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The floor of the Rotaringia Royal Palace lobby shattered as the supreme demon Tamuz soared into the air, gnashing his teeth.

Originally, he loved grandeur and extravagance. His fondness for bizarre rocks of various shapes, luxurious jewels and ornaments, and artworks created by artists with all their heart was so exceptional that it was rumored even among other demons.

The reason he maintained the appearance of a handsome human was largely due to this. He considered his true form ugly.

For him, revealing his true form was absolutely unacceptable. If not for the shocking situation where all the schemes he had orchestrated in Rotaringia had come to naught, he would never have revealed his true form until the very end.

He intended to swiftly neutralize the clergy hunting demons in the banquet hall and lead his subordinates to quickly escape the scene. Fortunately, his subordinates were also skilled in transformation, so he calculated that once they escaped the immediate situation, they could hide their forms and slip away.

This demon, with a lower body resembling a goat, bat wings, a head, horns of a ram, and a muscular upper body with ridges, puffed up his chest as soon as he took flight. He unleashed a scream beyond the audible range to massacre or incapacitate humans in an instant.

However, he missed the presence of a nun knight who had surged right in front of him, her blue eyes flashing.

{Kie―ea――ack!!!}

[Kwaoooo!!!]

The violent sonic blast from Tamuz was met by Sophia’s Lion’s Roar as she soared into the air.

The collision of the sonic wave shaking the atmosphere and the roaring clash was intense enough to shatter chandeliers and windows in an instant, but fortunately, it only caused a slight pressure wave to the people on the ground.

‘My scream was devoured!’

Realizing the situation, Tamuz’s face twisted in frustration. Like a small prey being devoured by a larger predator, his scream was entirely consumed by Sophia’s Lion’s Roar.

This was a difference stemming from the nature of the beings emitting the sound waves. In that fleeting moment, Tamuz and Sophia’s personalities and positions were reflected in the sonic clash.

‘I, who have lived as a predator of mortals, am now in the position of prey!?’

And that was something Tamuz could never accept.

Wild predators, alpha males of packs, share the common traits of being victors and beautiful. Lions and tigers are fearsome beasts, but they are also beautiful. Birds of prey like eagles and hawks are the same. The antlers of the strongest stag, the tail feathers of a male peacock—each possesses a unique sublimity and beauty.

But wounded, sick, defeated, or hunted beasts are not beautiful. This was Tamuz’s usual belief. And he had never, not even in his dreams, imagined he would be in a situation where he would fall from the position of a predator, a glorious victor.

{I can’t accept this! I can’t accept it!}

Enraged, Tamuz charged with a roar. The blood-red morning star in his hand carved a menacing arc through the air. The sight of the iron club, reminiscent of a building’s pillar, being swung was quite intimidating.

But Sophia’s counterattack was simple. As her white fingertips touched Tamuz’s morning star, he felt an inexplicable force twist and pull the weapon.

{Huh!}

Gripping the weapon’s handle reflexively, Tamuz tried to steady his shocked mind.

‘It feels like being pulled by a giant! What kind of trick is this!?’

Watching the demon adjust his stance in astonishment, Sophia clicked her tongue.

“You have quite good senses. You don’t want this to end easily, do you?”

{Shut up!}

Tamuz shouted, but the next moment, he felt a chilling premonition. Reflexively turning his body, he swung the morning star just as a longsword, appearing as if by magic, slashed at him with a blade aura.

Thanks to the overlapping trajectories, Tamuz narrowly escaped death. Before he could even feel relief, he heard a whisper in his ear.

“You must have been in a hurry. Daring to show your back to me.”

Tamuz’s eyes widened as he immediately spun around and swung the morning star, but Sophia was no longer there. As his weapon cut through the air, he released a ‘Curse Explosion’ spell behind him and leaped forward.

“Oh my, aren’t you a bit rough?”

Sophia was already behind him again.

