Volume 2 – The World Sneered
Red wings of flame flapped in the royal capital’s skies.
The soldiers who turned into angels spread around while shedding red tears from their eyes.
Of course, they also headed towards Mary and the group.
“It’s like a scene from Hell. And they all have 20,000 Sorcery Rating?”
“So that’s 1,000,000 combined.”
It was lower than Defale’s, whom they fought in Captis, but the numbers were still overwhelming.
To be frank, it was a hopeless sight.
Philias felt like running away any moment now.
“Don’t make it sound worse, princess.”
“It’s alright. We just have to kill them all!”
Ami grabbed wheels of around 1 meter in size with both hands, and leaped forward.
Then she threw.
The wheels spinning at high speed while creating a whirlwind around them split the angel’s body in two.
“That’s one. Wait, it recovered. Was the cut too dull?”
The severed body linked together again with flesh threads.
The angel continued charging at Ami.
She charged back towards the angel and used new wheels in both hands to clash against the flesh sword her foe swung down.
Ami frowned.
By all means, the angel was stronger in a contest of strength.
And when he pointed his empty hand towards her, a spell of flames surged from it.
A fireball was shot.
Ami bent backwards to evade it.
She did a backwards somersault, and threw a wheel while floating in the air.
The wheel inclined in front of the angel’s eyes, then vertically crashed into the angel’s body as it pushed its wheel surface against the angel.
The angel’s body was chopped into pieces by spokes moving at high speed.
The angel got turned into minced meat without a chance for recovery as blood and meat scattered around.
That’s one, Ami though, as she jumped forward to dodge an ice bullet shot from another angel approaching from above her.
“Now, I don’t care about maintaining my image any more. This is the end, so go wild and disgusting, my insects!”
The sand between the cobble paving under Cutie’s feet began to crawl and wriggle.
Each piece of sand grew wings and turned into an insect, and they remained in the air like a black mist.
The angel suddenly went diagonally upward.
He pulled his own arm out, turned it into a bow and nocked an arrow.
Cutie immediately held her hand up towards him.
The swarm of insects swooped down upon the angel.
The insects bit his arm off before he could fire an arrow and they devoured his torso.
“With how lax their guards are, they’re sitting ducks for the power of Empress.”
Cutie ran off full of confidence and without a moment’s delay, and commanded her familia to attack the next angel.
But her enemy did not just take it.
The angel burned the insects away with flames emitted from his hands.
Cutie immediately created more insects, and continued attacking without a pause while avoiding getting closer to her enemy.
“I see.”
Watching this scene unfold, Philias put her hand on her chin and nodded.
“Basically, we just have to beat them up to the point where they can’t recover.”
“That is correct.”
“Then I can also – oops.”
Suddenly, a piece of flesh flew aimed at Philias.
She tilted her head and dodged it.
The piece of flesh smashed a sturdy stone wall into pieces.
“Scary……”
“Another one is coming, Miss. Philias!”
Mary raised her arm to shoot a bone shell.
Calaria also aimed her gun.
Meanwhile, Philias pointed at the angel and calmly said:
“I command thee by the name of the angel. ‘Do not move.’”
The angel flying in the sky suddenly stopped after Philias loudly shouted.
He stopped flapping his wings and fell towards the ground.
“That was Temperance……”
“Finish it off now.”
Mary grew a huge arm from her back and crushed the angel with her fist.
“Aaah, you finally saw it, huh?”
“I still don’t understand how it works, though.”
“I want to keep that hidden while I fight. Still, I’m relieved that it does work on them. Basically, this means that they have a will. Poor things.”
“Will……?”
“I don’t want to reveal the trick, so it’s my secret. Anyway, that’s how it is.”
The others wanted to complain and tell her, ‘Now is not the time’, but they decided not to.
(They were in pain when their bodies were changing. Even if they are being controlled, I suppose their egos are not completely erased.)
Why did he do something like that?
He could have just completely brainwashed them.
Mary wondered, but she decided that it was a waste of time to think about that.
The enemy’s objective was to destroy the dignity of Henry and Mary.
He would do anything to make things unpleasant for them.
“They’re coming again. We can’t let them surround us.”
“I’ll step in front too. Let’s all survive and regroup!”
After Ami and Cutie, Mary also headed towards the large crowd of angels.
