The champion’s sword was precise in its aim and utterly without mercy.
“Die, motherfucker!” he roared.
A quiet jolt of alarm ran through me. It was clear beyond doubt that if I took his swing head-on, I would be gravely wounded. I parried the blow and swung at him in return... But my claws didn’t strike true.
I had set the Hero and the demons’ army against one another, and I’d robbed the Golden Lion of his power. My body ought to have been rendered far stronger, far more agile, than that of any common demon. Yet, why?
“You...” I snarled. “How dare you!”
“If you think you’re the only one who can pull that shit, then too bad for you, asshole!”
I had known from the moment I’d first caught a glimpse of him in the capital. In fact, I’d been shocked at the discovery that there were others in the world who had gained power just as I had. But to think that he had thrown himself into demon-slaying so ceaselessly as to completely abandon human form, becoming nothing but a warwolf...
“You sick madman!” I shouted.
“Takes one to know one, pal!”
The man who had once been called a champion spoke casually, the corners of his mouth raised in a smile. He’d showered himself in blood until he lost his very humanity... He was utterly insane.
“The world looks upon vile things like you and dubs them champions! That is what warps men’s minds!”
This world was far too harsh and cruel to sustain the belief that anyone could be special from birth. Lives were easily plucked and scattered, or preserved only to be exploited and abused day after day. Soon enough, every man came to realize that he was only one among the masses—and that was why champions, unique in all the world, enthralled the people so.
“You are what stands in the way of the future!” I roared.
This man—this man, if no one else—had to be eliminated. I had set him against the White Wolf, renowned as the strongest among all my Lord’s armies, intending that they should weaken one another and be destroyed together. But he had fled beyond my reach, and my plan had been for naught. My informants had told me that the champion Veiss had gone missing, and I had been unable to track him down until he’d come to face me of his own accord.
Now that he had been reduced to a warwolf, his days of renown as a champion among men were over. But still, even now, he stood against me to block my path.
“Damn, you’re really stuck on me, huh? You’re not still jealous about ten years ago, are you?”
The beast gave a mocking laugh as he blocked my claws with his sword.
“You...” I growled.
“Bull’s-eye, huh? All this time later, and you’re still down bad for another guy’s damn fiancée!”
I could see the thick, sharp leg kicking toward me. I dodged it and lunged in too close for him to swing his sword, baring my fangs right in his face.
“How dare you say those words with her blood on your hands?!”
“That’s what she wanted. You didn’t seriously think she was gonna be with you, did you, dumbass?!”
He slammed his head into mine, and I weathered the blow unflinchingly.
“You damned monster!”
“Pot, meet kettle.” The wolfman grinned like human malice incarnate.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Master!”
Charging in between us came the Hero, slayer of the Demon Lord. She stabbed at me with the defective product’s knife, aiming directly for my heart.
“Why do you not see?!” I cried. “Why can you not understand?! You have no justice on your side!”
“When the hell did we ever swing our swords for justice?!” the wolfman shouted. “We kill to live—that’s all there is to it!”
The Hero’s irritating movements robbed me of the chance to strike back, complementing the champion’s sweeping blows. Their coordinated attacks were well practiced and ever shifting, and they threatened to tip the balance of this battle in Veiss’s favor.
“Lemme teach you how the world works, buddy! The winner’s just whoever stays alive!”
He launched a sweeping kick that I ought to have been able to dodge, but with the Hero blocking my retreat, I was forced to block it with my arm. The leg I leaned my weight on sank into the ground, and even with all the physical durability of a demon, the blow was fierce enough to shake me to my core. I groaned with the pain.
Another man’s heart might have faltered there—but I had long since left my own behind.
“Do not trifle with me, you filthy deviant!”
The wolfman charged at me with another vicious strike, but I took it head-on and leaped away with a flap of my wings. I spun my body along with the momentum of my fall, driving my heel directly into his neck. The neck was the weak point of every living creature. No matter how monstrous an animal might become, if the nerves joining brain and body were severed, it would lose the ability to so much as stand. If nothing else, the damage to its brain would delay its reactions—!
“You twisted psychopaths, unable to live except by taking the lives of others! All of you must be destroyed!”
My Lord, when he had yet lived, had never wished for such a thing. He had believed that the strong ought to join hands with the weak—that those with power ought to protect those without. He had sought to embody that ideal and to bring it to fruition... But an ideal was all it had been, in the end.
“If it weren’t for you—! You villains!” I drove away the Hero with a lash of my tail and kicked away at the flat of that massive sword, disarming the wolfman—the former champion—as I closed in on him. “All humanity—let them all perish! If you can only live by robbing from one another, then let that cycle consume and destroy you all!”
I concentrated mana in my arm, and my strike gouged into the wolfman’s chest. But he seized hold of my arm with his own hand, and he bared his fangs.
“Finally saying the quiet part out loud, huh?! Just admit you got bullied once and now you’re mad at the whole damn world, you weak sack of shit!”
A shock pierced through me from behind. Turning my head, I saw the defective product holding her bible, striking at me with her fist as faint bolts of electricity arced off of her.
“Do you truly imagine that will...” —work...?
For a brief moment, my thoughts turned to the White Wolf’s demise. From what I’d been told, this defective product’s intervention had been instrumental in his defeat.
Where was the Hero?
A mere girl, devoid of any redeeming traits save for her speed, would never have been able to make her way unaided to my Lord—were it not for her singular talent as an assassin. Did skill foster talent, or did talent beget skill? The answer was undeniably the latter. The means by which she’d acquired her prowess didn’t merit my consideration. What mattered was that she had possessed a talent for lurking stealthily and approaching her targets undetected; eventually, talent had birthed technique, and technique had awoken skill.
Silent Assassin was what my Lord had dubbed the invisible killer at large within his domain. And last night, I had witnessed for myself how she fought.
With a grunt of exertion, I released mana in all directions. She might have evaded my perception, but she certainly hadn’t vanished from existence.
“There you are.”
Below and to the left of the champion, there in my blind spot, was a small shadow waiting for the moment when my attention was diverted to my back. As she lunged at me, I met her with my tail, quick and vicious as a massive snake.
“Gah—!”
She frantically leaped away to the side, but my tail followed after her with ease. I pressed her against a wall, but just as a smile spread across my face, my body instinctively tensed at the unmistakable aura of death directed at me.
“Damn, taking your eyes off the fight? Confident, ain’tcha?”
The wolfman snapped my arm at the elbow and bared his fangs wide. My wings—
“No you don’t!”
I hissed in rage as the defective product leaped onto me, clutching at the roots of my wings to hamper their movement.
The fangs closed in, and my voice rose in a wail of fury.
“YOU VERMIN!!!”
I single-mindedly sent all of my mana circulating through my body, raising my strength and durability to their absolute limits.
Veiss’s eyes flashed with shock as his jaw clamped down. His fangs wouldn’t pierce me. I healed my arm and moved to grab him in return, but he quickly retreated, pulling the defective product away with him. While I’d been distracted, the Hero, too, had slipped out from between my tail and the wall... These obnoxious, meddlesome nuisances!
“If you insist that I face you at the zenith of my power, then so be it...”
My fingertips twisted and stretched into tentacles, spreading out in all directions. They pierced through incapacitated demons and devil-touched to drain their blood.
“What the fuck—?!”
Veiss made to charge at me, but my divine soldiers would occupy him. I summoned one to my side, using it as a wall to shield me.