Chapter 146: Chapter 138 – Heroism and Heroics

It was pretty obvious what he was trying to do.

Slowly whittle me down by sapping my MP every time I parry his sword, and deny me my top off in between.

It wasn't a bad strategy.

It was working.

It was also pissing me off.

The second denial.

The third.

I was recovering a bit of MP with each stale mouthful of blood, but it wasn't nearly enough to offset the amount I was losing with every parry.

It had only been a few seconds since I was forced to engage him in melee, yet things were already looking a bit dire.

Our side was already completely in disarray.

The main target was too close for Sarah to fight against him effectively, the imps were scattered due to [Wind Magic], and Claret wasn't exactly much use due to how well this guy was using his cold iron sword.

I was glad I had borrowed Sarah's mithril sword, but that felt more like a consolation prize.

I continued to parry while trying to create distance, but he always managed to keep up despite my superior stats.

As to why, it was blatantly obvious.

My footwork was terrible. I knew it.

Despite how high my [Sword Mastery] was, and how it gave me the instincts to know how to manage my footwork and posture while fighting with a sword, actually executing that turned out to be quite a different affair.

Part of it was due to my unusual centre of gravity due to my pregnancy, but in reality that was probably the lesser of two issues.

The greater one, was the fact that I wasn't actually that experienced at using a sword in the first place.

Beyond the early floors of the dungeon, I mostly dropped weapon combat in favour of using my claws and magic. Both of them were natural parts of my body, and both were stronger than most weapons I could get my hands on anyways.

Especially magic was insanely versatile since I had access to all of the elements.

To think that this assassin's main weapon not only was a natural bane of my race, but even neutralized my main forms of fighting.

I hopped back after a parry in lieu of a glob of blood to generate some distance and hopefully create some sort of opportunity. In the corner of my eye, I saw understanding in Sarah' expression and she shifted her aim towards my opponent as I cleared her line of sight.

But to my dismay, not only did he close the distance almost immediately, but he even shifted a bit to my right to further block Sarah' line of sight.

"Tch!"

I wasn't the only one frustrated by this guy's movements.

But fortunately, I felt the presence of Geirskogul and his subordinates approaching from behind. It seemed like they had recovered from the wind blast which had scattered the little warriors.

Right as they came in range, I switched from defence to offence, trying to throw in a quick slash right after a strong parry.

Annoyingly, he simply raised his shield to block my quick strike. However, more than just that, the shield flashed white light.

It was fortunate that I was wearing Elli's shawl, as thanks to that, my face didn't feel like it was melting. Instead, the skin of my face felt more like it had suffered a bad sunburn while my vision had turned entirely white with no indication of recovering quickly on its own.

It wasn't perfect, and made me vow to get my hands on much more powerful light protection, it wasn't nearly as debilitating as the last time.

None of that really mattered though, as Geirskogul was already swinging down his halberd.

But against my expectation, rather than try to defend against him and the other imps, the man in white armour hopped up and swung his sword down hard.

In a hurry, I raised my sword to parry his next strike, only to be hit by a powerful blast of wind.

That wind scattered Geirskogul's subordinates again, with the chieftain himself barely holding his position.

On the other hand, my opponent took advantage of the magical wind provided by his allies to throw his entire body weight into his downwards swing, aided by the extra pressure from the spell.

Rather than parrying, I could only block the attack, causing our swords to stay in contact for more than the fraction of a second as usual.

(A bind?!)

I understood that these were stupid things to get involved in, and normally they were the sort of thing which you wanted to avoid. In this case, it was bad for me despite my higher strength. I could feel the cold iron sword sapping me of mana and warmth as my hand and arm chilled, making even the act of holding my weapon more difficult by the moment.

Despite the relatively mild effect, fearing a repeat usage of his shield, I grabbed it with my free hand. Hoping to take advantage of this opportunity, I swung the shield away, but unfortunately, he let go of it to avoid being taken away with it.

