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The blinding, volatile storm of golden aura finally began to recede, drawing back into Luke's chest. As his racing pulse slowed, the suffocating haze of his manic rage lifted, leaving behind only emptiness.
He stood alone in the ruined street. The demon lord was gone.
Why didn't she kill me in my moment of weakness? The thought drifted through his fractured mind. Was it just a game? Tormenting mortals until she grew tired of her toys?
But the answer didn't matter. What truly terrified him was the realization of what he had almost done. He stared at his trembling hands. A moment ago, he had been ready to incinerate the entire district, entirely willing to sacrifice thousands of innocent lives just to vent his bottomless grief.
Norn was gone—twisted into a nightmare. It wasn't certain if he or Teresa would ever see her true smile again. But that agony didn't give him the right to become a monster himself.
He remembered his brother Arnold's deep reluctance to let Arthur walk the path of a hero.
"Hic…"
A painful knot seized Luke's throat. The dam finally broke, and tears carved hot tracks through the ash and grime on his face. He collapsed to his knees against the cracked cobblestones, the sheer weight of his loss briefly crushing him.
"Brother… why aren't you here…?" he whispered, a foolish, desperate plea for Arnold to step in, to be the responsible older brother and make the nightmare go away.
The heavy clank of armored boots broke through his sobs.
"—Luke…?"
He looked up through blurred eyes to see Marcus. His adoptive father's face was bewildered and etched with sorrow. The older man knelt, placing a heavy, grounding hand on Luke's shaking shoulder.
"…Norn is safe," Marcus said softly. "We… We'll find a way to bring her back."
Luke nodded repeatedly, his shoulders heaving as the tears refused to stop. He allowed himself one last moment to grieve, aggressively gulping down the knot in his throat and fiercely wiping his eyes. When he looked back up, his eyes were bloodshot, but the madness was gone.
"…Did she harm anyone?" he rasped.
Marcus shook his head. "She has the body of a monster, but she's very docile. We locked down the estate to keep her contained there. Everyone else is heading to the cathedral. The imperial palace is closer, but the road to the church is much safer right now."
Hearing that the people he loved were safe, something fundamentally shifted within Luke. He silently rose to his feet.
He looked down at his bare hand. Without a single chant or desperate struggle, a radiant, golden aura enveloped his skin. But it was no longer the volatile, world-ending fire from before. It was steady, warm, and completely obedient to his will. The realization washed over him: his power had truly awakened. He no longer needed a legendary sword to draw it out.
"Luke…" Marcus reached out, holding something toward him. It was Flora's sword. "Can I count on you to help me protect our family?"
Luke looked at the blade, then at his father. "Yes, Father."
He took the hilt, and immediately, his golden aura wrapped around the steel, turning it into a beacon of hope in the darkened district.
Luke looked up at the crimson sky. The sky itself must be bleeding, he thought.
Fortunately, the empire was not entirely defenseless against this invasion. Across the city, even the smallest magic stores and local supermarkets had activated their divine barriers, glowing faintly in the distance to repel the lower demons. The massive, high-tier demons were few in number, but that wasn't an excuse to waste a single second.
"Once we get everyone off these streets," Luke declared, his voice carrying a calm, unbreakable resolve. "I'll hunt down the demon lord that caused this."
His heart was shattered, but his priorities were set in stone. He would rescue the innocent civilians first. Then, he would eradicate the demons. And finally, he would find a way to bring Norn back.
Marcus placed a heavy, gauntleted hand atop Luke's head, a proud, tired smile breaking through the grim lines on his face.
"That's my boy."
◊◊
The cries and roars were drowned out as Arthur neared a castle ruin, faintly sensing demonic energy coming from there.
"Now that I'm this far from the empire, I can sense something coming from that castle ruin."
Arthur came to a stop on the main highway road connecting the empire to most of the major trading hubs in the region. West of where he stood, Lockinge city was within view in the distance.
The air stank of suffocating demonic energy, prompting him to unsheathe the Holy Sword. Divine light rippled down the blade as Freya's words echoed in his mind; she had sensed the artifact's energy somewhere within those crumbled stone towers. If he secured the artifact and took down the mastermind behind this invasion, the entire realm would revere him as the undisputed savior. The peasants dying in the streets back in the capital meant nothing compared to the glory waiting for him here.
BOOM!
Before he could take another step, a blur of motion tore through the air. A punch delivered with astonishing force struck Arthur square in the chest.
