Sorcery Hacker:Volume3 Phase05
Phase 5: Spirit Leader – Four Lord[edit]
Part 1[edit]
There was no final battlefield.
Wind Lord Escalrain did not need to restrict himself to any one location.
With a thunderous neigh, his 200 esoule[1] body charged toward the school tower.
“Ayato!?”
“Don’t fall off, everyone!!”
Ayato stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into the wall and switched the state of the lights on each floor right when Escalrain blinked.
That led the Four Lord to mistake which floor Ayato’s group was on.
He ended up crashing into a floor below theirs.
However, that broke the entire gem tower from its foundation.
The Theatre Club was rumored to have nearly made a live sacrifice in an attempt at the old ceremonial magic that predated sorcery guns, but not even they could have predicted a performance on this scale.
Ayato left gravity’s grasp and slammed into the wall. It took all his efforts to simply avoid being thrown out the window.
“Gahhh!!”
They may have fared better if he had guided Escalrain to a floor higher up than them, but the Student Council office was unfortunately on the top floor.
The entire tower tilted and picked up speed as it fell over.
Once it hit the ground, anyone on the top floors would be killed instantly.
But that never happened.
The gem tower collided with the side of the neighboring mana tower. It stopped at a slant.
Ayato stabbed a Linkage Plug into a window-washing scarab.
“We’re moving to the other tower. Grab on!!”
“Dammit, not this again!”
Henrietta tearfully complained since she did not like heights without public infrastructure built around them, but she knew they had little choice.
Some kind of limit was reached as soon as the scarab’s legs reached the intact mana tower’s wall. The slanted gem tower sank straight down. It dropped like a waterfall and a great cloud of dust swelled out at the ground. There went the tower that symbolized Ayato’s sins and the death of a friend.
“…”
Escalrain was unconcerned.
After knocking down the gem tower, he kept moving and flew up into the night sky. Now he stopped in midair and made complex movements of his four wings.
Thick clouds dulled and finally covered up the bright moon.
Henrietta gulped.
“Something’s…coming.”
“Jump in, everyone!!”
They broke a window and dived from the giant scarab and through a broken window into the mana tower in the nick of time.
It was like a horizontal impact.
A gust of wind blew in and the outside world was filled with hailstones the size of fists.
The individual sounds couldn’t be made out. A constant sound reminiscent of a crashing wave pounded on Ayato’s eardrums. This was a storm of weapons falling from high in the sky. The tower’s walls themselves were being torn away by the barrage. If they had delayed a moment longer, they would have been pummeled and thrown out into the air still clinging to the window washing scarab. The density was too great to dodge.
“Wh-what about the others?” Teleria was pale and trembling. “Are the other students and teachers alright!? I mean, um, the gem tower fell over!”
“It’s pretty late at night, so everyone should have been back in the trailer dorms. Unlike when we attended, it sounds like the school has banned spending the night in labs and special classrooms. Now, you need to start worrying about yourself, Miss Teleria. The next attack is coming!!”
An eerie boom of thunder split the night’s silence.
Something towered higher even than the towers. It was a tornado.
Escalrain controlled all meteorological conditions, so natural disasters were no more than another card in his deck. He could choose whichever one he liked and play it against his target.
Close-quarters combat was the only card in Henrietta’s deck, so her eyes widened.
“What are we supposed to do now!? We can’t fight back against Escalrain without getting close to him!!”
“Coach, there are only so many towers here. If this keeps up, he’ll bring them all down, leaving us nowhere left to hide.”
More than that, the Academy Towers had already lost if all of its towers came down. One of the Four Lords would have brought down the symbol of human sorcery. That would encourage the demons living in hiding to gather around Escalrain out of misguided hope. They might be able to win some localized battles, but they could not avoid defeat in the overall war. A doomed war of independence would begin.
So Ayato’s group had to end this before that happened.
They needed something they could use against Escalrain.
“…”
The Sorcery Hacker boy thought for a moment.
“Miss Henrietta, you say we cannot fight back without getting close?”
“Of course! What about it!?”
All magic was made from a combination of the four elements: fire, water, wind, and earth.
It was the Four Lords who gave color to the colorless mana. A clash between Lords would be one thing, but ordinary human magic could not possibly damage Escalrain. That was like trying to stop a tornado by blowing on it.
Furthermore, sorcery gun magic’s effective range was defined by the audible range of its gunshot. So.
Ayato brought a hand to his forehead.
