"I'm stronger than you."
"Haha~ Five hundred years and you haven't grown any taller, but your mouth sure has gotten a lot bigger," Aura rested her chin on her hand, confidently crossed her leg, and the smile on her face was instantly mixed with a competitive fighting spirit, "Other things can still be discussed, but this one thing, just like before, let's settle it with force. No objections, right?"
"I have no objections. Whoever wins gets unconditional support afterward. I'll also help you gather the undead legion. So even if you lose, no complaints. How about that?"
"Ahh! Of course!"
"But before that, a small question. What if your undead army gets smashed up too badly? You won't come asking me for compensation, right?"
"If you can do it, then come at me! Today, I will wash away my past humiliation! I'll make you kneel at my feet!"
Aura slammed the armrest hard, boldly declaring her challenge, determined to measure strength with him and return every grievance she had suffered in the past.
———
To prevent Aura from going back on her word after losing, Ash naturally let her properly assemble her forces.
Standing by the castle gates behind the army, Aura looked at her own vast, pitch-black headless legion and had already begun thinking about what she should make him do first after her victory.
During the war between the Demon King's army and the humans, she had scavenged and pieced together several thousand carefully selected elite troops. With such an army to use up, victory was practically unquestionable.
She was even starting to worry that the outcome would be too one-sided, lacking any fun or sense of achievement.
After all, defeating Ash and turning the tables to become the one in charge had been her greatest wish for many years. She had even almost accepted it as her greatest regret, thinking Ash was dead.
"But still, Ash has gotten worse, hasn't he? Back then he should've been much more cunning. And now he actually… huh?"
Aura was still yawning as she sighed halfway through her thought, when her voice suddenly cut off.
As the undead legion surged forward, Ash showed no fear at all in the face of this overwhelming numerical violence.
At the moment when blades and swords were about to strike him, he merely bent his knees slightly. Abnormal gravity caused the surrounding headless soldiers, along with rubble and sand from the ground within a hundred-meter radius, to float up into the air, completely losing their ability to move.
And in the very next instant—
BOOM!
With a thunderous explosion, the ground suddenly cracked apart, sand and dust erupted in all directions, and Ash's figure vanished from where he stood, shooting up into the clouds in an instant.
Aura had originally imagined many victory scenarios. After all, the difference in numbers was enormous. No matter how she thought about it, losing was impossible. But—
"This bastard! He's still as cunning as ever!", The moment Ash flew into the clouds, her heart sank, and she couldn't help anxiously scanning the sky.
In this era, the sky belonged to demons and monsters. Even if there were mages among the undead legion, they couldn't fly.
Ordinary soldiers went without saying. Even the mages guarding Aura and the few demons present were caught completely off guard.
As a gravity manipulator, Ash's flight speed was clearly far beyond that of normal demons. In the blink of an eye, not even a black speck could be seen in the sky.
This was their first time dealing with such an opponent. They severely lacked the necessary experience and countermeasures.
The human-wave tactic Aura had envisioned became completely useless right from the start. It made her so angry her teeth were practically grinding apart.
She just couldn't understand how she had fallen for his trick again.
"What 'duel in open terrain so I can fully use my troop advantage and lose convincingly'? Isn't this just you abusing your mobility? Ash! Don't think this means you can beat me! This time, I will win! No matter what!"
While watching the sky together with her subordinates, grinding her teeth, she also released detection magic to sense fluctuations in the surrounding mana.
Ash didn't keep her waiting long. Soon, she detected an abnormal surge of magic power, and everyone else saw it too.
They didn't even need to look up. A crimson glow was already spreading across the ground.
In the afternoon sky, an untimely scene of burning clouds appeared.
This made Linie, the young demon girl Aura had taken in, softly exclaim without realizing it, "Is that… a real meteor?"
That's right. A violently burning fireball, just like a meteor, was slanting down from the sky, falling toward Aura's position.
Its speed was unheard of, even faster than when it had ascended.
Aura's heart tightened. She raised her hand sharply and shouted, "Hurry and stop him!"
There was no reply, but the surrounding headless mages one after another sent multicolored lights and tangible manifestations of various elements flying toward the high-speed meteor.
However, the meteor's descent was even faster than their spells, and more than that, the abnormal gravity created by the purple lightning surrounding the meteor caused spells like wind blades, pillars of flame, and ice spears to have their trajectories twisted and deflected the moment they entered its range. Other intangible spells were warped and shattered outright, unable to approach the meteor's core at all.
