Chapter 162 - Damn Reincarnation

The Capital

Taking the pocket watch from her breast, extending the hand holding it to the side... Did she really need to say all that aloud? Alastor Form? The name alone gave no clue what it actually was. If every step of that process was necessary, wouldn't its usefulness in actual combat approach zero?

... That was what Eugene had thought, but seeing it firsthand proved otherwise. When Carmen had first shown him Destiny Form yesterday, the transformation had been slow enough for even his eyes to follow the process. Its speed now was beyond comparison.

The instant she murmured, “Alastor Form,” her right hand was already encased in a silver gauntlet. In other words, she had deliberately slowed down yesterday's demonstration of Destiny Form.

'Impressive...'

Carmen's right hand. Where Destiny Form had possessed nails as sharp as blades, Alastor Form was a metal glove fitted snugly around her fist. Its knuckles protruded in uneven ridges, suggesting a form designed for striking.

Even Iris, who had been casually deflecting their attacks with a twisted smile, briefly lost that smile. She blinked her widened eyes at Carmen's right hand.

“... What did you...”

What was that ridiculous name she had just muttered? And what was that fist? Though this dark elf of several centuries looked and acted wild and free-spirited, she could not understand Carmen's peculiar tastes.

Carmen did not expect Iris to understand, either. Her extended foot touched the floor without a sound. Her body moved forward as though someone had pushed her from behind. Her fist rested at her waist. A mechanical noise came from her elbow.

CLICK.

SWISH.

Iris failed to activate her demonic eyes in time. Before her mind could grasp the situation, Carmen's fist hammered it into her. Both of Iris's feet left the ground. There was no sound. Her body buckled, and in the instant before the impact buried deep within her could travel up her airway and blast out her breath, her body's reaction was reset to the beginning. Before that sequence could even play out, another fist struck. The blows slammed into her with that much speed, one after another.

Even Eugene's eyes could not fully track that absurd speed. No, was it even possible to move like that? Her legs remained in their forward-stepping stance. She used none of the recoil from her waist or upper body. The fist thrust from her waist whipped about like the boneless limb of a mollusk, accelerating further each time it folded back and shot out again...

Was she doing all that with her right arm alone?

“Machine Gun Blow.”

The breathless barrage ended. Despite unleashing all those attacks, Carmen's breathing had not roughened in the slightest. Only then did the delayed sounds of impact overlap.

“Urgh!”

Darkness caught Iris's body as it flew backward. A barrage delivered in an instant. She spat out blood and pieces of her innards, but her body had not been destroyed.

Eugene pounced on the retreating Iris. His fist swept upward, the karambit slashing with it. Biting her blood-soaked lip, Iris summoned darkness.

Just as it was about to block the blade, Eugene's sword force exploded. Mana manipulation approaching the miraculous reshaped it. A sword barely the length of a finger unleashed an indiscriminate flurry of slashes. Darkness was shredded before Iris's eyes. Being cut did not destroy it, but Eugene's slashes were too fast for it to knit itself back together.

Her insides throbbed. She had taken too many of those impossibly fast punches. Iris hurriedly drew her foot back, trying to regain her stance, but the unending slashes dragged up a memory from the distant past.

These slashes. This form. A swift, heavy sword swung with the entire body. A flurry that seemed reckless, yet offered few openings—and even the openings one barely managed to exploit were used as traps.

'... Asura's Frenzied Slaughter?'

The darkness would not rejoin. Even as he unleashed that enormous flurry with a short karambit, Eugene was simultaneously directing magic. He expanded the spaces between his slashes to keep the darkness from easily knitting together, leaving sword force stretched thin as thread within them.

This was not simply using a sword and magic at the same time. Was such a thing possible?

It was impossible for Iris.

'Threads of sword force...'

She knew them. A memory she would never forget. Three hundred years ago, when she had lost her beloved father. When that damned Vermouth had hacked her father's body apart with that dreadful, despair-inducing sword. Iris had wanted to throw herself forward and save him. Even if the pale sword light, radiating what seemed to be destruction itself, burned her body to ashes, she had wanted to help her father.

The reason she had been unable to...

Was that a bastard every bit as vile as that damned Vermouth had stood in her way.

Hamel the Stupid.

The gulf between Iris and Hamel's abilities had been so vast that, without her Demonic Eyes of Darkness, she would have been utterly helpless against him. She had been called the strongest dark elf, taken as Fury's daughter, and given the epithet Rakshasa.

Yet three hundred years ago, the weakest person in the Demon King of Fury's castle had been Iris.

The threads of sword force threaded through the darkness joined together. Eugene pushed the karambit forward and wound the threads around his left fingers. Delicate manipulation. A favorable wind. Sparks of lightning crackled. His left fingers moved as though playing cat's cradle.

