Chapter 22 S2

Breathless, the angel rose to his feet and wiped his blade before making it disappear. Without lingering, he moved towards Seiran and Lirum when a decadent laugh turned his head. Surprised, he saw the president, still on one knee, surrounded by a kind of red smoke. He stopped and watched her, frowning. He felt a natural form of energy, but different from the one he was used to handling. It was as if it had been modified.

"You angels always think you can control everything, decide everything, said the elf in a husky voice. But you often forget that by taking yourselves for superior to others, you underestimate our strength and determination! You're not the only ones who want to influence the course of things in the intergalaxy!

Surprised to see her still standing, Niris glanced at the six elves he had slashed and noticed with amazement that their bodies had blackened and the flesh had disappeared from their bones.

"The spell still worked?" he exclaimed.

Without waiting, he reappeared his weapon, but this time invoked flaming charisma. In front of him, the President was absorbing the natural energy that had formed into concentrated streams of red smoke around her. He analyzed the situation acutely.

Apparently, the elves had managed to complete the spell despite his intervention. He cursed himself inwardly. He'd been too slow! With both hands firmly welded to the hilt of his sword, Niris tried to gauge the amount of altered energy at the elf's disposal. She didn't seem to be able to stop, gorging herself on energy until her energy channels exploded.

Niris took stock of how much energy he had left. Even if he constantly collected natural energy passively when he ran out, it wouldn't be enough to undo the President in the state she was in. He was going to have to push back his limits if he wanted to end this fight with a victory.

He took his bearings and decided to launch a first attack while the elf continued to absorb the strange red energy. He concentrated his raw energy into the blade, which immediately resonated and blazed with a beautiful yellow-orange color. He let Niyari's energy flowing through his body mingle with his natural energy without restricting it. He needed it. Lou was nowhere near and didn't seem to have sensed the fight. He couldn't count on her to get him out of this situation.

Extending his left leg backwards, he propelled himself towards the president using the natural energy he had diffused in his muscles for this purpose. As he swung his sword, hoping to land a significant blow, he was stopped dead in his tracks by a buckle that activated when he was only a meter or two away from the elf. The shock made his arms tremble, and he leapt backwards.

He'd put a lot of force into this blow, so he hoped he'd at least altered the shield, but its surface was as smooth as ever. The angel hadn't even made a dent in its surface. He gritted his teeth, then resumed his attack. Once, twice. Unsuccessfully. The shield was extremely resistant.

He was about to try one last time when the elf straightened up. The red vapors surrounding her had disappeared. She had finished absorbing the modified energy produced by the strange spell cast by the now-deceased elves.

Niris swore inwardly. She seemed stronger than ever. Without doubt, she was the most powerful opponent he had ever defeated. He wasn't sure he'd get through without damage... Was he even capable of beating her?

He quickly pushed the thought from his mind. He had no choice but to beat her. Without waiting any longer, he decided to launch a first attack to gauge his opponent's strength. He gathered his natural energy and concentrated it in his blade, whose tent turned bright red. With a broad vertical movement, he projected the accumulated energy with unprecedented power. Normally, the elf wouldn't have time to dodge.

But just as he was expecting her to parry the blow or attempt a last-minute dodge, she materialized two whips and slammed them down in front of her. The shock instantly stopped her attack, causing a violent shockwave. Niris raised his arms to shield himself from the wind, which lifted everything around him. He himself skidded a few centimetres, despite his feet firmly planted on the ground.

"Impossible!" he thought in amazement. He couldn't believe it. The elf hadn't become stronger, she'd become much stronger than before. The situation was critical. Just as he was about to step back to buy a little time to devise a strategy, the elf spoke up again.

-Did you really think you could hit me with that ridiculous attack? Haha! I don't believe it! I'm more powerful than the offspring of that insufferable Aroslan! Hahahaha!

The chairwoman was seized by a sudden fit of laughter. Her eyes had a bulging quality that made them look as if they might pop out of their sockets at any moment. Niris didn't intervene; he just let her be. If she wanted to talk, fine! She was going to buy him time. In the meantime, he would devise a strategy to deal with this monster.