“This could hardly be worse. With Escalrain’s control of the air, he can create a vacuum. So no matter how loud the gunshot of our magic, he can block it all with just a paper-thin barrier between us.”
That meant there was nothing Teleria or Mamilis could do. The vacuum barrier could not be breached without Demon Lord Nirvelphany’s orbital sorcery cannon designed for use in space.
But…
“I can do it,” said Henrietta. Her earlier “of course” must not have been as definite as she made it sound. “Launching magic at Escalrain won’t work, but I can boost myself with magic. He might control the winds, but he can’t block the magic I direct at myself with my own sorcery gun.”
“And then what? You jump onto his back and attack him directly? He’s one of the Four Lords. He’s extraordinarily powerful.”
“It’s possible, though, isn’t it?” Henrietta pointed her thumb back at her chest. “Magic won’t work on Escalrain, but a boosted blow from a bayonet axe is a purely physical attack. That doesn’t require the Four Lords’ permission, so it should be able to harm him.”
“The secret to survival really is a diverse party, isn’t it? We may have been completely out of options without you here, Miss Henrietta. Listen. This is something I can only ask of you since you are the most destructive when restricted to purely physical attacks.”
Henrietta blinked a few times.
After a short delay, she gave a snort.
“The first person that comes to mind when you need help, hm?”
“Still, I must remind you that this is an extremely risky gambit.”
“So what? He needed a count to three in order to fully knock down the gem tower with his tackle. That was to avoid damaging his own body with his weight and speed. The thickness of the tower walls doesn’t matter to him. It’s an unpleasant comparison, but when people fall from high enough heights, they can be killed by the shock of hitting the water’s surface. So we can use that to calculate out the limits of Escalrain’s defense. With my armor and five or more casts of Primary Ex Massive, I can break through his thick skin.”
Ayato belatedly realized just how much danger he had been in when this monster had been pursuing him.
There was nothing like a reliable friend.
Ayato couldn’t help but smile bitterly as he spoke to that Striker with exasperating levels of brute strength.
“Then I will find some clever trick to give you the opportunity.”
Part 2[edit]
After realizing he had misjudged his aim and missed his target the first time, Lord Escalrain chose not to try another tackle. Knocking over the towers like he was pulling up weeds would be the fastest way of ending this, but even a small concern was enough to stop him.
It helped that he was an expert at a wide variety of ranged attacks. He had won victories for the Demon Lord by wiping out groups of enemies that Blasthogg’s head-on attacks and Fleurelisia’s recovery magic couldn’t handle.
He only had to focus on long range attacks.
It might take longer, but he could destroy all of the towers by sending out meteorological threats like tornados, lightning, and hail. He could even shake the tall structures with powerful horizontal winds.
Or so he thought.
However.
Just when he thought he had sent in a sharp gust of wind, the well-formed tornado dispersed.
“…?”
His four wings created the four winds and he could create any meteorological condition by weaving them together. He was the ruler of the atmosphere, yet he hadn’t expected this at all.
It was a small thing, but he took it as a grave insult.
This was the territory of a lord. And it was silly to say a lord was unaware what was happening in his realm. No matter how insignificant that thing was.
So he focused on it and then realized what had happened.
Something else was locally influencing the temperature and humidity and that had altered the pressure. The altered pressure had obstructed the shape of Escalrain’s tornado “projectile”.
In other words…
“No more than a silly trick using hot steam!!”
White steam was flowing from the walls and roofs of the towers, forming something like a cumulonimbus cloud. The perpetrator must not have thought he could hide the trick forever.
Escalrain could control the atmosphere all around the world while the humans could only alter the temperature and humidity around the towers. It was obvious who was more powerful.
But at the same time, the inferior humans would interfere if he produced a tornado or gust of wind here and now. Any projectile was meaningless if it didn’t land a direct hit with its full power intact. If it was too weak, the enemy could feign death, leading to further trouble later on.
Humans would do anything to win. Escalrain had seen more than enough of their underhanded tricks in his time.
“…”
So.
He gathered air in his four wings and planted his giant hooves directly on the air.
He voiced a neigh so loud it seemed to split the air.
“It would seem you wish to die an early death, humans. I am Lord of this place and any violation of my airspace is punishable by death!!”
His 200 esoule[2] body flew straight toward them.
His tackle would smash their foolish hopes to smithereens.
Part 3[edit]
“H-here he comes, Ayato!!”
