No Man Can Be My Equal

==

What this meant was that the Demon Lord was a creature of magic, and thus everything it can do naturally, there was a spell that could accomplish very nearly the same thing. And while it can absorb magic, it didn't actually [Drain] magic from range.

This I explained. Then I bantered "[Magic Missile] is interesting if it can't miss, yours are probably guided by visual tracking, right?"

The Demon Lord let out an annoyed screech, and began gesturing, and ended up raising its index finger at me in a rude gesture.

Somehow I could just understand its meaning:

/Don't you bloody well make light of witchfire, ya wanker. It destroys all defensive magic on contact. You just bleedin' fed your magic barrier with power as fast as it could be disrupted until it was the Magic Missile that ran out of power./

"Fair enough."

How odd. It was easier to make friends with a Demon Lord that literally ate people than getting along with Zorah.

Still gonna rip and tear your guts, of course. Nothing personal.

The Demon Lord nodded. Fair enough.

"... Don't you two look like you're having a good time right there!" General Bazoar shouted. He brandished his sword. "DEMON LORD! Why haven't you killed this brat yet! Don't be incompetent and shame me!"

I tossed my sword aside and raised my fists like a boxer.

"Wha…! What are you doing?! HOW DARE YOU IGNORE ME!" the General roared.

"[FUCK OFF!]" I shouted back and with that completely unorthodox chant tossed a wave of rock spikes his way. Sure, he could sap all the magic he wanted - but since he was not a magician, it's not like he could do anything with all that magic power.

He could only dump it into the Demon Lord through their contract bond.

He would personally have to waste time chopping through those stone spikes before he could do anything to help.

Then I turned back towards the Demon Lord, and leaped at it like an angry demented red monkey.

It began screeching and swinging at the air.

I caught a thumb and began scampering up its arm. Its screaming grew louder.

Then we were face to face and our eyes met again and I screamed into the space between its brows "YOU ARE HUGE! THAT MEANS YOU HAVE HUGE GUTS!" I gripped the leonine fur around its neck. "RIP AND TEAR!"

Then it tried to melt my face off with eye lasers wait what the shite it can do that?!

The beams slapped against the [Air Shield] I always kept active around my head because /of course/ as the person that draws aggro in the party I would use my eye mask as a convenient place to engrave magic tools. Open face helmets are only good against shrapnel and arrows falling from above, and less so in face to face combat.

I disengaged from melee, because punch magic was less useful when the enemy can absorb the blow through sheer muscle mass.

The Demon Lord zapped away with its eye lasers again. A round shield of ice stopped and refracted the beam.

A breath passed as our eyes met.

Considering.

Testing.

Silently pre-casting.

I shot a Knife Missile at its face. This time the Knife Missle met an /angled/ magic barrier and was deflected instead of punching straight through.

The Demon Lord dropped to one knee and flared its wings out like a cape. The shadows under it thickened. Then from underneath a pair of howling, snarling Hellhounds emerged.

The demon dogs had six eyes, and flame licked the ground where their feet touched. They were fast and fearless, jaws open and dripping with saliva to bite and rend.

The stone floor became as unto [Land Sharks], great white jawed mouths lunged out from the burnt remains of the carpet, swallowing them up from ambush and then gnashing and tearing them to pieces, dragging them underneath the solid stone floor until only a small gout of flame marked their passing.

"I said, DON'T IGNORE ME!"

A wave of antimagic passed across the room, and the Demon Lord shivered. Sure, the magic would still be passed on to it, but it still felt deeply uncomfortable.

"Hm?" I grunted nonchalantly.

"FALL DOWN! FALL DOWN!" General Bazoar sent out wave after magic-draining wave at me. He was making it far too obvious now doing it with his right hand. "WHY WON'T YOU FALL?!"

With perfectly stable footing, now I didn't even show the slightest hint of being affected.

I turned around, grinned at him, and spread my arms out again, daring someone - anyone - to take a shot at my open unarmored body. "~I HAVE NO RIVAL! NO MAN CAN BE MY EQUAAAL!~"

The General now began screaming incoherently.

I began singing out, turning my back on the Demon Lord entirely "~BOOOORN TO BE KING! PRINCE OF THE UNIVERSE! FIGHTING AND FREEE~"!

The Demon Lord did not take the bait. It seemed more amused by these shenanigans than anything.