'... Dead End!'

The threads of sword force had already closed in and wound around Iris's body. Thin and seemingly fragile, they were sharp enough to sever flesh on contact. Had Iris been an ordinary dark elf, this attack would have cut her body to pieces.

RIP-RIP-RIP!

Dozens of lines appeared across Iris's red suit. Skin showed through the fabric sliced by sword force—smooth skin without a blemish or callus. Even direct contact with the sword force had done no more than draw a few beads of blood.

'Still as tough as ever.'

Fury's children shared not a drop of his blood. Instead of blood, the Demon King had bestowed various powers upon his adopted children. Iris's power of darkness had also belonged to the Demon King of Fury, and her formidable resilience, utterly inconceivable in an elf, was another power he had bestowed.

“You bastard...!”

Iris twisted her body, her face contorting.

CRACKLE!

The lightning flame mixed into the sword force engulfed her entire body. Even that current, however, failed to make her lose consciousness.

“So you were Lionheart's hound...!”

Hamel, who had died three hundred years ago, had been reincarnated as Vermouth's descendant.

Naturally, Iris could not reach that conclusion. No one would have. Besides, Iris knew that the detestable Vermouth had passed the dead Hamel's techniques on to his son, and that the son's descendants still carried on that legacy.

'Thanks for misunderstanding.'

Without answering, Eugene sharply thrust his hand toward Iris. At his command, the lightning flame still burning over her body condensed and squeezed her.

Carmen shot out from behind Eugene. He no longer doubted Heaven Genocide's practicality in combat. Without even saying “Form Change,” she had transformed her right hand into something entirely different from Alastor Form.

It was no longer a hand or a fist. Only a heavy iron cannon extending from her forearm.

WHOOOOM...!

Mana from the atmosphere, unrefined by a core, concentrated in Carmen's right arm.

FWOOSH.

The White Flame Formula, driven to its utmost limit. Its Seventh Star—a realm few had reached since Vermouth the Great. With Doynes Lionheart dead, Carmen Lionheart was the only member of Lionheart to have reached the Seventh Star.

In other words, Carmen was now the strongest person in Lionheart.

'Even the lightning flame?'

Even some of the lightning flame constricting Iris concentrated in Carmen's iron cannon. The circuits engraved on its surface shone. Black light flashed in Iris's eyes.

BOOOOM!

An immense impact, unlike the earlier blows. The darkness she had erected as a defense burst apart. Even after she diverted and dispersed the attack through a passage, it retained this much power. The shock spreading throughout her body shattered Iris's teeth and burst her eyes.

Her body flew backward. A tiny opening had been created. Eugene did not want to miss this chance.

Inside his cloak, Eugene gripped the Moonlight Sword's hilt. Iris was flying backward, her body swaying like a puppet with its strings cut. Perhaps he could kill her if he swung the Moonlight Sword now.

Three hundred years ago, he had fought through countless battlefields, surviving and winning.

Premature certainty would tighten a noose around his own neck. Instead of the Moonlight Sword, Eugene took hold of Akasha.

Carmen had honed her intuition until it bordered on precognition, but she lacked Eugene's experience of crossing the line between life and death. The strength she had achieved was awe-inspiring, yet she had lived in an age of peace, when Demon Kings and humans were not earnestly trying to annihilate one another.

So she did not sense it, and advanced. Blast Form, Gigant Impact. Her attack had struck true. Though it had lost some power breaking through multiple defenses and being diverted elsewhere, it had still succeeded in shattering Iris's body from within.

Carmen saw victory within reach. Just a few more steps. She did not know how much longer Iris could endure, but a few more steps would let her kill the Rakshasa Princess. The repercussions? Nothing to worry about. The Rakshasa Princess had picked a fight with Lionheart first. Moreover, both she and Fury's Independence Army were nuisances even to Helmuth. Killing her here would cause no problems.

'Lionheart's glory.'

Their honor had been trampled. The Rakshasa Princess's life would make the finest sacrifice for the cornerstone upon which it could rise again.

CLICK.

Carmen's right arm transformed. Her lips itched to announce it immediately, but there was no time.

Form Change.

Destiny Form.

Destiny Break...

WHOOSH!

The distance that should have narrowed grew wider. But she was stepping forward? Her sense of distance tangled. Had she noticed too late? It was because she had never imagined it. How could she have imagined that Eugene, her ally in this fight, would cast spatial magic, then go further and seize the back of her neck to pull her away?

“Why—”

Before Carmen's words could become a sentence...

CRUNCH!