“This may be a common trait among the Four Lords.” Ayato grinned. “They are the eternal strongest with all the strength that comes with the title. So when a problem becomes too much to think about, they resort to brute force. Fire Lord Blasthogg repeatedly used his breath to attack the sky city’s airport to assist the Demon Lord and Water Lord Fleurelisia challenged the Predator Island to a direct battle. Restraint isn’t their strong suit.”
“(Ugh. And that same trait leads mother to fall in love at the drop of a hat.)”
“?”
For some reason, Teleria looked away and muttered something under her breath.
Escalrain was charging straight toward this tower. He likely intended to knock down everything that was interfering with his meteorological disasters. He was furious after belatedly realizing his deck of cards was being secretly counteracted and spied on by the other side.
Using his full firepower right from the start was definitely the right decision here. Holding back and slowly working his way from his weakest moves would be inefficient in the extreme. Unless the physical changes themselves presented a risk of reducing his lifespan, he didn’t need to worry about preserving his strength since his safety was assured as soon as he killed the enemy before his eyes here.
But life could be unfair and the right decision didn’t always lead to success.
Never assume you can defeat a Sorcery Hacker using the standard tactics.
“Just like I hoped he would. Miss Henrietta!!”
“I swear I will fulfill my task.”
The straitlaced Striker drew her bolt-action carbine from her hip. She pulled back the cocking lever to load the first round and aimed it straight up as if preparing for a gun salute.
And she gave a roar in time with the bright red muzzle flash.
“Buff: Primary Ex Massive!!”
The empty cartridge fell to the floor, its gold coloration fading like a withering flower.
Henrietta stepped up onto the window frame and jumped out into the air. She didn’t hesitate to drop down onto the back of the giant horse trying to destroy the tower at a lower level. She had been so afraid to hang into the tower’s wall, but her excitement over challenging this enemy had won out. She really was a warrior through and through.
Ayato’s group was hit by a tremor that made it feel like the world itself was shaking.
Calling the massive Four Lord to them was all well and good, but they had used the tower itself as bait. Ayato considered a few possibilities for what he could hack to get them to the neighboring tower.
“Coach, our tower is falling again.”
Just then, something shook the air outside the window. The buzzing sound came from a dragonfly sorcery device measuring 5 esoule[3] long.
A familiar voice played from the speaker at its mouth.
“This is Planetary Probe Prototype 8. Hop on quick if you want a ride.”
“You’re testing it here? The atmospheric composition and conditions on another planet would be entirely different, so this will never tell you if it could fly there.”
The Academy Towers were supposedly protected by a complex maze of wind, but the collapse of the one tower and its connecting walkways must have provided some freedom to fly. Taking advantage of your own mistakes wasn’t just the Sorcery Hacker motto – it was the standard for all areas of research.
Ayato smiled bitterly at the Rocket Club’s words as he hopped on.
The dragonfly shape meant he had to cling to the long, skinny body running down the center. Instead of hanging down by his hands, he rode it like it was a witch’s broom.
“How bad is the damage?”
“You think anyone’s going outside with all this going on? Most everyone’s trembling in their trailers, so don’t worry about them. Oh, but come to think of it, the Hiking Club went running for the surrounding mountains and received minor injuries from rubble. I don’t know why. Maybe they just panicked.”
“I bet they’ve dug a hole in the mountain and built an unauthorized shelter. One of the Four Lords going on a rampage has got to have those doomsday preppers jumping for joy and gloating ‘told you so’.”
“If our rocket development had progressed some more, I’d be fleeing to the moon in the sky right about now. Guess I should thank those assholes on the Council for getting in our way so often.”
After Teleria and Mamilis followed after Ayato, the mana tower tilted too far to support its own weight and collapsed straight down.
“I can’t help but notice we aren’t gaining any height. Is this no more than a weird-looking glider?” asked Ayato.
“Oh, shut up. It was designed to get aerial photographs of empty craters. It wasn’t meant to carry three whole people. So where should I drop you off: another tower or the ground?”
“The window of another tower. We can’t possibly win this down on the open ground.”
Explosive booms erupted directly below them.
Henrietta was using her entire body to swing her bolt-action carbine with axe bayonet. She was slamming the weapon into the Four Lord’s back with all the might of her repeated magic buffs.
She used the simple sharp point.
But since it was no more than physical damage, no magical tricks could negate it.
Escalrain, Lord of the Skies, was clearly slowing. His four hooves stood on the ground instead of the air. As the ruler of the skies, standing on the ground may have been the greatest humiliation of all.
