Aars Pugnae, the method of fighting by bursting fairy energy, is specialized for duels. Which is why it's hard to make perfect use of it right now. Even so, she could blend parts of it in.
The flame-born monsters the Salamander created were cut down, burst apart, scattered and erased before they could even reach Shinar, blocked by the wall called the Mad Order of Knights, and every shaping spell of fire was stopped by Esther.
All of it was truly impressive. Each thing they pulled off was nothing trivial in Shinar's eyes.
"They're all relentless."
They had advanced to a point she could no longer keep up with by swordplay that only utilized fairy energy. The entire Mad Order was like that.
That didn't mean she felt jealous. It simply meant she recognized she also had to do something.
Shinar lifted her sword. At some point it had become a needle—a blade shaped like an awl.
"Winter."
Rather than jump recklessly into the fight, she breathed winter's chill into her sword. If beastmen fight with life-force itself, then a fairy's energy bears the power of the four seasons.
With a needle steeped in winter's chill, she denied the rain of fire. It was enough to raise her sword and trace a path that seemed to shield her from above her head down along her body.
As the curtain of chill met the rain of fire, there was a long hiss, and steam rose.
That bought a moment. A shield of cold would hold for about the time it took to breathe three times.
One turn—from the crown of her head, past her right ankle, and back up to the left above her head. The moment she finished swirling the blade like that, she tossed her sword into the air and caught it in a reverse grip.
The fairy, who'd flicked her sword up with a sharp tap and snatched it again, stamped her left foot and twisted her waist around her ankle as the axis.
The power linked from ankle to waist, to elbow and wrist. Transmission of strength. Then she layered fairy energy onto the needle that held winter's chill. More precisely, she gathered energy in her fingertips and fired it.
"I won't just be pushed back."
No jealousy, but resolve.
Shinar looked squarely at how she lagged within the Mad Order, and rather than resign and halt, she chose to advance.
She poured the methods of Aars Pugnae into her sword and even used the way Rem threw projectiles, learned over his shoulder. Then she let the blade fly.
Her silver hair whipped savagely. Her body turned, and a dynamic motion unfitting a fairy burst forth. In the end she used every ounce of rebound in her body as if she would pitch forward. Thus the Needle of Winter, loosed from her reverse grip, became a single line.
Bang!
After the sword flew, the air layer ruptured and shoved the heat aside. If one had eyes that could see temperature, they would have seen a single blue line carved through a space filled with yellow heat.
Boom!
Her sword speared and burst a portion of the fire-cloud. The dragonkin looked back. He'd caught on to what the fairy was aiming for.
"As expected."
The dragonkin murmured. He already knew there was something he had missed, and grasped it.
The intent left behind by the parasite of heat. A lump where malice and negative emotions had pooled.
Between the clouds of flame, a dingy-colored pillar of fire rose up, then sank back into the clouds.
There was no sound. But everyone here possessed exquisitely keen senses.
Enkrid and Jaxon went without saying, and Audin, drawing on sanctity, gauged the lumps of malice present among the Salamanders; Rem was already poised to nail it with his projectile the moment a gap opened.
Shinar had merely beaten them to the punch. From where the dingy pillar of fire had risen, black soot leaked out.
Between the clouds of fire, it looked like a smear of alien black matter lodged in them. In Dunbakel's words, soot that seemed like it would stink.
***
Is an intent different from the main body?
It is. It cannot project overwhelming might on par with the original. It cannot bring over the troops stationed in the Demonic Realm. Summoning an excellent host is also impossible.
Intent—the parasite—thought:
"So because of that, you think there's nothing I can do?"
Is that why they jabbed an intent with a ridiculous little skewer like this?
A blade of cold did stab his body, but that was all. The impact was slight.
Annoying, perhaps—that much could be said.
Even if it was a thought split off from the main body, it shared the same ideology as the main body. Meaning its pride was the same too.
"How dare they?"
The petty lifeforms living on this continent call him a demon. The parasite of heat knew what the mortals called him.
He also knew they called him that because he could do things they couldn't even imagine.
"With a mere skewer?"
This was a provocation.
The parasite decided to convert his discomfort into wrath. That didn't mean he would blow his top like a human. That would be unbecoming of a demon.
Instead, he would present them with a slightly more merciless situation.
From the start, none of this was particularly to his liking anyway.
Which was why the decision to simply slaughter everything crawling down below was nothing special.
"A mere human killed Balrog?"
