F-Rank Puppeteer!! But I'll be Queen, and I'm not a narcissist!!!!!-Chapter 187: Balanced Combat Quickly Unbalanced
"ATTACK!!" I shout to all the soldiers advancing against thousands of angels. I charge forward among them, cutting down everything in my path with my spear.
"Lady Esther, what should I do?" One of the sub-generals asks me as he accompanies me across the battlefield. His question makes me think for a second.
"Take 1000 soldiers to the right flank. We need to reach the enemy’s core area." I give the command and use a spear technique that cleaves a path forward, killing everyone ahead.
’...’ It’s too easy for me right now. Why are there only weak and average angels that I can kill in one strike? Because of this, I manage to advance straight into the heart of the enemy formation, punching holes in their defenses.
Clank
I deflect a sword strike with the tip of my spear, but the blow still pushes me back a little. I see who delivered it and, to my surprise, it’s the enemy general himself.
A man with hair as black as ebony and white eyes. His wings are large and pure white, while his angelic halo is platinum, and he emanates a very strong divine presence.
"Who would have thought, the general of these troops himself came here to fight?" I say with false sympathy.
"You are also the demon general of this area, and yet you are here. I suppose that answers your question, doesn’t it?" He holds his sword in a stance against me, and all nearby angels back away, turning to focus on my soldiers.
"In part, yes." I watch him move his sword, and with a violent wave of magic, he releases a slash that slices through the air itself. I dodge with a leap, and when I touch the ground, I’m already in front of him in a lunge.
He defends the strike of my spear with the flat of his sword without even moving from his spot. He tries to redirect my spear with his sword, but I fire several knives at his head, forcing him to jump back, now with a few cuts on his cheek.
"Urgh..." He vomits a little blood but quickly uses magic to dissipate the curses. He lunges forward with a swift strike, catching me by surprise and throwing me back a bit.
"...Don’t you think that’s an excessive number of weapons?" he asks, and I see part of my coat has opened, revealing hundreds of hidden knives, each with a different curse.
"I like throwing them at the heads of idiot angels like you. Angels always fall for the simplest tricks." I grab three of the throwing knives and hurl them at him. He defends with his sword, sending one of them flying into the sky.
"[First Storm Surge]." I shoot lightning magic at him.
[First Storm Surge] - Lightning magic that fires a bolt in a straight line. Upon hitting the target, it generates an electrical explosion that spreads in waves.
He’s caught off guard but dodges. However, dodging doesn’t prevent collateral damage. Several angels are hit, their bodies exploding while many others nearby receive electrical damage.
The angel general appears behind me in an attempt to strike, but I plant my spear in the ground, making his sword hit the shaft. I kick backward, hitting him in the stomach, and throw a knife into his chest.
The knife pierces his armor, striking directly into his chest. This makes his eyes become bloodshot. A pretty potent curse, indeed.
"..." He grabs the knife and throws it back at me. It grazes past me, but these knives are relics. They only activate if I use them, so it had no effect on me.
I kick his chin and pull the spear from the ground, delivering dozens of rapid thrusts that he defends with difficulty. With my other hand, I grab more knives to throw at him.
"[Sacred Descent]." He uses magic, and an immense pillar of light falls on top of me. The burning sensation is immediate. It’s strong, destructive, and even my "armor," while defending, struggles.
He takes advantage of the opening to try and cut me with his sword, but his weapon, when it strikes my shoulder, doesn’t cut through, stopped by my clothes. He’s surprised, and in that single millisecond of his distraction, I pierce halfway through his throat with my spear.
"..." He jumps back, placing a hand on his neck and seeing the large amount of blood on his palm. He uses magic to heal himself, but while he heals, I form an attack spell.
"[God’s Hunting Arrow]." I use a spell I created myself, and it works in conjunction with my blessing.
