Your Majesty!
The creep in the skintight suit skulked to Gill’s side, but safety didn’t follow. A new shadow loomed, danger sharp as a drawn blade.
"How are you this late? Let me guess—something happened?"
"Indeed, Demon King…"
"The Demon King’s here, isn’t she?"
He lifted his chin toward Gill, mind flashing back to the commander’s last words. Threading that with Gill’s tone, the King’s target was likely the Demon King.
"Mm. The Demon King came alone. The commander requests Your Majesty’s support."
Gill’s laugh cut cold, like ice cracking on a winter river. "Heh… my support?"
Rafi met the soldiers’ wary stares across the distance, and knew her crown had been seen. The truth tasted bright; exposure was a spotlight she welcomed.
If she carved a massacre here, Alicia’s entrance would glide in clean, no awkward seams.
"Flame Vortex!"
Fire bloomed between her hands, a molten sphere braided with whorls like whirlpools on lava. She hurled it at the city wall, arm a thunderbolt.
This craft was simple—no chant, no focus—just mana spun tight and released, like a storm wound into a ball.
By design, its bite was the tearing force of rotation, limited stuff. Sheet iron was its ceiling on a normal day.
But Rafi wore Demon King blood. Even trash tricks erupted into calamity in her grip.
The soldiers snapped up layered barriers, a stack of shields like panes of glass before a tidal wave.
They held for a heartbeat, then shredded to dust in the air, confetti on a burning wind.
The fireball slammed into the wall. Stone quivered under booted feet like a drumhead, yet the crest didn’t collapse.
Look over the battlements, and you’d see the crater yawning below, webbed with cracks like a spider’s frost. Rafi’s artwork.
The commander knew waiting meant ruin; the storm would break whether they struck or not. Better to answer thunder with thunder.
"All units! Load anti-daemon shells! Swap to anti-daemon rounds!"
The troops moved fast, metal clacking like rain. In moments, every barrel was primed, every magazine changed, orders hanging like a held breath.
Rafi saw it and didn’t lift a finger. Her task was simple—deliver despair like midnight swallowing a candle.
"Listen up! Mages, start chanting. Marksmen volley at three seconds. Spells follow at five. Keep the magic riding the barrage!"
Everything was set in plain lines; even the dull ones could march them.
"Three—two—one! Marksmen—fire!"
Boom-boom-boom!
Shells roared from the barrels. Only twenty-odd tracked Rafi dead-on; the rest bracketed her, explosions tuned to catch her in their storm.
That way, damage was assured without betting it all on a dodge. Unless she bent space itself…
To everyone’s surprise, Rafi used no spell. She stood there, still as a midnight lake, and something cold crawled up the commander’s spine.
She took every hit. Every shell found its mark, shockwaves from the fringes piling on like waves on a breakwater.
The magic followed hard—no dispersal, no feints—holy light and fire, all colors of death, streaking straight into Rafi.
"Did we do it?!"
That doomed line, of course, came from the ranks.
Even crude tongues know truth: before the Demon King, they were ants. Still, after a strike like that, hope pried at the door.
The commander alone kept to the pulse of the field. From the first moment, unease hammered in his chest like a trapped bird.
Focusing too hard on Rafi, he finally saw the real wound—the daemons were gone.
"Aaah—!"
A scream broke at his ear. He spun, and found a headless soldier, and a daemon grinning blood like a crimson crescent.
Where did it come from? The answer flickered—the Flame Vortex had hit the wall. Was it not attack, but breach?
No time to test a theory. That was the process; the result already stalked the battlements. What use chasing footprints as the wolf bites?
No one noticed the impact point. Rafi still stood there, untouched by soot, like a celestial stepping through clouds that never smear her robes.
Too bad. What descended wasn’t a celestial. It was a daemon.
Her lips curled, a knife-edge smile lit with danger.
Useless~