"You have finally provoked me, you little shite! I'll kill you myself!" The General rushed out from his other half of the room, having managed to hack his way through some time ago. His sword was a hand-and-a-half bastard sword with an impracticably broad blade, meant more for slashing and smashing than thrusting through gaps in armor. Probably a magic weapon.

"~Here I belong. Fighting for survival~," I whispered. "~In a world with the daaarkest powers~."

Rather than attack me at the same time, the Demon Lord stepped back - entering General Bazoar's passive antimagic range. Smart.

Bazoar chopped down at me with a great two-handed overhead blow that would have split open anything -

But I stepped /into/ his guard, and so instead of being cut I simply caught his sword by the grip of his two hands with a flat open palm. I was shorter than him by a fair amount, so I blocked the strike with my right arm held up straight up.

The force of that blow was transmitted harmlessly from the rigid arm, down the shoulders, through the spine, onto legs and down into the floor. The stone tiles under my feet cracked, but I was otherwise completely unharmed.

Bazoar snarled at me, completely unprepared for the sheer effrontery of someone meeting his hard combat strikes with soft martial arts.

I nodded. "Hey."

Then from my left hand behind my back that had been surreptitiously reaching into my belt pouches, I slapped onto his chestplate a conical device.

"Thanks for letting me past your anti-kinetic screen, moron~" I whispered.

"It's not going to work, with the Blockbracer I am invincible no matter the dista-"

I slapped the back of the cone, and the non-magical anti-tank shaped charge exploded under my palms. The copper liner inside the cone abruptly was turned into a molten jet of hypervelocity liquid metal that effortlessly punched through plate armor, and the cloth gambeson underlayer.

BANG.

Unfortunately, even at this short a distance, the Blockbracer (thanks again, you gabby idiot) effect still applied. The kinetic force of the jet was stopped. Unfortunately because of the extremely narrow focus of the armor piercing shaped charge this did not quite stop the fire and the rest of the explosion from proceeding /sideways/.

It didn't stop the transfer of heat to his skin fast enough.

"Gyaaaakh!" The general screamed in pain and staggered back. The Demon General caught him and helped him back to his feet.

Yeah. We went into this knowing we might have to deal with Crystal Creature antimagic shenanigans. And Monika and I, being people with pattern recognition, knew that if we could encounter *one* of those things, we surely will encounter another at some point. So just before we arrived at Alpas Castra, we [Boom Tubed] some of our anti-Crystal Creature arsenal.

It was almost exactly a panzerfaust, a completely unmagical solution to a magic-eating menace.

Yes, this was the advantage of having someone as OCD as Charlotte eating out of our palms for scraps of knowledge. We were not willing to unseal the pandora's box of gunpowder hot weaponry on this world just yet - its Renaissance levels of magic technology was sustainable - but making nitroglycerin and nitromethane and plastic explosives? That was another matter entirely.

Bazoar looked down and for a moment his eyes didn't recognize the circular gouge in his armor. Magically reinforced armor - which due to being inscribed as a magic tool continually absorbed ambient magic, hence mostly unaffected by his anti-magic field as long as given a second or so to recover, otherwise people would be complaining of malicious planned obsolence - was peeled open into jagged strips like a flower.

I could see exposed flesh through the breach in his knightly plate.

Hesitantly he reached out to touch the metal and winced - not at the pain - but the reality of it, feeling the sharp points scrape against the tips of the metal-capped fingers of his glove.

"What… what?! What have you done?!" he whispered in horror.

His skin was unharmed, it was just heated up quickly; not even to the level of a sunburn or touching a hot pan.

But that brief reminder of his mortality broke his belief in his invulnerability.

I could see from his eyes glancing this and that in panic, that this was enough to start breaking his sense of superiority. His confidence. His pride as a warrior!

The problem with people who cheat their way to the top in pay to win is that they have no idea what to do when they meet an actual pro on the same level.

Granted, I am someone who was also a cheatery existence, but at least I didn't just rest on my ass. My build was destined to be good at magic. So I worked to be good at magic and shored up my weaknesses in other fields, instead of thinking myself invincible!

I am only so strong BECAUSE I knew I wasn't invincible! So despite my seeming recklessness, I could always put 200% effort in because I knew that controlling the flow before the enemy makes a decision is as good as armor.

"You are not the man chosen by the gods. I am!" I said, striking straight at his ego. "I am immortal. And I can hurt you. I can /kill/ you."

I still had no idea how to harm him yet as long as those magic tools exist, but I can still destroy him. Psychologically.

