Derek and Master Unicorn—hero and shenmo—stood facing one another. Their visages were like a refined painting of two enemy generals proudly facing each other in single combat.
“We might have misunderstood you, Your Majesty!” the Third Kingdom’s soldiers shouted with appreciation.
I’m only doing this because it’s the way to win, you useless tools, Derek cursed internally as he drew the sword on his back. Many thorns sprouted viciously from the bizarre longsword, which was called Emanuel’s Blade. There weren’t many who could use this weapon, but it was a perfect match for Derek’s wicked aura.
“Are you sure you want to do this alone?” Master Unicorn maintained a natural posture even after Derek readied his weapon. “You look like someone whose abilities are suited for logistical support or strategy meetings, not direct combat. I don’t think you’ll put up much of a fight against me.”
“Heh heh, I don’t know about that,” Derek said before dashing forward. He accelerated with tremendous force, much like a close-quarter combat specialist would.
Master Unicorn raised her eyebrow with a glimmer of surprise.
“Take that!” Derek shouted.
She blocked the incoming downward swing, but the unexpected weight behind the attack knocked her back.
“Wait, was His Majesty also good at physical enhancement magic meant for this sort of fight?” asked the commander of the soldiers as he looked down at the fight from atop the cliff.
“No, take a closer look,” one of his men replied. He pointed behind Derek.
“Physical Enchantment, Pacific Blessing.” Derek’s wife Elise, who’d descended to the bottom of the valley with him, stood some distance behind him using her magic to bolster him.
“You said this would be a one-on-one fight, you craven!” The therianthropes voiced some justified criticism.
Derek, however, showed no sign of guilt. “What are you guys talking about? Elise is just a tool I’m using after brainwashing her. She’s essentially the same as a sword or a shield. Isn’t that right, Elise?”
“Yes. Everything is as His Majesty says. I’m but his humble tool,” Elise replied. The eyes on her charming face appeared hollow as a result of his control.
“See? She said so herself,” Derek said.
“Our king seems to lack a human heart! How deplorable.” Derek’s men exchanged various words of contempt for him.
Derek clicked his tongue as he glanced over at his soldiers. Bunch of fussy morons clinging to their foolish honor and chivalry ideals again.
“You think we’ll accept your cheap sophism?!” the silverback shouted in rage. He obviously shared the soldiers’ sentiment.
“I don’t mind,” said Master Unicorn.
“Good, good. Looks like you get me, unlike those bumbling idiots.” Derek unleashed a maniacal cackle.
“I’ll still win regardless of what you do,” she said with an even expression. She found Derek as threatening as the pebbles that rolled at her feet. Words like “arrogance” or “haughtiness” weren’t even close to describing her behavior.
“Hmm, I see now. This entire battlefield is full of nothing but noisy insects. Let’s see how long you can keep up the tough act!” Derek said as he readied his sword again, then snapped his fingers.
“Wind and fire, bring forth a dazzling paradise of embers. Firestorm!” Elise fired a powerful blaze group spell from her hands. Her Chanted Magic charged forward with tremendous force and heat that charred the ground beneath it. Master Unicorn managed to just barely dodge it.
“You shameless cretin. You’re even having her use offensive magic now?!” The silverback ground his teeth in frustration.
Elise peppered Master Unicorn with a barrage of powerful Chanted Magic. Each spell reduced the surrounding trees to charcoal and gouged the earth it struck. Master Unicorn slipped through them with smooth movements, but she was as physically frail as an ordinary human girl. If even one of those spells found its mark, the wound would be fatal.
“Elise is a mage of the highest caliber, you know. They had high expectations of her back during the demon lord’s first subjugation. She’s high specification, right?” Derek said.
“That’s something you’d say about an object, not your own wife! You’re scum even from a demon’s perspective,” the silverback said.
“What’s wrong with praising a tool’s specs? She’s also pretty efficient when we have fun in the bedroom. She’s even popped out four kids!” Derek replied before giving a sinister laugh.
Master Unicorn dodged one of Elise’s spells, bringing her close to Derek.
“Hey, you have to pay attention to me too!” He’d caught her while she was midair. With no foothold, she was unable to move. It was an orthodox and nasty attack that took advantage of the opponent’s most vulnerable moment. However, Master Unicorn twisted her body in the air with feline flexibility and applied instantaneous force to dodge Derek’s swing.
