The solid sickle of blood sliced through the coat on Solitär's shoulder, carving a gash a thumb's breadth deep.
Had she not used the recoil of a close-range mana scatter to force some distance between them, that swing would have taken Solitär's little head clean off.
"Ugh…"
Solitär let out a muffled grunt. The false smile on her face stiffened once more — and propelled by the mana scatter's blast, she was sent tumbling backward at an angle.
She crashed into the ground not far away, landing on her back and rolling several times. The pain hit all at once, and for that one instant it numbed her completely — she didn't even manage to cast a cushioning spell.
After so many long centuries, Solitär had almost forgotten what it felt like to be hurt.
"Kgh…"
Jane hadn't fared much better. She'd taken a full mana scatter to the upper body — the pair of blood wings at her back snapped and shredded, the half-solidified blood pauldron on her shoulder shattered in an instant. Skin and flesh peeled back beneath the mana's force, a gruesome sight.
The violent impact to her abdomen sent a wave of nausea crashing through her. Jane coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her charging body lurched, she staggered back a step, and some of the blood crystals embedded in her skin cracked, broke free, and fell away.
But almost immediately, ore-like blood crystals burst back through the surface of her skin, growing of their own accord — new armor proliferating to replace what had been lost, fresh blood crystals sealing over every wound.
"What are you…?"
Solitär pressed a hand to her wound and struggled to haul herself off the ground.
Severe mana depletion on top of physical injury — it had been a long time since she'd been this beaten up.
The void warped again. A rain of mana blades came pouring down once more.
This time, Jane dragged the sickle forward. Blood from her palm slid down the haft and spread across the entire blade.
She stepped forward into the storm of mana blades and swung the massive sickle in a wide arc. The layer of blood coating the blade launched off as a crescent of red — and as it flew, it kept expanding.
The blood-arc cleaved effortlessly through the mana blades, carving a diagonal path straight through the oncoming barrage.
Solitär, barely halfway back to her feet, saw the enormous blood-crescent bearing down on her and immediately half-crouched, rolling to the side.
Another hair's-breadth escape.
"This time…"
The blood ran hotter and hotter. Jane turned sideways, hoisting the massive sickle with both hands. With each drop of blood that slid from her grip, the sickle's silhouette seemed to grow just a fraction larger.
At the same moment, the broken blood wings at her back fully regenerated.
In the blink of an eye, Jane flashed to Solitär's side — who had only just managed to claw her way upright.
"Who exactly are you…?"
In the final instant before the sickle's blade pressed against her throat again, Solitär asked one last question.
"Jane. Mother told me that's the name I can use for myself out in the world. I am one of the Twelve Apostles of the New Demon Association — Jane."
Having laid the blade against Solitär's throat — Solitär, who was clutching her shoulder and no longer moving — Jane brought the sickle down.
"Thank you for your answer."
The moment Jane struck, Solitär exploded.
More precisely — mana detonated outward from Solitär's body in every direction.
The dense mana formed a ring of bursting grey-white beams that engulfed Solitär where she stood beneath the blade.
The sickle cut through nothing. Jane was swallowed whole by the wall of mana beams surging toward her.
Solitär was cunning. She had spent ages moving between humans and demons alike, blending into both worlds — compared to her, Jane, who had spent thousands of years alone inside the White Tower, was still something of an innocent.
When the blinding light of the mana scatter explosion faded, Jane's blood armor had been blasted to pieces.
The blood-red sickle fell to the ground nearby — and at the bottom of the crater, there was no longer any trace of Solitär.
On a park bench, Macht cradled his fur mantle in one hand and smoothed it out with the other, tidying it where he had just picked it up from the ground. His expression was perfectly calm — as if the battle moments ago had been nothing more than smoke drifting past.
Beside him, Nanoda flexed her freshly de-goldenized arm back and forth a few times, drew a slow breath, and kept that same cool, impassive look she always wore.
For a moment, neither demon said a word.
The vast, gleaming golden expanse settled back into its original stillness, the noise of battle fading away.
"You surrendered awfully easily at the end, didn't you."
Nanoda was the first to speak, breaking the somewhat awkward silence hanging between the two demons.
"I could tell during the fight. Setting aside the former Demon King, you are only the second being I've ever faced where I couldn't see a path to victory. I had already lost back then, ten years ago — even the me of right now cannot defeat the you of ten years ago."
Macht set aside the arrogance of a Seven Sage of Destruction and Great Demon both. He was, unexpectedly, quite humble.
"So this is what it means to be a Great Demon tempered by the ages…"
"I believe that line was meant to be mine."
If he had any expression to show, Macht's face would probably have been a wry smile.
"To familiarize yourself with my attack patterns in the span of a single battle — to the point of anticipating when I'm about to cast — you're remarkable in your own right."
"Truthfully, from the very beginning, I never wanted to resolve things through fighting. Like you, I consider myself something of a pacifist these days."
"You know it yourself — some battles are necessary. Unavoidable. That's precisely why you created Mana-to-Gold magic: to settle the outcome decisively, through sheer, overwhelming force of a curse."
"…I won't deny it."
Macht resettled the tidied mantle back onto his shoulders and fixed his gaze on the pitch-black Domination Ring on his wrist.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again. His voice carried no emotion at all.
"Will you hear me out for a moment?"
"Go ahead."
Nanoda gave a small nod. Beside her, Macht continued.
"Without a powerful Demon King to command us, we would never have united to wage all-out war against humanity.
In my eyes, humans had always been like pebbles by the roadside — neither here nor there, not even worth calling prey. I used to look down on them too much to waste my proud magic on them.
And yet — when I followed the Demon King's orders and slaughtered them — I found that humans were a remarkably interesting existence. That sensitivity of theirs, that capacity for feeling — it was something our Demon Race had always lacked.
Meaningless slaughter began to feel interesting.
I grew fond of humans. I began to try to understand their emotions.
But in the end, I could never truly understand them."
Macht raised his hand, lifting the Domination Ring to eye level. For the first time, a faint tremor entered his otherwise flat voice.
"The effect of this Domination Ring is real. The power bound within it can genuinely restrain me. And it was precisely because of that — in the moment I turned this place into the Golden Land — that I recognized my own defeat. That outcome has not changed in all the ten years since."
"Why is it that slaughter showed me human emotion, yet I cannot understand it — cannot possess it?"
He lowered his head. The great, towering figure suddenly seemed small — like a lost child.
"Macht — do you still remember the wager we made back then?"
____
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