The wind roared.
He twisted his giant body to twist the air around in counterattack.
But none of it hit Henrietta as she ran every which way atop the giant horse’s back. A horse lacked a hand to scratch his own back and he could not twist his head around to bite at it either. If he could not shake off whatever was on his back, then that acted as a blind spot for him. The more effort he put into it, the more momentum Henrietta poured into swinging her thick axe blade into his unguarded back.
It didn’t look like he intended to use his wings.
That showed hesitation on his part.
Even if they could reach his back, what would happen if his wings – his greatest symbol – were attacked in the same way as his back? The wounds would be like the slightest crease on the edge of a card, but what if that robbed him of his ability to weave the winds and he could never use it the same way again?
Thus, the hesitation.
Or maybe it was fear.
Even the Four Lords were filthy living creatures.
Henrietta was buffing her strength with magic, but the bayonet axe she swung down was a purely physical attack. That prevented even a Four Lord from negating the damage caused by the thick blade. This human rebellion was only possible because she had inherited all the martial arts techniques passed down from before sorcery guns were common and she had trained in them day in and day out.
Sparks flew and powerful shockwaves scattered. But this was not a dance of magic with its own color and light. It was all the result of the physical damage that buffed Henrietta kept pouring into Escalrain.
“That’s incredible, coach,” muttered Mamilis while staring down at it.
“It is. But this isn’t over yet.”
They entered a 44th floor window to reach the Control Science Unmanned Sorcery Device Research Tower’s Grade E zone.
No sooner were they inside than more hail blew horizontally against the tower. It was probably meant to knock Henrietta from Escalrain’s back, but it also smashed up the dragonfly, knocking it from the sky outside the window.
“Henrietta!!”
Fist-sized hail was not enough to instantly kill a human, but when it was falling too thickly to dodge out of the way, the damage would add up. Ayato located a boiler system’s steam pipe in a nearby wall and stabbed it with his Linkage Plug sword. Controlling that hot steam would let him divert and dissipate the meteorological attacks.
However…
“Ah!!” shrieked Dark Elf Mamilis.
Escalrain violently swung his four wings while pinned to the ground, smashing them into the lower levels of the tower Ayato’s group was in. That was enough to start its collapse.
“Hang on for now. Move to the next tower only after this one hits it and stops!!’
“Ayato!!”
Ayato couldn’t answer Teleria’s shout.
He rolled right on out the window and away from the tilting tower.
Part 4[edit]
Of all things, it had to be this.
Henrietta Split Destrius cursed her terrible luck.
That Sorcery Hacker had fallen from the night sky.
And onto Escalrain’s back.
“What are you doing, dangerous individual!? There is nothing for you to do here!!”
“Did you think I fell here by choice?”
Henrietta was still rapidly moving around and swinging down her bayonet axe to attack the Four Lord’s enormous back like she was tilling a field. That she kept doing it meant she couldn’t keep him pinned down otherwise. She could break his skin, but the muscle and bones further in were too tough.
And if Escalrain regained control and shook the two of them from his back, they lost their last chance. The giant horse had been made (literally) painfully aware that his back was his weak point. He wouldn’t let anyone jump onto his back so easily the next time. And once he was on the lookout for that, they were done for.
The air shook.
The weather looked threatening again. Hail would be pouring down again soon.
The Striker had a bad feeling about this, but she asked just to be certain.
“How, dangerous individual? We’ve seen this attack already. I assume you have a countermeasure?”
“If you would kindly guide me to the closest tower? I just have to stab my sword in there to hack the steam pipe.”
“You mean you have nothing!? The cumulative damage is going to kill me in the end!”
Complaining wasn’t going to improve their situation.
If anything, it would tell Escalrain what to use against them.
His four wings made a complex motion like they were operating a loom or knitting needles.
They were actually intersecting the four winds to produce some form of extreme disaster.
Hail fell from the sky as thick as a solid ceiling.
Part 5[edit]
A short distance from Ayato and Henrietta, Teleria and Mamilis were watching after moving from the falling control tower to another tower.
Teleria hated only being able to watch what was happening below.
No…
“That isn’t it. I knew all along there was something I could do. Ayato stepped across the border between right and wrong to save me, but I’m still trapped by my own rules. I can’t keep doing that.”
“Teleria?”
Dark Elf Mamilis gave her a curious look.
The Four Lords were powerful enough to alter the rules of the battlefield by their very presence.