-You pretend to be the benefactors of humanity, but all you do is impose your ideas on others! Democracy? Peace? How do you know that the populations of intergalaxy want your disillusioning principles? Ah, how I long to see you fall from your pedestal one day, losing everything you've got to people who've been hurt by your ideology! You withdrew from the intergalactic scene, why did you come back? Assume your weakness and powerlessness instead of playing the peace guards!

Niris tried not to take what the elf had just said too personally, but it was difficult. He lacked his father's diplomacy and calm.

-An admission of weakness? The one who will bring us down has not yet been born, as far as I know. And what you see as weakness, we see as wisdom. Our role is not to impose our vision on others, as you say, but to share it with those who want it. You seem to have forgotten that without our intervention, on several occasions in history, the intergalaxy as it exists today would certainly have disappeared, and you with it. And if we do nothing today, this tragedy will be repeated.

-Ah, do you hear that!" jeered the elf. As haughty as her father, I can't believe it!

She took a step in his direction. Her whips were now filled with electric shocks that boded ill for the future.

-Why don't you assume your deeply violent nature? Instead of playing the paragon of peace! You consider that to achieve peace, you have to kill conscious beings, but you allow yourself to give lessons to others! And you don't know if you've saved the intergalaxy from certain extinction, nobody knows what would have happened if you hadn't intervened! It's easy to rewrite history according to your own narrative!

-Stop being such a hypocrite, we all know that you have a huge inferiority complex and that you can't digest the fact that another species can dominate you and oppose you at the risk of annihilating you! All you elves care about is the survival of your species, without any involvement with the outside world. If the world disappears but you survive, then you don't mind - on the contrary! I think you'd even be happy for that to happen...

Niris underlined his tirade with a wry smile he knew the elf could see.

-Well, if you understand us so well, why do you persist in opposing us? You can't eradicate us from this world anyway according to your beautiful mentality, so deal with it rather than continually fight against it, can you?

-I'd rather die! replied the angel, still smiling and with a spark of mischief in his eyes.

The discussion was over. The elf was about to launch an attack, and he was ready to dodge it. The first whip sounded. He leapt to the side to avoid it, then leapt again to avoid the second. A third came soon after.

The electric discharges that ran through them caused the grass to crackle and blacken instantly on contact. Niris told himself that he absolutely had to avoid them. A single blow would certainly be fatal. Unless he reinforced his skin with energy protection, but he didn't have enough reserves to do that. It was better to concentrate everything in his speed to be sure of avoiding the attacks.

But he had reached a dead end. His analysis hadn't brought him any good news. The elf's natural energy was strange, but one thing he was sure of was that it was much more aggressive than his own. It was as if she ate the natural energy that came into contact with her. This dissolved it, and it lost all its offensive character, like his attack earlier which it had dissolved with disturbing ease.

Her energy was therefore vulnerable to this strange, modified natural energy. No matter how much he put into his attacks, they would be ineffective against the elf. He therefore decided to concentrate on defense, while watching for a breakthrough, however small, through which he could pierce and hit her directly with his weapon without using natural energy. She wouldn't be able to nullify his attack, since it would be a physical one.

But achieving such a feat was going to be difficult. For several minutes now, he had been struggling to cope with the elf's succession of aggressive attacks. The whiplashes had multiplied, and were now accompanied by beams like those she'd used previously. Avoiding both natural energy arrows and whips was proving particularly difficult. And she left no exploitable opening.

The angel soon found herself out of breath and her body covered in cuts. His numerous dodges saved him from the worst, but he had no choice but to let the smaller attacks get to him.

-Tired already?" mocked the elf, who wore a big, victorious smile.

As far as she was concerned, she'd already won. Which was probably true if Niris didn't find a way out of this predicament quickly. He resumed his incessant dodging and tried to think of a solution. He was about to attempt a desperate attack to force a passage and create an opening himself when he felt an immeasurable wave of energy wash over him.

It was Niyari's energy! He felt it coursing through his channels, burning his limbs like raw flesh exposed to red-hot iron. The pain galvanized him, but surprise made him react a hair too late, and one of the elf's whips caught him in a rib. As he gritted his teeth in dread of the pain that was about to overwhelm him, he was surprised to find that the pain hadn't arrived.

No. He didn't even have a mark on his body, and the blow barely swept him off his feet, propelling him just a meter away. Stunned, he quickly inspected himself before freezing. A voice was calling to him from inside.