Luck, surely. If not that, then it was that idiot who hymned struggle committing suicide.
Which was why even the host bearing the greatsword, influenced by the ideology the intent possessed, had looked down on his opponent from the very beginning.
In the meantime, every last one of the ones who suddenly leapt out swinging a blazing greatsword, and the rest who knew no respect, rubbed him the wrong way.
The parasite quietly rived and apportioned his feelings. He knew the hatred packed inside the Salamander. To use a comparison: a spirit beast feels pain just by breathing in this place. Because this is not where it lives.
"Hatred born of pain."
He mixed in a portion of intent and dredged up that hatred. Hatred mingled with pitch-black soot.
In the deep places of the Salamander's memory, a being covered in dingy shadow whispered:
"Your will doesn't matter. Your intention doesn't matter. Your desire doesn't matter. You are just a mass of fire. A fire that burns everything."
The words of the one who summoned the spirit beast here with a fraudulent contract.
The pure spirit of flame was dragged here and lost its reason.
"Hatred toward the fraudulent contract."
The parasite of heat was, by nature, a being that erodes the minds of men. He couldn't do the exact same thing to a spirit beast, but he could provoke and rouse it—and he could do this.
"Hatred, gather."
He drew together negative emotion, the urge to destroy, and the like, and packed it tight. The spirit beast writhing in pain couldn't block it.
It could not be taken as a host, but it could be shaped into a heteromorph made of hatred. The parasite did exactly that.
With the authority he possessed.
All the Salamander had done was scatter the mirage called illusion so that none could approach it.
He did not want a fight.
If one finally overcame those illusions and drew near, even a Salamander could do nothing about it. Enveloped in hatred, it would have to fight.
A part of the parasite goaded the emotions that composed the spirit beast.
"Abandon yourself to hatred."
The spirit beast's mind split in two. One side watched and suffered; the other surrendered to hatred and pain and thrashed.
That was the best rebellion it could muster.
The parasite intended to show the worms squirming below a wonder one could only witness inside the Demonic Realm. Not for free. The price, naturally, was life.
Depending on how things went, if he took a host it might even be possible to harvest profit from having come this far.
He had lost the host who wielded the greatsword, but if he were lucky enough to seize the body of the one who killed Balrog, it would still be a gain.
"You're the ones who attached the two letters 'demon.' Now I'll teach you what it means."
The Needle Shinar hurled had hurt the intent, but it had not led to its annihilation. Nor did the Winter she threw affect only the intent. That led to an unanticipated development.
The parasite detected that there was another presence in the place where he should have been alone.
"What are you?"
In the world of images, the parasite raised his will and asked.
A hazy green light congealed and took form. Through the green, a silver waterfall came pouring down. A figure with silver hair and green eyes spoke.
"You."
Somehow, part of Shinar—her mental body—faced the Salamander from within. That spirit body went on speaking.
"You're truly ugly."
Since only mortals concern themselves with appearances, the parasite wasn't swayed by the words.
But because a fairy speaks only the truth, that truth reached him and made it unpleasant.
The color of her feelings aimed at him was plain as day.
Disgust and loathing.
Meeting in spirit form meant there was no need for long exchanges. Here, they could share emotions in real time and measure each other by will.
"A fearless fairy… shall I tear you apart? Or toss you to be a toy for my soldiers?"
A demon's threats are not bluffs. They are what will happen. A piece of the future.
And part of what the parasite said was based on truth. Shinar was indeed a fairy who had lost her fear through experience with the demon One-Killer.
"I refuse. And besides, I didn't come at your invitation."
She saw the stream of fire standing between the demon's intent and herself. Right after she had thrown Winter, she had heard a voice asking for help.
A voice so faint that only a fairy—and only one attuned at the level of a city's ruler—could hear and respond to it.
Shinar had not ignored it.
That was why she had come here.
***
Black soot flowed through the fire-clouds, and flames rose after it.
In that instant, the surrounding temperature climbed higher still. The air seemed to sizzle. It was hot to the point one didn't even sweat.
Heat that even a knight would find oppressive.
"The tongue."
As the heat boiled up, the dragonkin spoke. Enkrid was already moving before the words were finished, tucking the unconscious Shinar—who had collapsed right after throwing Winter—under his arm.
The lash-like heat-tongue whipped down at Rem, Ragna, Audin, and Enkrid from three directions.
Even with Sacred Radiance Armor, that was not an attack to block head-on.