Instead, he adjusted his grip on his sword and tilted it, using the contact point between our swords as a pivot point to initiate a swing.

I adjusted my own blade, sliding it up his to break his new swing. But then he tried tilting his blade in the opposite direction.

Over and over, a dozen times in less than a second, I repeatedly adjusted my blade to prevent him from completing any swing.

I tried using my strength to push against his blade, but he simply used that force to pivot his sword towards me, either the tip or the pommel.

Giving up on that method, I tried countering his pivoting with my own. But as expected, he simply ignored my attempt to counter his trick by copying it and just tried to pivot his blade at the same time, forcing me to return to focusing in maintaining my guard.

I continued to adjust my guard to avoid his repeated attempts to leverage his weapon against me and waited until the gust of wind stopped, wherein I used that moment while he was still airborne and unable to freely move to leap back.

But again, against my expectation, he swung his sword down. Late in my reaction, I failed to parry his attack, and the tip of his blade barely managed to touch my foot.

Of course, that alone was enough, and my boot flew in an awkward direction, no flesh to hold it in place.

*Bang!*

A bullet flew just as I landed, and with a shower of sparks, broke apart on the man's cauldron. The force of it forced him to spin on one foot as he tried to catch me, allowing me to finally get a little bit of breathing room.

For what felt like the first time in ages, I managed to shoot a mouthful of fresh blood down my throat, doing wonders to recover my strength and my body.

While it wasn't enough to restore my lost foot, it did stop the bleeding and fix my eyes. As the warmth of the new mana radiated from my belly throughout my entire body, I glared at my enemy.

Nothing I was doing was working, so I needed to try changing things up a little bit. I gathered my aura beneath me, outside of the assassin's range and formed balls of stone and ice before shooting them like a hail storm at him.

As expected, the white armoured figure swiped at the massed projectiles with his cold iron sword as he charged in.

But I could see the surprise in his posture as the projectiles neither disappeared nor lost their velocity and continued on to pelt his pearl white armour.

The damage wasn't great as there wasn't much mass nor energy behind each blow, but the sheer numbers did do wonders to slow his advance.

*Bang!*

And bought plenty of time for Sarah to reload and fire another shot.

Sparks flew this time from the assassin's cuirass, causing him to stagger momentarily. His once nearly flawless armour was becoming riddled with dents.

But I wasn't very optimistic at this point. We were doing damage and I was on my way to be fully restored in strength. But from a broader perspective, we hadn't really made much progress at all towards our objective.

So, taking advantage of his loss of balance, I thrust out my shadow, splitting it in five and raced it across the trampled snow towards my enemy.

Of course he slashed his weapon in a panic, but I wouldn't be caught by this trick again so easily. I retreated the shadowy tendrils which were threatened by his blade, and before he could recover from his hasty swing, I trusted my shadows up, further splitting each spear into thin needles as they were guided into the tiny gaps around the greaves covering his left leg.

But not taking any excessive chances, I quickly extinguished my shadows before he could sap my aura of its mana.

The man in white armour glared at me through his visor.

(Ah, this is way better.)

The way he was letting his emotions take over felt more like the actions of a mindless beast. It was something I was quite comfortable dealing with, as it was quite common inside of the dungeon. Most likely, no matter how hard any creature tried to intimidate me in this manner, it would feel like little more than an autumn breeze against my cheeks.

This change in atmosphere was like a breath of fresh air to me, making it easier to think and strategize.

The problem was surprisingly simple, and the possible solutions extremely variable.

I checked the presences around me and confirmed where everyone was. Most of the imps were still trying to get back in range with the assassin after being blown away. Geirskogul was the exception as he was almost ready to attack.

Sarah was off to my side, preparing another bullet to fire.

Claret was overhead. Even without looking, I could tell how her fear paralyzed her. Fear of both the cold iron sword and the possibility of my death.

It wasn't like I could blame her. I had felt the consequences of that hideous metal first hand.

But despite that, she was trying to act. To do something.

