“That despicable man...”
Raven, self-proclaimed future Demon Lord and God, growled with fury. As he glared up at Spirit Mountain with undisguised rage, demons and mercenaries surrounded him, freed from the divine soldiers’ onslaught. Most likely, that was thanks to Glasses and his long-range casting. He wouldn’t have been able to pull off this many consecutive shots, though, so the one firing must’ve been the saint.
Regardless, the lightning blasts had taken out the divine soldiers. The devil-touched had been immobilized by the electric shocks too, and now they were all neatly tied up. The innkeeper was the one who’d ordered them captured alive; he’d suspected that they might be soldiers from a neighboring country, and he wanted to avoid a messy diplomatic incident. Surprisingly, the Golden Lion had been equally on board with that, and his orders to his troops had been the same. He’d shouted something about how attacking incapacitated enemies went against their pride as warriors or whatever—I didn’t really get it, but sure.
“In any case, it’s about time we finished this,” I announced, brandishing my bible.
With the divine soldiers down, the aether they’d been sucking up was starting to return, albeit only slightly. I’d administered emergency treatment to myself and Cion in parallel—and Veiss as well, while I was at it. I would’ve liked to get the Golden Lion back in the fight if possible, but I didn’t quite have the spare capacity for that.
“Please surrender,” I called to Raven. “I’m not interested in beating sense into you—I’d merely break my bones.”
“Me? Surrender? So you’ve broken my dolls—what of it?!”
Just the shock wave as he swung his arm was enough to send the exhausted mercenaries flying, and even the demons crumpled to their knees.
“I shall teach you that true power cannot be bested by mere force of numbers!”
Raven’s body began to swell as he made his proclamation. He regrew his lost wings better than new, with three pairs instead of one. Countless arms sprouted from his torso, mouths gaped wide on his arms, extra eyes opened across his body, scales covered his long tail... At this point, he’d transformed into an utterly surreal creature, going straight past creepy and into incomprehensible.
Was that thing really a living being the same as us?
“He’s certainly nailing the Demon Lord look, if nothing else...” I muttered to myself.
Raven responded with a mocking laugh. “My Lord continually suppressed his power. He did not wish for his own form to establish a hierarchy among the tribes that served him, he said...”
Glancing over, I could see the Golden Lion standing on Raven’s opposite side, leaning on the innkeeper for support.
“Raven...” he said. “I know you swore fealty to our Lord. I’ll accept the resentment you held for us. But our Lord would never have wanted this. He’d—”
“Silence. You could never so much as comprehend the will of a God, you filthy tomcat.” The Demon Lord’s right hand glared at the Golden Lion, and his voice trembled as he spoke. “My world has no need of warriors, Heroes, or champions! You are obsolete, all of you!”
As the devil howled, poised to strike at any second, all the assembled soldiers braced for battle.
Even if we could exchange words with one another, that didn’t mean we’d be able to reach an understanding. When a conflict was driven by the two sides’ personal creeds, all they could do was keep on clashing until one or the other was destroyed.
“This is asinine,” I muttered.
All this time, we’d just kept on killing and being killed, going around in circles forever. The Demon Lord had held power on par with a God, and even he’d died trying to end that cycle. Maybe it was just impossible to ever stop.
But I didn’t care.
“I’m not ending it for you!”
If clashing was the only way we could understand each other, then we’d just have to clash. We could trade blows, we could trade insults—that was all fine. But I had terms of my own.
“I won’t let you kill anyone within my sight!” As a bride of the Gods. As an agent of the holy powers that bring forth miracles. “I’m going to stop you!”
I made my declaration.
I stood against the devil.
I faced him, mere human that I was.
“Bold words, bride.” He slashed out with an arm too fast for the eye to follow, slicing into the earth and sending people scattering. “Go ahead, then. Try to save me. Try to defy me! Reject my will, just as I reject yours!”
He took flight, wreathed in crimson flame. Not to run away, but to incinerate us all.
“Glasses!”
Before I’d even called out, a blast of lightning shot down at the devil, but he blocked it with a single arm raised over his head. Worse, it bounced off and scattered in all directions, leaving casualties on our side.
“How is he so completely useless?!” I fumed as I ran around searching for a jumping-off point. I wouldn’t be able to reach him from the ground. If I could get to one of the buildings that hadn’t collapsed yet—
“Alicia!”
Cion pointed at a cluster of people as she ran by my side. A slovenly pack of mercenaries were crouched low to the ground, holding out their shields.
“Over here, missy!” the innkeeper shouted.
“Cion!”
“Yeah!”
I applied whatever physical buffs I could, and we sprinted full speed up to the mercenaries, jumping together onto their shields as—
“Her merciful bosom?”
“Has time still to grow!!!”
“What’d you say—?!”
Our footholds sprang up underneath us, launching us like cannonballs straight toward the devil, but I felt like I’d heard a chant down there that I absolutely wasn’t going to let slide.
“I’m gonna kill those assholes!!!” I clenched my fist tight and launched it straight into the devil with all of my momentum. “Who the hell are they calling—?!”
There was a sound that might’ve been a weary sigh from Cion next to me, but the next second, all that remained was an afterimage. She raced along one of the devil’s arms, ignoring the flames as she carved into the wings on his back.
“You worthless, defective trash!”
Raven tried to grab at us, but I created a rope with an orison and tossed it to Cion in midair; we pulled our bodies together to dodge his hands, and I dispelled it. Then, I tied a new rope onto Raven and used it as a fulcrum to launch a kick into his abdomen.
“Your pitiful blows...cannot harm me!” he rasped out.
He caught Cion with a large, sweeping strike and sent her tumbling back to the ground, but one of his wings was barely still attached.
“If we can’t harm you, then how about you just sit there and take it?!” I shot back.
Another orison rained down on him, countless spears of light punching his wings full of holes in a saturation attack.
“Stop acting all high and mighty, dammit!”
I used another rope to swing up in the air, then landed an axe kick straight to his shoulder. Now his flight was really starting to get shaky.
“Shut up!” he yelled.
The devil caught my ankle in his grip and tried to crush it, but—
“Scarlet...Brave!”
I pressed a hand to Raven’s chest and did my best to imitate Cion’s Energy Drain. I wasn’t touching an open wound, so I hadn’t been sure how effective it’d be, but Raven screeched in pain and let go of my leg.
“Glasses, now!”
With flawless timing, the wrath of the Gods poured forth. Tearing open the cloudy sky, a bolt of lightning descended with a thundering roar to shoot straight through the devil in midair.
“Gah—!”
As he let out a short, desperate cry, Raven fell to earth with nothing at all to catch him.
I half botched my own landing, forcing me to take a nasty tumble, but I managed to sit myself back up and look over at Raven. His entire body was charred black, and he knelt on legs like burned-down tree trunks... And as I watched, his skin swelled and bulged, like something was bubbling up from within.
“Wait, shit! What’s with that thing?!” One of the mercenaries who’d been shouting something or other about my bosom screamed in panic.
“Alicia! Is he—?!”
It was uncomfortably reminiscent of the scene we’d witnessed underground. But as Cion looked to me for guidance, a lump of flesh peeled away from the bulging mass and fell to the ground with a sickening plop, and a terrified silence enveloped the world.
“Aaah— Aaaaugh...”