Well, Teleria knew of another being capable of altering the standards of sorcery.
The girl who had inherited the Nereid name.
“My secret has kept everyone from their rightful destinies. My survival caused everything to go wrong for my brother, for the Council, and for Ayato.”
But.
So.
“I will not run away. I won’t hide it anymore.”
Something sounded like crackling sparks.
But this was not magic initiated by a sorcery gun and controlled by human hands.
Her blue blazer’s buttons popped off.
A different sort of power – a power based on this world’s most fundamental rules – caused Teleria Nereid Aquamarine’s Mimic Options to burst from within.
The black tights shredded and a mermaid’s tail appeared in the outside world.
Do not doubt.
Do not regret.
Do not fear.
Everyone worries at first. Everyone fears revealing their truth. She could accept that.
But no longer was she a chrysalis who hung her head and bit her lip.
She brought that period of her life to an end here.
She overcame it.
She moved past it.
She had to confidently show off the wonderful traits she was born with. She had to find pride in her differences from others and appreciate the joy of finding things only she could do. No part of her body was shameful and no part of her soul was flawed. So she had to hold her head high. She wouldn’t let anyone stop her from announcing that the power inside her could end the tyranny of Escalrain.
Pain stabbed into her chest.
The pain of regret. Now that her focus had shifted, the care she had taken to protect her daily life now tore into her as self-inflicted damage.
Yes.
She could admit it now.
If she didn’t admit it and look straight at it, she couldn’t tell how tall that hurdle was. She needed to know the height, orientation, and distance to the hurdle if she was to clear it, but she could only measure those things using her own pain.
So she clenched her teeth.
She accepted the pain. She could do that now.
Memories came back to her like her life flashing before her eyes.
So many good times.
Her time spent with the human boy who had accepted her secret and protected her as her stepbrother. He had silently covered up any minor slipups she made and always supported and encouraged her.
So many good times.
The times spent with that black-haired boy who had formed a one-on-one relationship with her despite his ignorance of her secret. He had been the strongest Forward – the Hexajinx, but despite the concerning stories about him, he had let all his feelings out like a child. As someone forced to live her life carrying a secret, she had honestly envied him.
So, so many good times.
Ayato and her brother hadn’t had a wonderful friendship or anything like that. They had often clashed harshly, especially when it came to treatment of Teleria. To the point that they appeared to have developed fighting into a new form of communication.
But they had done it all for Teleria.
So it hadn’t been all that bad being caught in the middle of that fighting.
When Teleria Nereid Aquamarine thought back on the happiest time of her life, she always returned to the memories of those days. She had felt so much more like a princess than on that small island full of mermaids and other demons. Ayato had been the strongest Forward and her brother had excelled in his sorcery studies, so they had both injured themselves constantly. Those days of sighing, bickering back and forth, and healing their wounds with water recovery magic had been the happiest of all.
Then various threads had complexly intertwined and one of those lives had been lost.
The other one, Ayato, had been so obsessed with revealing the truth he had reduced himself to a Sorcery Hacker and turned his back on the upright path of the strongest Forward.
It was possible he wouldn’t forgive Teleria.
The answer had more or less been revealed to him at Laguntreat. If he impartially viewed the data available to him, he would readily arrive at the conclusion that Teleria wasn’t human. But the human mind was a complex thing and it did not always respond the same way to the same answer.
It was perfectly possible he would have been fine with it back then, but not now.
Yes, she should have gone ahead and confessed the truth before they left Laguntreat. If she hadn’t still been dragging that secret around with her, the President couldn’t have used it against her to set up that despicable trap. Ayato said he didn’t care, but once Teleria came out and said she was a mermaid and had hidden that secret from him, it could reveal some weakness or ugliness inside him he wasn’t aware of himself or some other whim could come over him and the revelation would create a great fissure between them.
There were no absolutes when it came to the innerworkings of people’s minds. There was no surefire method. That was the one thing no one could hack. No cheats could be found. And that was what made it such a precious thing.
None of this would have gotten so twisted if Teleria had been shot back then.
Her stepbrother would still be alive and the other demons wouldn’t have had to suffer.
That was the truth.
No one could predict what Ayato would do once he knew it all.
So.
The moment she revealed her identity to save him could also be the moment their journey together shattered and came to an end.
(But.)
The girl clenched her teeth.
She desperately forced down the temptation from the side of her that feared change and loved making excuses.
(The idea of our relationship ending scares me. The thought of our journey ending saddens me.)
