There was another “Die!” in the distance, and one of Laus’s clones threw the second apostle over. She was in as bad a state as the first. No, actually, she was even more damaged, since she’d had to deal with two Lauses at once. The apostle the main Laus had faced was still trying to get her wings out and fire off more feathers, but the second just let herself be flung around like a battered rag doll.
The two apostles crashed into each other midair, and as they hurtled to the ground, Laus flew directly above them.
“Limit Break, final stage!”
For just an instant, he activated his strongest Limit Break, then swung his mace down with all the might he could muster. He enlarged it as much as possible while swinging it, hitting both apostles with a literal metal boulder. The two of them were too weakened to deploy a disintegration barrier, and they were sent careening into the city’s main street.
“Hmm, I guess I only needed the third stage of limit break, really,” Laus mused as he looked at the mangled corpses of the apostles in the crater their collision had created.
He brought his mace back to regular size and recalled his clones. But he knew there was no time to rest, and he hurried back to where Lyutillis and the others were fighting. As he approached the battlefield, though, he saw that Kimaris and his bishops were all trapped within the enchanted trents’ roots, and most of them were dead.
He turned to Lyutillis, who puffed her chest out proudly. Laughing, he looked over the battlefield to see how everyone else was faring. The Templar Knights were still fighting, but they were sorely weakened and the Liberators had a clear advantage. Leonard and Craid would be able to take care of things easily.
However, as Laus turned back to Lyutillis, he heard someone call out to him.
“Why...? Why...?”
Looking over his shoulder, he saw Lilith staring up at him with a pained expression on her face. There was a deep gash in her chest, and she was clearly on the brink of death.
Reinheit was standing behind her, gritting his teeth. He was the clear victor, but he’d refrained from dealing the final blow, probably to let Lilith have this one last conversation.
She fell to her knees, but she kept her gaze fixed on Laus. There was no will to fight left in her.
Ignoring the battle raging around him, Laus went to Lilith and knelt in front of her.
“Why...? Why did you betray us...Laus-sama...?”
“Commander Lilith...”
Coughing up blood, Lilith stretched out a hand, as if searching for something. Her eyes couldn’t see anything anymore. Trembling, she shook her head and reached out further.
Laus tenderly grasped her hand and replied, “I’m sorry, Lilith, but I couldn’t bring myself to abandon what mattered most to me.”
The light disappeared from Lilith’s eyes, and the strength left her hand. Laus had no way of knowing if she’d heard his final words, or what she’d felt toward him in those very last moments. However, he couldn’t help but think that if he’d chosen to fight against fate sooner, she might have been one of those people Laus Barn would have considered too important to abandon.
With a twinge of regret, Laus gently closed Lilith’s eyes.
“You shouldn’t have been born into this country.”
Lilith was already dead, but for some reason, Laus felt that he heard her say that. From any other knight, those words would have been an insult, but for some reason, Laus didn’t think Lilith meant it as one.
“You’re right, I shouldn’t have been,” he said with a small, sad smile on his face.
“Laus-sama,” Reinheit said, walking over.
“Reinheit, you’re in command now. Keep the citizens...and my sons safe until I return.”
“Yes, sir!”
Reinheit put as much confidence into his voice as possible in order to reassure Laus that the capital would be safe in his absence.
“Lau-chan-san!”
“How many times do I have to tell you to stop—?! Ugh, whatever! Let’s go, Lyu!”
Laus slung Lyutillis over his shoulder and leaped up into the air. Leonard, Craid, and the others all flashed him fearless smiles as he flew off to join Vandre and Naiz at the palace.
Eight thousand meters up, at the peak of the Divine Mountain, the sky around the Holy Cathedral was filled with numerous black spots. There was also a torrential downpour of enchanted swords striking it. That was the opening salvo Oscar and Miledi unloaded on Lucifer and his Paladins.
Most of the Paladins spread their white wings and flew out of the way of the barrage. However, Lucifer and four of his bodyguards, each of whom was carrying a sacred shield replica, stood their ground.
“Consecration!”
“Celestial Fortress!”
“Shield of Retribution!”
“Divine Protection!”
