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GOING back in time, to before the battle began…
“There’s this phrase adventurers use: first-sight death. Sometimes people call it a ‘clueless death’ too.”
In the fort up the mountainside, Cristophe and the members of the Golden Helm were having a strategy meeting in a simple room that had nothing but a plain table, a result of their hasty preparations.
“There are some monsters you can’t tell how strong they are just by looking at them,” Timm was saying. “They got the strength to kill ya, but they hide it, getting close enough to you take ya out by surprise. Gettin’ killed by one of these monsters is called a first-sight death, since it was your first time seeing it and you don’t know how strong it is. Sometimes the monsters that are good at doling out first-sight deaths are called a first-sight death themselves. But anyway.”
Cristophe was listening intently to what Timm said.
Knights were warriors, soldiers. Their job entailed battles that were many versus many, and, to an extent, the best strategy was figuring out how to take standardized units and best apply them.
Adventurers, on the other hand, needed to be able to respond to any situation, to monsters with unbelievable abilities. It was just a little better for them to think about how to use abnormal strengths.
“I think it’s good to assume they’ve got a general idea of what Lushera can do, but just having more variants is already throwing their calculations off. And Lushera’s got a brand-new skill,” continued Timm.
“The Hurricane of Insight is a water-based dracovitae,” said Lushera. “I’m certain the dracovitae is more powerful than me, but I should be able to divert its weapon-form attacks with my pseudo-tidal breath. I’m sure we can make an opening if we make them think I can only use fire breath. And in terms of how that ties in with our victory…”
“You have a plan for this too?” asked Cristophe.
“I do.” She nodded. “I’ll need Mom’s help.”
Kaphal’s large eye peeked in through the window, watching the strategy meeting.
✦ ✦ ✦
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IF Julian had just a bit more experience in combat, or if he’d accepted the advice of those more experienced than him, maybe he would have realized.
Maybe he would have felt it, the niggling sense that there was something off because, even though the crimson girl wiped out all those soldiers, she herself received no injuries, not even a scratch, not a single fleck of grime or blood on her, as beautiful and perfect as a picture.
If you run through a battlefield, you would be dirtied by dust and mud, but she wasn’t yet good enough at creating her crimson puppets to replicate that level of physical features.
In the middle of the battlefield was the gigantic icicle block, but the crimson girl wasn’t inside anymore.
Julian thought for a moment that she’d disappeared, but in her place knelt a beautiful woman with long, fiery locks.
“What in the—?!”
“…Deceiving hard,” she said, then disappeared. The red dragon roared on the other side of the mountain.
They said dragons could turn into people. And because they could do that, they could also create a puppet form that could act independently of their main body. Dragons who weren’t very skilled at the technique couldn’t actually turn their real selves into a person, they could only create and move this puppet.
The dragon was also capable of deciding the appearance of that puppet to be whatever they wanted it to be. Kaphal, for example, created a form that matched Lushera in style, that looked like it could be her mother.
Looking at that in reverse, it meant Kaphal could change the appearance of her puppet, even make one that looked just like Lushera.
These puppets were far weaker than the real dragon body, but they weren’t weak. They emitted a dragon aura, could use magic, and were far stronger than a human.
But they didn’t have the power to rewrite the world, a power dragons naturally had. They weren’t powerful enough to stand against a dracovitae. That was why even Julian was convinced the puppet was Lushera when he looked at it.
“It was a fake! Th-Then where’s the real one?!” shouted Julian as he scanned around him.
Kaphal’s main form was on the other side of the mountain, constantly using her fire breath to stop the dracovitae. There was no way she could use her full draconic powers on this battlefield.
Which meant that, even if that was a fake Lushera, the real Lushera should be nearby to use her abilities. It was the only logical conclusion.
Those Setrayuan knights that charged with the fake Lushera… Amongst them, was one knight performing particularly admirably, a small knight, wielding their giant war axe from atop their horse to slice down enemy soldiers.
