbons—dropped to the ground, drenched in blood.
“Hah. Hah.”
She'd won.
Sasha beamed and started running toward Camibarez—but something about her was off.
Her pupils had gone redder and redder, and now she was stalking toward the blood-soaked Priest with a savage gleam in her eyes.
Thud. Thud.
She looked utterly parched.
The moment she reached the unconscious Priest, exposed the back of her neck, and bared her teeth to bite down—
Gotcha!
Sasha threw her arms around Camibarez and held her tight.
Just the way Camibarez had done for her, every single time before.
“...U-unnie. Are you okay?”
Camibarez's body trembled faintly, then went still. A few ragged breaths escaped her before her breathing slowly returned to normal.
“...I'm okay.”
At last, a strained answer came.
When Sasha looked up, Camibarez's pupils had returned to their soft violet.
The two of them held each other close, as if confirming that the other was still there.
* * *
<Pierce of Blizzard>
SHWAAAAAAAAA!
Meilin swung both arms like windmills, and ice spikes came pouring down from the magic circle in the sky.
“Block it. Zeno.”
At the Priest's command, a beast that looked like a living boulder stepped forward and curled itself into a shell.
Its body hardened further with holy power, effortlessly weathering Meilin's blizzard.
Meilin clicked her tongue with an irritated gnnh.
'Annoyingly tricky.'
Her opponent was a Divine Beast Studies major.
She fought by commanding five divine beasts at will. Three of them had already fallen to Meilin's onslaught and been recalled into the Priest's holy subspace—but two still remained.
“Now! Zeno!”
Meilin ducked fast at the Priest's shout.
A hawk-shaped divine beast tore through the empty air in a razor-sharp pass. A few strands of sky-blue hair fluttered up, severed and drifting away.
'Just how many divine beasts does she have?! This doesn't feel like a one-on-one fight at all!'
The two of them were nearly evenly matched.
Meilin raised Dark Flare in both hands once more, and the Priest readied herself to summon yet another beast from her subspace.
Right at that moment—
“Meilin!”
Simon burst out of the underbrush from the darkness.
“Ah—Simon!”
Meilin cried out, her voice full of relief.
“...Wha—what the.”
The Priest, on the other hand, looked utterly flustered.
'What happened to Sister Lirinet and Sister Istar?'
Simon stepped in front of Meilin and spoke.
“Against a Divine Beast Studies major, I've the better matchup. Get to Cami's side, quick.”
“Matchup? What kind of nonsense is that all of a sudden?!”
Instead of explaining, Simon looked at her with serious eyes.
“Please. I'll finish this and come after you.”
“...”
Meilin was frustrated at leaving her own Priest unfinished, but she figured Simon had his reasons for going this far.
Above all, everyone's top priority was protecting Sasha. She couldn't afford to confuse the order of importance.
“Fine! Don't you dare overdo it.”
Meilin turned on her heel and dashed off into the darkened forest—then glanced back once and bellowed at the top of her lungs.
“If you so much as get a scratch, I swear I'll never let it go!”
“...Haha.”
And so Meilin was gone, and the two of them faced off.
The Priest let out a long sigh.
“So that would be you, coming here after taking down Sister Lirinet and Sister Istar?”
“Yep, that's right.”
“...That's not helpful at all. Those two. Are they perhaps dead?”
“No idea. I didn't exactly hold back, but if they're lucky, they're still breathing.”
“You must be strong, then.”
She peeled a badge off her chest and thrust it forward—CHK!
“In that case.”
A holy subspace opened within the badge, and out of it came bouncing a divine beast that looked like a little teddy bear.
“I'll get serious as well.”
With a triumphant smile, she pressed her palm against the beast's body.
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWA!
The instant her holy power flowed into it, the bear cub's frame swelled enormously.
A colossal four-legged bear monster, draped in heavy slabs of muscle. White energy rippled and roared across its entire body.
“Consider it an honor. I'll have my strongest divine beast, Akalion, take you on.”
She thrust out her arm with a roar of “Attack!”—and Akalion charged at Simon like a stampeding bull.
'...'
Simon lowered his stance and prepared a curse in response.
But then—
Padat.
Akalion, which had been charging with the momentum to crush everything in its path, gradually slowed—and then came to a dead stop right in front of Simon.
“?”
Both Simon and the Priest wore identical expressions of bewilderment.
“A-Akalion? What are you doing! Smash him flat!”
But Akalion paid the command no mind. It rolled its eyes, observed Simon with what could only be described as curiosity, then stretched its head out. And then—
Lick.
It began slurping at Simon's face with its tongue, oozing friendliness.
“Wh-wh-wh-WHAT is this?! Why is it doing that all of a sudden?!”
The Priest hopped around in a panic, but Akalion showed not the slightest trace of hostile intent toward Simon.
After an awkward beat, Simon reached out and stroked its head—and Akalion snorted through its nose, clearly delighted.
'Now, how did she do it earlier...'
Still petting Akalion, Simon tried channeling his own holy power into the beast, just as the Priest had done.
And then—
FWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!
A blaze of holy power far greater than before surged up around Akalion's body. The beast turned—and then circled all the way around Simon before taking its place at his side.
Then it snorted and glared at the Priest, as if standing guard against her.
“OH, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!”
The Priest, in full panic, clawed at her own hair.
“HOW DOES THIS EVEN HAPPEN?!”