Chapter 253
The heavy air seemed to thicken as Alfia drew closer, her footsteps almost unnervingly soft on the debris-strewn ground.
She paused briefly, not in hesitation, but in a moment of quiet observation, her sharp ears picking up the strained exchange between Lyra and Kaguya.
A fleeting, almost imperceptible curve touched the corner of her lips—a ghost of a smile, gone before it could fully form.
It was Kaguya’s words, a desperate plea for unity in the face of impossible odds, that seemed to hold her attention most.
“I see,” Alfia’s voice was a low murmur, carrying an unexpected depth that cut through the tension.
“So, there are still those who know how to show proper respect to their opponent, even in the throes of despair. A rare commodity in this disappointing city.”
She resumed her advance, the casual pace belying the immense power coiling within her.
With each deliberate stride, the ambient magic in the air began to hum, a subtle, vibrational thrumming that grew steadily more intense.
It wasn’t a visible aura, but a pervasive pressure, like the prelude to a crushing storm, causing the very ground beneath their feet to subtly resonate.
The air itself seemed to grow taut, stretched to its breaking point by the sheer force building within a peak Level 7 adventurer.
Alfia halted once more, a precisely calculated distance away from the two girls.
Lyra and Kaguya both flinched, their hearts hammering against their ribs like trapped birds.
The invisible force field of impending doom seemed to solidify around them, making every breath a struggle.
“It’s truly regrettable,” Alfia continued, her voice layered with an almost theatrical melancholy, “that I lack the score for a funeral dirge, a sorrowful melody to accompany your final moments. All I have is a trumpet’s blare, a sound that will grind your very bones to dust.” Her eyes, though closed, seemed to pierce them, chilling their blood.
“So, please,” she added, her tone tinged with a feigned, almost sympathetic sadness that was infinitely more terrifying than outright menace, “do not cry. Do not plead. And above all, do not scream.”
A shiver ran down Lyra’s spine.
Alfia’s words were a direct assault on their will, almost as if designed to strip them of even the dignity of protest.
“There is nothing more irritating……than the screams of dying young girls” Alfia concluded, her voice dropping to a near-whisper, a chilling counterpoint to the thunderous magic now reaching its crescendo.
The air around her pulsed, groaning under the immense strain of the concentrated power she was about to unleash, an invisible force poised to strike.
“Fuck this!” Lyra’s raw cry tore through the suffocating tension, her terror finally overriding her meagre bravery.
She could feel the pressure intensifying, hear the subtle whine in the air that promised inevitable destruction.
“I am out! You can stay here and die if you want, Kaguya, but I will try running. I will take my chances on that!” she shrieked, her body already tensing to bolt.
“No, Lyra, please!” Kaguya desperately countered, her voice laced with pleading urgency despite her tremor.
“We have to stay and keep our eyes peeled for an opening! I can’t survive this without your help!”
Kaguya didn’t wait for Lyra’s reply.
With a desperate, heart-wrenching resolve, she forced her trembling hands to grip the hilt of her katana, trying to steady them, before launching herself forward.
It was a desperate, suicidal dash towards Alfia, a last-ditch gambit born of pure, unadulterated fear and a faint flicker of hope.
However…
“Begone, noise,” Alfia stated, her voice devoid of inflection, a simple dismissal.
The petty squabbling of the girls had done little more than sour her already aloof mood, confirming her low expectations for the city’s inhabitants.
“Gospel.”
The single word hung in the air, a brief pronouncement.
It was the melody of silence, the beginning and the end of all sound, compressed into a singular, devastating syllable.
“Gaaaaaaaaaagh!” Kaguya’s desperate scream was abruptly cut short as an unseen force, like a colossal battering ram, slammed into her body.
She was hurled backward with the devastating power of a flash flood, her form a blurred streak before she smashed into the crumbling remains of nearby buildings.
Reinforced stone and wood twisted and buckled under the impact, raining down debris around her.
Lyra, on the other hand, managed a desperate, scrambling leap to the side.
Her instincts, born from years of surviving as a gutter-rat was just enough to help in avoiding the direct, invisible impact.
But the sheer concussive force of the resulting shockwave, a silent explosion of compressed air, still caught her.
It punched through her defences, lifting her off her feet and sending her sprawling, tumbling several meters across the uneven ground.
The sheer destructive power of the blow had done more than just displace Kaguya.
Jagged rocks and splintered boulders were flung high into the air and pulverized.
Cracks spider-webbed across the very ground where Kaguya had been, as if the earth itself had recoiled from the silent thunder.
Kaguya’s katana had also shattered into a million glittering fragments, some of which embedded themselves cruelly into her skin during the initial, unseen blast.
