Chapter 161 - Damn Reincarnation

The Capital

As the door flew into the room, Eugene grasped Akasha inside his cloak.

WHIIIINE!

The spell took shape in an instant, enveloping Levera and the old man.

Casting Blink on someone else was more difficult and required more care than casting it on oneself, but that posed no great problem for Eugene. The most important part of spatial magic was accurately calculating its fiendishly complex formulas according to the different coordinates and flows of mana.

He had been adept at sensing mana flows even in his previous life, and this remarkable body of his was quick to perform the calculations the theory demanded. With Mer assisting him as well, it was only natural that his spatial magic should be fast and precise.

But the real reason the spell succeeded had less to do with any of that.

The door had shattered, opening a gap in the space Iris controlled. Rather than stop the magic unfolding before her, Iris turned her attention to whoever had kicked down the door from outside.

Footsteps thudded across the floor.

Carmen Lionheart walked into the darkened room. An unlit cigar between her lips, she crossed through the rising dust. Her loose gray hair and the coat draped over her shoulders fluttered.

"... Hmm."

Carmen surveyed the room. Ten dark elves standing upright. Iris seated on the sofa before them, her legs crossed. Eugene opposite her, holding Akasha.

Mer had told her where to find them.

The Lionheart estate was excessively large. About all Eugene did there was train, but the same was not true of Mer. Not only Anisilla, the mistress of the main family, and Gerhard at the annex, but servants such as Raman and Nina and even the White Lion Knights doted on her.

As a result, she was often summoned here and there, and Eugene could hardly accompany her every time. He had therefore installed a magical terminal in his room and linked it to Mer, his familiar.

They used the terminal when Eugene returned from training and could not find Mer, or when Mer needed to locate him somewhere in the vast forest.

By tracing the link back to the terminal, Mer could also contact it herself. That was how she had reached Nina while she was cleaning his room and summoned Carmen from the main estate.

"... Hmm."

Iris took a deep drag on her cigarette. Pale smoke swirled around her face. In a single breath, she burned the cigarette down to its filter.

The filter broke between her chewing teeth, and the cigarette fell. The pale smoke dispersed. A red ember dropped through its center.

None of them moved first.

All three, keenly aware of one another, did what the situation demanded most urgently.

Black light flashed in Iris's eye. The revolver was still in Eugene's hand, yet a black bullet shot from its muzzle without him pulling the trigger.

Then Iris planted both hands on the sofa. Snapping her waist forward, she swung both legs. They swept toward Eugene like blades—no, like whips—threatening to tear his body apart.

The moment the bullet left the muzzle, Eugene's eyes slid sideways. He tracked its trajectory without losing sight of it for an instant. It was a bullet created by the Demonic Eyes of Darkness. The revolver was merely a matter of Iris's taste; that bullet did not need a barrel to launch it.

It could fire without any triggering mechanism, and it did not have to travel in a straight line. The darkness created by her demonic eyes moved according to Iris's will.

The instant the bullet touched his hair, electricity coursed through Eugene's body. Mana infused with lightning propelled him at a speed scarcely believable for a human. The bullet pierced empty air instead of his head.

Her legs came flying toward his body. Eugene slammed both feet into the ground.

BOOM!

The sofa shattered, the floor caved in, and Eugene spun once on the spot.

The cigar between Carmen's lips snapped under the wind pressure. That was how fast she surged forward. The coat on her shoulders fluttered away. She pulled her left fist against her chest and drew her right fist tightly back, until her shoulder seemed about to wrench out of place.

The moment her extended foot planted on the floor, her ankle and waist rotated together. Rather than a punch, it looked like a shell fired from the cannon of her body. Her fist shot straight ahead, piercing the space before her.

Iris's eye flashed again. Her Demonic Eyes of Darkness generated darkness.

WHOOSH!

The swirling darkness swallowed Carmen's punch whole.

Eugene's body completed a turn in midair. The Cloak of Darkness swallowed him entirely.

CREEEAK!

From between its folds, Eugene drew a bowstring. Pernoa, the Lightning Bow. Five bolts of lightning formed on the drawn string.

CRACKLE!

A chain of lightning descended on Iris.

THUNK!

As her swinging legs moved, her heel kicked a liquor bottle lying on the floor.

CRASH!

The lightning shattered the bottle and burned the liquor.

