As Frey blurred across the battlefield, effortlessly weaving between Angelus' relentless barrage while methodically chipping away at the crazed king's seemingly indestructible body, Kaede gave nothing more than a thoughtful hum at the figure that appeared silently behind her.
"What did you find, Charlotte?"
The former spider monster, now a Majin Insectar and commander of the Leaf, Maple Tree's intelligence division, knelt upon one knee before answering.
"I have completed my investigation." Charlotte inclined her head slightly. "I searched every library, laboratory, archive, and restricted vault within Angelus."
Her expression remained perfectly composed.
"Over five hundred lives were sacrificed throughout the Artifact Archangel Project. The majority were used during the weaponization experiments conducted upon the Archangel's corpse."
Kaede's expression darkened ever so slightly.
"There are also records of several recently summoned Otherworlders. According to those records, they escaped with Lady Sumire's assistance when an opportunity presented itself."
"Oh?"
Kaede's gaze drifted toward the young woman in question.
Sumire stood several paces away, her attention completely consumed by the battle raging within the barrier. Her knuckles had turned white around the hilt of her sword, her eyes never once leaving the figure that had once been her father.
"So she's against her father."
Charlotte nodded once. "Her diary indicates as much."
Kaede blinked. "...You read her diary too?"
Charlotte blinked as well before hurriedly lowering her head. "In order to fully understand the structure of the nation, I examined every available source of information."
"My investigation included their libraries, laboratory journals, financial records, official correspondence, personal notes..." She paused only briefly. "...and their private belongings."
"I read everything."
Kaede stared at her for a long moment. "You did all that..." Her eyes slowly widened. "...You've only been here for, what, an hour?"
Charlotte lowered her head even further. "I shall endeavour to complete future investigations more quickly, my Lady."
'You're already absurdly fast.' Kaede kept that thought to herself.
Instead, she looked back toward the barrier where Frey continued dancing around Angelus with almost insulting ease.
"Should we be expecting any more surprises?"
"Yes." Charlotte answered without hesitation. "King Angelus had already begun preparations for the next stage of his research."
"He intended to summon Greater Demons and incorporate them into the souls powering the Artifact Archangel."
"Artifact Archangel..." Kaede repeated the name quietly. "He did call the smaller ones Artifact Angels, didn't he?"
Charlotte nodded.
Kaede folded her arms for a moment before giving her next orders.
"Make sure nobody escapes Angelus."
"Understood."
"And have your daughters recover the bodies of the harpies..." Her gaze shifted briefly toward Frey. "...along with the Otherworlders who were used during the experiments."
Charlotte lowered her head once more.
"As you command, my Lady."
The moment the order was given, her figure vanished without so much as disturbing the air, leaving Kaede to quietly resume watching the battle unfolding within the barrier.
Kaede sat cross-legged in the air, hovering lazily above the ruined city as though she were watching a stage performance rather than a battle between monsters capable of erasing kingdoms. "Hey, Artificia."
"What can you tell me about Angelus' new form?" Her eyes remained fixed upon the barrier. "He's just spamming light-based attacks. Kinda feels like a cheap version of Leon."
There was a brief pause.
"...Only sixty-three?"
"So he's falling apart then."
Within the barrier, another barrage of radiant spears rained across the sky.
Frey slipped between them with effortless grace, never slowing, her wings carving elegant arcs through the air as explosions of white light blossomed harmlessly behind her.
Angelus' attacks continued to grow more extravagant.
Not more effective.
Kaede nodded. "Yeah, I noticed. It's on the level of Charybdis, which is way more than Frey has. Nearly six times more."
Spiritrons and magicules were fundamentally different forms of energy.
Angelus could expend vast quantities of holy power without noticeably exhausting himself.
Unfortunately for him... Actually hitting Frey proved considerably more difficult.
Within the barrier, six wings beat once. Dozens of white circles bloomed behind Angelus.
Then dozens became hundreds.
The sky itself seemed to disappear behind an ocean of glowing sigils.
"Heavenly Dominion."
The world erupted.
Columns of white light descended indiscriminately, crossing one another until the battlefield resembled a forest of divine punishment.
The barrier shook continuously beneath the bombardment.
Kaede rested her chin on her hand. "...looks pretty though."
Every beam missed.
Frey flowed through the barrage like a feather dancing upon the wind.
Sometimes she banked.
Sometimes she simply folded a wing slightly and allowed an attack to pass less than an inch from her face.
At one point she actually stepped on one of the descending lances, using it as a foothold to change direction before driving a kick into Angelus' shoulder.
The transformed king spun halfway through the air. His shoulder regenerated almost instantly, and he laughed as his trap activated.
Directly beneath Frey's claw, a golden symbol woven from pure light suddenly manifested, radiating an intense brilliance.
Her eyes lingered on it for the briefest of moments. It was all the opening Angelus required.
He quickly extended a hand toward her. "Now reap what you have sown." A faint smile touched his lips. "Heavenly Reaper."
Far above the battlefield, a massive lance of condensed white light materialized before plunging toward Frey.