The longsword that reappeared like a ghost left a gash on his thigh, but Tamuz couldn’t afford to care about the pain. His survival instincts were screaming too loudly.

The demon inwardly regretted.

‘Damn it, if I had known this would happen, I would have just focused on escaping myself, forget the subordinates…’

It was clear that his judgment had momentarily failed, thinking that all the foundations he had built in this land would be lost.

‘Where did this monster come from?’

Having been in hiding in Rotaringia for so long, he had little contact with other demons and had almost no chance to hear about the nun knight notorious among demons in Franquia and the Empire. Even if he had heard, he probably wouldn’t have paid much attention.

“Oh, you still have the mind to think of other things?”

In that brief moment of distraction, disaster struck. Tamuz’s sensitive senses detected an anomaly in ‘space.’ The next moment, he realized he was gripped by an invisible force, unable to move.

The pressure, as if squeezing space itself, held the demon like a giant’s hand. Tamuz intuitively realized this was Sophia’s doing and screamed.

{Let go, you monster!}

“What…? Huh, really. Who’s calling who a monster?”

Sophia, holding the demon’s body with one hand using the Control of Heaven and Earth technique, shook her head in disbelief. But Tamuz was different from the demons Sophia had slain before. In an instant, he transformed into a slender human male, escaping Sophia’s grip.

Immediately reverting to his true form, Tamuz activated all the shockwave and curse explosion spells stored in his spell sockets, scattering them in all directions, and fled without looking back.

“Tsk, what a nuisance!”

Even Sophia couldn’t have easily anticipated the demon fleeing without a second thought, so her reaction was slightly delayed. Moreover, the shockwave and curse explosion spells Tamuz had scattered posed a risk of collapsing the royal palace.

If the palace were to collapse and cause casualties, the political responsibility the Church Order would bear would be no small matter. Clicking her tongue, Sophia once again invoked the Control of Heaven and Earth technique. What happened next would have made anyone knowledgeable about spells doubt their eyes.

The shockwave and curse explosion spells Tamuz had scattered were unable to proceed in their original directions and began to be drawn toward Sophia. The spells gathered one by one on her raised palm, forming a dark mass of spells.

The only thing maintaining the unstable mass of spells was the force of the Control of Heaven and Earth technique.

After a moment of staring at the mass of spells on her palm with a troubled expression, Sophia sighed. Soon, a halo-like light seeped from behind her and flowed down. The holy radiance, a mix of gold and jade, moved like water and enveloped the spell sphere on her hand.

Since the spells were rooted in curses, this was the end of their treatment. Watching the spell mass vanish like a candle, Sophia turned her gaze to the direction Tamuz had fled. A faint smile appeared on her lips.

“Hah, it seems there was no need to worry about the aftermath.”

In her sight were Hildegard, Esiocles, and Conra, who had ambushed the fleeing Tamuz.

{Kuh!?}

Tamuz’s neck was caught between Esiocles’s thick pectorals and biceps, glowing with golden light. Esiocles Emmanuel’s muscles were now fully coated with the Light Power forged by the Immovable King Wisdom Technique.

“This is the headlock of the Grand Master passed down in the Alps Mountain Range!”

“Please stop disrespecting the Grand Master…”

{Y-you bastards…!?}

While Tamuz was caught in the bizarre headlock of the ‘Shining Muscle Esiocles,’ Hildegard’s halberd and Conra’s spear controlled his other limbs. Relentlessly controlled and unable to move his limbs, the demon had to endure the continuous strikes from the Light Power forged by the Immovable King Wisdom Technique, all while being strangled by Esiocles’s bulging muscles.

There, in the form of a demon being hunted, was a figure more pitiful than any demon slain before.

Watching the demon’s presence fade, Sophia smiled with satisfaction.

Indeed, it wasn’t just Sophia who had grown stronger. Her comrades had also been steadily improving. Sophia could see this in the way her comrades completely controlled the supreme demon’s body.

 

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