The heat-tongue was like a sword of judgment that cut everything it touched. Wherever the Salamander's tongue passed, nothing burned—everything was left only as pitch-black ash.
The tongue missed the four, scraped the ground, grazed a burning log, then curled back up into the sky.
The log the tongue had touched tilted, toppled with a thud, and as it hit the embers on the ground, it burst into flames.
Snap.
Esther flicked her fingers and extinguished it. A marvelous trick in itself, but against a spirit beast that altered the very climate, it was little more than a parlor trick.
"This isn't good."
Esther drew up beside Enkrid, casting a glance at Shinar. If no one else, at least she could guess Shinar's state. Hearing her, Enkrid asked:
"Why did she faint?"
Esther explained, short and blunt:
"Part of her spirit linked upward."
It was too short. Enkrid pressed:
"Upward?"
"With the Salamander."
What the hell?
Even standing still, she had more than enough to block. Why suddenly do this?
No reason. It was pure coincidence. And when is there ever not coincidence in the world?
If chance favored them, it was luck. If not—
"The goddess of fortune's turned her back on us."
Enkrid muttered. From experience and instinct, he judged Shinar couldn't have done it deliberately. But neither could it have happened by her will alone.
After the lash of the tongue, the rain of fire thickened and multiplied.
"Is that bastard using up a lifetime's worth of shit all in one day, huh?"
Rem spat his complaint. Whether it had once been a monster that terrorized the continent or not, to him it was nothing more than a beast.
It was an understandable complaint. Even with sling-straps treated with alchemical booster and twisted from beast-hide to prepare for every contingency, in such heat they frayed and snapped in no time.
Ragna, with a detached air, simply lifted Sunrise overhead and tilted it. The streams of fire flowed as though drawn to the blade and guttered out. His casual hand and calm gaze looked all the more brutal for it.
He might talk of sparing the Salamander, but if things turned sour, he'd cut down dragonkin and all. He would do it if needed. That resolve was clear to see.
Audin dimmed his Sacred Light and moved his body this way and that. For him, seeing and dodging firestreams of this level was no trouble.
To an onlooker, though, he might look like a bear putting on tricks.
Jaxon brushed aside flames with a single dagger and walked through the fire, dodging where needed.
By now the very ground around them was blazing.
If there were a hell of fire, it would look like this.
Flames that burned even smoke and soot closed in on all sides.
So, was it a crisis?
Hardly. Not at all.
That was Jaxon's thought. They'd come here to stop the Salamander, but if they wanted to escape, they could.
Did that bizarre, tongued spirit beast even have the power to read his presence?
And if it did, how would it catch him when he slipped away?
It wasn't just him. They all had at least one way to flee.
"Easier just to kill it."
Above all, Jaxon still had plenty of ways to fight this sort of monster.
Even before facing Balrog, and especially after, he had squeezed gold out of Kraiss if need be to collect relics scattered across the continent.
More than just collecting—if time allowed, he even planned to raid a few ruins.
So many relics were piled in the cellar of his guildmate and lover's home.
Only one concern remained: when it was all over, putting out the wildfire would be a nightmare.
Over Esther's head, a canopy of black velvet appeared, shielding her from the rain of fire.
The dropping firestreams hit the velvet and scattered.
If one looked closely, the rain of fire looked like elongated creatures. Like lizards, with four legs and grotesquely long bodies.
Everyone, Enkrid included, had already seen it with battle-sight, but knowing it changed nothing.
"If you kill that thing as it is, Shinar dies with it."
Esther spoke. She had put one eye into the spell-world, gazing at the world behind the phenomenon.
A thin green light stretched from Shinar's body upward.
Slender, but unbreakable. Yet if they killed the Salamander—?
Now they had a reason not to kill it.
Meanwhile, above, fire coiled around the black soot, gathering into a mass that stretched down.
Enkrid, watching, thought of the process of glassmaking he'd once seen in a city. How the molten stream stretched sticky and continuous.
So it was with the fire, reaching toward the ground. Over the red flames, yellow and blue lights flickered, then turned to white fire.
At the sight, the dragonkin's eyes gleamed bright yellow.
"Guard me too."
He spoke, without preface or end, then closed his eyes.
Hearing it, Rem let out a baffled remark.
"…Since when do we?"
Had the dragonkin been awake, he would have answered with blunt honesty, wielding truth and innocence as a weapon: "Since just now." But the dragonkin had left only those words and fainted on his feet, leaving only Rem's muttering.