I was just too preoccupied to notice how her shadows would try to strike before retreating due to the swaying blade.

It was annoying, but I had to admit that this assassin's swordplay was even better than I had thought. I wasn't the only one he was repelling with his swings.

Another gust of magical wind approached from behind him.

Sarah wouldn't get her shot off before it would connect.

[Sarah! Try to take down those mages instead!]

"!!!"

She looked at me in shock for a moment before moving to change her aim, not even bothering to take the time to respond.

At the same time, I readied my borrowed mithril sword.

The assassin, with the aide of the gust of wind even stronger than the previous ones, overcame his injury and charged at me despite my continuous barrage of hailstones and pebbles.

Fully prepared this time, I met his blade with a full swing, overcoming any attempt at trying to put our weapons into a bind a second time, nor setting up a followup swing.

That damnable cold iron sword was knocked back.

Unfortunately my opponent managed to keep his grip, but was thrown off balance making it easy for me to create a bit more distance between us.

*Bang!*

To my side, Sarah fired off her rifle. But a quick glance told me all that I needed. The human mage generated a floating slab of stone to block the steel bullet.

The results were unfortunate, but the fact that she was forced to do that meant that the two mages would be much harder pressed to support the white armoured man. Between all the possible results, this was the one I was hoping for the most. Aside from the more effective, but less likely possible results.

"Hyaaa!"

And following up with that, Geirskogul swung his halberd down at the enemy standing in between us. Catching the lip of the back of his helmet, while the imp chieftain's weapon didn't do much damage, it did manage to dislodge the solid mithril piece of armour in addition to knocking his target forward, severely damaging his balance.

With my fellow leader in the fray now, I was forced to reduce the intensity of my little hailstorm in fear of accidentally hitting him. In return, I increased the size and velocity of each projectile, aiming them at more critical points like his elbows, hips, and of course the visor of his helm.

At the same time, I tied my shadow to the end of my blade and threw it.

While the act was riskier in than engaging in melee in the sense of losing my weapon, I preferred to keep at a distance.

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The fact that the assassin was partially blinded due to his misaligned helm meant that he would have more difficulty dealing with our attacks.

Geirskogul continued to attack his backside, searching for weaknesses in his armour he could exploit while the mithril sword I wielded soared through the air and chopped down at my opponent's wrist. There was a decent chance that my weapon coming in contact with the cold iron sword would cause my shadow to dissipate, I needed to aim for other targets.

But in reality, that just meant that I needed to aim with the intent of making this guy lose his grip on his weapon. It was the only thing that gave him any chance at beating us.

Before he could fix his helmet, I struck.

While he was able to perceive my attack and attempted to stop it, not being constrained by my own body to strike, it was also easier to simply avoid his blade by a wide margin to continue my slice.

A small spurt of blood rose from where I had cut, but the damage was shallow. Chain mail covered the small gap which I struck at, limited the effect of my attack and thus failing to disarm my assailant.

But disarming him wasn't the only objective of my strike. It was also to reduce the danger to myself and Geirskogul on top of creating more opportunities to get what I really wanted.

With his wrist hurt, the assassin focused on defence even more. He used both hands to hold his weapon, the only thing allowing him any degree of power in his current situation.

And by prioritizing protection of his chosen weapon, he became more vulnerable elsewhere.

I shot out my shadow as squirming tendrils at him once again. Some circled around while others creeped up from the front until he was completely surrounded. The assassin struck out with his weapon defensively each time a tendril moved too close, which in case I withdrew those tendrils to maintain control over my shadow as a whole.

Seeing what I was doing, Claret thrust out her own shadow in a similar manner from above, adding to the man's difficulties.

Eventually I struck with several spears of shadow, forcing him to broadly swing his weapon.

Rather than let the tendrils be erased by his mana repelling blade, I simply disconnected them and retreated my aura before they could be effected by his large counter.

At the same time, I warped space and thrust my arm through it.

My disembodied hand appeared at his side, and with a quick flick of my fingers, my claws cleanly sliced through the belt which held my true prize.