You couldn’t tell who it was, since they were hidden by full armor and a helmet, but the normal assumption would be they were a female dwarf. Dwarf women stopped growing at what humans thought looked to be their mid-teens, but their bodies became as strong as their male counterparts, and being small on a battlefield was beneficial as it actually meant you were a harder target to hit, and a lighter load for your mount to carry. There was nothing abnormal about a female dwarf being here. The fact that they were wielding a dwarf’s preferred weapon, an axe, was even more supporting evidence for the lie.
“Hiyaaaaaa!”
“Gah!”
“Agh!”
With a full swing of her hellfire-wreathed axe, she cut down soldiers like wheat before a scythe.
The dwarven knight, no, the real Lushera, who had put on armor made for a dwarven woman and mixed in with the knights, smashed through their formations, closing in on the center.
She darted straight through on the side towards Monica, where defenses had worn thin.
When the fake Lushera came, Julian was forced to send his elite knights, which were also his guard, to deal with her. It was the obvious move as it could have turned the tide in their favor, but it also left their defenses weak.
“You!” Julian of course noticed her.
With Kaphal’s puppet gone, there was only one powerful presence here. Any warrior would notice it. That much draconic power with that much of a presence was overwhelming even in a chaotic battle filled with fighting energy, and Lushera had no way of hiding her aura now that she was in fight mode.
Water erupted from out of thin air. It swirled, spraying out droplets, turning into an undulating snakelike spear that launched right at Lushera to pierce her, tear her apart, crush her, and in the end, freeze her. This attack didn’t care if it took out allies as well. It would absolutely kill Lushera if it struck dead-on.
But Lushera finally smiled beneath her helmet when she saw it. “Thanks. I’ll be taking all that water!”
“What?!”
Just as Julian thought the water flow pierced through Lushera, it was caught in an invisible vortex swirling around her and spun around her with a roar.
It’s hard to hold! But better than canceling it out head-on with fire breath, she thought.
Lushera still felt a pressure that might crush her, even if she had avoided a direct hit. She felt like the blood vessels in her fingers were bursting, a huge weight pressing down on her from every direction, like being buried in stone, even though she wasn’t directly touching the water.
Her sturdy mithril armor caved in, bent, and eventually tore off her. Beneath she wore her combat outfit, the belt, skirt, and her hair dancing in the pressure.
But she stood firm.
Water, one of the root powers of the world. She now used that as her own.
She couldn’t directly take on the dracovitae’s explosive power, but if she could redirect its flow, parry it!
“Haaaaaaaaah!”
Lushera took the swirling water and released it around her. The water, a giant, multiheaded snake, cut into the ground as it shot out, shearing down the knights.
“Ack!” A newly created wall of water protected Julian from the flow Lushera launched.
He was at his limits just protecting himself and his source of power, Monica. And that was even considering Lushera was careful not to catch Monica up in the attack.
Something strange flew at Julian.
His reaction was slowed because his focus was on the incredible display of pseudo-tidal breath. By the time he realized it was there, the object was already bouncing at his feet, emitting a pink smoke.
“Ack, gah, agh!”
“Thank you for using our delivery service. We’ll send the bill to the imperial court!”
“You!”
“Uh-oh! Gotta book it!”
With a nostalgic, old-fashioned hand catapult in his hands, Weyne, dressed like a militia man in the Marquess’s army, stripped off his disguise and bolted like a rabbit with miraculous dexterity.
“Now! Release all the remaining variants!” Cristophe’s voice shouted from the call charm in Lushera’s breast pocket. It sounded like he activated every call charm he had to give the order to the entire army.
As he did, monster roars came from all different locations, overlapping each other.
What Weyne launched at Julian was a monster attractant. All the variants fighting here and there across the battlefield rushed towards him.
That wasn’t all either. They had four bird-type pseudo-dragon variants in reserve that they released at once. They flew right over the mixed melee of friend and foe, homing in on Julian.
While he was dealing with those variants, Julian wouldn’t be able to return the dracovitae’s power to Monica. And while she was under orders through the Collar of Slavery, she couldn’t fight back.
Less than a minute after that, there was nothing between Lushera and Monica.
Lushera pulled out a small rug, about the size of a couch pillow, that had a teleportation circle woven into it.