Chapter Eleven: Time Passed

Fumiko trained daily with Meld whenever he wasn't out on the battlefield.

She had gotten better at handling a sword, actually having a proper style to fight with. But whenever Meld was out fighting, she would train with lower ranking demons that stayed behind and she would show how she really fought.

No style or form and heavy blows. What Meld would call a barbaric fighting style. A monster given human form using a sword without any knowledge on how to use it.

Fumiko had also learned of the power that Lord Zerad had granted her. And for the powers he had granted her, she was eternally grateful.

It was called 'Seven Sins' as each power was named after one of the seven deadly sins. Although maybe the sins were named after them.

Wrath, the one she had been using unconsciously. It increased her power in accordance with her anger. And every consecutive hit added weight to it.

Of course there were the other Sins as well, Pride, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Greed and Sloth. But she would keep what they did to herself for now.

Her anger for humans had also grown. Everytime a battle ended injured demons would come back to the kingdom, and others would come back dead with their family mourning them.

Fumiko felt sorry for the families, but she was never allowed to leave the castle until her training was over. According to Zerad he didn't want to send her out just to die, and she could be a secret weapon for them.

She truly believed in Zerads cause. Get rid of the humans and make the demons the rulers. To stop this war, to get rid of the pain it was causing to these innocent demons.

Her body had also gone over a great deal of change over the time she was in this world, which was around five months by this point.

She had grown taller, causing her a lot of growing pains that just didn't seem to end for over a month.

She had lost the fat she was so insecure about, now no longer fat as she was before. She had gained muscles that made her stronger, that showed how strong she was. But her muscles didn't make her manly, but just the right amount to give her a certain sexiness.

Her hair now wasn't tangled and messy. It was now straight and perfect as she wanted it. Surprisingly it didn't change shape, and had the tufts of hair sticking out, but instead of being random pieces that stuck out, it was now like that way on purpose.

The bruises and scars that had lined her skin constantly before she came here were now nowhere to be seen. Instead, all that was seen was unblemished skin that was as smooth as polished marble. Fumiko had also gained a slight tan from being outdoors every day, training until she collapsed.

The freckles that had dotted her skin like dirt that couldn't be removed were now nowhere in sight as they seemingly disappeared after a while.

Her glasses also weren't needed anymore. She just got a headache from wearing them one day and then realised that she could still see perfectly without them.

Although she kept the glasses as a souvenir, a reminder to herself. Of what she once was, and now what she is.

Her old self was a weak, incompetent, incomplete, weak, ugly person. A shell that she had shed to become who she was truly meant to be.

A beautiful person who everyone looked at with love, lust, a desire to protect them and a desire to get with them. But knowing they would have no chance because she was out of their league. That was who Fumiko is now.

Fumiko could finally live up to her name's meaning. A beautiful child. Although she was not a child.

She was a woman, who was now stronger than half of Lord Zerads army combined.

…

Nariko trained whenever she could. She had gotten stronger, but she knew her current level of strength wasn't going to be enough to get rid of the Demon Lord Zerad.

The reason, she had said, was that she trained whenever she could. Was because she was sometimes forced to take breaks. Because the people feared she was overworking herself, although Nariko reassured them that she wasn't, sometimes she knew she was lying and other times she felt that she wasn't.

Her stay with the sword had become more refined. She learned how to properly attack. How to block weapons at odd angles.

Her counter attacking and defence had only gotten better since she came to this world. But her ferociousness in attacking wasn't something that could be ignored.

She had been training with a katana for her main weapon, but using a spear whenever she could as well. It wasn't that she was carrying around a spear and a katana.

But that Gazef had told her that she could lose her weapon or it could possibly break, so she would have to know how to properly wield a different weapon in case she couldn't find a katana in the battlefield near her.

Which would likely be the case since it was an unusual weapon to fight with. In fact the royals and army didn't even know about it, except for a few who had heard about it. They actually had to scour the capital for a smithery that sold the weapon.

They did manage to find one, and the blacksmith got access to a better forgery to craft the weapon for Nariko. And because she was happy with it, and the king saw that, the king made some builders to build the man a forge like the one that he had used. Safe to say that his smithery became more popular after that.

Nariko had also been educated on the power that she held. Apparently it was a sacred power that only a few in history had ever held. And no one had ever had the honour of having all of them, one person had two at most at one point and he was recorded in history as a legend. And it was even rare for all of them to be on the planet at the same time, which just showed the severity of the situation to anyone who wasn't convinced before.

Anyone in history who had this power in history had done great things. And they were always good. And the people who held the skills were always said to be the people closest to God or the Heavens.

'Seven Virtues'. That was what the group of skills was collectively called. The skills worked by belief mostly, as long as one believed in themselves for something, faces a challenge head on, and stood up against injustice, the skills would work and wouldn't lose effect.

The skills were already taking effect, and Nariko could feel herself getting stronger day by day.

Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Courage, Faith, Hope and Charity. These were the Seven Virtues.

So far, they were the strongest skills Nariko had in her arsenal.

Of course, she wasn't arrogant enough to say she could beat all of the Orders of the kingdom. But she was strong enough that she wouldn't lose straight away and could put up a decent fight.

Her appearance hadn't changed much either surprisingly.

She probably only grew a few centimetres, but that was normal since she was still growing. If anything she thought she might have passed the six foot mark, which was an accomplishment in her opinion.