"Hey kid! It's me!"

Niris didn't dare reply. He knew very well who the voice came from, and he refused to speak to it. But the situation had frozen him in place. Fortunately, the elf must have needed to regain her energy, for she paused in her attacks.

"Ah, don't answer if you don't want to," resumed Niyari, whose voice echoed in her mind. But at this rate you'll die, and I'll disappear with you, and that's out of the question. So take my energy and put an end to this madwoman's rantings. I can't believe you're so weak, how could you keep me inside you with so little power?"

"No," replied Niris simply, who was a little tetanized by what was happening.

He was afraid, and at the same time he was on the alert, waiting for the next attack.

"What do you mean, no?" snapped the demonic spirit. Listen to me, kid, I'm not asking you. You and I are in the same boat, so you're going to do me the pleasure of saving your skin properly."

"You'll take control as soon as you can." The angel protests mechanically.

"Oh, yeah? So you die and I die? Great idea, I hadn't thought of that!" she ironized. Niris thought for a moment.

But he didn't have time to think.

"Listen, stop procrastinating, this crazy woman is preparing a super-powerful attack. Not only will you die if you take it, but you won't be able to dodge it either. So do as I say instead of yawning."

Niris didn't reply. He knew she was right. The air around the elf was becoming electrified, and the time it was taking her to attack again didn't bode well for him. He had no choice but to accept Niyari's offer.

"I'm going to send you some energy. Concentrate it in Flaming Charisma until the blade turns black. Once it's done, activate its energy form. "

"Its energy form?" the angel repeated a little stupidly.

"What? You've never done it? Seriously?" the demonic spirit muttered something Niris didn't quite understand. "Well, basically, when it's black, you're going to feel something, like an opening in the blade.

Take it and run into it. Then let yourself be guided. The sword will do the rest. But be active, because once it's in this mode, it will consume a lot of natural energy, and then it will draw on your vital energy. So you have two or three moves to finish off the elf, and then you disconnect everything. Is that clear?"

The angel didn't answer, but nodded.

"I'm blocked by the seal so I can't guide you, but I'll give you what you need in natural energy. Now go, don't waste time!"

Suddenly, as if in response to Niyari's injunction, the angel brandished his sword. Facing him, the elf seemed ready to attack at any moment. He felt his lungs compress as the wave of natural energy invited by Niyari swept over him. It was energy beyond measure!

He shook himself and came to his senses. Without wasting any time, he directed all the energy into his blade, which quickly turned from bright red to dark red. After a few seconds, it turned completely black. The concentration of natural energy in his body stirred the air around him. The wind caused by the friction of the concentrated natural energy with the air created a strong wind that blew his hair around him.

As he concentrated on his blade, he finally felt as if an energetic voice was opening into blazing Charisma, exactly as Niyari had told him. He stepped into the breach and was swept away in a whirlwind of energy. When he came to his senses, the blade was pitch-black, with small brittle lines running through it in a strange pattern. It was also slightly longer and incredibly sturdier without being any heavier. But above all, Niris felt filled with a power he'd never felt before.

Determined, he tightened his grip on the handle and prepared to launch himself forward. Opposite him, the elf was ready too. For a second, silence fell and time seemed to stand still above them. Then the two combatants lunged at each other. With a cry of rage, their weapons clashed just once, sounding the final death knell for the fight and its victor. An enormous explosion ensued, the result of the release of a phenomenal amount of natural energy by both combatants.

A single blow, and yet the entire surrounding environment had been turned upside down. When Niris opened his eyes again, his clothes were in tatters, and he was standing in a hole several meters in diameter. All Niyari's energy had vanished, and Flaming Charisma returned to its normal state before his very eyes.

Staggering, he turned around. Behind him, the elf stood motionless. Without a gesture, she fell to her knees, then face down, inert. Then, without warning, her body began to decompose, like those of the other angels earlier. Dazed, Niris stepped back, then turned around. His muscles ached, but he forced them to obey him. He climbed the slope and rushed as fast as he could to where the demon was standing. There, he dropped to his knees.

Lirum, beside him, reassured him. The demon was fine and his shield had protected him from the fight. Niris thanked him and, with his help, lifted him up. The two of them carried him back to the palace, which had been deserted by its guests. The angel had only one thing on her mind: to look after Seiran.