"You'll become a residue of Mana too—I only need to take a small portion at a time. Under my magic and Mana, you can live forever! This is the courtesy I extend to my own kind. Be a good girl and become part of my collection."
The "he" the loli demon spoke of naturally referred to Böse, who had died several times over.
Having laid eyes on two never-before-seen, nearly flawless "collectibles," her anger had been replaced by joy—the sort of malice that yearned to harvest remains.
"We're all of the Demon Race here—how about we sit down and have a nice chat, about this map?"
Inwardly grumbling about why she'd run into this so-called "eternal life" business yet again, Nanoda attempted to communicate with her opponent.
"That is the one thing there's nothing to discuss. You, who recognize this map—you must be in league with that villain who ruined my collection! I will absolutely never let you go."
She was among the most communicative of the demons Nanoda had ever met.
Even so, given the other's resolute attitude, a battle seemed unavoidable.
"Hero Himmel, I'll leave the outside to you."
Faced with the request, Himmel did not refuse. He understood Nanoda's strength well, and he chose to honor the promise they'd made earlier.
"Take care of yourself."
Watching Himmel turn and leave, the loli demon waved a hand, and the two identical copies of Böse both raised their arms.
As if Nanoda would ever give her the chance.
Within her Mana Perception, the outside had already fallen into a dense encirclement of undead. Her disciple and her party would likely need support.
"—!"
And in the very moment the two Bösen began to move, the loli demon's eyes suddenly went wide—a sense of wrongness came crashing over her, and she hurriedly marshaled her Mana to wrap around her body and resist it.
The Motion and Stillness paradox unfolded.
Floating in midair, she watched with her own eyes as Nanoda moved like a bolt of lightning—the two Bösen had their heads struck off outright, while she herself could only barely manage to twitch a fingertip.
Magic she had never seen before!
After slaying the Bösen, Nanoda's half-suppressed Mana erupted completely. All of it was Mana she had stored up over the rounds of battle since arriving in Kinton.
Her body seemed to have no upper limit on its capacity to absorb Mana. The Mana radiating from Nanoda had already overwhelmed the being before her by a clear margin.
From the purple-black pillar of Mana that had originally suffused the whole of Kinton, an even more colossal grayish-white pillar of Mana now spread out.
"Just what on earth are you..."
"Nanoda. And you?"
Nanoda's white hair stirred though there was no wind, her mismatched golden and gray irises flickering—composed and unhurried.
"Nofi."
Nofi's youthful little face looked as though it were about to wring out wrinkles. Watching Nanoda's aura transform so completely, she gradually calmed herself.
Even the "Sage of Corruption," whose name rang loud among the Demon Race, was in the eyes of the reclusive Nofi nothing more than a reasonably capable junior. But this being before her—
It defied reason, defied all reason. Setting aside that ceaseless Mana-absorbing state, that magic just now—in all the long years Nofi had lived, she had never once seen its like.
"Just how long have you lived?"
"Roughly, from the Mythical Era until now, I suppose."
"Truly a relic even older than I am."
Clutching her cushion, Nofi buried her head into it all at once, slipping back into her lazy, listless tone. The surging Mana and the crushing pressure both subsided.
"Can we have a proper talk now?"
Nanoda hadn't intended to go for the kill either. Both sides had already paid their price, and what truly warranted attention was the mastermind pulling the strings behind it all.
"Haah~" "Haah~" "Haah~"
Perhaps it was a peculiar way of wrestling with herself.
Nofi began rolling back and forth on her cushion. The cushion was large, and even rolling once or twice from side to side, the loli demon wouldn't tumble off.
The atmosphere relaxed, and neither Great Demon carried the earlier air of drawn swords and taut bows.
After rolling a couple of times, Nofi lay sprawled in a spread-eagle position, her closed eyes slowly opening.
This wasn't a coincidence, was it?
For the first time in ages she seriously put her mind to work. From the destruction of her collection to the whole pursuit of the culprit, it was as if she had been deliberately led along.
The strange thing was, had she not encountered Nanoda, she would never have doubted any of her earlier actions until now.
"Could you have the fighting outside stop first? The being who destroyed your collection is indeed connected to us—but you also destroyed the territory of my subordinate. Everyone has lost a great deal. It's about time we set aside the struggle for a while and talked."
Even with Himmel's help, against so many undead, Nanoda was still somewhat worried.
"Fine."
In the end, Nofi agreed to Nanoda's request.
She had only two hobbies: sleeping, and secretly collecting corpses to use as magical collectibles.
Lazy by nature, she even traveled by dragging herself along on a floating cushion. Unlike other demons, she took no pleasure in those battles that demanded a fight to the death.
Her choice to live in seclusion was merely to avoid subjugation by Humans, so that she could get a good night's sleep.
Aside from her bizarre proclivities, she was a nearly harmless Great Demon.
"Let me say this in advance—what I've shown just now isn't my full strength. Even though I probably can't beat you, your companions are all very lucky because of you."
"I kept a few trump cards in reserve myself. Since you can be so reasonable, it seems everyone's just very lucky."
The two Great Demons regarded each other with expressionless faces, yet a mutual understanding began to form between them, and the distance of strangers drew a little closer.
"They stopped?"
Yuna watched the undead corpses topple back to the ground, then glanced around.
The monks in the thick of the fight had also frozen where they stood, mirroring her very same motions.
"So that's how it is."
Himmel saw the giant amassed from corpses gradually crumble, collapsing limp into a mountain of the dead.
He gave his sword a flick and slid it back into its sheath.
There was no longer any need to keep fighting.
He had wavered over it at first. No matter what, that was a demon who had annihilated the Kinton Territory; many Humans had died at her hands, and by all rights she should have been a target for elimination.
Perhaps it was because he had seen Nanoda and the Gaderia Territory that a certain expectation and hope toward the Demon Race had risen within him.
When demons possessed of rich emotion, who understood human reason, came to lead the Demon Race, how would everything change?
Himmel could not guess at the future.
To make the world less cruel, to keep goodness and hope ever-present—that was the reason a Hero was revered, and it was his mission as well.
To let the Demon Race run free now was a Hero's failing.
And within the range of what had been Kinton's first line of defense, all was now a field of gold.
The ground, whether sunken or level, had turned into smooth, supple gold.
Beneath a canopy of who-knew-how-many layers of overlapping, semi-transparent barriers—
A tall demon clad in a pale blue-green greatcoat sat at the edge of a shallow crater, surveying his surroundings.
Statue after statue cast eternally in gold—identical faces, armor, and horns. Their uniform, orderly poses stood as tall as the demon man within the barrier, no less imposing.
"Böse."
The demon within the barrier murmured softly.
This entire ring was the "clones," "undead," and "remains" of one of the Seven Sages of Destruction—Undying Böse.
And the one who had defeated them was once the strongest among the Seven Sages of Destruction—Macht.
Yet judging by the present situation, it was likely a case of mutual destruction.
Macht could not break through so many layered barriers in a short time, and the Bösen had likewise lost all capacity to move.
The trump cards both sides had held in reserve had, unexpectedly, clashed in a battle of their own.
____
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