He stared back at me with eyes wide with panic. "No! No, that's impossible!"

"Search your feelings. You know it to be true."

"No! No! YOU LIE!"

I shook my head sadly and whispered:

"I've seen things you people won't believe.

"Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion,

"I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate,

"All those moments will be lost, in time,

"Like tears in the rain.

I smiled. "Time to die."

"I KILL YOU! YOU LITTLE BASTARD! I KILL! YOU ARE NOTHING! HEAR ME? NOTHING! LIAR!" he raved and wanted to lunge at me again, but the Demon Lord grabbed him by the cape and then held him up like a kitten. "What? LET ME GO! YOU DEMON! HOW DARE YOU! DO YOU BETRAY ME TOO?! YOU NEED ME!"

The Demon Lord let out a series of clicks, as if saying /"Well, yes. But you promised a glorious sacrifice, and this contract will not be helped by you dying. I am obliged to protect you, and this is a pointless battle you need not fight."/

The shadows thickened again.

Bazoar pointed at me. "I WILL RAZE YOUR KINGDOM! ALL WILL BURN! I WILL HAVE YOUR WOMEN R*PED TO DEATH BY PIGS, AND THEN FED TO THEM AS SLOP!" He yelled as he was grabbed by the Demon Lord from behind almost in a hug. He jabbed his finger vehemently at me. "I WILL FLAY YOU ALIVE AND MAKE YOU WATCH, YOU WILL DIE! DIE SCREAMING! AND THEN DEMONS WILL HAVE YOUR SOUL!"

I laughed. I opened my arms wide again and retorted:

"When you bring your army, I urge you to send your best. Send all your demons, all of them! Don't hold back! Soon enough they will learn, there is the ONE that they all fear." I jabbed a thumb at my own chest and lifted my chin arrogantly. "Come back stronger and struggle against me with all your meager power, you pathetic traitor general! Don't you dare make this boring!"

"YOU FUCKEERRRR~" he roared, even as he was pulled into the inky-black shadows, which then seemed to pull inwards, like a pool of water evaporating out in the sun.

Wait, why didn't it just shadow-teleport straight to… oh, right. Demons and other strange mystical creatures have weird rules about territory and where they can enter uninvited. There are plenty of [Teleport] magics with arbitrary rules like that.

And outside…

Huh.

I didn't realize it before, but there were also sounds of battle (mainly explosions) that now had subsided. All the lesser demons also vanished when the Demon Lord retreated.

"Monika, the stupidhead's gone. The antimagic field… no need to beware for it. You can come out now."

Leene appeared, showing herself through the open outer wall "Indeed, I AM THE STRONGEST!" she declared. "Gyahaha. These evil creatures are nothing before me!"

"Okay, /one/ of the stupidheads," I added.

Nothing but silence. "Monika?"

Oh wait, she had shut down.

After all, she said she was not an artificial intelligence, but the smartphone in its totality.

I took out from my belt bag a brick of solid tempered steel. Inside that was a dense but soft layer of packed wool. Then inside that was a leather bag. And inside that was another quilted bag of fine silk and cotton. And then inside of that was a wooden slot with air spaces to further insulate the contents from touching the insides of the container.

And then, sliding that out, inside that tray was my smartphone.

All of which had Leene's [Protection] applied to them.

Elze, Linze, and Yae then appeared, being lifted up via [Air Platforms]. Leene pushed them through the gap. Zorah remained levitating outside, and for a change was at loss unable to make a comment against Leene.

When it comes to pissing people off, age and experience beat youth and energy every damn time.

=

And that was how the girls found me, standing there, half-naked, staring numbly down at the black technological slate in my arms.

"Mister Zah? Are you alright?" asked Linze.

"Tch. So the bastard's escaped," Else groused. "Fighting demons ain't very much difference from fighting monster beasts, it's just that monster beasts can feel pain and fear. Damn demons just don't flinch."

"Demons seek to slay or corrupt mortals more than anything, if they can," said Leene. "You can trust that, at least."

It was only Yae that remained silent, bending down to look at my face. With half my eye mask shattered, it was actually the first time she had a good look at enough of my real face.

She gasped. "Playa-dono!"

I remained frozen in time, cold, and shivering, as if it was raining. It was raining heavily.

The smartphone screen was a flat empty void. A crack ran straight through the gorilla glass.

Despite everything, General Bazoar had won against me and given me the absolute despair.

==

==