“What’s wrong? Getting cold feet?”
The apostle narrowed her eyes, looking vaguely annoyed.
“I shall dismember you and present your limbs to my lord as a gift,” she said, and with a single flap of her wings, she charged toward Laus. He leaped off from his perch, meeting the apostle head-on.
“I can take care of the archbishop and his minions! You just focus on the apostles, Lau-chan-san!”
“If you call me that in front of Kaime or Selm, I’m going to kill you!”
Meanwhile, Laus’s main body was still keeping Kaime and Selm busy.
“Brother, the apostles are struggling! We have to at least keep his main body here or they’ll be overwhelmed!”
“Got it! I won’t hold anything back!”
Laus cast a sad gaze upon his two children. He’d known a brief conversation wouldn’t be enough to change their minds, but it still hurt.
Still, he believed that his words must have had at least a little impact, so he tightened his expression. No longer could he face Kaime and Selm as a father; he now had to fulfill his duty as a Liberator.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t talk for longer, but it looks like time’s up.”
His obsidian-black mana swirled around him with such force that Kaime and Selm staggered backward.
“I know I’m being selfish. You can hate me for this if you want.”
Laus could no longer bear to see his precious children in Ehit’s clutches, regardless of what they wanted.
“Limit Break, stage one.”
“Huh?”
Kaime and Selm blinked in surprise as Laus’s mana pulsed. Both of them had thought the only way Laus had been able to overpower them, crush a contingent of apostleified knights, and break Kimaris’s defensive formation all at once was because he’d already been using Limit Break. Of course, they knew evolution magic had been boosting him as well, but that alone shouldn’t have been enough, especially seeing as he was fighting on even ground with two apostles with just his clones. If he’d somehow been managing all of this without even using his Limit Break, then he truly was...
“A monster...”
“There was a reason I was hailed as the church’s strongest knight.”
Kaime and Selm had been hoping that if they just dragged the fight out, eventually, Laus would exhaust himself and leave himself vulnerable like he had during that fight in the valley.
“How can this be happening?!”
Selm looked up at Laus in terror, futilely firing a barrage of feathers at him. Kaime desperately raised his sword, but before he could even launch an attack, Laus struck.
“Soul Purge!”
Laus ran over to Kaime and Selm faster than the eye could see, put a hand on each of their foreheads, and knocked their souls out of them.
In their soul forms, Kaime and Selm watched their bodies slump to the ground.
“The Liberators will take care of you. We’ll talk again later.”
Laus made sure to gently place them both on the ground. They wanted to respond somehow, but they couldn’t find the right words, so they simply looked down at their own unconscious bodies.
“For now, just watch. I hope after we accomplish what we came to do, you’ll both...” Laus mumbled as he looked over his shoulder at his sons’ soul forms. “...you’ll both see that there’s so much more to the world than the church.”
As he watched Laus depart, Kaime unconsciously touched his forehead where Laus had placed his palm. As a pure soul, there shouldn’t have been any sensation, but for some reason, it felt warm.
Meanwhile, Selm watched as Kimaris desperately tried to keep reanimating corpses even after losing his apostleification, while the Liberators fighting him watched each other’s backs and kept their comrades safe.
Before long, it became too painful to keep watching Kimaris, and he and Kaime turned to look up at the sky. There really was nothing they could do except watch now.
“Has his Limit Break grown more powerful than before?” one of the apostles muttered.
The two of them were fighting two Laus clones, both of which had gotten the same power boost the main Laus had when he’d used Limit Break stage one.
Before, Laus had possessed eight stages of limit break, with the final stage multiplying his stats by five, but now his very first stage was as strong as the standard Limit Break spell, which tripled someone’s stats, and he had ten total stages, with the tenth multiplying his stats by ten.
“Limit Break, stage three.”
Quintupling his stats was as easy as going into stage three now, which didn’t even put that huge of a burden on him.
“To think he could reach Overload status with such ease.”
The third and final Laus rose up to join his clones, and the apostles switched targets to him. One fired a barrage of feathers at him, while the other launched a disintegration beam.
Laus’s clones blocked both attacks while he hefted his mace and went after the apostle who was firing feathers. His mace stretched outward at blistering speed, and the apostle had to raise her claymore to block it. However, the force with which it stretched was more than she’d initially anticipated, so she was sent flying.
Laus sent his two clones to finish her off, while he turned his attention to the one firing the disintegration beam. By the time she realized she was under attack, Laus was already right in front of her.
“Such unbelievable speed,” she whispered.
“Don’t talk, or you’ll bite your tongue.”
Laus swung his mace so fast it looked like a blur even to the apostle’s enhanced eyesight. Fortunately, her claymores were large enough that she could block even if she couldn’t tell its exact position, but the force of the blow numbed her hands.
“So evolution magic and spirit magic combined have made you this strong...? Ngh!”
“I told you you’d bite your tongue.”
Laus’s next blow landed right on the apostle’s head, and shock waves radiated from the point of impact. However, the apostle didn’t crash to the ground because Laus whirled his mace around and hit her chin from below before she moved more than a few centimeters.
The apostle’s body was tougher than most things, but even she couldn’t withstand successive concussive blows like that. Still, even as her vision blurred, she managed to launch a feather barrage at Laus.
“Hmph!”
However, Laus wasn’t fazed. He simply swung his mace, converting the massive amount of mana within it into booming shock waves that ripped apart the feathers.
By the time the apostle’s vision had finally cleared up, she realized Laus had rammed his prosthetic arm into her stomach. She doubled over as a combination of mana shock waves and the Void Fissure spell that Oscar had baked into the arm obliterated her innards. Plus, the punch was strong enough to tear apart her battle dress as well.
Eyes glinting with something akin to desperation, the apostle dropped her claymores and grabbed Laus’s shoulders. She wrapped her wings around them both, determined to annihilate Laus with a disintegration suicide bomb.
“Hmph!”
However, Laus headbutted her so hard that she let go of him and stumbled backward. Then, not giving her even a second to recover, Laus followed up with a front kick that hit her right in the stomach, where her armor had already been shattered. As she sailed backward, the apostle tried to recall her claymores, but Laus chased after her and shattered her wrists with his mace.
Like his arm, Laus’s mace was enchanted with spatial magic. That, combined with his own superhuman strength allowed him to damage even the apostle’s ridiculously sturdy body.
“You’ve surpassed all human limits.”
“Oh? So even without a soul, you’re capable of feeling emotion?”
Laus could see the impatience, and the fear, on the apostle’s face now. He then smashed her face in with his mace.
The apostle’s neck let out a sickening crack. She futilely lashed out with a kick, but Laus just grabbed her foot with his prosthetic arm and snapped that as well. Realizing she was in mortal peril, she tried to fly away.
“Not so fast.”
Laus knew just how powerful an apostle could be. Given free reign of the skies, she’d be able to keep her distance and pepper Laus with ranged attacks, hence why he’d decided that once he closed the distance with one, he wouldn’t let them escape no matter what.
“Uwooooooooooooh!” Laus let out a roar that could be heard throughout the entire city as he launched a series of devastating blows on the apostle. He was attacking so fast that she didn’t even have a chance to counterattack. There was no finesse to his techniques, nor was he adding any complex magic to his attacks. He was simply converting his soul into power and bludgeoning the apostle—the very symbol of Ehit’s might—to death through brute force.
“Gak!”
“Die!”
Pretty much every bone in the apostle’s body was broken at this point. Her limbs were all facing the wrong direction, and her spine was bent at a precarious angle.