The Paladins deployed their respective special magics, one which created a spatial barrier, another which created a zone that dampened the impact of all attacks, yet another which reflected any attacks that hit, and a final one that simply buffed the defenses of everyone nearby, to protect the pope, while also relying on the natural sturdiness of their sacred shield replicas.
Oscar’s rain of enchanted blades hit the roof of the cathedral a second later. And at the same time, disintegration beams headed toward Miledi and the others from four sides.
Miledi redirected them all using her gravity spheres, sending them toward the Paladins who were trying to fly up to them. However, those Paladins were much faster and more skilled fliers than the other knights. They easily dodged out of the way of the beams and fired off their own counterattack.
Large blades of light shot toward Miledi, accompanied by spears of light that were specialized for piercing over raw damage. There was also a deluge of light arrows and several shock wave attacks. Each of those spells was insanely powerful, a result of Lucifer’s Divine Crusade buffing a group of already powerful apostleified Paladins. The combination was almost as strong as evolution magic.
“This might have actually been kinda tough if we didn’t have your artifacts!” Miledi shouted, her sky-blue mana surging around her. Thanks to the evolution magic and debuff-repelling artifacts Oscar had made for everyone, Lucifer’s Sanctified Purge wasn’t wearing them down at all.
“Asura!”
Miledi knocked down the Paladins and their spells with one wide-area gravity field.
“Your Sanctified Purge doesn’t seem to be doing much!” Meiru shouted as she circled around to cover Miledi’s back. Her whip-like snake scimitar lashed out at the Paladin trying to skewer Miledi from behind with his spear.
“That hurts, you know?” Meiru said as the spear went straight through her chest. However, the Paladin barely had time to blink in surprise before Meiru’s sword decapitated him. She recognized him as the knight who’d had the teleportation spell which had helped the pope retreat to the Holy Cathedral.
“Thanks, Meru-nee. Are you using your new skill?”
“Sure am. Though it’s rather nauseating how badly it makes my vision blur.”
Meiru had been able to preempt that surprise attack thanks to the new restoration magic spell she’d learned, Future Sight. The true nature of restoration magic was the ability to manipulate time, and once Meiru had realized that, she’d learned how to see a few seconds into the future.
“By the way, Oscar-kun, that attack broke through Metal Batlam’s defenses.”
“I see... It seems the Paladins have been buffed so much that Metal Batlam alone can’t fully block these attacks,” Oscar mused, swinging his gauntleted hand.
“Are those metal wires?!”
“They’ve been enchanted with spatial magic as well!”
As four apostles tried to close in on the group, they were stopped dead by Oscar’s web of metal wires. They were extremely fine and enchanted with both Refraction and Perception Inhibitor, so even the apostles hadn’t noticed them at first. Moreover, because they were enchanted with spatial magic, they could be locked in place at any time, so once you got entangled in them, it was impossible to get back out.
Unfortunately, after a brief moment of surprise, the apostles started radiating disintegration magic to destroy the wires. Even with all the reinforcement Oscar had put into the wires, it took them only two seconds to melt them. However, those two seconds were more than enough for Miledi to finish casting her ultimate spell.
“Heavencrush.”
Four spheres of pure black destruction appeared in the four cardinal directions, one to an apostle. The apostles started groaning in pain as they tried to resist the crushing force of overwhelming gravity. And lucky for them, Lucifer’s Sanctified Purge was weakening Miledi just enough that the apostles weren’t instantly flattened.
Miledi furrowed her brow in frustration.
“What irksome magic,” Darrion said, thrusting his spear in front of him. He was the first Paladin who’d managed to escape Miledi’s Asura. Four beams of light then shot out of his spear, each one hitting one of Miledi’s Heavencrushes.
“Are you serious?!” Miledi shouted as she watched her spheres disperse. Darrion had wiped them out so thoroughly that it almost seemed like she’d canceled the spell herself.
“Miledi-chan! Oscar-kun!” Meiru shouted, running over to the two of them. “Torrential Bulwark!”
She then summoned up a wall of water just as bolts of lightning appeared out of nowhere. The flashes were so bright that the trio was momentarily blinded, and the boom of the thunder left their ears ringing.