She held a massive scythe in her hands.
She created machine guns on her back.
The angels approached from four directions as if they were waiting for her, and she welcomed them with bullets and her crooked blade.
“You’re not used to fighting them. You can pull back if this is too much.”
Calaria also transformed the black briefcase in her hand, equipping the back and arm parts, and flew up into the air.
The enemy she headed for was not expecting an attack.
She cut the angel with her sword and the angel turned into a red splash and vanished.
“Everyone’s so determined. Needless to say, I’ll flee if things get too bad. Because while there is life, there is hope.”
Philias let her feelings show.
Then, an angel suddenly appeared right beside her.
It almost looked like teleportation.
But it was simply a high-speed movement.
The angel’s body had transformed because of World’s blood.
In other words, the angel’s body itself was running on mana.
So there was a direct link between the angel’s Sorcery Rating and physical abilities.
Unworldly speed.
Unworldly power.
It was impossible to fight so many at a time unless one could exploit their weak point of having a weak guard due to relying on regeneration.
As such, the finishing blow from Ami’s wheels were lacking.
On the other hand, Cutie, who was inferior in Sorcery Rating, could destroy the angels quickly enough to stop them from regenerating.
An angel diagonally swung his flesh sword down.
Philias inclined her body and dodged with a small move.
Then she unsheathed her own sword.
The sword was covered in flames.
The sword was so scorching hot it could melt diamond, and she stabbed the angel in the chest with it.
“Maybe they’re weak to flames?”
Coupled with the fat around his meat, the angel was immediately covered in flames.
A human would immediately turn into ash.
But it was not so with the angels.
The angel burned, scorched, and swung his sword down on Philias while regenerating.
“So annoying.”
Philias jumped back to dodge the attack.
The sword grazed her bangs – she barely made it in time.
(I don’t want a close distance fight.)
She felt a sudden chill as she faced the angel heading for her, and pointed at the angel with her index finger like a gun.
Wings of flame came out of her back.
“In the name of the real angel. ‘Do not regenerate’.”
The angel instantly stopped moving.
He froze up with his sword raised high in front of Philias.
“Uh…… Ah, aaah……!”
He groaned in pain almost like a human, then collapsed to the ground.
His carbonized body hit the ground and got smashed up into pieces.
“Phew, looks like Temperance works well on them, unlike His Majesty. That’s a relief…… but it also pains me in my chest.”
Philias took a glance at the sinless soldier’s remains, then felt a presence behind her and immediately jumped back.
A boulder-like bullet passed by her face.
It hit the wall of a commoner’s house, pierced through with almost no sound, and created a perfect round circle.
“There’s 500 of them, right? So it’s 100 for each of us. What a joke.”
Philias looked at three angels approaching from different directions and loudly sighed.
♢♢♢
Calaria, who was attacking the angels from the air, was suddenly surrounded from all directions by more than ten angels.
“I’m not used to fighting in the air.”
The angels raised their hands in unison.
Then, with their violent Sorcery Ratings of 20,000, they attacked Calaria with spells specialized in attacking.
“But if I can’t use complex sorcery, then!”
Calaria sped up in a ‘downward’ direction
Her equipment was not meant for flying in the first place.
Its fuel consumption was inefficient, so it could not be used all the time.
First, she had to break through this encirclement.
But she was completely surrounded, so it was impossible to dodge angels’ spells no matter which way she went.
So with her two pistols in her hands, Calaria headed for the ground after shooting down the ‘basic spells’ approaching her from the front like fireballs or blocks of ice.
Originally, the elite soldiers of the royal army would use a more diverse set of spells.
But the angels only used basic spells.
It was probably because only a fragment of their egos remained.
They were fighting in pain with their atypical bodies and under World’s domination, so they did not have the spare energy to use complex spells.
Calaria somehow made it through the barrage of spells, and the angels continued chasing her before reaching out and trying to grab her.
She also dealt with this using her pistols.
She blew away her foe’s arms and had some leeway to move now, so she transformed her Machinenaus into its long barrel mode.
An impressive direct hit.
But the bullets bounced off as if they hit the barrier surrounding the royal castle.
(I guess we can’t beat that giant with brute force either.)
The giant did not seem like he would attack right now.
He was probably focused on protecting the castle.
Mary and the others’ strategy was to thin the angels’ numbers first.
