Alan felt his hair raise at the deadly look in the Queen's eyes as she walked toward him.
'She wants to kill me.' He felt this with certainty.
For a moment an unidentifiable emotion grew in his heart - but then he took in the appearance of the Queen and the emotion died before it could begin affecting his thoughts, swallowed by a putrid darkness that made him madly grit his teeth.
'One would have thought that after taking such a beating she would have looked at least a little haggard, so WHY does she look so perfect?!'
Titania's silky white hair and smooth green skin were just as flawless as before, completely unaffected by her rough tumble through the dirt.
This is a natural result of mana purification, a process that many people proficient in mana control use to keep their body clean, but for some reason that possibility did not cross Alan's mind. To him Titania was irrationally, inconceivably, impossibly perfect, whereas he - covered in dirt, blood and emerging bruises - was like dirt in comparison.
He despised that.
"Alan…" Titania finally spoke and he flinched, bracing himself for her wrath. "You disappoint me."
He blinked. '...Huh?'
"You've gained something that I suppose most creatures would call 'strength', but in my eyes you have lost all hope. You have become worthless."
The thick branches of wood restraining his limbs abruptly broke apart.
"Get up. Fight me, I'll show you just how insignificant you are now."
A wooden sword gradually formed in her right hand. "And don't even think of escaping, I wasn't just lying down there for the sake of it. This entire area is filled with my branches. You have a higher chance of devouring the sun than you have of fleeing from me."
As if to demonstrate that, new branches wrapped around his feet tightly and then released him a second later.
"You… YOU! HAHAHA! Okay! Alright let's have it your way then! One last dance with the wife!"
Alan practically growled that last word as he shot to his feet, his emotions all over the place.
Titania raised an eyebrow but through him the sword nevertheless. A short spear formed in her hand shortly afterwards and it shone with the light of her aura as she reinforced the weapon with her mana.
Alan caught the sword and did the same thing, causing lightning to run across the sword. He chuckled with a crooked grin as he swung it a few times, testing out its weight. But when he took a look at Titania's weapon he couldn't suppress his left eye from twitching.
'Is she mocking me?'
For Titania to use a short spear was normal enough. It was her main weapon of choice due to the fact that it complimented her fighting style perfectly. Most people didn't expect the initially short weapon to suddenly grow and pierce their hearts from 100 metres away. However, usually, the spearheads of her crafted spears usually looked like actual spearheads.
So why was this one flat on all sides and shaped like a cuboid?
She planned to fight him… with that? What kind of bad joke was this? Even in the friendliest of spars in the past she had used blade-shaped spearheads against him, and yet she dared to hold back against him now?
'To look down on me this much… Ludicrous! Her pride truly knows no bounds!' The indifferent smile on his face slipped and contorted into rage. He could no longer hide his loathing.
In the next moment he leapt in a burst of lightning, closing the distance between him and Titania by half in nearly an instant.
Titania didn't flinch in the slightest. She entered her stance with a fluidity that revealed practiced perfection, aiming the tip of her spear at her husband with her right hand as she held the other before her, poised for a follow up attack or defence. Most people didn't know how vicious that hand could be.
*CLACK!*
The 2 wooden weapons clashed. Alan wasn't so foolish that he would genuinely run at a spear user head on, it had been a feint. He had stopped himself before reaching her and turned his thrust into a slice at her ribs - but it was parried by the spear.
In all honesty he had expected the block, his plan had been to take advantage of Titania's pride and surprise her with his enhanced strength. After all, although she knew he was stronger thanks to his newfound connection to Envy, she could not have predicted just how much stronger.
Using most of his force, he had expected to send her reeling even if she didn't go flying. But as if to spit on his face, she did not budge. At all.
For a moment, he was flabbergasted. This is not something that happened before - and that was something considering that in each of their fights 'before' he had been much weaker than he was now.
'How?' The suppressed fear in his heart grew as he sent a flurry of attacks her way with all of his strength, all which were blocked with little effort.
'Did she get stronge-'
*CRACK!*
Titania's spear slammed into his jaw in a blur of speed, dislocating it instantly and sending him flying backwards.
*Splash* *splash* *splash*
After narrowly avoiding a collision with a tree his body bounced on a shallow but large puddle three times before coming to a stop, but he didn't dare allow himself a moment of daze. He rolled to his feet immediately with blinding fury.
"WHAT DID YOU DO!" He bellowed. "HOW DID YOU… HOW?!"
If the spearhead of Titania's weapon was in the usual shape of a blade he would have suffered more than mere jaw dislocation. His jaw would have come clean off.
What's worse was that she did not make any attempts to press her attack. From the beginning till now she had not moved from the spot that she was still standing on. Even her face was the same, empty of emotion and as ethereal as always.
'...!!!'
"Haah… Haah… Haah! Haah!Haaah!" He began to hyperventilate at the sheer audacity of the entire situation. Having avoided such a grisly injury simply because his opponent had deemed him unworthy of a real blade, and then seeing the face of the opponent looking bored of him as if he were nothing… How could he possibly maintain control over his emotions?
"TITANIAAAAAA!!!"
Never had his soul known such hatred.