After throwing that first punch, Carmen closed in on Iris. She spat out the cigar between her teeth. The smell of evaporating liquor. The cigarette smoke that had yet to clear. None of it was to Carmen's liking.

The situation itself was unpleasant, and there was plenty to make it even worse.

SNAP!

With her left hand still held against her chest, Carmen tore off her shirt button.

She clenched her fist hard enough that the leather glove bulged, seemingly about to burst under her grip. Her gray hair streamed behind her as she accelerated toward Iris.

"Tch."

Her cannonball punch came to a halt. The ground seemed to give way beneath her—and her body really was about to fall. Darkness spreading over the floor invited Carmen into the depths underground. Instead of advancing, she arched backward and leaped away.

Could they kill her here?

Eugene released the Lightning Bow. The Cloak of Darkness spread wide like wings. Their opponent was Iris, the Rakshasa Princess, a legendary dark elf notorious since three hundred years ago. As he was now, Eugene could not kill her.

It was absolutely impossible. Even with Ignition, the Moonlight Sword, or the Holy Sword, the impossible remained impossible. Eward, who had borrowed power from a remnant of a Demon King, was insignificant beside a genuine monster like Iris. She had already been that strong three hundred years ago, and now she was stronger still.

In particular, she seemed to have completely mastered her Demonic Eyes of Darkness. Three hundred years ago, Iris had not wielded them with anything approaching her present speed and ease.

That was why he had not immediately thought of Iris when Levera and the old man disappeared from the workshop. He had never imagined she could wield her demonic eyes this well.

'The Moonlight Sword...'

He did not draw it. He was not confident he could cut Iris down with the incomplete, weakened Moonlight Sword. The same went for the Holy Sword. In fact, the Holy Sword would be of little help against her. Even divine power struggled to purify that brutally simple demonic-eye power.

Iris reached out. Even in this unexpected battle, the twisted smile never left her lips. Her long fingers bent, and her eye shone black.

At that instant, dark matter appeared on either side of Eugene. The two masses moved to crush him between them.

The Cloak of Darkness whirled. Eugene drew Wynnyd from inside it and cut through the darkness. The sensation in his palm was disheartening. He had not felt it in a long time: cutting something without feeling as though he had cut it at all. And that was precisely what had happened. The instant the blade split the darkness, it was already sticking back together.

Mana flowed through the formula woven into his sword strike. Spatial expansion.

WHOOOSH!

The rejoining darkness stretched out, as though someone had seized its top and bottom and pulled. Forcing magic into the darkness itself was impossible. But could he physically cut it apart and then insert magic into the gap?

'What a pain.'

It had been the same three hundred years ago. Noir Giabella was far stronger than Iris. Yet Eugene had found Iris harder to fight.

The reason was simple. Senya and Anise had rigorously divided the work of defending against Noir Giabella's attacks. Iris, on the other hand, had mostly been Hamel's responsibility alone.

'She wasn't very good at hand-to-hand combat back then.'

CRAAANG!

Iris's rising kick drove Eugene backward. At the moment of impact, he erected seventeen layers of defensive barriers and raised an Aura Shield as well. Yet a single kick, delivered while she was seated on the sofa, shattered every barrier and sent him flying.

"... Ahaha!"

Iris swung her kicking leg back around and crossed her legs once more.

CREAK... CREAK...

The sofa creaked backward under the force. She draped both arms over its back and lifted her head.

"You're that Silver Lion of Lionheart, aren't you?"

Carmen did not answer. She pulled her fingers free of the ceiling. The floor was not far below. The fall would take only an instant.

No one watching would have believed it could be so brief. Carmen's movements made that impossible to imagine. The moment her hand left the ceiling and she began to fall, her legs were already driving toward Iris, trailing hundreds of afterimages.

But Iris remained unperturbed. Her wide-open eye followed each of Carmen's attacks and summoned darkness. The blows came without end. The darkness scattered but did not disappear. Dispersed by kick after kick, it clumped together again.

Carmen's feet touched the floor. Iris had still not even risen from her sofa. Eugene's backward flight came to a halt.

Only a few minutes had passed since Carmen entered.

The Black Lion Knights' Third Division arrived belatedly and raced down the stairs. Every one of them was a knight whose ability would win recognition in any nation.

"Don't come in."

Carmen spoke. Iris, riding the creaking motion of her sofa, grinned as well.

"Don't interfere. Just watch."

Iris's words were directed at the dark elves behind her sofa.