But.
But.
The girl who had once been all alone raised her head and roared in challenge.
She was the Nereid princess.
The girl who would be the Water Lord one day stared at the hail impudently pouring down from the sky. Someone other than their proper ruler had infringed on the princess’s territorial waters without her permission. And, of all things, he had done so to pummel people she held dear.
It didn’t matter who was responsible. This tyranny could not be allowed.
So she declared war against the world here.
Change.
Throw away your mask.
“None of that is worth abandoning Ayato over!!!”
Part 6[edit]
The fist-sized hail stopped just before hitting Ayato and Henrietta. It really did stop in midair.
Something had intervened.
Escalrain could control all the world’s atmosphere and cause any meteorological disaster he lied. But the hail he had sent pouring down was still made of ice.
The wind element had indirect control, but the water element had direct control.
That made a difference.
Human magic could not reach the level of the Four Lords, but a clash between two of the Four Lords was a different matter.
If the Water Lord were here, she could indeed take control of the ice away from the Wind Lord. And she wouldn’t need a sorcery gun, so the audible range of the gunshot wouldn’t matter.
“What…just happened?”
Henrietta looked up, dumbfounded.
But Ayato viewed the crux of the issue before questioning this phenomenon.
“Miss Henrietta, right here.”
“What?”
“Strike his back. Hurry!!”
Henrietta forcefully swung down her axe-like bayonet. Splitting the thick skin was miraculous enough, so there was no way this would damage the muscle and bone within. Continuing with the same attacks wasn’t going to do significant damage.
But.
Ayato had a mean smile on his face.
“I understand your defenses now, Escalrain. The next one will end this.”
He had already raised his Linkage Plug sword.
At this last moment, a mocking air rose from all across Escalrain’s body. That seemed to prove that this was indeed a living creature. It seemed to announce that he was one of the Four Lords and thus any elemental magic the Sorcery Hacker hacked and used against him would be deflected.
You must not unjustly look down on demons.
But it was also wrong to place them on a pedestal.
They laughed, cried, rejoiced, raged, thought, considered, worried, and trusted. They had a mind capable of all the same things as a human mind, so there were of course demons who did good deeds and demons who did bad deeds. Even the same demon might feel sorry for a crying child at one point and find the crying shrill and irritating at another point. Anyone who said demons always did one thing or another was wrong. Just like humans did not have a single way of thinking and did not react the same way at all times.
So.
Ayato Criminaltrophy showed no mercy. He understood Escalrain’s reasons for wanting revenge, but was it really right to sit idly by and let it happen when that revenge would harm Teleria, Mamilis, and Henrietta?
No, it was not.
If he placed Escalrain’s anger and the girls’ smiles on the scales, Ayato wouldn’t hesitate to reach for one side. He would protect that side and make sure it happened. No matter what crimes he had to commit and even if it meant receiving criticism from every part of the world!!
“Take them if you can.”
He heard a low neigh.
Escalrain was pure fury to the end. In the sense that he was a tyrant whose emotions led him to abuse his power, he truly was a type of lord.
“Do you really think you can take my wings from me, Sorcery Hacker!? That arrogance will be your undoing. Just you try it. I grant you this reckless single combat with a Lord. Prove you can hack me!! You were doomed from the moment you reached the arrogant conclusion that a mere human could steal away my freedom!!!”
“Miss Henrietta.”
“?”
Ayato’s focus changed directions.
Who found it more puzzling: the straitlaced Striker or Lord Escalrain?
“I’m counting on you.”
He had not stabbed his Linkage Plug sword into Escalrain’s thick skin.
He had stabbed it into Henrietta’s armor and hacked that device of monster leather and tendons capable of buffing her physical abilities.
Yes, Ayato had done this before. In order to drain Henrietta’s stamina as she pursued him, he had secretly altered her armor’s parameters so she would waste her strength.
So what happened if he did the opposite – removing the excess and optimizing her movements?
And what if he switched off all of the sorcery safety devices built into the armor?
Wouldn’t that allow her to make an attack several times greater than the standard specs?
The effect was extraordinary.
The boom was louder than thunder.
The pressure pushed past the thick, thick skin and bore down on the thick nerves protected by the large, tunnel-like spine, causing the Four Lord’s great body to stagger to the side.
All of the power had passed through him.
“Vulnerabilities are always found in the enemy,” spat Ayato.
This truly was his limit.
“But trump cards are always found in your allies. Remember that, you lonely Lord.”
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