Elsez immediately drew mana into her body, strengthening herself, and charged at Dike.
But Dike wasn’t someone who would just take the blow.
KWAANG—!
She easily blocked the attack.
“You’re quite impatient. I was actually worried about you.”
Elsez gave a crooked smile.
“Looks like you’ve got the luxury to worry about me?”
Though Dike was skilled in magic as well, she couldn’t use it here.
In the dimensional rift, only mana from the other world existed.
Which meant: Dike could rely only on swordsmanship, while Elsez could use both magic and close combat.
On top of that, Elsez still had a little healing potion left.
‘…Though I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to pull it from the bracelet and drink it.’
Even so, despite all those disadvantages, Dike wasn’t an opponent to underestimate.
She had killed the first demon-god; Elsez, a created one, could never reach that level.
‘And… I don’t feel my strength recovering anymore.’
According to the forbidden text Rashiel had interpreted, there was a limit to how much mana a soul could contain.
So the maximum demon-god’s power that Reti’s soul could hold… was probably what Elsez had now.
‘My mana might recover endlessly, but my body will wear out before that.’
Trying to tire Dike out first wouldn’t work either—she showed no intention of attacking first.
Her goal wasn’t to fight Elsez, but to open the rift again and return to her original world.
‘So I need to finish this before my body gives out.’
Elsez launched into another fast assault, pushing Dike back.
Dike parried every strike.
KWAANG—! BAM!
In that space of no time and no place, their clashes echoed with thunderous roars.
Over and over the cycle repeated, until Elsez began to wear down.
Her breath grew ragged, her movements slowed.
Dike too was tiring from the long battle, though less so than Elsez.
‘…I can’t keep forcing this with power alone.’
If she did, she would be the first to collapse.
Elsez searched for another way.
‘The rift has no terrain to use—so no tricks to divert her eyes and strike from an angle.’
That applied to Dike as well, but for the weaker Elsez, it was hardly favorable.
If it came down to pure strength, the weaker side had no real hope of overturning it with strategy.
‘If I try black magic, Dike senses it faster than I can cast it…’
Dike’s strength was divine power—she could instantly detect its opposite energy.
‘There has to be some other way.’
As she wrestled with her thoughts, Elsez suddenly remembered her training with Rashiel before their final battle.
‘Some fools cry out that you have to fight fair and head-on—but that’s just the brainless method of people with nothing but strength.’
‘…’
‘If you can objectively grasp your own strength and abilities, and fight efficiently—that’s strategy too.’
‘In that case…’
Resolving herself, Elsez rushed Dike again.
Dike met her with the holy sword, and in a brief lapse of focus from the drawn-out battle, Elsez’s hand was grazed, leaving a cut.
Drip, drip…
Red drops fell onto the white void.
Ignoring it, Elsez attacked again, recklessly, almost suicidally.
But she couldn’t overpower Dike.
In the end, she was knocked back by Dike’s strength, her body thrown far.
Dike looked at her as she knelt on one knee, gasping for breath, and asked:
“Isn’t it time to stop this pointless fight?”
“…”
“Come back with me, to the world where your companions are waiting.”
Dike stepped closer and extended her hand.
At that moment, Elsez’s lips curled upward.
“No. You’ll never go back.”
And instantly, from the drops of her blood at Dike’s feet, crimson vines surged upward.
“…!”
Before Dike could counter, the blood-formed vines wrapped tightly around her.
Her eyes widened as she stared at the vines binding her arms.
‘Black magic… through blood.’
There were two types of black magic:
One used the mana of another world.
The other used blood as its medium.
The latter had stronger, more lasting power—but at the cost of consuming the caster’s own life.
“Ugh…”
A searing, burning agony coursed through Dike’s wrists and lower body where the vines held her.
The more strength she put into breaking them, the greater the pain became.
Elsez rushed in at high speed toward the still-bound Dike and struck her.
“…!”
A crushing pain, enough to knock the breath out of her lungs, spread through Dike’s entire body.
It was power incomparable to any of the earlier blows.
“Huff… huff… Once a hero, and now you stoop to such cowardly tricks….”
“That’s what you were best at, wasn’t it? Using whatever means necessary to reach your goal.”
Isn’t that right?
Elsez’s fist slammed into Dike again.
In that agonizing pain, Dike felt Elsez mustering the last of her strength to deliver a fatal strike.
She could sense Elsez was breaking down under the very force she was unleashing.
The fact that Elsez was even using black magic through her own blood meant she was already at her limit.
Elsez took a deep breath and prepared her final blow.
She felt certain Dike’s end was close.
But just as she was about to strike—
Dike tore through the vines and broke free.
Elsez faltered in surprise, but quickly bit down hard and pressed the attack.
Dike immediately summoned her holy sword and countered.
KWAANG—!
The calm smile was gone from Dike’s face.
‘If I had taken one more of those attacks, I might’ve died.’
Keeping Elsez alive any longer meant risking her own death.
To survive, she would have to kill.
Feeling the danger, Dike fought desperately now, unlike before.
The two continued trading blows, watching for even the smallest opening.
Both could feel, in their own bodies and in their opponent’s, the toll of the long battle—
That the time for the final strike was near.
Then, Dike saw it—Elsez’s weakness. Her slowing movements revealed a gap.
She didn’t miss it. Dike lunged and struck.
Thud—
Elsez tried to dodge, but Dike’s holy sword stabbed her in the side.
“Ugh…”
Dike raised the corner of her mouth, certain of victory.
But in that instant—
Elsez, gritting her teeth, didn’t retreat. She charged straight in.
And Dike realized.
‘No way…?’
Elsez had given up her body on purpose to create that opening.
The moment of realization came as Elsez’s hand gripped Dike’s neck.
At once, black mana surged from her hand into Dike’s body.
“Hhhrgh…”
The invading mana seized Dike’s heart and unleashed powerful magic.
At last, Dike’s heart stopped.
Her body collapsed limply, and the holy sword disintegrated into dust.
Blood welled dark and thick from Elsez’s wound where she had been stabbed, and she too fell.
Only then did Elsez swallow the healing potion she had been holding in her mouth all along.
She had known she would take a fatal blow.
“Haa…”
Elsez lay her battered body down.
Her broken frame didn’t even have the strength to twitch a finger.
As she stared into the silent, soundless void, reality set in.
‘…I did it.’
I—no, we—saved the world.
The moment that truth sank in, tears burst forth.
Relief, and with it, every hardship and struggle flashed across her mind in a sweeping rush.
The heavy weight in her chest lifted—leaving emptiness, but also freedom.
And sadness, too, that she couldn’t share this moment with her companions who had suffered alongside her.
“Hhh…”
Elsez finally let out all the fear and crushing responsibility she had hidden from everyone, weeping them away.
At last, she was no longer a hero—just an ordinary person again.
As her wounds slowly healed, her sobs quieted.
And then, before her, a dimensional rift appeared—one connected to the real world.
She couldn’t stay here forever. Even if she didn’t want to, she had to return.
As she hesitated, unable to step forward right away, Rashiel’s words suddenly returned to her mind.
‘I’ll come find you.’
Recalling that voice, Elsez made her decision and reached toward the rift.
Soon, a brilliant light wrapped around her.
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