Eugene descended.

Carmen caught her glove between her teeth and pulled it tight around her fingers.

CRACK!

Iris flexed her fingers, cracking her joints.

THUMP.

Eugene's heart beat.

It was the same this time. None moved first; all of them moved at once. The darkness Iris multiplied spread through the room like ink. The floor became a doorway to some unknown place, and it was difficult to tell whether the darkness spreading toward them was a passage connected to other darkness or merely a mass of force.

That was what made fighting Iris so difficult. There was no way to discern the true nature of her dark matter without first touching it. It was a bizarre power he could not understand even through Akasha.

'I know because I've experienced it so many times, but...'

Did Carmen truly understand it? There was no time to tell her. She was already advancing. A point-blank exchange of punches and kicks. Eugene was familiar with this range too.

CLICK.

His left hand drew the karambit concealed inside his belt. He slipped his index finger through the ring, wrapped his hand around the grip, and clenched his fist. Sword force, compressed into a thin layer, enveloped the blade.

CRACKLE.

Lightning flowed. Eugene accelerated forward. Carmen, slightly ahead of him, leaped over the darkness covering the floor and punched at the curtain that appeared before her. The instant her fist touched the darkness, she stopped it. Senses honed nearly to the realm of precognition detected the wrongness of that contact.

Had she extended it any farther, her fist would have been swallowed. The darkness Iris created linked together and connected spaces. If it disappeared while her fist was inside, that fist would be severed without resistance, however well trained and defended it might be.

She withdrew her halted fist. Twisting her body fluidly, Carmen slipped around the darkness's flank.

Her angled punch detonated just beside it. The darkness burst and scattered.

Eugene's momentary acceleration was faster than Carmen's. By the time she burst the darkness apart, he had already passed her and entered Iris's reach.

One thing was overwhelmingly better than three hundred years ago: he had far more tools at his disposal than he had as Hamel. Wind was one of them. The wind wrapped around Eugene and flowing ahead of him touched the darkness before he extended his flesh into it. Was it swallowed and carried elsewhere, or was it blocked? That alone told him the darkness's nature.

'Three hundred years ago, those two were all she had.'

Her control over those two abilities had grown nearly perfect. Perhaps she had acquired other powers as well, but for now he would guard against what he knew for certain.

WHIIIINE!

Sword force erupted from the karambit's curved blade. The slash following his swinging fist split the floor. The instant Iris's eye darkened—while she was still seated on the sofa—the darkness swallowed the slash.

He let it. Of all his weapons, he had chosen the karambit because moving his bare body was simpler than wielding a weapon.

'And it doesn't matter if it breaks.'

Though that would reduce his power. The darkness heaved. It split apart and descended on him. As it multiplied, the wind grew fiercer. His sword force scattered sparks again and again. Before he knew it, Carmen was beside him.

They had closed the distance in an instant. Iris could no longer remain on her sofa. The darkness summoned by her demonic eyes pushed against her back. She rose unsteadily, as though being pulled upward, and erected a curtain of darkness to keep the dark elves behind her from being caught in the fight.

Iris raised both hands. By then, dozens of forms of attack were already driving toward her. Carmen's and Eugene's hands sought to strike, shove, seize, twist, crush, wrench, and break her. Following those movements, the reverse-gripped karambit sought to stab, slash, tear free, thrust repeatedly, and hack her apart. In truth, description was meaningless. At this range, Eugene and Carmen drove every possible kind of attack at Iris without getting in each other's way.

And Iris moved both arms with a twisted smile.

The spreading darkness cut off their lines of attack. Each blocked path narrowed the forms their attacks could take. Even when they employed dozens, at most one or two could prove effective. She closed off every route until none remained.

These were by no means feeble attacks, yet the legendary dark elf blocked them all with ease. Not even ten minutes had passed since the fight began. But in that brief span, they had exchanged hundreds of attacks and defenses, while still more attacks had vanished before they could be completed.

Despite so many blows passing between them, the building did not even shake. The underground space retained its shape. The only things broken in the room were the table and sofa Iris had struck down on, and the door Carmen had kicked in. Such was the restraint and precision of the three combatants: none of their power spilled away, all of it concentrated on the point of impact.

"Form Change."

Carmen turned sideways.

"Heaven Genocide."

Her tattered leather glove grasped a pocket watch.

"Alastor Form."

The name alone gave no clue whatsoever as to what shape it would take.