Let sleeping dogs lie. Calaria decided not to attack any further.
She landed.
A rain of spells came down from above her head.
They were all like powerful bullets that each created 3 meter wide craters in the ground.
It would not end well for Calaria if she got hit.
First, she focused on evasion.
Then she aimed her rifle while running.
She shot at an angel in the air.
The enemy tried to guard himself with his hands, but his upper body was blown off along with his arms.
Calaria’s attacks were clearly stronger now.
It seemed to be thanks to the equipment she got in Pupa’s research institute.
If converted to Sorcery Rating, its power was probably equivalent to over 30,000.
(This was clearly developed for me, after all. What’s Yueri, that woman who is still hiding under these circumstances, really thinking?)
She was Calaria’s real mother.
But for Calaria, she was probably one of the creatures in this world who were the hardest to understand.
And she did not want to understand.
But unless this question was answered, this ‘bad feeling’ Calaria had due to her using this weapon would not go away.
“Uaaah – ah.”
At that moment, she heard some faint groaning behind her.
She turned around.
A sword was right in front of her eyes.
She hastily twisted her body.
The sword cut Calaria’s cheek and spilled blood.
“Tsch! I guess there is no time to think!”
She transformed her gun into a gauntlet.
The angel was about to attack again.
Calaria jumped back and grasped the hilt of her sword.
Her foe was already ready to attack.
She drew her sword with some delay.
But her next moves happened before the blink of an eye.
Bisection. Flash. Pulverization.
The angel was blown away, leaving behind only an arm holding a sword.
Snap! A noise was heard after some delay.
The angel’s meat fell to the ground, then rotted away and vanished.
“World, High Priestess and even Emperor are holding back, but we can’t.”
She sheathed her sword, took her rifle again and one by one shot down the angels approaching her.
There really was no end to them.
It could be considered a surprise victory just to shoot down three enemies with 20,000 Sorcery Rating, so it was ridiculous to fight hundreds of them.
But thinking about it would only demotivate her.
Her only choice now was to fight recklessly, or only death awaited.
She calmly took aim and pulled the trigger.
She looked for her next enemy, and shot starting with the closest one.
After she repeated this a few times, the angels suddenly started making strange movements.
“Aah…… No, I don’t want to die before I see her……!”
“My wife… Just let me see her once……”
“Uh, aaagh! I can’t go to her with this body! I can’t ever see anyone agaaaain!”
They were lamenting with human words while holding their heads and twisting their bodies.
Some of them smashed against the ground after free falling, and some ran around in confusion.
“W-What’s going on? Is this a new arcana power!?”
Calaria was confused, but after looking around, she saw Mary with a bow in her hands.
She was drawing the bowstring back, but there was no arrow.
Her fingers radiated a green light, and a mana arrow of the same color was formed.
She fired the arrow straight into an angel’s chest, and the angel began to groan like the others.
“The arcana of Lover! I see, so it’s dragging out the remaining consciousness of the angels……!”
It invoked the feelings they held for others.
No matter where they came from, the angels remembered the people they loved, and that anguish surpassed World’s domination.
The angels had to suffer even more in exchange for this, however.
“This is the only way for us to survive. Forgive me.”
Calaria shot the slowed down angel in the head.
The angel’s upper body got blown off, and he died after convulsing for a while due to his lower body not being enough to regenerate from.
“I want to feel good while fighting once in a while, you know.”
She could not help but complain due to the bad aftertaste this left.
Mary’s arrows only shot one at a time.
This took a lot less time and work than to kill the angels, so it was an effective strategy. But it was far from enough to stop all the angels.
Still, this gave the group some leeway to evade.
The more time they could use on attacking, the faster the number of angels decreased.
Calaria hoped that this was enough to comfortably end the first phase, but she felt a hostile presence to her side the next moment, and hastily turned her body.
It was not a fragment of flesh or a basic spell that grazed her body.
It was a flying sword that cut all things in creation.
“So she’s here.”
Calaria followed the hostile presence and glared in its direction.
“Digi!”
A young girl with a beast mask was standing on a roof.
Her robe fluttered in the wind.
“Haha, how nice it is to suffer. I envy you.”
For some reason, instead of Calaria, she looked at the soldiers suffering because of Lover’s power and muttered to herself.