✦ ✦ ✦
Its temperature must have been insanely high, because anything it got close to burst into flames in an instant. It left scorch marks on the airfield’s pavement as it plodded toward me. The closer it got, the more I could feel the heat radiating from its body. A few more feet and my clothes would start to burn.
First things first, though: its list of titles. I could confirm without a doubt that “Demon Lord’s Subordinate” was on there. Whale, whale, whale. Fynar was right about me being the target. That meant the goal of this attack was to ruin me in the eyes of society, because monsters were a “mark” for the people to associate with me. Roundabout? Sure. Insidious? Definitely. Which made me think I must’ve been making my enemies pretty damn nervous.
“En, we can’t let it do any more damage to the airfield. Let’s finish this before it really goes wild!”
“Got...it! Master, I can use my sword beam here!”
“Okay, fire away!”
Sword beam. Also known as the Magic Edge Cannon. It was a concentrated attack I’d developed shortly before heading to the dwarves’ domain, my aim having been to replicate Lefi’s Dragon’s Roar. I hadn’t tried it since my racial evolution, so I was itching to see how much more powerful it might’ve gotten. Magic Edge Cannon normally took some time to charge because I needed to incorporate spirit magic into it, but this time, I’d readied everything in advance.
“Oh dear... This is bad. Very, very bad. Everyone, brace for impact!”
Behind me, I could hear the Demon King shouting orders to his people.
“Sorry, but I’m gonna have to cut your performance short by turning you into charcoal!”
I swung my sword. The air itself shuddered. A boom like a battleship’s main cannon being fired rang out, followed by a concentration of mana so dense that you could literally see it piercing through the air.
Hoooly baloney. I might have put too much power into that. The recoil hit me hard, like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I was surprised my arms didn’t break—it was that powerful. It did blow me away, though. Panicked, I whipped out all three pairs of wings to regain control of my body as it hurtled through the air.
The attack was so strong that even I’d felt the impact, so what’d happened to the goddamn devil thing that’d taken it head-on? It’d vanished. Not fatally wounded or blasted backward. I was talking complete annihilation. Roughly two-thirds of its body was just gone, and all that remained were the tips of its feet. Naturally, its HP was zero, meaning it was super dead.
“Wooow... So cool.”
En sounded kinda excited.
“S-Sure was...”
As for me, I could feel my face twitching uneasily.
Water was my elemental forte, which made me well-suited for water spirits when it came to using water magic. But there was no water nearby and not many water spirits, so I’d thought that would naturally reduce Magic Edge Cannon’s power, since it used spirit magic. Actually, what we’d just witnessed might’ve just been exactly that, a weaker version. In turn, that made me wonder how much more powerful it would’ve been if I’d fired it near water. While I stood there frozen in shock at the sight before my eyes, I heard a voice behind me speak.
“Yuki... I realize this sounds a tad strange to say after you’ve already defeated the enemy, but...you may want to think a bit more about your offensive methods,” the Demon King said with a rueful smile.
“Uhhh, my bad?”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say.