Pitch-black darkness appeared in the space Carmen had been about to enter. Every darkness Iris had summoned thus far had appeared suddenly, but there had always been a warning: her demonic eyes would shine.

This darkness, however, appeared without any warning at all. Moreover, its nature was entirely different from all the darkness before it. Carmen could feel that without even touching it.

Had she not stopped...

No, had she not been pulled away. Had she kept advancing, she would have died without even knowing why.

“... Tsk.”

Iris's flying body stopped. Her backward-bent body creaked as it tilted forward. Her eyes had burst. Crimson blood and darkness swirled in the empty sockets.

“Good luck? Or good instincts?”

Blood dripped from Iris's mouth with every word. Chuckling, she leaned back against the darkness.

“What a shame. A little faster, and I could have crushed you.”

The sphere of darkness that had appeared between them vanished with a pop. Slowly descending, Iris stared at Carmen and Eugene.

“Princess.”

A dark elf standing beyond the darkness behind her spoke.

“We have delayed too long.”

“I wouldn't say too long. It's only been ten minutes, hasn't it?”

“They are already approaching.”

“This country is unnecessarily well policed.”

Clicking her tongue, Iris planted both feet on the ground. As she did, she felt her legs weaken slightly. But she did not stagger. She forced strength into them and stood straight.

'Not bad.'

She had suffered this much at the hands of a human younger than Yagon, that son of a bitch, or Incarceration's Three Demons? The realization filled Iris with exhilaration rather than humiliation. Cackling, she closed and opened her stiff eyes several times. Her burst eyes regenerated, and her shattered teeth grew back in full.

“I suppose negotiations have broken down?”

Eugene felt Iris's killing intent fade. She shrugged and gestured behind her. A dark elf approached, placed a cigarette between Iris's lips, and even lit it for her with a gold lighter.

“Shall we sit down at the table again?”

Blowing out smoke, Iris answered.

“If you die here, I'll at least talk to your successor.”

“That would be a problem. Fury's Independence Army only has meaning because I, my father's rightful heir, exist.”

The dark elves gathered around Iris. One removed his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders, covering her own clothes, now little more than rags.

“Eugene Lionheart. Carmen Lionheart.”

Holding the cigarette, which had burned down in an instant, between her fingers, Iris rolled the smoke over her tongue.

“Next time, let's meet beneath the sun, not in a musty basement.”

The cigarette fell from her fingers.

Iris and the ten dark elves fell with it. The darkness beneath their feet became a passage, and all the dark elves vanished from the basement.

'... She didn't have that ability three hundred years ago.'

The darkness on the floor returned to ordinary shadow, no longer Iris's. Eugene stared at it, lost in thought.

'What a dramatic transformation, Iris. Three hundred years ago, only your archery and agility were worth anything. Now you're quite good at close combat, too. And you've developed your demonic eyes' abilities.'

She must have worked hard to become a Demon King. Chuckling, Eugene slipped the karambit off his finger.

“Lucky.”

Failing to kill Iris here was nothing to regret. If anything, Iris was the one who ought to be disappointed. She probably believed that, without outside interference, she could have killed both Eugene and Carmen here.

Eugene was equally certain, though of something different. That certainty had only grown as they fought. Nothing he did today could kill Iris. Had the fight continued, he would have had to seriously consider how to escape.

But before he even needed to plan his escape, Iris had withdrawn. The fight had been brief, but he had gotten a clear look at a power of her demonic eyes that he had never seen three hundred years ago.

Eugene had learned about the Iris of the present, not the past.

But Iris did not know about Eugene. He had been right not to draw the Moonlight Sword, the Demonic Spear, or the Crushing Hammer. That would give him an overwhelming advantage when he killed Iris next time.

“... Whew.”

Carmen let out a long sigh and deactivated Heaven Genocide on her right hand.

“... Are you all right?”

Eugene looked at Carmen's blood-soaked right arm. Without answering, Carmen flicked a finger. The coat that had fallen off, unable to keep up with her movements when she first entered, flew back to her.

“... You saved me.”

“Please don't worry about it.”

“If you hadn't pulled me back, I would have died.”

“I was behind you, Lady Carmen. That simply gave me a broader view.”

He had noticed for that reason alone? Carmen could not quite accept it, but she did not press him. Her limp right arm had almost no sensation left. With her left hand, she took a cigar from her coat pocket and put it between her lips.

“... The lighter.”

“Pardon?”

“The one the dark elf used earlier. Made of gold, with that popping sound.”

“... Ah, yes.”

“I wanted to ask where he bought it.”

“... But you don't even light your cigars, Lady Carmen.”

“I might want to someday.”

Muttering those words, Carmen turned away.