Before he could redirect his swing to the source of my real attack, I grabbed the newly freed canister and withdrew my hand, undoing my [Dimensional Magic] in the going.

There it was, the container which imprisoned Orphne's soul.

I could feel the faint warmth of her aura through the cold metal exterior. It was slowly undulating, as if she was asleep, perhaps dreaming.

Though if that was true, it was better. She shouldn't have to remember the experience of having her soul held away from her still living body.

And now that this most important goal had been accomplished, I was more free in how to deal with this wannabe assassin.

"The holy artifact!"

The man yelled out as he saw my cradling the canister carefully in my arms. The severed dagger and tube was still dangling off of his cut belt, barely secured to his body via belt loops.

As for me, I had no idea what was so holy about such a thing. This canister, and the dagger which fed it, was a completely blasphemous thing, and shouldn't exist in this world.

Immediately, I bent space around his legs and instantaneously expanded it along with the ground below. With the space itself larger than before, in theory all the molecules that made up his legs would be spread out. But with the area around the immediately expanded space still being entirely the same, a bit of work undulating the expanded space and recontracting it after a few moments should force his body to phase through a part of the ground, merging the two together as the atoms which made up both would be partially jumbled up.

But to my annoyance, it didn't work at all.

As I tried to warp the space which his body directly occupied, I felt strong resistance against my actions, and in the end the results I was hoping for didn't manifest.

It was annoying and made my next step more difficult, but things only went that far.

Withdrawing my mithril sword, I lined up its point towards my target. Then timing it with Geirskogul's persistent attacks, thrust it as fast as I could with my shadow, not neglecting the distracting barrage of hail and gravel nor the shadow tendrils still provoking him.

[Parallel Thought] was really being pushed to its limits for the first time since I became pregnant with Alicia.

With the assassin forced to deal with so many threats, he was late in reacting to the blade the same colour as his armour originally was. And late was more than enough for me.

Immediately before contact, I laterally compressed the space the sword occupied, turning its already thin blade to only the thickness of an atom.

The tip easily found its way through the interlocking metallic crystal lattice which comprised of my enemy's armour before it was interfered with his magical resistance. But by the time the interference managed to disrupt my own magic and undo it, the blade tip had managed to penetrate the man's chest plate. The sudden expansion of the neutron wide thick blade disrupted the makeup of his armour while doing little to stop the sword's momentum.

Fissures erupted in the armour as the mithril sword expanded back to its original size.

Not only that, but despite the added resistance, even if momentary, caused by the pressure of the sword blade against the structure of the armour, Isaac Newton continued his strike and the blade continued on its path with the remainder of the momentum I had imparted.

My assailant grunted in pain as the metal shaft tore through his torso, stopping only when the blade tip encountered the back of his breastplate.

The blow wasn't lethal by any means. A quick check confirmed that he had only lost a quarter of his HP throughout this battle so far.

But the bleeding combined with a punctured lung meant that his ability to defend himself had dropped considerably, not to mention his offensive capability.

*Bang!*

Another shot rang out from Sarah. The fourth one she had aimed at the mages after I instructed her to.

But this one was a bit different. The sound alone was enough to tell me that, but the larger and brighter than normal puff that expanded from the barrel suggested to me that she did something different.

It was only for a fraction of a second, but it looked like the bullet that flew from her weapon was black in colour in its tip, unlike the usual silvery steel tip with their copper orange jacket.

Sparing a fragmentary moment, I watched the trajectory of the shot.

The human mage again formed a stone slab midair to intercept the shot. But unlike the previous shot I watched this one pulverized the magical rock into a cloud of dust, and with little change to its trajectory, the black bullet continued unobstructed until a bright red flower blossomed in the elf mage's shoulder to the side and behind the human mage.

The shock of the impact caused the elf, who was maintaining the overhead storm cloud which kept Harja and her subordinates grounded, to fly through the air before being run through the broken snow which covered the ground.