The spells that scattered in the sky even bloomed like fireworks, bursting into brilliant, multicolored light. And, before Aura, protected in the center by a large group of shield-bearing undead soldiers, could see the outcome she had been hoping for, she instead realized—
"It can turn?"
Not only were their spells being deflected, the meteor itself was actually changing direction at ultra-high speed, curving straight toward her as she tried to retreat into the castle. She was left utterly dumbfounded.
Instinctively, she gathered magic between both hands, preparing to strike back herself.
For Aura, who possessed vast magical power, even a simple attack of gathering and firing mana would be more than enough to deliver a powerful blow. But just as the mana had gathered, a blinding light instantly stole her vision.
KABOOM!
With a roar like the sky itself splitting apart, Aura's position was instantly swallowed by searing flames and dust that blotted out the heavens.
The ground trembled violently, and the towering castle behind her seemed unable to bear the strain, shuddering and letting out a deep, groaning sound.
The stone-paved road in front of the castle was torn apart by the impact, cracking into a dense, tangled web of fissures, like a gigantic spiderweb spread across the earth.
Immediately after, these cracks seemed to come alive. Driven by the shockwave, they surged outward like raging waves in a stormy sea. Every shattered brick became a deadly projectile, indiscriminately bombarding everything around it.
The shield-bearing soldiers guarding Aura were torn apart like paper by the "meteor," their bodies flung away like scarecrows.
Even the demons nearby who tried to rush in to protect her were unable to advance an inch amid the raging shockwaves, flames, and stone-shrapnel barrage, instead being blown backward.
Soldiers farther away also couldn't escape disaster, losing their footing and collapsing under the earth-shaking impact.
In that unimaginable collision, Aura, a mage lacking close-combat means and with a body far weaker than a warrior's, didn't even feel pain.
Until the very end of her consciousness, all she saw was the ever-approaching fireball, and then, before her magic could even disperse, she lost consciousness.
If Ash hadn't held back, her entire body would likely have been shattered in the explosion.
When the smoke and dust finally cleared, the surrounding demons and undead legion at last saw that in the massive meteor crater, their master lay beneath Ash, having cleanly passed out.
Because of this, the undead legion immediately entered standby mode, while the demons, amid cries of shock, instinctively ceased all hostile actions.
"Lady Aura… lost just like that?"
"As expected of Lady Aura's older brother!"
"This is really… unbelievable…"
Amid stunned gasps and disbelief, the ash-covered demons' eyes were filled with shock, fear, and awe.
Although Ash's abilities almost completely countered Aura's, the fact that one of the Seven Sages of Destruction was utterly defeated in a single exchange was more than enough to show the gap between them.
At the very least, even now they couldn't imagine any way to intercept that ultra-high-speed "meteor" within the bizarre space warped by abnormal gravity.
Yet even when facing a monster they absolutely couldn't defeat, they merely stood around helplessly, unsure of what to do.
Although both Ash and Aura had always liked to decide labor distribution based on strength, and demon society itself was ruled entirely by the strong over the weak, these demons were still Aura's subordinates.
Switching allegiance without waiting for Aura to speak would likely cause no small amount of trouble later.
Ash, however, had little interest in them. Ignoring those hesitant figures entirely, he did what he had always done in the past, grabbing Aura by her convenient, easy-to-handle horn, lifting the unconscious woman up, slinging her over his shoulder, and boldly striding into the castle.
Even now, he was already looking forward to what kind of expression Aura would have when she woke up.
———
The day after the duel—
It wasn't until evening that Aura's consciousness gradually returned. In a hazy daze, she opened her eyes, staring at the familiar ceiling and blinking for quite a while.
It took her a fair amount of time to finally understand the situation and realize, she had lost.
"Why… did it turn out like this?"
"I'm really sorry. My magic just happens to bypass your human-wave tactics."
"You despicable bastard!", The familiar voice by her bedside made her instantly turn her head and glare, her face filled with humiliation and unwillingness.
Even though she understood that, given the previous situation, she would definitely still lose if it happened again. Still, scolding him first at least made her feel a bit better.
And more than that, she really was unwilling to accept it.
Facing this duel again after five hundred years, she had imagined it being one-sided. The reality was even more one-sided than she'd expected, except the one being crushed was herself.
