While the goddess was sucked out rather than being devoured, Tigre’s body continued to return to its former shape. His hair which had dyed black reverted to its usual dull red. The miasma disappeared from his eyes, and while only faintly, light returned to them as well. The same applied to his nose and mouth. And above all, his left hand and the Black Bow, which had combined into one, separated slowly but steadily. Tigre’s consciousness was about to revive as the terrifying pressure of the goddess had been lifted. He had been frantically resisting a complete domination, but he was at his limit. If things had gone on for a little bit longer, Tigre’s soul would have lost itself, broken into pieces, and probably got absorbed by the goddess.
On the other hand, Tigre was assailed by a strange sensation. Fragments of odd sceneries kept playing back in his mind. It appeared to be someone’s point of view. The scenes depicted the interior of a dim forest, the inside of a bar that was probably thriving with business, a battlefield littered with a humongous amount of corpses, and a grassland rustling gently in the wind. One man was always reflected as part of those sceneries. Him feeling like he was towering tall probably stemmed from the viewer being short.
There was no talking or any other sound. But the eyes of the man looking at the viewer were brimming with trust. Tigre very naturally believed that the viewer most likely observed the man with the same feelings. And he felt like the viewer was addressing that man as Charles.
Suddenly, the floating sensation left his body. Unable to move it normally while being weighed down upon by gravity, Tigre fell to the ground.
“Tigre!”
That cry, seemingly on the verge of tears, roused the youth’s consciousness. He tried to answer, but his voice failed him. He couldn’t even move a single finger, let alone his arms or legs. As soon as he perceived the sounds of someone running over, he was powerfully pulled into an embrace. His sight was filled with the face of a girl possessing silver hair and ruby eyes. For him she was an indispensable, cherished existence. Endless streams of tears trickled down from her two eyes.
“E…”, he finally managed to squeeze out. Then he strained himself to let “len” follow. Elen nodded many times over, tightly pressing her body against his. A hoarse breathing, instead of a scream, escaped his mouth. His fingers were trembling, but the sound leaving his mouth was owed to something happening behind Elen.
“Stop it, you’re making him suffer.”
Mila forcibly tore Elen off Tigre. About to fall on the ground once more, Tigre was supported by someone from behind. Once he shifted his face, Titta’s face entered the edge of his visual field. At the time when his body had been under the goddess’s control, Lim, Titta, Damad, and Gaspal should have fallen back, but apparently they had now rushed over.
Tigre moved his lips, calling Titta’s name, and moved his fingers. His lover didn’t miss that, and gently grasped them while nodding so as to tell him that she’d understood.
“Carry Tigre away from here. Hurry.” Sofy’s voice resounded.
Several hands extended for him, propping up Tigre’s body together with Titta. Their owners were Lim, Gaspal, and Damad.
“It is great to see you safe.” Lim’s words were curt, as typical of her, but still filled with a lot of emotions.
Tigre’s visual field gained in height as he was lifted up. Moving his head, he let his eyes wander across the vicinity. A bit further away stood Elen and the other Vanadis, their backs turned on him. Tigre’s eyes widened when he realized what they were facing.
It was a giant with a height of more than thirty chet. The upper body of a jet-black giant and the lower body having no clear shape as it melted into a black swamp-like miasma from the waist down. The giant’s right hand clasped Durandal. Even the Sword of Invincibility looked like a shortsword in the hands of the giant. And Ganelon’s face in pure white had surfaced on the giant’s forehead.
“This is…can you actually describe something like that as goddess…?” Sofy’s words were filled with disgust.
Not a sliver of divinity could be felt from that ghastly, repulsive cluster of miasma.
『Indeed, you can』, answered Ganelon from the giant’s forehead. 『The statues of the gods merely depict what humans imagine the gods to be. The gods have no fixed shapes, thus they can take on any form. That’s why they’re gods』
Ganelon lifted his right arm, pointing Durandal upwards. A black globe floated high up in the distant sky. It consisted of an ominous darkness that looked like it’d swallow up all creation.
『The black sun. The world has just begun to change』
“You think we’re going to let you go through with that?” Elen stepped in front of the giant, hoisting up Silver Flash.
Mila, Sofy, Liza, and Olga followed her lead, lining up next to her.
