Elze confirmed that the giant Kyklops had been defeated and grinned.
“Mama Elze, in front!”
“Oops.”
Elze turned her gaze forward at Linne’s insistence.
A metallic red frame was thrusting its rapier at great speed. Any normal pilot would’ve ended up as Swiss cheese, but Elze’s extraordinary kinetic vision allowed her to see each of the sword’s strikes and deflect them with Gerhilde’s phrasium knuckle guards.
“Hmph!”
Spotting an opening, Elze attempted a roundhouse kick, but the red Kyklops jumped backward to barely avoid the blows.
“To think you could even take down Balor...! Dammit, I had planned to at least take down some of the duchesses with it...”
“You should be glad. If that had happened, you would most definitely have seen hell. You’d be begging and crying to be killed.”
Elze sounded like she was making a lighthearted remark, but if any of them had died, that was definitely what would have happened. Their husband pulled no punches when it came to that sort of thing. With his powers, he could likely revive them with resurrection magic, but even if they did come back, he’d never forgive the one who killed them in the first place. He’d break their minds as completely as he could and show them absolute hell. Even if the other party was a wicked devout, someone who was already a dead person, he would inflict enough pain and terror that their soul would be weathered away.
Elze would not deny this. After all, she’d do the exact same thing if her own family were killed, and she had no intention of forgiving the idiot who was trying to do just that right in front of her.
“[Boost]!”
A residue of red magic overflowed from Gerhilde’s multilayered armor. Clad in light, Elze kicked the ground with explosive power. Having approached the enemy in an instant, Gerhilde’s shining fist swung wide.
“How are you so fast?!”
“Need you to go bye-bye for now.”
The phrasium knuckle guards smashed right into the Kyklops. A crack appeared in its frame. Naturally, this wasn’t the end.
“Intoooooo...!”
“Crusher!”
Elze and Linne shouted in unison, launching Gerhilde’s pile bunkers. With a dull thud, the spikes shot right through the Kyklops’s stomach and its back. The frame bounced and slammed to the ground.
“Since we don’t have the sacred treasure, we can’t tackle the wicked devout directly. I’ll just have to hope this is enough to make him run away...”
“If he does come back, I’ll beat him up!”
Elze flashed a wry smile at Linne’s simplemindedness. As a divine ward, Elze was forbidden from killing the wicked devout, but it was okay for her to protect herself. Well, maybe not okay per se. It was a strange gray area. It came down to whether or not it was considered an act of self-defense, an unavoidable attack to protect oneself. Elze thought she’d be able to give the excuse that the other side attacked first, but whether that would fly was a whole different question...
Anyway, the fact that no gods had come flying on over had to mean that it was overlooked. There would be no problems if Linne took the wicked devout down, but unfortunately, the sacred treasure was with Touya’s team, who were still in the middle of carrying out their plan. Even if they could give the devout a good beating, they couldn’t truly eliminate them.
“Ah!” Linne’s sudden exclamation had Elze looking back at the monitor. There, the metallic red frame was shown rising up like a ghost, stomach completely gouged out. Elze clicked her tongue.
I should’ve gone for its chest. That’s probably where its G-Cube was.
Suddenly, she realized that the enemy’s rapier was beginning to flicker with a dim red light. That creepy flashing grew faster and faster until it finally sent an unavoidable explosion of flame right for the Gerhilde.
“Stardust Shell!”
Before the Gerhilde could be engulfed by the flames, small shining star-shaped shields lined up in a regulated formation to create a large shield in front of them. Blocked by those celestial shields, the flames died out before reaching them.
“Whew, that was a close call.”
“Thank you, Sue!”
Behind Gerhilde stood Sue’s Ortlinde Overlord. Had the Stardust Shell come even a second later, Gerhilde would’ve been burned to a crisp.
“Tch! If Balor’s out of commission, then it’ll be impossible to do anything more...”
The metallic red Kyklops slowly edged backward while the surrounding Kyklops moved forward. It seemed he’d chosen to retreat.
They would rather not let him go, but even though they’d defeated the big Kyklops, they didn’t have the trump card to take the wicked devout down.
Guess we need to back off, Elze reluctantly relented. But then suddenly, the space above them started to warp.
A hole opened up and something gold came flying out.
“Is that...Gold?! Wait, no!”
Elze focused her monitor on the gold Gollem that had appeared. It looked exactly like Gold, but the small gold Gollem had metal bird wings on its back and was glaring at them with its red camera eyes.
“Gould...?”
A confused voice came from the metallic red frame. Gould ignored that voice and instead sent countless gold feathers out onto the battlefield.