Chapter 390: Demon Queen vs Queen of Angels Final Part
"..." Esther Marionette slams the Qyraen against the ground as I land to draw the Qyraen’s attention, since it only focuses on me. Knocked to the ground, she drags herself, clawing at the floor as she rises, trying to run desperately toward me. Her body grows slightly larger.
But not because she’s grown — it’s because her muscles have expanded so aggressively that her ribs puncture through her chest, and the eye on her chest has its pupil staring upward, trembling with pain.
"EVELYN!!" Unlike the desperation she exudes, her body tries to reach me. I throw a spear to Esther Marionette, who slices off one of the Qyraen’s legs. The Qyraen punches Esther as her leg grows back.
But it grows back deformed, with parts of the bone protruding and bizarre, spiny distortions. I leap up onto the threads, dodging her while Esther Marionette pierces her back with the spear. I throw another spear to her, and it impales the Qyraen’s thigh, slowly crippling her.
The Qyraen’s movements are completely clumsy, probably because of her utterly deformed leg and her vision, which must not be faring well either.
"STOP!! STOP!! STOP RUNNING!!!" Her voice grows more distorted as tears mixed with blood drip onto the ground and she screams at me. Something in her tone is almost childlike, like a kid being bullied.
’S-So suffocating... so unpleasant...’ I start crying because of the taste of her despair. Arial cried too when she ate my emotions the first time. Now I understand her. I can taste the Qyraen’s despair as if it were my own.
It’s as if all the emotions around me have become part of me too — a unique experience, but one I don’t like at all. Even though there’s something "sweet" in this flavor, it’s something that suffocates me.
"..." She points a hand at me, but Esther Marionete drives another spear into her — a spear made of ice that pins her hand to the ground. The Hikishin blast creates an extremely deep hole in the floor while I use my threads on her leg to hold her against the ground.
’So strong...’ The power she possesses is undeniable. The ease with which she unleashes attacks so brutally powerful is terrifying. If she had any awareness of what she was doing, she would probably win this fight.
"GAAAHHHRRR!!!" She lets out a scream, forcing herself to rise as her leg is deeply cut by the threads. Esther Marionette starts hurling several ice spears at her limbs, trying to stop her from moving while I look for an opportunity to kill her already.
"If you still have even a shred of awareness, stop trying to move. You’re destroying yourself. Can’t you see? The more you move, the more you hurt yourself!" I try to make her stop, because at this point she’s only torturing herself.
"..." Her eye finally focuses on me again, as if she’d heard me. But instead of a positive reaction, it grows more aggressive, and her pupil trembles. Before she can show any other reaction, Esther Marionette pierces her chest, and the spear expands, anchoring itself into the ground with its second blade, pinning her down.
"EVELYN!!!! AAHHHHH!!!! DIE!!! WHY WON’T YOU DIE!!!" She lets out a terribly loud scream, just repeating the same thing. Even though she can speak, all the words are just simple repetition, all tied to me in some way. The Hikishin wave in her voice shatters all the ice spears as she lunges at me with a violent leap that breaks her own legs.
"!!!" Before I can escape, she grabs me, squeezing her hands, trying to crush me. But my dress of threads, which I made indestructible, manages to block most of her strength.
I move my fingers, pulling the threads to hurt her, but her grip only tightens as she crashes against the ground with a loud boom, her broken legs trying to regenerate, only causing the bones to tear out of the flesh, ripping through it brutally.
"Esther!! Attack this thing, quick!" I shout to the Marionette as the Qyraen moves me, trying to place me into the empty part of her neck. Since she has no head, from here I can see inside her body. The inside of her neck is full of deformed, scattered teeth, not even arranged in proper rows.
I can literally see her heart from here, completely unprotected and in an entirely wrong position. I also see a small, shiny object — it seems to be her core, weakly growing with the magic from the environment.
"...KYAAAHH!!" Esther Marionette cuts off the Qyraen’s arm, and she screams, writhing. Esther thankfully managed to do it using blood magic, and she quickly grabs me, pulling me away from the Qyraen, who tried to devour me alive.