He was sent flying by that punch, crashing into the dirt and creating a deep crevice along the highway. Coughing up dust, Arthur pushed himself up to see his attacker. It wasn't a towering beast, but a strikingly attractive humanoid demon clad in sleek, skimpy armor that highlighted her lethal physique and powerful lean muscles.
"This is the first time we've met. As we're fellow warriors, allow me to give you my name!"
She closed the distance in an instant, lifting both hands to smash him into the earth, "Demon Lord Ekterina Foruthflame!"
"Huut!"
Arthur unleashed an Aura Blast directly into her path. The concentrated light struck her full-on, sending her flying into the air.
Ekterina crashed a short distance away, skidding across the dirt before effortlessly flipping back to her feet with a smirk on her face. The white flames didn't burn her skin—not to an extreme degree.
Arthur's eyes narrowed as a spike of unease hit his stomach. An Aura Blast was pure internal aura condensed into light to strike down foes.
Fired through the legendary Holy Sword, it should have torn through a demon lord's defenses. Yet Ekterina's armor barely bore a scratch, and the faint mark on her skin healed in seconds. A bitter reality nagged at him: he could only use a few of the Holy Sword's true skills, leaving its legendary potential largely untapped in his hands.
She couldn't just resist the aura's effects but even heal!
Noticing a faint glow of light with a trail around the woman, Arthur's eyes followed it.
Standing atop a broken wall behind Ekterina in the shadow of the castle wall was another woman. Draped in an elegant, floor-length dark dress that billowed around her like velvet shadows, she was fluidly controlling a magic circle in the air, clearly the source of the buffing. The pinkish-black magic flowed into Ekterina, enhancing her physical defense and speed to absurd levels.
"In a crisis like this, a hero should be protecting the citizens, not coming straight for the leader. You'll regret coming here on your own."
Arthur remained silent, his grip tightening until his knuckles turned white.
This woman... the sheer volume of demonic energy leaking from both of them was so dense it made Arthur nauseous. But beneath the sickness, his ego flared violently. He hadn't come here to play babysitter to children choking on the streets. He was here to claim the ultimate victory—no matter how many bodies he had to step over to get it.
When he kills the leader, the others' morale will fall, thus ending this nightmare.
Arthur's eyes snapped from Ekterina's unblemished armor to the elegant, dark-robed figure standing atop the castle wall.
It's that woman.
Divine aura was meant to purify and incinerate abyssal energy on contact. The fact that Ekterina had taken a point-blank Aura Blast from the Holy Sword with barely a singe wasn't just unnatural—it was impossible. The glowing, pinkish-black runes trailing from Lilith's fingertips were weaving an invisible barrier around the demon lord, neutralizing the holy light before it could bite into her flesh.
Cut off the support, and the monster falls.
Without a second thought, Arthur feinted a step toward Ekterina, then forcefully pivoted on his heel. The earth blew outward beneath his boots as he channeled his aura into an explosive burst of speed, launching himself straight toward the ruined wall. In less than a heartbeat, he bridged the gap, his eyes locked on Lilith's pale neck.
"Die, you damn witch!"
The Holy Sword blazed with sacred fire as he executed a swift, horizontal slash meant to decapitate the second woman before she could even raise a hand to defend herself. Since she's a mage-type, he assumed she wouldn't be able to react even with her magic.
CLANG!
A deafening shockwave shattered the surrounding stone pillars into dust.
"Going for Lilith first, huh? How cute."
Arthur's arms went completely numb from the violent recoil. He gasped, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief. His blade hadn't reached Lilith. Ekterina had moved at a speed that defied human perception, intercepting his strike in mid-air and catching the glowing edge of the Holy Sword against her gauntleted forearms. The sacred flames licked uselessly against her armor, dispersing into harmless sparks against Lilith's dark buffing runes.
Above them, Lilith hadn't even flinched. She simply tilted her head, a slender hand resting against her cheek as she let out a melodic, mocking laugh.
"Ekie, you shouldn't play with your food. I know you're letting him get close to me. Is this a punishment perhaps?"
"Tch—!" Arthur gritted his teeth, pouring every drop of his available mana into the sword to force it through Ekterina's guard. "Get out of my way!"
Ekterina's lips curved into a bloodthirsty smirk. With a casual flick of her wrists, she effortlessly deflected the Holy Sword upward, throwing Arthur completely off-balance.
