Titania watched as the infuriated Alan shrouded himself in lightning once more but this time with an additional eerie green aura. With a look of sheer ferocity that she had never seen on his face before, he rushed at her with blinding speed, zipping left and right at unpredictable intervals as if to catch her off guard.
'Useless.'
Looking at his movements that in her eyes looked like a leaf slowly drifting with the wind, she momentarily felt a trace of helplessness at the entire situation. After realising that Alan's mind had been warped by the corruption of Envy, a great deal of her anger had transferred over to Envy itself rather than Alan. It was clear that Alan was just a pawn in all this, a victim of a force that could not be comprehended, some might argue that he was almost blameless. Nevertheless, she steeled her heart and readied her next move anyways.
What had to be done had to be done.
She didn't know how to save Alan and even if she did, his offences were too high and her own reputation too turbulent to allow any leeway. The 2 previous rebellions were already a big source of mockery that her enemies and rivals liked to take advantage of whenever they could, if this 3rd betrayal was exposed she could only imagine how grim things would become. Reputation was important, and with her rapidly growing clothing business ensuring that she had to maintain a positive (or at least neutral) relationship with multiple nations, she couldn't afford to let her reputation suffer this kind of damage.
Moreover, for Alan to be victimised by Envy there must have been some real skeletons in his closet. Honest people generally didn't end up in his situation.
As such, Alan had to die.
She let out a huff in the midst of dodging the flurry of strikes he had sent her way. When she had enough she parried one, sending him rearing - then slammed the head of her faux-spear into his jaw.
Which sent flying again.
However she noticed that despite additional force being used in that attack he had felt heavier instead of lighter. He didn't fly as far as last time either.
Clearly, he had become stronger because of the green aura surrounding him.
She had heard about this. When the forces of Envy enter a certain transformation, an envious aura will cloak them and they would become stronger the more envious they feel, or something like that. This was different to the time all those years ago that Zalucard had used some technique to spread his aura of Envy to other Elves as if it were a contagious magic plague, probably. Maybe it was the same technique but with different applications or masteries.
Either way, it had an obvious sanity cost. Alan was screeching and roaring, saliva flying out of his mouth like a crazed beast.
It made him look quite frightening and fearsome - even if he had lost all of the grace that was innate in every Elf. He was probably strong, but unfortunately for him it was meaningless before her in her current state.
Forest Union.
That was a technique that she had developed herself that allowed her to connect her vitality and mana with any real trees in her vicinity. The more trees there were the better the effect, similarly the higher quality the trees the more power she would obtain.
However, this was the corrupted continent and even here on the outskirts the trees were unlike any she'd seen before, clearly affected by demonic energy and Envy's corruption. The mana within… she didn't dare to connect with it.
But connecting her vitality was enough. More than enough. It greatly enhanced her physical strength and senses, so much so that she didn't even need a weapon to deal with Alan at all, she could have used her bare palm to swat him to the ground without any difficulty.
The only downside of this skill is that it took time to connect with the trees, requiring her to create her own roots and use them to connect them with the tree roots, furthermore the trees had the capacity to resist. They weren't sapient, they were barely even sentient, but what little they had was enough to resist or even deny her connection if they wanted to. Thankfully, because of her various affinities that generally didn't happen.
This was the true reason why she had spent so much time on the ground earlier on. Nobody suspected this because nobody knew about the technique. Now, it was evident that keeping secrets about her true strength even from her closest allies was not a mistake…
*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*
Titania had switched from passive defence to active offence, smashing Alan's body around and painting the land with his blood. Eventually, even the haze of madness brought by his corruption began to recede from his face as what looked like fear took its place. It was probably finally registering to him that his death was inevitable and just around the corner.
Titania sighed.
Then she struck again.
…
'I just...' David was dumbfounded as he watched the awe-inspiring display of violence. '...How is she so strong?' He asked himself for probably the 10th time. He couldn't fathom what he was looking at.
He knew that the Queen was powerful, but Alan was also strong - much stronger than he used to be thanks to Envy, and quite frankly his aura was just shy of being as oppressive as Titania's. Going just by that it wouldn't have been a surprise if they fought to a standstill because of the speed and stun advantages that Alan had thanks to his lightning mana. Of course, with the Queen's wealth of experience in battle, her profound techniques, and her innate domination over all Elven kind, there was no way that she would lose, but…
This… This was far beyond his expectations, and to be honest, although he was proud of the might of his queen, he could not help but feel fear. He was utterly loyal and had no worries that he would end up on the receiving end of the Queen's assault, but he couldn't help it.
This was the primal fear that came from standing next to a creature that could kill you on a whim and leave you helpless to resist.
'How is she… so strong?' He dumbly asked once more.