"NO!! No!! DON’T RUN!! COWARD!!! STOP!!" The tone of despair in her voice is cutting, as if something important is wrong, or as if she’d lost something she never should have lost.
"...[Sanguine Wall]" Esther Marionette uses defensive magic, forming a sphere of blood around us. Immediately, I see the sphere take on a bright reddish glow, as if something intensely bright outside is colliding directly with the barrier.
"You’re really strong. I know you don’t understand, but without you, this would be impossible," I say to Esther Marionette, trying to distract my mind from this mess of emotions I see all around us. But it doesn’t last long.
"..."
Crack
I hear a snapping sound as I see a hand piercing through Esther Marionette’s body, opening a hole in her and trying to reach me. I retreat a few steps as Esther Marionette strikes the hand, cutting it off. She grabs me and leaps upward, dodging some physical blow that shatters the barrier.
Fortunately, Esther Marionette is a puppet that isn’t alive, so a wound is irrelevant and I can just fix her later. That calms me down — the thought of not losing her.
’!!!’ I see the Qyraen’s wings emitting silvery smoke. They are extremely broken, with the flesh vividly exposed as blood pours in liters onto the ground. It looks excruciatingly painful.
’Her blood is forming bubbles, almost as if it’s boiling. Probably her regeneration is doing something bizarre to her blood...’
The Qyraen lets out a pained, desperate moan as I use the threads to bind her hands before she can grab Esther Marionette. Esther quickly throws me upward and drops down onto the Qyraen, using magic.
Platinum metallic spears impale the Qyraen’s entire body, immobilizing her enough. I quickly use as many threads as I’ve accumulated around us to bind the Qyraen’s whole body.
Even with this mountain of threads tying her down, she begins forcing herself to rise, her flesh being squeezed and shredded by the threads that cut her due to the movement, along with the spears.
"This... is grotesque... you idiot! Stop trying to move!! Can’t you see you’re literally destroying your body more and more!?" I approach her, scolding her for it. Even with the indestructible threads holding her, she managed to lift herself onto her knees, completely shattering the ground around her.
To immobilize her better, Esther Marionette climbs onto her back, grabbing and pulling her wings while pressing her down with her leg.
I quickly grip [Infinity +1] and approach her. The eye on her chest moves violently, as if trying to flee, even though her body tries to lunge forward.
"..." The veins in her eyes bulge so violently that they burst, starting to bleed as her pupil becomes slit, staring at me. I take a deep breath as her despair engulfs the area like a dense shroud.
Her eye, for a moment, seems a little calmer and keeps staring at me despite her body continuing to thrash. But the calm in her eye vanishes moments later as she looks between the sword, my hand, and my face.
"Just die already... you’ve fallen far too low, and this is... horrifying." I pierce her eye, aiming for the small core inside her. The sword sinks deep as her body thrashes against the threads and she lets out a horrible scream.
She thrashes so madly toward me that a great deal of her flesh is torn away by the threads, but she can’t break free. Her eye, with the sword piercing it, looks at me with so many tears.
Until the movement slowly begins to stop, with small contractions that gradually diminish until her chest no longer rises and falls. Even as she tries to drag herself toward me, her body can no longer manage it. The sword that cut her soul and is draining her Hikishin prevents her from attempting another desperate gambit to evolve again.
Her eye, full of tears, still moves, being cut by the blade from the motion it makes, but soon it stops, staring at me as she finally dies.
"Haaa..." I fall to my knees on the ground, panting as I cough and cry. A black slime drips from my lips — a liquid mixture of Hikishin and her emotions that materialized because of my power.
"It’s over..." I drag myself backward, looking at the dead body of this aberration. Something about this image feels wrong. I don’t know — this isn’t how I imagined this war would come to an end, and it gives me no satisfaction to see that she ended up like this.
Her mind was already gone, so I couldn’t feel any satisfaction of revenge. She was just a desperate, irrational monster, full of pain and agony over her own existence.
"...Why become this? After everything..." I can’t understand. Why choose to become this grotesque aberration and die in this bizarre way instead of just giving up or trying to negotiate a real treaty.