To be honest, if it weren't for the sake of saving face, losing so thoroughly so suddenly made her want to cry.
Even though she held it in, her regret grew so strong that she unconsciously began biting into her blanket, tearing at it on the bed while glaring viciously at Ash. The chewed-up blanket in her mouth seemed to stand in for him.
This put considerable pressure on Ash. He even worried he might get bitten himself, so he stepped back slightly and shook his head with a sigh.
"What are you, a cheating little kid? You don't even know the meaning of 'accept the outcome of a bet'?"
"Despicable bastard!"
"Alright, alright, I'm a despicable bastard," She growled through clenched teeth, just as unwilling as before, while Ash shrugged indifferently, "Say whatever you want. Just don't forget what you agreed to."
"What do you want to do?", Though deeply unwilling, she recognized the difference in their strength and, after a long silence, chose the same compromise she had made five hundred years ago.
Even so, she still warned him, "Let me say this first! If you plan to bully me casually like before, I won't just obediently let you do whatever you want!"
"What exactly do you take me for?"
"A despicable bastard."
"That's enough already, isn't it? And wasn't that a perfectly fair fight? Where was the despicable part?", He retorted casually, then slapped her face with his palm to forcibly shut her up, "Right now, more importantly, come with me."
"What do you mean 'more importantly'?", Aura complained as she pushed his hand away, then lay on her side and let out a long sigh, "I didn't explain it clearly before, but now let's make things a bit clearer."
"What?"
"Even if I want to be the Demon King, the truly troublesome ones aren't just the Demon King himself. The All-Knower Schalcht and the Golden Land's Macht are both extremely troublesome. Even the two of us together might not be able to win. Do you really think we have a chance?"
"Let's ignore Schalcht for now. Macht of the Golden Land doesn't even have interest in this sort of thing, does he?"
"Is that so? Even so, there are still quite a few troublesome ones besides them."
"Let's ignore that for now too. In any case, we need to make the necessary preparations before anything happens."
The demon population was small, but their hidden power was vast. From time to time, a great demon would pop up out of nowhere. No one knew how many great demons were hidden in this world.
Those types were good at hiding, hard to find. Even the Demon King might not know where they were.
And having Aura control great demons was far less convenient and efficient than directly controlling the human upper echelons.
"Leave all your subordinates here. Don't even bring the undead legion. Come with me to the Empire."
"The Empire? Why?"
In this world, there was only one country called the Empire. It wasn't just the strongest among the northern lands, it was also the strongest country on a global scale.
Because that Empire was the surviving successor of the great empire that had conquered most of the world a thousand years ago.
Even in the current war against the demon race, it was the hardest nut to crack on the front lines.
"The Empire is a pain. If anything, without the Empire, the central continent would've fallen long ago. Don't tell me you want me to control that emperor? Forget it. If it were that easy, it would've been taken long ago," Just thinking about the troublesome Empire made Aura's face fill with annoyance.
Ash naturally understood what she was saying, even more clearly than she did. Sitting on the desk in the room, he casually poured himself a glass of water and said,
"True. If we went in carelessly and got surrounded, it would be a real headache. After all, the Empire inherited far too much from Flamme, and then developed for another thousand years."
"Flamme? Ahh~ The human magic progenitor from those books you used to read?"
"So aside from those great demons, the most troublesome existence is the Empire."
Even though he had no intention of directly confronting the Empire and only planned to scheme a few things first, just thinking about it gave him a headache.
Though it was merely a fragment of the great empire that had survived under siege from surrounding nations, it was still the strongest core centered on the imperial capital. Neither demons nor humans had been able to take it down.
Flamme had spread magic to human society with a beautiful vision, hoping it would become the light of humanity. Almost all of that legacy now lay within the Empire. Her wish had partly come true, and partly not.
It was indeed the main pillar resisting the demon race, but calling it the light of humanity felt somewhat inappropriate.
Because, according to the future Ash knew, after the Demon King's death, when the demon race fell into chaos, the Empire, having lost its greatest threat, planned to kill him, becoming the greatest contributor to turning the Empire into the world's strongest magical civilization and the most powerful human nation.
Their object of worship, Flamme, included her master Serie, and her disciple Frieren.
At that time, Serie had stepped forward after hearing Flamme's final wishes and had already been teaching humans magic for over half a century, and Frieren was also one of the major contributors who helped them eliminate the Demon King, that greatest threat.
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