Outside the barrier, Kaede tilted her head. "He's really just putting 'Heavenly' in front of everything, isn't he?"
She watched the lance continue pursuing Frey through the air. "...A homing attack, huh?" The Demon Lord's eyes narrowed.
"No..." Her attention shifted to the glowing symbol beneath Frey's claw.
"It's that mark." She watched as the lance adjusted its course again. "...Is it attracting the attack?"
A brief pause followed. "...Or is the mark just designating the target's location?"
Frey banked sharply to the left, and the lance followed. She climbed and It climbed with her.
She folded one wing and dropped almost vertically through the air. The beam curved impossibly, altering its trajectory without the slightest loss of speed.
"...Persistent."
Her expression remained calm despite the relentless pursuit. With another beat of her wings, Frey blurred toward Angelus.
If the spell followed the mark rather than the caster's intent, then removing its creator would answer the question soon enough.
Angelus watched her approach without moving.
A second golden symbol appeared beneath her other claw. Then a third beneath one wing.
His lips curved ever so slightly. "Heavenly Reaper Triple."
Three more lances descended from above.
Frey's eyes narrowed.
The original lance did not vanish. Instead, all four attacks converged simultaneously.
The sky erupted into intersecting trails of white light, each one adjusting independently whenever she changed direction.
She twisted between two beams before kicking off the third itself, using the solidified light as a foothold to propel herself toward Angelus.
Only for the fourth lance to descend directly into her path.
She clicked her tongue.
A burst of wind exploded around her as she changed direction yet again.
The lance narrowly missed her shoulder.
It continued onward for several hundred meters before making a perfect arc through the air.
Then it came back.
Outside the barrier, Kaede watched the spectacle with growing interest. "Definitely the mark." She rested her chin on her hand. "The attacks don't care where Angelus is looking."
Another lance curved around the battlefield.
"They only care where those symbols are."
"So removing Angelus won't necessarily stop the attacks."
Kaede gave a small whistle. "That's actually pretty annoying. We can do that, right? Yeah we can."
Inside the barrier, Frey's thoughts had reached much the same conclusion. 'A troublesome ability.'
She slipped beneath another beam before allowing it to pass barely a hair's breadth above her wings.
'His techniques have become considerably more refined.'
Another mark appeared. Then another. Golden symbols blossomed beneath both legs.
The barrage intensified immediately.
Angelus remained perfectly still, observing.
Then suddenly, the Demon Lord abruptly stopped moving.
Seventeen lances descended upon her simultaneously.
Angelus watched in silence.
Kaede leaned forward.
Claire held her breath.
Sumire instinctively cried out.
The beams finally reached Frey, only for every one of them to miss.
A violent cyclone had erupted around the Harpy Queen.
The winds she commanded twisted into an enormous vortex, violently redirecting every lance as though the heavens themselves had been seized and forced to change course.
The seventeen attacks collided with one another moments later. An explosion of blinding white light engulfed nearly a quarter of the battlefield.
The barrier trembled violently.
When the light faded, Frey still hovered exactly where she had been.
Not a single feather had been touched. She brushed an imaginary speck of dust from her sleeve. "...I believe I've learned enough."
Angelus staggered backward despite floating freely in the open sky, the motion almost involuntary. "How? They should have torn you apart entirely! That is divine energy drawn from my own sacred self! A mere monster should not..." His sentence cut off abruptly, replaced by a sharp, strangled sound.
A massive hole had opened in the center of his chest.
Frey descended calmly, her feet touching down upon the ground with unhurried grace, an ephemeral orb resting gently within her cupped hands. "This is your core, isn't it?"
Outside the barrier, Kaede blinked in genuine surprise. "Wait, what? What just happened? She broke straight through his defenses, but how? She couldn't manage that a moment ago. And what was that burst of energy right at the end?" She turned slightly, addressing the air beside her. "Artificia, play everything back. Keep looping it until you figure out exactly what happened."
Artificia complied immediately, and within seconds delivered her answer.
According to the playback, Frey had dodged only the first few lances of light Angelus launched against her. After that point, she had stopped dodging entirely and had instead allowed every single attack to make contact with her.
The attacks, however, had done nothing to harm her. Instead, each one had been reflected cleanly off her wings at the precise moment it appeared as though she had narrowly avoided it. Every time, at least one feather would brush against the incoming attack and send it redirecting elsewhere, all while the reflected energy continued traveling onward in its original trajectory rather than scattering uselessly.
Even stranger, she had been doing this for the vast majority of the fight, including every instance where Angelus had relied on homing attacks meant to track and follow her regardless of evasive movement.
Then, after using a tornado to finally disperse the dozens of reflected attacks she had been quietly accumulating throughout the entire exchange, she had simply closed the distance and driven her fist directly into his chest.
As for how she had managed to break through his defenses so completely, Artificia confirmed the underlying mechanism. Frey possessed some manner of unique skill that allowed her to reflect incoming attacks while simultaneously storing the energy drawn from each one within her own body, building toward exactly the kind of overwhelming release that had just torn open Angelus's core.