Chapter 323: No Use in Talking Further (Patreon)

The earth-shaking roar made Jane and Yuna turn their heads.

A blinding sphere rose in the east. Mana Perception, overwhelmed by a shock it could not bear, failed in an instant.

It wasn't that the perception had been blocked. The Mana it had detected was simply too vast, and Mana Perception had short-circuited.

"Lord Qual has really made something outrageous."

Yuna remembered that Qual had worked two days straight, without sleep, before the war began. This was probably the secret weapon he'd mentioned.

"Here it comes... Yuna, take care of yourself."

Jane dragged her enormous blood scythe, one and a half times her height, in one hand and strode forward. Her silver-white hair streamed behind her, and with those crimson eyes she looked like a Reaper going out to harvest souls.

A drifting wall of thick fog was moving toward them.

"Huff... huff..."

Inside the fog magic, Deneb lay flat against his horse, retreating while he sustained the spell.

The range of this casting was simply too wide. If he had only been maintaining a one-square-kilometer patch of fog, he could have held it for a day or more.

But to cover an army of five hundred thousand, the Mana capacity it drained was nearly six or seven times what he usually spent. He could last only about two hours.

Once the fog dispersed, his death wouldn't be far behind.

"Lady Nanoda, I'll leave the rest to you."

In truth, Deneb didn't believe that a handful of them could defeat a human army of five hundred thousand. Even if the true Demon King were here, he probably couldn't do it.

"Hey! Get out here! Demon Race scum!"

Haston had demanded another fast horse from the reinforcing soldiers and was chasing alone through the fog toward the spot where Nanoda had vanished.

It was the Goddess's tracking magic, recorded in the Holy Scripture.

After crossing blades with Nanoda, he could sense the faint trace of Holy Power left on her. Even through a fog like this, it let him find her general position.

Ahead of the white-robed Hero, beyond layers of gray-white mist,

Nanoda was running flat out, her speed no worse than that of a galloping steed.

To be honest, she kind of missed Aura, who was presumably in Empire custody by now.

Against an army this size, only her Magic of Obedience made things easy.

"Deneb, how much longer can you hold?"

"?! Lady Nanoda! Already?"

Deneb, who had been watching ahead, turned his head and found the black-and-white Greater Demon running neck and neck with his war horse.

"One more hour. That's my limit."

He answered in a rush.

"Go that way. I'll rejoin Jane."

Nanoda pointed in a random direction, reinforced her body with Mana, and shot right past the horse beneath Deneb.

The horse snorted, offended that a two-legged creature had outrun a four-legged one. It gathered itself and surged forward, only to fall further behind Nanoda.

"Demon Race scum! Don't think you can run!"

When Deneb caught the faint voice behind him, he panicked and yanked the reins, steering his horse the other way.

Unable to resist Deneb's strength, the poor horse had no choice but to turn around.

Not long after Deneb left, another war horse burst through the fog and charged straight ahead.

"Strange. Is someone else in this fog? Never mind. That Demon is no ordinary one. I have to hunt it down first!"

That eerie magic could only be countered with Holy Power.

Haston had never met a Demon as powerful as Nanoda. Even against Demon generals, he had never released all his Holy Power without holding back the way he did today.

If he let that Demon live, it would surely bring calamity.

"It stopped?"

After chasing relentlessly for a while longer, Haston slowed his horse, wary of a trap.

A crimson blood scythe parted the white mist and sliced clean through the horse's neck.

Haston's pupils contracted. Almost instantly he kicked off the stirrups and leapt backward. While he hung in the air, the Holy Scripture at his waist stirred without any wind, its pages flipping, and a curtain of light woven from Holy Power unfolded around him.

Nanoda's broken horn left only a shallow crack in the curtain of Holy Power, and her Severance Magic was scattered by it.

"..."

Nanoda separated from Haston within the light curtain, and both of them landed on the ground.

"Ah, I failed..."

Jane tilted her head.

The scythe traced a red arc of blood droplets through the air. The headless horse still held its charging posture and ran several more meters before its legs buckled and it collapsed.

Yuna stepped out from behind Jane and, without hesitation, pointed her staff at the white-robed Hero.

A compressed Killing Magic blast shot out at tremendous speed. The Holy Power barrier, already cracked, shattered together with the spell.

"A human? You would side with these vile Demons too?"

Haston looked at Yuna with eyes full of loathing.

"Lady Nanoda is a good person! Without her, Gaderia and I would have been destroyed more times than I can count! I won't let you insult her. Not all of the Demon Race are evil. There are kind ones, just like humans!"

Yuna was furious. It had been a long time since she'd been this angry.

She had been at Nanoda's side since childhood, and she considered herself the person who understood best what sort of Demon Nanoda was.

Nanoda could be merciless when she turned cold-blooded, but at her core she was gentle and kind.

"Ha, stop making me laugh. Are you saying those Demons who slaughtered people like flies never harmed a single human? In my eyes, the Demon Race has no good or evil. They're all enemies of humanity."

Haston rolled his neck.

"What right does someone like you have to call yourself a Hero?"

Yuna could feel it. The so-called white-robed Hero Haston was nothing more than a vengeful demon soaked in the stench of blood.

Compared with the Hero Himmel she had met as a child, he was worlds apart.

"Yuna, enough. Talking to a man like this is pointless. Time is limited. Let's finish this quickly!"

Nanoda, Jane, and Yuna, two Greater Demons and one top-ranked First-Class Mage, faced this monk-slash-Hero together.

If they could subdue the white-clad man within the hour before the fog faded, there was still a chance to turn the battle around.

"Hahahahaha! Good! So there's one more Demon. Come one at a time and I'll kill one, come in pairs and I'll kill two! And you, if you get in my way, I don't mind treating you as a Demon too!"

Surrounded by the three of them, the white-robed Hero showed no fear at all. If anything, his fighting spirit burned even higher, and the twin swords in his hands blazed with golden light once more.

His boundless Holy Power seemed endless, undiminished from the start.

He faced three opponents and did not retreat a step.

Setting his personality aside and judging purely by courage, Nanoda thought, this guy really was a Hero.