Ganelon looked down at the Vanadis, cheerfully asking, 『What are you going to do about it?』
Five draconic arts served as reply. Storm blades, a whirlpool of ice spears, a light orb, lightning, and a shock wave dividing the ground as it pushed its way onwards attacked the giant all at once.
However, the black miasma forming Ganelon’s gigantic frame didn’t show even the slightest resemblance of a swaying when getting hit by those attacks.
『Let’s see… I guess I’ll test the goddess’s power on you bitches』
He spat out miasma from the part looking like a mouth. That miasma turned into a black tempest, assaulting Elen and the other girls. The invisible barrier deployed by Sofy was extinguished in almost an instant, and the Vanadis were blown away by the miasma.
Tigre and those around him could do no more than watch it happening in utter shock.
Ganelon’s face shifted its eyes away from the Vanadis to Tigre’s group.
『Let me test this next』
With those words, the area around the giant’s belly bulged into a strange shape. Something flew out from within. Those were monsters made out of miasma. Some of them grew horns and had a huge body, others were scrawny with huge wings, resembling those of bats, growing out on their backs, and yet others had heads like a frog. In addition, there were dragon-like and skeleton-like monsters among them.
Tigre swallowed his breath after spotting the monsters. Probably because they were made out of the black miasma, the monsters were colorless and didn’t sport distinct contours. Yet they resembled the monsters which Tigre and the Vanadis had fought on countless occasions.
While raising beastly roars, the monsters swooped down on the Vanadis. Elen and the other girls had barely managed to get up while propping themselves up with their draconic tools. And yet the girls held their ground, desperately fending off the swarm of monsters.
A scrawny monster flew Tigre’s way while powerfully flapping its wings. Tigre groaned in his heart as it looked just like Baba Yaga.
“Titta, please take care of Tigre.” Lim snarled with a tense voice, readying her sword.
Gaspal and Damad took up positions next to her.
◆◇◆
The Baba Yaga-like monster swooped down from the sky, heading straight for Lim. Lim timed the distance, and then swung her sword. A feedback as if cutting through water, and a shriek similar to glass screeching. Lim had loped off the monster’s arm.
But, she had no time to celebrate. Another three monsters of the same type were heading their way. Meanwhile, monsters were born out of the giant’s belly on end.
Gaspal and Damad frantically wielded their swords, but not only were their opponents made out of miasma, but they were also attacking from sky, resulting in them being forced into a hard struggle. The number of small cuts on their foreheads and shoulders kept increasing. The monsters seemed to become unable to maintain their bodies and vanished when suffering a certain amount of damage, but just killing one monster cost the three a lot of their stamina.
The Vanadis resolutely brandished their weapons near the giant. They blew away the monsters with a single strike, but their side had to deal with too many foes. With them only countering the monsters, they had almost no time to take a stab at Ganelon. And even when they barely managed to find an opening to counterattack, their attacks were incapable of inflicting any damage upon Ganelon.
Moreover, Ganelon had been mercilessly attacking the Vanadis with lightning and fireballs while creating the monsters.
──This won’t go anywhere with me just supporting.
Lim’s face twisted in vexation as she drove away a monster rather than knocking it down. So far she had been assisting Elen in different areas while staying at her side. And she had been satisfied with that.
But, that didn’t work in this situation. As long as Lim wasn’t as powerful as Elen, she wouldn’t ever be able to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with her. All she could do was to watch how her close friend had been pushed into a predicament.
The distance between Lim and Elen amounted to roughly twenty steps. Lim estimated that she could cross that distance before counting to thirty if she ran. However, right now that gap between them looked insurmountable to Lim.
Probably because she had been preoccupied with Elen’s situation, she only noticed the monster approaching her from behind when someone shouted at her. She swung her sword while twisting her body. With one reason being that the opponent had approached too closely, her sword had bisected the monster from the top of its head all the way down halfway through the body. At the same time she heard a strange crack from the area around her hands.
Lim became shocked. Her sword had snapped in the middle. Immediately following, the monsters swarmed towards her who had now become unarmed. Damad cut at one of those monsters, causing it to fall back, and Gaspal struck another monster with his sword.
Opening her mouth into a soundless cry, Lim crouched down on the spot. Her face distorted in despair, she drummed both her firmly clenched fists against the ground.