As the settling dust finally veiled the immediate aftermath, all that remained was a cold, desolate silence.
“D-devastating…” Vito muttered, his voice barely a whisper, his eyes wide with a mixture of horror and awe at the destruction before him.
He was so utterly consumed by the spectacle that he didn’t even notice his mask had slipped from his face, revealing a grimace of raw shock.
His ears rang with a spectral echo of the unseen blast, and his body instinctively shivered, a primal response to witnessing such overwhelming power.
“Glad she’s on our side,” Erebus commented, his eyes similarly wide, though a hint of his characteristic, cruel amusement flickered within them.
He hadn’t anticipated such an overwhelming display, especially from what he knew to be a relatively low-cost, single-chant spell.
“I guess that’s why you don’t piss off Hera’s girls, eh?” he mused, a dark chuckle escaping him.
Meanwhile, Lyra, battered and disoriented, struggled to push herself onto her trembling hands and knees.
Her entire body shivered uncontrollably, not just from the cold dust that clung to her, but from the systemic shock that coursed through her veins.
A sudden, crushing wave of dizziness hit her like a tide, forcing a pained groan from her lips.
As she blinked, trying to clear her blurred vision, she noticed dark, glistening droplets splattering onto the grimy ground beneath her – dozens of them.
Slowly, her vision began to tint crimson as a thin, sticky trickle of blood seeped from her eyes, ears, and mouth.
“H-how?” Lyra gasped, her voice raw with shock and confusion.
“I didn’t even get hit directly…” Her bloodshot eyes frantically searched for Kaguya, the one who had taken the full brunt of the assault.
The internal ache was unbearable.
Her ears screamed with a high-pitched whine, her head throbbed with a relentless, jackhammering pain, and she couldn’t even manage to stand upright.
‘Ugh, I feel sick’ she thought, battling back the acidic urge to vomit.
However even in her current state, Lyra refused to yield.
She desperately tried to deduce the nature of Alfia’s attack.
“It wasn’t wind… or light…” she muttered, her thoughts forming slowly through the haze of pain.
“Then it must be… sound.”
As if in response to her whispered realization, Alfia’s cool voice reached her.
“Did your allies not warn you, the Loki and Freya’s children? Yes, my magic is sound. That, and nothing more. I cannot burn you to cinders, nor encase you in ice. I can only batter you, tirelessly, until all that remains is a mangled lump of flesh.”
The revelation was horrifying in its simplicity and brutality.
Alfia’s magic was utterly invisible, devastatingly effective, and the most terrifying aspect was her ability to unleash such destruction with just a single word.
‘Monster’ was the only word that formed in Lyra’s reeling mind after hearing Alfia’s chilling explanation.
The full scope of Alfia’s capabilities was truly despair-inducing, a crushing weight on her spirit.
'She’s also good at melee, isn’t she?’ Lyra thought, the realization further deepening her despair.
‘Is any of this even fair?’ Her legs, already trembling, finally gave out, and her body crumpled, falling face first onto the cold, unforgiving ground.
“Words fail me,” Erebus purred, a genuinely malicious smile spreading across his lips.
“I told you to teach them the true meaning of despair, but it’s over so fast. I don’t think they even had a chance to feel it.”
Alfia turned her head slightly, her eyes still closed, but her attention now directed towards Erebus.
“If a lesson is what you seek, then perhaps you should provide a more fitting opponent. Besides,” she added, turning her attention back to Lyra, “this fight isn’t over yet.”
“A convincing act, pallum,” Alfia stated, her voice sharp with an undercurrent of disdain.
“Did you learn such a trick from your fellow gutter-rats, perhaps?”
“Shit,” Lyra cursed under her breath, her fingers subtly twitching in a futile attempt to keep still. She hadn’t even been breathing, straining every sinew to feign unconsciousness, yet Alfia had seen through her effortlessly.
Despite the crushing revelation, Lyra still tried her best not to react, clinging to the desperate hope that she might be overlooked.
It was a rather foolish act, she now realized in a flash of horrified clarity.
Alfia’s magic was sound.
She didn’t even need sight; her magic alone would pick up the desperate thrum of Lyra’s racing pulse, the frantic beat of her heart, even the subtle shift of fluids within her body.
And beyond her specific magic, Alfia was a Level 7 adventurer, her raw, innate senses must have been honed to such an incredible degree that she could pierce through such a basic level of deception without even trying.
Lyra was exposed, her last desperate gambit seen through before it even truly began.
“You seem to be around Level 2, or thereabouts,” Alfia remarked, her voice a low, even hum that somehow managed to fill the space between them.
She began to walk, slow and deliberate, toward the much smaller figure of Lyra.