'What kind of power is this!?' he had put his all into his strike but she easily deflected it.
Before he could reset his footing, her boot slammed directly into his sternum.
BOOM!
The impact echoed like a cannon blast. Arthur was hurled backward across the field, smashing through three crumbling stone walls before coming to a violent halt in a heap of shattered masonry. Pain burst through his ribs, the metallic taste of copper filling his mouth as he struggled to draw air into his lungs.
He coughed blood onto the dirt, clutching the Holy Sword with a trembling grip. His ego was bleeding just as heavily as his body. The divine aura wasn't failing—he was being completely outmatched, unable to even pierce the veil of the demon lord's protection.
"Activate the barrier, Lilith. The next move is meant to kill him."
"Yup~" with a flick of her wand, and a jiggle of her large breasts, a pink barrier activated over the castle ruin.
Ekterina jumped out of the barrier and levitated in mid-air.
She grabbed empty space, retrieving two greatswords which were as thick as concrete slabs, clearly meant for crushing.
Black tentacle-like energy coiled around her then engulfed the two greatswords.
"Humph!" she swung them in a cross motion, sending a dark energy flame towards Arthur. Even though there was a considerable distance between him and the black energy, he could feel its pressure and danger signals went off inside his head.
Arthur forced out an incredible amount of his aura, making the energy around the Holy Sword grow until it became the size of a skyscraper, piercing the red clouds.
Then he swung down. The pillar of light cut apart the clouds, making moonlight shine down on the world again, piercing through the red mist and creating a picturesque scene for those standing in the distance.
The divine pillar collided with the arc of dark energy, freezing the night sky in a blinding, split-second stalemate before the atmosphere tore completely apart.
The resulting detonation pulverized the earth for miles. Bedrock beneath Arthur's feet collapsed, carving a trench dozens of feet deep into the foundation of the castle grounds and highway. Shockwaves rippled outward in violent concentric rings, flattening stone towers like dry parchment and atomizing every structure outside Lilith's shimmering pink barrier. The sheer thermal stress of the Holy Sword fused the surrounding soil into sheets of black glass, while the competing magical pressures generated atmospheric vacuums that tore up multi-ton boulders and hurled them into the sky like pebbles.
Anyone standing miles away would think a natural disaster was happening.
Even safely behind her protective ward, Lilith tilted her head as the pink barrier groaned under the fallout, spider-web fractures radiating across its surface before her dark buffing runes flared to repair the structural damage.
When the blinding flash finally dissipated, the terrain was unrecognizable. A massive crater spanned the entire battlefield, with glowing fissures of molten rock bleeding heat into the night. The mountain ridge in the distance had been sliced clean in half by the trailing beam of divine light, creating a gaping gap through which the cold moonlight poured.
Yet standing at the absolute center of the destruction was Ekterina. Her twin concrete-slab greatswords were planted deep into the magma, having taken the brunt of the holy strike. The heavy black armor encasing her forearms smoked, but her bloodthirsty grin hadn't faded in the slightest.
"It seems you came here unprepared, Hero. I thought I was going to be fighting the strongest human in the world. But turns out that guy hasn't lost that title yet."
Arthur dropped to one knee, gasping violently as ash and superheated air burned his lungs. The Holy Sword flickered weakly in his trembling grip, its divine flame reduced to a faint spark. Looking out over the apocalyptic wasteland they had created in a single clash, the terrifying reality set in: he wasn't just fighting superior warriors—he was fighting monsters whose mere magic and swords rewrote the world around them.
All the confidence he had before coming here, knowing that he had the Holy Sword, was gone.
Ekterina landed and slowly approached him.
Pupils shaking, he fell back on his back and crawled back.
Ekterina suddenly stopped, her eyes widening as she looked behind Arthur.
While crawling, he suddenly bumped into something, his hand touching skin.
He looked down to see someone's foot—though it was quite large, it was unmistakenly a woman's delicate foot.
Then he noticed a torn, dark purple dress when his gaze travelled up her leg.
He looked up, seeing the toned thigh of a woman. Since she was tall and the wind was quite fierce, he could almost see the inner area of her legs.
No undergarments were in sight.
There was a helmet on her head and beneath that helmet was long red hair that danced with the wind, blending in with the blood-red mist.
"…Guinevere." Frowning, Ekterina said the woman's name.