[God’s Hunting Arrow] - Elemental Darkness magic, combined with the ability of Esther Ashcroft’s blessing, creates an arrow that will always hit the target. It generates a black arrow with the Curse of Ruin, causing self-replicating wounds that spread through the body like a disease.
When the arrow is fired, the angel dodges by flying upward. He grips his sword and looks back, seeing the arrow curve. He tries to strike the arrow, but the moment he’s about to hit it, it curves perfectly at an abnormal angle and passes through him, piercing his arm.
"..." Since it’s a slow, continuous-effect spell, I advance on him. With a powerful blow, I slam him against the ground. He looks up to see me dropping down in a stab, and he barely dodges as the ground beneath him cracks.
As I pull the spear out, I spin completely, the spear nearly cutting him. He thrusts with his sword, but I redirect it with the shaft of my weapon and block his kick with a kick of my own. Our fight is so destructive that the devastation we’re causing is noticeable.
Our attacks are killing more nearby allies and enemies than actually dealing mortal damage to each other, and keep in mind we’re being careful since we could use high-level magic for even more destruction.
"Demons like you truly are a plague," he says as a wound appears on his leg, identical to the arrow wound he received earlier.
"Such a cowardly method of fighting could only come from a demon..."
"Cowardly? Cowardly?! Then I’ll show you what it means to fight in a cowardly manner." I usually avoid using my blessing in wars. First, because it’s not necessary, and second, because it’s tedious. After all, using it is a guaranteed victory most of the time.
But for this stubborn, arrogant angel who calls me a coward, I’ll make an exception and show him what it really means to fight me.
"Come on," I say, shifting my stance to one much less serious and more relaxed, as if nothing were a threat anymore. He grits his teeth at my arrogance and charges at me.
However, his leg hits a stone, breaking the perfection of his attack. With a simple spear movement, I strike his sword, nearly disarming him. He tries to attack, but the body of an angel comes flying and hits him in the back, allowing me to kick him in the face. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶
He stumbles backward, and an explosion in the distance sends one of the knives I used earlier flying, striking the inner joint of his knee. He flies back a bit, taking distance.
But not giving him time, I advance, kicking a stone at his face which he dodges. He tries to strike me with his sword, but the stone I threw earlier hits someone’s head, knocking that person down. The magic that person was about to cast is fired incorrectly, exploding on the angel general’s back and throwing him near me.
I strike with my spear in a horizontal slash, opening his chest with the blow as blood sprays onto the ground, bathing my spear. He groans in pain and uses a shield spell, but without much trouble, I strike precisely at the barrier’s single weak point, shattering it.
"[Explo-" Before he can finish the spell, I kick a severed hand that hits him directly in the mouth. By the time he realizes, I’m already punching him in the face, breaking his nose.
"You son of a-" I kick him in the balls with so much force I think I hear something break. Maybe his armor, or perhaps his future children. He, like any man, reflexively moves his hands to "defend his treasure" and ends up dropping his sword.
"..." I grab his sword and drive it into his leg. He lets out a cry of pain, but with his mouth open like that and full of openings, I grab a knife and drive it vertically into his mouth. The knife goes through his tongue, his skull, and exits below his chin. A paralytic poison is applied as a curse to his head.
"GHMMMHHAA!!" He tries to scream, but with my fingers, I gouge out his eyes. He falls backward, writhing in pain, and before he can even think of using healing magic, one of the knives I threw much earlier in the fight, which he had deflected, falls from the sky, piercing his skull.
"Tsk, so easy..." This is why I don’t use my blessing in fights like this. Of course, it doesn’t always work. If I tried these things against the Demon King, it would never succeed. But using my blessing against someone weaker than me makes fights pathetic.
"If you hadn’t called me a coward, we could have had a much more memorable fight." I spit on him in disgust. Foolishness truly is a curse. Talking too much cost him his life.
"Now just your 3 sub-generals remain, and we’ll have successfully repelled you... I wonder what Evelyn is doing." I point my spear, ready to kill more angelic soldiers.