The air around Alfia seemed to ripple with suppressed power, a silent, menacing hum that pressed down on Lyra.
“I was holding back by a large margin,” Alfia continued, her steps measured.
“Nevertheless, you do well to still breathe. You are cowardly and sly, the polar opposite of that delusional Pallum hero (Finn).”
Her words, devoid of emotion, struck with the force of physical blows.
Alfia stopped directly over Lyra, her shadow engulfing the prostrate girl, an imposing figure of absolute dominance.
“Zald has a fondness for your ilk, but I find you quite irritating.”
A faint, ominous glow began to build in Alfia’s outstretched hand, a swirling concoction of concentrated magic.
The air grew thick, heavy with the promise of annihilation.
But just as the energy coalesced, a voice, surprisingly clear despite its owner’s apparent defeat, cut through the tension.
“I am small…” Lyra began, her voice a fragile whisper that steadily gained strength.
“Cowardly and weak… but you know, I have to still pull my weight somehow.” She paused, the blunt criticism from the Level 7 warrior stinging more than she cared to admit, yet it fuelled a deeper resolve.
“I have to do things like playing dead, making bombs, using vulgar tricks… anything so I don’t drag the other girls down. You will never understand how hard that is… especially when you possess all that monstrous talent.”
As Lyra spoke, Alfia’s brow subtly arched, a flicker of something akin to surprise crossing her impassive features.
An almost inaudible, dry chuckle escaped Lyra’s lips, a sound of bitter amusement.
“Sometimes I gotta be bait too, do you know how crappy that is?” Lyra continued, her voice rising slightly.
“But somebody’s got to do it… because,” she paused again, drawing out the moment, a calculated risk.
Alfia’s face remained a mask of hard, featureless stone.
Her mind struggling to process why a being of her caliber, a Level 7, was being lectured by a mere Level 2.
The sheer audacity of it was almost comical, yet intensely annoying.
“I ain’t the only one who knows how to play dead!” Lyra suddenly shrieked, her voice a raw, desperate cry that startled Alfia.
Alfia’s reaction was almost instantaneous, a blur of motion as her superior reflexes kicked in. But ‘almost’ wasn’t good enough.
Aided by Lyra’s perfectly timed, distracting outburst, Alfia’s other foe, Kaguya, materialized just behind her, a vengeful phantom.
“Iai Strike…” Kaguya’s voice echoed, rasping and strained, yet laced with a chilling intent.
She appeared as if conjured from the very depths of a nightmare, her body streaked crimson – a horrifying mosaic of her own blood and the debris of the battlefield.
In her hands, two short swords, secondary weapons she carried, gleamed dully.
She unleashed a terrifying flurry of lightning-fast strikes, a desperate, last-ditch effort.
But Alfia, with breathtaking agility, took a single, elegant step to the side, effortlessly slipping out of the attack range.
The blades carved only air where she had been a split second before.
“I am surprised you still have weapons, or bones for that matter,” Alfia mocked, her voice cool and detached, a stark contrast to Kaguya’s ragged breathing.
“Haaah… Haaah…” Kaguya huffed, her chest heaving, nearly spent.
Blood, hot and metallic, leaked from her lips, painting them a grotesque crimson.
“You monster! How did you dodge so easily?” she gasped, her frustration palpable.
She had staked almost everything on that single, backstabbing maneuver, yet it hadn’t pierced Alfia’s defences, hadn't delivered the killing blow.
However, despite her failure, a flicker of amusement sparked in Kaguya’s bloodshot eyes.
“Hahahahaha!” she burst into raucous laughter, immediately dissolving into a fit of hacking coughs, each spasm bringing more blood to her lips, cementing a crimson smile.
Alfia tilted her head, a hint of confusion in her gaze.
She genuinely wondered if Kaguya had finally succumbed to madness.
“You are bleeding, Level 7,” Kaguya said, an ecstatic, almost manic triumph colouring her tone.
Slowly, deliberately, Alfia raised her left arm, examining it with a detached curiosity.
Sure enough, the sleeve of her elegant dress was torn, revealing a minuscule, almost imperceptible line grazing her otherwise flawless skin.
It was so small, so utterly insignificant, that her body hadn’t even registered it as a wound, a minor inconvenience at best.
“It may just be an insignificant scratch,” Kaguya declared, her voice ringing with a bizarre, hard-won victory.
“But it’s still a wound. My sword shed your blood!” Her tone suggested that this minuscule act of defiance was enough to win the entire battle.
Alfia remained silent, her gaze fixed on the tiny blemish on her arm, a single, perfect line disturbing the smooth expanse of her skin.
