Within the barrier created by Guy Crimson, sparks of light and dust appeared at different intervals albeit irregular intervals.
The various Demon Lords seated around the barrier watched the battle calmly. Well, not all of them.
Carrion frowned. 'What's this? I can barely see what's happening. How are they moving so fast?'
The air flickered with light, and the ground was blown away by the shock.
It was a high speed battle, too quick for Carrion to perceive, he could only see traces of it.
Which side has the advantage? The result was unknown.
"At a glance the situation seems even, however?" Rimuru said absently.
Carrion turned to him. "You can see the battle, Rimuru?"
Rimuru didn't answer but nodded instead.
Millim also turned to Rimuru. "However?"
"I can see that Leon has the advantage, and is leading the situation to his desires." Rimuru didn't turn away from the fight as he replied. 'There won't be many opportunities to study the abilities of the other Demon Lords.'
"Is that what it looks like?" Millim asked with a mischievous smile.
This time Rimuru did look away from the fight and faced Millim. "What do you mean Millim?"
"You're right in what you said just now, in that if the conditions remain as they are now, Leon will win." Millim looked oddly serious as she spoke. "Leon isn't the kind of person to hold back in the first place, regardless of his opponents. He fights to win instantly and without toying around."
Then the mischievous grin came back. "It looks like Sally has figured this out as well and is using that as an advantage." She turned to Rimuru again. "Hey Rimuru, since you just became a Demon Lord today, you may not know this, but those who awakened an Ultimate Skill can no longer be affected by lesser skills and abilities."
"Wait seriously? Rimuru looked surprised.
Millim nodded. "Yeah. Clayman didn't have an Ultimate Skill so he was never going to be able to beat you at all."
Rimuru nodded in understanding. "So, Sally isn't going to be able to beat Leon at all if she doesn't have an Ultimate."
"That's the thing." Millim grinned even further. "We don't know if she has an Ultimate Skill or not. Even my [Millim eye] can't read her, so that must mean that she has an Ultimate Skill right? There's no way she would be able to block me without one, but somehow, I just know that she doesn't have an Ultimate Skill."
"This level of uncertainty." Rimuru murmured. "If even you are having it, then Leon who is fighting her is definitely having these thoughts as well. With such a lack of information the correct option is to end the fight quickly and not give her the chance to try anything."
"Exactly." Millim gave him a thumbs up. "And that's a problem. He's not underestimating her, and is fighting her seriously. But by doing so, he's unknowingly handed the conditions to her. By not underestimating her, he underestimated her."
Rimuru looked at the Dragonoid. "What does that even mean?"
"You'll see Rimuru."
---
Leon frowned internally as the girl dodged another of his lights yet again. As a matter of fact, since the fight began fifty seconds ago, he hadn't landed a single hit once.
She didn't even bother parrying or warding off any of his attacks, simply dodging each and everyone.
That point had to be emphasised. Each, And, Every, One.
Leon Cromwell was one of the few awakened Demon Lords, alongside Guy Crimson, Millim Nava, and Luminous Valentine.
What that meant was, he also had an Ultimate Skill.
[Purity King, Metatron]
An Ultimate Skill which draws the purest energy possible from power, magic, aura, and skill. The attribute of this skill is light and it specializes in purifying demons.
This meant that what he was firing at the girl wasn't necessarily light, but rather, the purest form of energy, or more specifically, photons, which were one of the building blocks of magicules alongside spiritrons.
However, this attack behaved a lot more like light, even moving at the speed of light, and having similar properties.
In other words, this power was fit for a hero, which was rather ironic, considering that Leon Cromwell was a demon lord.
Just getting hit by one of his attacks would instantly purify the energy of the person blocking or parrying it.
Yet, none of his attacks were even grazing her at all.
Another barrage of light erupted from his position, not in a straight line this time, but fracturing, splitting mid-flight into dozens, then hundreds of converging trajectories. A lattice of annihilation, every angle accounted for, every escape path sealed before it even formed.
The lattice collapsed around empty space.
This time, he closed the distance, and appeared directly in front of her, hand already extended, photons condensing into a blade so dense it hummed with silent eradication.
Their movements overlapped for a fraction of a moment, and Leon's blade passed through empty space.
The space itself began to shift under his authority. Angles bent. Trajectories collapsed. Every vector in the battlefield was rewritten to serve a single purpose.
Corner her.
Limit her.
Force an outcome.
'How?'
That was the question Leon kept returning to, a minute and five seconds in, with the same answer he'd had at the start.
He didn't have one.
She wasn't faster than him. He knew that much. With [Thought Acceleration] active, he could track her movement well enough to confirm that her speed wasn't the issue, if he fired where she was going to be rather than where she was, she simply went somewhere else.
Leon fired three beams in rapid sequence, spacing them across the angles her evasion patterns had favoured in the last thirty seconds. She went through the gap between the second and third with a tilt of her head.
'Trying to pattern my attacks? Useless.'
The girl hadn't attacked even once since the fight began, something that Leon had thought at first was because Guy had given the condition that all she had to do was survive a fight with him.
Such a thing would have been impossible, and it should have been possible. Leon wasn't one to toy with his enemies and always ended his fight in an instant.
That the girl before him was evading all of his attacks was starting to grate on him just a little bit.
Even when he tried to draw her into hand to hand combat she still moved around him with ease.
His [Thought Acceleration] sped up his mind to the maximum, nearly a million times, and the girl slowed to a stop before his perception.