Back where she originally stood, her staff, still held tightly in the grip of her now severed arm, toppled over with nothing to support it.

"Idmon!"

The human mage yelled out in a panic as she rushed over to her fallen companion.

The cloud cover quickly dissipated together with the elf's consciousness. A fact which Harja immediately took advantage of, switching from direct combat on the ground to flying above her opponent and dive bombing, putting gravity itself into the strength of her attacks while limiting her opponent's ability to counter attack.

"Meleager! We need to go! Now! Forget about the demon lord or we're all going to die in vain!"

The man glanced back at the mage who shouted at him. The sight of his black armoured companion now in quite a dire situation was quite clear, and with a quick glare at me, he immediately started to back off while doing his best to ward our attacks with his only weapon.

But I wasn't going to let him get away so easily.

He dared to invade my home, hurt my people, and threatened Alicia's life.

I attacked his legs with my shadows as he tried to hobble away.

Despite his attempts to ward my attacks off with his cold iron blade, both Geirskogul and Claret helped to chip away at him, tearing at the weak points in his armour. The scent of blood filled the air and blood dripped from between the dirty metal plates that comprised his armour.

The moment the opportunity showed itself, I used a shadow tendril to grab the sword still embedded in his chest and ripped it out together with a spurt of blood.

I had to force myself to hold back from licking my lips as the scent of his delicious blood grew ever thicker.

Together with all the other attacks, I added the mithril sword to them.

Soon enough, I managed to throw a heavy blow in and severed the man's arm at the elbow. Removing that damnable weapon of his from the equation.

At least that was what I had thought.

"Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!"

He cursed and cursed as things turned so badly against him one after another.

As for me, I dug my shadow tendrils into his legs, now that I had little to worry about with his weapon separated from his body.

But once again, I was proved naive when it came to battles to the death regarding intelligent creatures.

"Ancaeus! Hylas! Go! Run!"

With his yells, the now red armoured man grabbed his severed arm with his one remaining hand, and threw it together with his sword to his companions.

"Fuck! Seriously?!"

I thrust out a tendril in an attempt to catch the airborne blade to prevent it from reaching the man's companions.

But it wasn't like I could touch the sword itself, especially with my shadow, so I was forced to compromise and try to grab his arm in the hope that it would be enough.

And to my chagrin, it wasn't, as while I succeeded in grabbing the arm, the limp hand didn't have a strong enough grip to continue holding the blade after being jerked around so much. The cold iron sword continued to fly and landed near his companions.

The woman, carrying her fellow mage on her back now that her bleeding had been stopped, reached out to grab the sword.

"Eeek!"

Her hand immediately retreated from the sword though.

"Ancaeus!"

"Damnit, you hold the insulated grip you stupid woman!"

(Seriously?!)

I had no idea the grip was insulated!

But even if I knew that, it was possible that my sensitivity to the material would mean that that alone wasn't enough.

The black armoured man picked up the cold iron sword as he regrouped with the two mages. The human mage threw out powerful spells to keep Harja's group at bay, even if it was only for a few seconds.

Then, against my expectations once again, the man in black armour threw some sort of crystal onto the ground. As the thing shattered, a bright flash erupted, blinding me for a moment.

Once my eyes had recovered, the entire area where those intruders had been was covered in thick smoke, obscuring all vision in the area. Not only that, the density of mana within the smoke mean that [Mana Perception] was being over-saturated. Even worse, [Sense Presence] wasn't working through the smoke, being overwhelmed by the sheer number of hits.

I was forced to give up on on that group, but I already had something much more important to deal with right in front of me.

The man in now red armour glared at me.

"Do your worst, Demon Lord."

"I've never called myself such a thing, but oh well."

Something like that didn't matter. Not anymore.

"Claret. Kill him."

"Yes Master!"

With nothing to hold her back anymore, I let my ever faithful and loyal familiar get the stress relief she deserved so much as I turned away from him.

As long as he couldn't threaten the safety of those I cared about, he didn't matter.

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