“What?!” Derek shouted in surprise. This woman’s combat technique was beyond the pale. Since he’d never expected her to dodge that, he’d left himself full of openings. Master Unicorn swung her sword at him mercilessly, but his body stopped her blade with a loud clang.
“Physical enhancement magic, is it?” she murmured.
The one who’d used the magic was, of course, Queen Elise. The ones most surprised by it, though, were the Third Kingdom’s soldiers. Master Unicorn had sliced through metal turrets like butter only minutes ago. They understood that magically enhancing a human body to be tougher than metal was an almost impossible task. They knew that their queen, along with their king, had earned significant military accolades during the Titanomachy, but they never imagined she was this skilled.
“You could even say Elise is better than Norman at this! She’s truly the best of tools.” Derek mentally thanked his brilliant past self for acquiring such an excellent object as he held his sword aloft. Just as Master Unicorn was about to block his attack, he said, “Curse Droplet.”
Momentary shock overtook her, but she immediately stabbed her sword into the ground and used it as an axis to rotate her body around, followed by a large leap. A black liquid flew out of the thorns on Derek’s sword and splashed onto the spot she’d been standing. As soon as the liquid hit the ground, it made a sizzling sound, and black smoke rose from the dissolving rocks.
“Poison.”
“Ha ha ha, figured it out, did you?” Derek said with some sarcasm.
This was the Dark Priest’s surefire strategy: have physical enhancement magic cast on him to supplement his low combat abilities and use powerful black poison magic to one-hit KO the enemy while they were distracted by his allies. His thorn-riddled longsword, Emanuel’s Blade, offered an easy way to tear through an enemy’s skin and deliver the poison into their body.
“This is how I buried your predecessor in the Seven Black Stars. His last screams had quite a ring to them,” Derek gloated. It had been a fine victory. The past Black Star had been massive and confidently displayed amazing feats of strength, but as soon as Derek’s paralyzing poison had hit, that strength had dropped by two-thirds. After that, Derek had easily tormented the Black Star until his death.
Thoroughly crafty and merciless. That was the essence of Derek’s fighting style.
“Hmm, I see,” Master Unicorn said to herself. “Even so, I’m simply going to win in the end.”
Derek blew a fuse; she was still underestimating him. “Say that again?!”
A second later, she vanished from sight.
“What?!” he cried in shock.
“Your Majesty, behind you!”
Derek tried to react to Elise’s warning, but he was too late. Before he could turn around, Master Unicorn brought her sword down faster than the eye could see, slicing his right arm off and sending it dancing in the air.
“Ugh!” he grunted.
After a moment to take in the situation, despite the shooting pain, Derek grabbed his arm and rushed over to Elise.
“Your Majesty!”
“Hurry and stick it back before the cross section is damaged!”
Just as she was told, Elise put his arm in place and used recovery magic. Reattaching a severed arm normally took about a day, but recovery magic was another thing she excelled at. Moreover, it was Derek’s aptitude with the water element that assisted his recovery the most. He could control every liquid flowing through his body, his blood included; he hadn’t lost a drop. With all those advantages, his arm connected back to his body in the blink of an eye.
“So, you can teleport, huh? You’re plenty cunning yourself, keeping an ace like that up your sleeve,” Derek said. The silverback under Master Unicorn’s command had prattled on about her fighting with swordsmanship alone, so Derek had been caught off guard.
“No, I didn’t do anything special.” Master Unicorn shook her head. “I ran quickly and circled behind you.”
“Don’t give me that crap. Are you trying to play dumb?” Derek scowled. “Your physical abilities are about the same as this woman’s. Even if you’re the embodiment of silent movement or whatever, you could never move fast enough to practically teleport without magic.”
On top of that, Master Unicorn had cut through Derek’s magically enhanced body when she’d failed to do the same moments before. Straightforward swordsmanship could have never accomplished that—there had to be a trick to it.
“Why can’t the rest of you do it?” Master Unicorn asked.
“Do what?” Derek asked.
“I’ve never been able to understand. If you want to move fast, just move fast. If you want to cut something hard, just cut it so it cuts.” She acted like a monkey that couldn’t understand why it was the only one who could speak among its troop. “Why can’t everyone else do what I can?”