──These two have to protect Tigre and Titta, and yet… Someone…anyone, please lend me strength.
She desired a weapon. A power allowing her to fight at Elen’s side. A power to protect the ones precious to her and to prevail through this perilous situation.
The monsters’ roars and shrieks. Slashes tearing through monsters and space. Lim prayed so hard that she didn’t hear either of those. To something and nothing that was not human.
The face of Vissarion surfaced in her mind. The face of Alexandra Alshavin surfaced in her mind. The face of Figneria surfaced in her mind. Their faces had crossed Lim’s mind when she had thought of Elen. Having lost her means to fight, praying was all Lim could do right now.
──Please! Please, give me power! Grant me a weapon to fight!
It was at that moment when violently blazing flames manifested within Lim’s consciousness. Not an imagination produced by her, but something similar to a single scene that continued to stream into her head from outside. The flames contained a mysterious radiance that overwhelmed anyone looking at them. Without using words, those flames silently called out to Lim. Lim knew the identity of those flames.
Her eyes flew open out of surprise. A dark, muddy ground was right in front of her, but inside her head the flames had drawn a clear and vivid image. It was a weird sensation, but Lim was able to accept it for what it was without any hesitation. She closed her eyes. For the sake of concentrating on nothing but the flames.
──Alexandra-sama. Figneria…
Lim muttered soundlessly while staring at the flickering flames. She suspected that their souls had influenced 『Flame』, or maybe that they had guided her in front of the flames.
──Are you going to allow me to depend on your power?
Lim asked in her mind, directly facing the flames.
No reply came from the flames. As if they had already told her everything they ought to tell her.
For an instant, Lim’s mouth loosened a bit.
Indeed. You being in front of me says everything. All that’s left is for me to answer you through my actions.
Lim had already been engulfed by those flames once, so maybe because of that, no fear disturbed her heart.
──I shall gratefully accept your power.
With fighting spirit filling her blue eyes, Lim extended her hands into the flames. She felt a light numbness and pain as if getting scalded, but she didn’t stop. She thrust her hands even deeper into the fire.
Then she touched upon something hard. Lim grabbed those hard objects without the slightest hesitation.
In the next moment, the flames silently dispersed in all directions, turned into countless embers, and coiled themselves around Lim’s body. This also revealed how her right hand was clasping a small sword with a golden blade, and her left hand a small sword with a vermilion blade. Those swords, which had been decorated with mystical ornaments and carried a brilliance that allowed anyone to sense their might, were unmistakably Luminous Flame Bargren – the draconic tool that should have been in the camp of Leitmeritz.
Lim’s feelings of despair from moments ago vanished as if being burned to cinders. The heat passed on to her from the blades provided Lim with fighting spirit and energy. It urged her to get up, desiring her to plunge into the middle of battle.
──Sure.
Lim nodded.
Around that time, the winged monsters had flown over Gaspal and Damad, trying to swoop down on Tigre and Titta.
Lim kicked off the ground. Her body felt so light that it actually astonished herself. Even though she hadn’t been in contact with the two swords for long, they familiarly laid in her hands as if they had tread across many battlefields together.
Two slashes with one breath, four slashes with two breaths. The monsters were slain with each slash, quietly vanishing altogether. Apparently having identified Lim as a threat, the monsters, which had been heading their way, all focused on her. Lim’s dull blond hair swayed as she let her two blades rip through space.
“──Piercing Fire Lance ColumnPlamoak.”
The fitting draconic art naturally popped up in her mind. The fire lances that blew out of the ground pierced through the monsters. They burned down one after the other within the crimson, swaying conflagration, just to disappear in the next moment.
“Lord Gaspal, Sir Damad, please take care of Lord Tigre and Titta.” Lim said while gazing at the two soldiers.
Both looked at her with surprise coloring their faces, but they didn’t ask anything. They had simply decided to accept the reality of her having obtained a power to battle the monsters. And in such a case, she should be further up on the battlefield.
“I’ll leave it to you,” was all that Gaspal said while Damad silently walked over to Tigre’s side.
Because all the monsters heading their way had been eradicated, it looked like they had the leeway to catch their breaths.
Readying her two swords, Lim directed her eyes at the swarm of monsters, and Ganelon beyond them.
“──Vanadis Limalisha, here I come.”
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