Then he charged at her again, this time his aura activated at maximum making him seem like a creature made entirely out of light.
By using [Metatron] on his aura he was able to turn it into pure purified energy, which he then used to infuse his body and increase his stats.
His speed rose even higher, allowing him to move nearly at the speed of light.
But this time, he didn't charge at her, deciding to hold off on close combat for now, instead he raised his hand, and the entire barrier was suddenly filled with twinkling stars made entirely of light. "Holy Breakdown."
Unfortunately, he couldn't use the full power of this attack lest he actually went and killed her. He was in no mood to deal with the aftermath of such an action.
Instead, he manually directed the lights himself instead of creating his usual multi-layered 3D circle and having the lights reflect infinitely of its barrier.
It was one of his strongest attacks, if he used it completely, capable of surpassing even the strongest holy spell, {Disintegration}.
The millions of photons would bounce off the barrier and one another infinitely and at irregular angles completely passing through whoever was caught in the middle over and over, breaking down whatever the touched.
Since he was controlling it manually, he aimed to corner her once again by attacking from all directions. Even if she got hit, she would still survive, maybe lose a limb or two.
The girl grinned, and Leon's instinct twitched.
It wasn't fear he was feeling, but it was still odd, like some uncomfortable itch in the back of his mind.
Since the fight, the girl's face had been neutral, just like his, something he was grateful for. Even though her actions were useless, she didn't annoy him with meaningless banter or unsavoury expressions.
Now though, she was grinning.
She extended her hand in front of her, ignoring the beams of photons about to rip through her.
Leon prepared himself for her counter attack, no matter what it was, it would be useless and he would crush and be fine with this.
"Devour all!!!" She cried, purple smoke bursting from her hand. "[Beelzebub]!!!"
"What the what!?" Rimuru cried out from his seat.
Leon's eyes were wide as his attacks were swallowed by the vortex of the gluttonous skill, vanishing into a void.
'She used the slime's Ultimate Skill just now. How is that possible? To copy an Ultimate Skill, she has an Ultimate Skill of her own!'
'What is it? And what are the requirements for copying another's skills? She was able to use Clayman's puppet string manipulation earlier, and with the way she was evading me, it's safe to assume she's also able to use [Thought Acceleration] as well. So she must have fulfilled the conditions for copying both of those. What did Clayman and Rimuru have in common?'
While Leon was still thinking, the girl had already absorbed all of his attacks, and now she extended her arm at him. "Holy Breakdown."
His eyes widened slightly as the barrier was suddenly filled with stars made of light once again, except this time, they were not under his control.
'She can copy skills by absorbing a piece of the skill?' Leon thought as he calmly took stock of his surroundings, he was surrounded completely by twinkling stars. 'No, that makes no sense. There was no way for her to have gotten a piece of Rimuru's [Beelzebub] when she was outside the barrier. There must be another condition.'
His magic perception soared to even higher heights as he prepared to dodge with [Thought Acceleration], then he paused. 'These lights... aren't real.'
In the process of extending his magic sense to predict the trajectories of each of the light particles, Leon realized that his magic sense was passing through the particles as if they didn't exist.
'An illusion.' Leon realized. 'That's the condition. It's a two step ability. Just like she was able to deceive Clayman and the voice of the world by giving him fake souls, she creates an illusion first and then for a brief moment, makes the illusion become real. For the duration that the illusion is real, its properties are the same as the original in strength and power.'
'That means,' He narrowed his eyes, and then the light particles suddenly blasted towards him. 'She'll wait until the particles are about to reach me, and then make them real at the last second. With [Thought Acceleration] she can easily achieve this.'
'In that case,' He suddenly blitzed forward, running through the multitude of light particles. The light didn't damage him at all, still illusions as the girl was caught off guard.
In an instant he was upon her, his sword drawn, Fire Pillar glowing a white searing light as it left the sheathe. "Since it's a two step activation, that means that there's still a slight delay. Not bad, but ultimately useless."
The barrier was directly behind the girl, so if she wanted to dodge, she had no choice but to go either to the left or to the right.
None of those would work now that he was this close, and he knew that was aware of this. The only option before her was to block and counter his strike.
'Another useless decision.' Leon swung his sword, aiming at her shoulder, and she raised her daggers to block while lowering herself, probably aiming to parry his attack and counter.
That would be her downfall, as he Increased the power in his strike to a level that she wouldn't be able to parry, rather she would just be crushed from the force.
His sword, met her daggers...
"I win." She whispered, and Leon blinked, before looking down, where a blue spear was currently lodged in his stomach.
The girl before him shimmered and vanished, an illusion. The girl, no, her name was Sally. She was standing just two more feet away from where her illusion was standing.
She'd made him think that the barrier was directly behind her, and that she could only dodge to the side, but instead she'd taken a step back and changed her weapon to a spear with a longer reach and when he focused on his attack, she stabbed him.
But how did she get past his multi-layer barrier? Was her weapon that of a legendary grade or god grade. It didn't seem so, instead he noticed that there were faint pixels coming out of the weapon. His barrier had been devoured apparently.
'She must have used [Beelzebub] again and layered it over her weapon. I was careless, she won.' He grimly thought as Guy's voice sounded. "And that's five minutes. Way to go you two, gave us quite a show."
Leon stood straight as Sally removed her spear. He glared at her. To think that they'd fought for five whole minutes and the only one who'd been damaged was him.