The thing that had changed most about her, physically at least, was her hands. When she got here, they were soft, not the hands of a warrior. But now they were rough, with small scars on them from swinging her sword. She had to wear wraps around her hands almost always when she was training as her palms started bleeding sometimes when she trained too hard. And even out of training didn't take them off, which confused a few people who she grew close to during her months here.

She had seen the injured soldiers return to the castle, some missing limbs and others having clothes over them and grieving family members around them.

Her determination to stop this war had only grown, and continued to grow every time she saw that scene. She had even learned the basics of healing magic to help out, so that the real healers could help out with the bigger injuries.

She had also been out on the battlefield a few times. The first time it didn't go too well, she froze. She berated herself each time she remembered. The death. Destruction. She couldn't handle it. She froze and only got snapped out of it because Gazef was out on the field and saw her freezing.

She managed to participate in the last stretch of it, but didn't make a big contribution. Not a great first impression for a hero supposed to save humanity.

But the next few small bouts of battles she went to were better. She didn't freeze and managed to fight and help out.

But whenever a demon begged for their life and surrendered… she couldn't bring herself to kill them. It wasn't right. So, remembering a lesson she learned earlier on she asked the king for a favour.

That was how Prisoners Of War, or POW, were created. She had remembered a lesson where she learned of a material that could stop the use of mana and any beyond normal strength abilities. It was tested to become a sword to stop magic and win fights faster, but then they realised that it affects the user of her sword as well even if they put something between the user and the sword.

So they were made into handcuffs and everytime a demon surrendered, the soldiers were ordered to put the cuffs on them. It would basically make them into a normal person.

Of course, Nariko made sure they weren't mistreated. That they weren't being used as slaves. She checked up on the areas that they were being kept, it didn't look great at first, but the place improved after time.

They were made to make stuff, but they got food and if they couldn't work due to sickness, a missing limb, or age, then they weren't made work.

Nariko was happy with herself for that accomplishment. She had stopped the deaths, or at least some deaths, of people who didn't need to die and were forced into the war.

She didn't just want to save humanity, but any demon or any other race of people that were being forced to fight for Zerad.

The king was happy about that as well. Apparently one of the leaders of the people he was working with to fight against Zerad was a Demon Lord, and he had told Gervais to thank Nariko in his place.

They had also gotten some useful information from some demons who had either overheard some stuff or were in high positions.

They had gotten positions of camps of where Zerad kept humans captive or where the strongholds of some high ranking demons were.

This helped Nariko and others to know what to expect when going to those places.

There were even talks of giving some good behaving demons freedom. And there was even talk of a possible new Order in the kingdom solely made up of demons.

The reason it said, good behaving demons, was because even though they surrendered didn't mean that they weren't bad. Some just did it out of fear, or some thought had heard about the POW and wanted to get into the kingdom easily and kill a bunch or kill the cowardice demons who surrendered, but they hadn't heard about the Anti-Magic materials.

The war was, apparently according to both Gervais and even Gazef, going to go into a temporary lull. Both sides were exhausted and even though Zerad wanted to win quickly, he knew that having tired troops fighting wouldn't get him victory. Proven by the fact that the humans had won more battles recently.

Right now Nariko was ordered by the king to go out to another battle and help out there. They had gotten information that it was a stronghold of the demons that held valuables and had a supply line to other strongholds. So if they destroyed this one, they would get whatever they were protecting and cut off the supply lines of other strongholds, possibly forcing them into a temporary retreat.

"You ready, Nariko?" Gazef asked as he petted his horse as he fed it an apple.

Nariko nodded her head in determination, putting on a gauntlet on her right hand, her left one already fitted with one, this wasn't a full hand gauntlet but one that just covered the back of the hand with the rest just being a glove. "Yeah. I'm ready."

…

Fumiko's hair blew as a lone gust of wind flew by. Her hair, which at this point reached just above her waist, shook for a few seconds.

Fumiko let out a breath as she had her eyes closed, before she suddenly opened them. Turning around, swinging her massive great sword with her, only for her to stop it at the neck of a maid.

The sword had stopped right at the neck, a drop of blood falling from the millimetre deep cut. The maid gulped, making another drop fall, before she spoke. "Lord Zerad has demanded your presence." The maid informed her.

Nariko stayed in that position, and the maid didn't dare move in fear of the sword not stopping at her neck like this if she did. She eventually let out an annoyed groan, moved the sword away and threw it in the ground.

She then moved towards the maid, the maid backing up in fear before she hit a wall. Fumiko put an arm beside the maids head, pinning her to the wall.

The maid suddenly felt really embarrassed as she blushed madly, looking up at Fumiko, wondering what she would do next.

Fumiko only used her other hand and brought it up to the maids neck, at the cut. The maid let out a hiss of pain, but that still did not get rid of her emotions from before, some other emotions appeared because of it.

Fumiko gently wiped her thumb against the cut, and when it travelled completely across it, the cut had disappeared.

Her thumb had gathered a bit of blood, and still staring silently into the maids eyes, only taking a quick glance at the blood, she licked the blood off her thumb, swallowing it before speaking.

"You ought to be more careful. I wouldn't want your cute face getting ruined by accident." Fumiko said into the maids ear, giving her a quick kiss on the check before walking away.

Once Fumiko was gone the maid fell to the ground leaning against the wall, her heart beating in her chest wildly. What had happened?! She hadn't felt this way about a woman before! And… "I wouldn't want your cute face getting ruined by accident", did Fumiko mean she would do it on purpose if she asked to?

The maid's breaths started to get heavier as thought about the situations that could arise from this. None of them morally good, but all of them…. so hot, in her opinion.