“Your strength may seem unbeatable, monster,” Kaguya continued, her voice growing hoarse from exertion and continued laughter, “but you are not invincible! Even a powerless child like me can make you bleed! Hahahahahahah!”
It was all she could do, a final, defiant roar against an insurmountable foe, for barely any strength remained in her depleted body.
“Are you finished making noise?” Alfia finally spoke, her voice laced with a newfound irritation, the brief moment of contemplation giving way to a chilling resolve.
“If so, then it’s time for you to disappear.” She raised her arm, her magic beginning to build once more.
“Not on my watch. Try these for size!” A new voice, this time Lyra’s, cut through the air.
She had used Kaguya as a distraction, and Alfia’s momentary focus on her injured arm, to circle unseen, now launching herself at the powerful warrior.
Immediately, Lyra hurled several dozen spherical objects at Alfia.
These were bomblets, crude but effective mini bombs she had crafted on the spot.
Some of them exploded in a rapid succession of muffled thuds, scattering thick clouds of dirt and choking soot into the air, creating an instant, impenetrable screen.
Their improvised plan, a desperate gamble, was to use this momentary obscurity to flee.
They had, however, gravely underestimated Alfia, whose previously detached disdain had curdled into a simmering, foul mood.
For the first time since the fight began, Alfia’s eyes snapped open, a flash of pure, untamed power.
With a casual, almost contemptuous swipe of one hand, she batted the still-airborne bomblets back toward Lyra with shocking force.
Simultaneously, with her other hand, she reached out, grabbing Kaguya by her blood-matted hair, and flung her directly into the path of Lyra and the returning projectiles.
The two girls slammed into each other mid-air, a sickening thud of bone and flesh.
Coupled with the subsequent, deafening explosions of the bomblets, the impact was devastating, a whirlwind of concussive force and shrapnel.
It had transpired with such blinding speed, almost instantaneously, that no ordinary mind could have registered the sequence of events.
It wasn’t accomplished with magic, but the raw, physical power of a Level 7 mage.
‘Truly a monster’ was the last, fleeting thought that crossed the minds of both girls before they were engulfed in the roaring inferno of the explosion.
BOOM!
The sound of the detonation echoed, a thunderclap that scattered death and soot throughout the clearing.
When the churning dust and debris finally settled, a grim sight greeted the world: two bloodied, unconscious figures lay sprawled on the scorched earth, broken and still.
‘When was the last time I saw my own blood?’ Alfia mused, her gaze fixed on the minuscule scratch on her arm, then drifting to the two inert girls.
‘To think that I grew lax and arrogant… like Hera’ A rare, unsettling introspective moment for the witch of silence.
“Woah, now that was quite the twist,” Erebus commented, his voice devoid of surprise as he leisurely approached Alfia, a shadowy figure emerging from the periphery.
“Indeed it was,” Vito agreed, his tone equally unruffled.
“To think they still managed to pull all that off, despite the disparity in strength.”
“Hmm, by the way, Alfia,” Erebus continued, a hint of curiosity in his ancient eyes, “aren’t you going to finish the job?” He watched her, interested in the complex machinery of her mind.
Alfia, however, offered no verbal reply.
Instead, she slowly raised her hand once more toward the two unconscious girls, magic energy beginning to coalesce around her palm.
‘What a pity’ Alfia thought, a flicker of something akin to regret, or perhaps just a detached observation, flitting across her expression.
“Gos…” she began to intone, the activation phrase of the devastating spell forming on her lips.
But just as the first syllable left her mouth, Alfia paused and stared at the sky.
Just then, a sudden, powerful wind ripped through the air.
The very ground shuddered violently as a new figure descended from the sky with incredible velocity, landing with a bone-jarring impact that sent dust and debris erupting outward in a massive cloud.
Soon, the swirling curtain of particulate matter began to settle, revealing a figure of striking and unusual appearance.
He was clad in a rather odd, dark cloak, adorned with an incongruous pair of bunny ears atop his hood.
Embroidered prominently on the fluttering fabric of the cloak was the unmistakable insignia of the Bahamut Familia.
From his back, a pair of powerful wings, covered in lustrous black scales, spread wide, momentarily catching the light.
They were accompanied by a thick, similarly scaled tail, which swayed lightly from side to side, almost lazily.
Beneath his feet, strong, clawed talons dug deep into the disturbed earth, anchoring him firmly.
Draco was here.
Staring directly at Alfia was a pair of intense, red reptilian eyes.
Alfia immediately found their gaze irritating, but more than anything, a rather annoying new noise had just disrupted the fragile peace she had momentarily reclaimed……….
A/N: Feel free to read ahead on pat3on and donate.