“That’s a bad joke.”

Adjest answered nervously. Being treated as the same kind as those who invaded her hometown and slaughtered her people was unpleasant, to say the least.

“You think I am messing with you?”

Adjest, who stared at Rhea, involuntarily shuddered; Rhea’s eyes were filled with deep hatred. *Crackle*

Flames jutted out from the veins within her arms and legs, before slowly encompassing her entire body. Despite the grisly sight, Rhea seemed immune to the pain. In fact, she had a grisly and sinister grin.

“That’s… !”

Adjest had an incredulous look on her face. Rhea’s body had begun to change into flame itself. Having half turned into flame already, the surrounding area burst into a massive blaze. Rhea thrust her hand towards Adjest, and energy surged through the floor beneath the two.

*Burst*

Immediately after, a stream of lava cut through the ground and lurched towards Adjest. The radiant heat poured into the atmosphere and engulfed the surrounding soldiers.

“What is that… !?” “Run, run!”

When the swelling lava flowed all over the place like a tidal wave, the buildings melted away without a trace. The Imperial soldiers began to run away in the chaos.

“My Inheritance is called the Preynople, and it was the last-ditch effort of mankind from the vanishing era to fight their imminent collapse.”

Rhea’s voice came from all three-hundred and sixty degrees around Adjest. She searched restlessly for the source, but all she could find was fire and lava.

“They discovered how to take an imprint of a powerful enemy and imbue it within an individual. This hateful power is directly inscribed within one’s genes, and is passed down through their offspring.”

Just before their collapse, the ancient civilization made one last invention to preserve their species. They created what they referred to as Inheritance, a genetic technique that allowed them to extract the powers of the demons that plagued their society and inject them into humans.

In the end, the brilliant civilization crumbled, but those that possessed Inheritance survived and passed their power down to future generations.

“Because of the power’s activation requiring mental focus, it became known as Imagery Magic to those who forgot its true nature, and the Church rebranded it as the Blessing of Light to mask its origin. In other words, you are our kind.”

“… Nonsense.”

Adjest’s reaction was perfectly normal. Imagery Magic and Inheritance. Come to think of it now, the two forces had something in common in that it was impossible to identify the principles behind them.

But if one was to say that these were demon-derived abilities, of course no one would believe them.

“Haha. Yeah, it’s hard to swallow, isn’t it? The power you’ve been praised for all your life is nothing more than the power of those damned devils.”

*Step*

*Step*

Rhea walked out of the soaring lava looking indifferent. Adjest’s pupils, now focused on Rhea, shook violently.

Because her appearance was clearly different from before.

Behind her back there were two huge pairs of scarlet wings, and the skin all over her body had turned red like lava. The figure was half evil rather than human.

Adjest had encountered a presence that looked the same in the past. “Dadenewt… ”

The Devil of Destruction, Dadenewt. Rhea looked just like the demon that appeared in the capital of the Prillecha Kingdom, Deltaheim.

“While I was raised as a fighting dog in an underground battlefield because of this ability, you must have been loved for your skill and noble lineage.”

Though they were strictly illegal, the continent was home to a few black market fighting arenas. Humans would gather for pleasure while their slaves, forced to fight like dogs, would risk their lives.

“While I was eating food worse than vomit, forcing it down my throat with my bare hands, you must have been dining on sumptuous and delectable foods, and gorging yourself on fine wine and ciders, huh?”

The bubbling lava shot up again from all sides.

“You… you wouldn’t be able to imagine my life, being a noble lady, would you? Imagine being forced to burn your best friend alive, their tear-ridden screams haunting you every time you tried to let yourself sleep. How come only you… ! We both have the same cursed power, but why did you… ?!?!”

The increasingly exuberant voice soon mingled with madness and turned into a cry. Just then,

Adjest opened her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up! Don’t you dare patronize me, I’m just… !”

As she continued, Rhea noticed something strange and her face hardened. Adjest’s mouth was drawing a line.

She was smiling at Rhea.

“Your story got boring so my mind wandered. I was thinking about other things, so would you mind starting over from the beginning?”

‘If I beat you here now, can I say I’ve caught up with the Desir from back then?’

Adjest muttered to herself and aimed her sword at Rhea. She stared at the swelling lava with an expression of indifference. At this moment, no matter the identity of her power or the heartfelt story Rhea shared, nothing else was as important to her. She could not hide her excitement at the fact that she might be able to confirm that she had reached Desir even a little. Her extremely rude attitude clearly struck Rhea’s ego.

*Boom*

A momentary burst of heat gathered in the buds that appeared around her. In the past, the heat was caused by flames, but this time, it was created by gathering boiling lava. In an instant, the completed heat wave was fired at Adjest. She developed a palace of ice and made dozens of shields.

*Boom*

Adjest had a look of dismay. Even though she layered many protective spells and focused her entire effort into defending one side, using the Ice Palace to support her, it was only possible to twist its trajectory.

The beyond-all-limits heatwave crossed Dresden and burned everything in its path. Damage reports flooded the line of communication magic Adjest was connected to.

Judging that she should not be given a chance to repeat that attack, Adjest quickly scattered her cold air everywhere. It was offset by the heat emitted by lava and began to change the flow of the surrounding atmosphere.

[Pray of Ice Blast]

Thousands of bullets of ice were fired at Rhea in unison, drawing different trajectories. The power of each bullet reached a level of power equivalent to Fourth-Circle magic.

At that moment Rhea’s red wings spread wide. Soon after she hit the ground, she approached Adjest with great speed. With the bullets all coming from different angles, if Rhea broke through the ones approaching her head-on, she would be able to minimize the damage she took.

*Clank*

When the hammer and the sword collided, Adjest was pushed back a little. Her dazzling gray hair was gradually losing its light; she was rapidly approaching her limit.

The amount of mana she could command fell and the amount of cold air under her control began to drop sharply. Rhea took advantage of her opponent’s deteriorating state, contorting her body and attacking again.

*Boom*

Adjest felt the burning heat in her hand despite grasping her freezing sword. If this heat had touched her directly it would have been impossible to withstand it.

Despite her situation, Adjest pushed deeper into her opponent’s attack. Feeling her own power reaching its limit, she knew she had to hurry if she wanted to force a victory. The dangerous act caught Rhea off guard, who was expecting her opponent to back off and attempt to recover. A swift blade was swung four times in a row, each aiming for a different spot.

As Rhea hurriedly retreated, Adjest dug in again and struck her sword out diagonally. The sweeping chill ripped Rhea’s left wing. At the same time, a flame of intense heat grazed Adjest’s cheeks.

Adjest had managed to pull off her sword technique, launching Rhea into the sky. Before Adjest could follow up, five buds erupted in the air above her, already fully bloomed.

A huge wave of heat tried to burn Adjest without leaving a trace of her existence. Adjest angled her sword to block her head, her face utterly calm.

[Magic Sword: Eternal Slumber]

A Sixth-Circle ice magic that stops all molecular activity within range at absolute subzero temperatures. The force, expressed through the magic sword, froze everything along its trajectory.

*Whoong*

The aftermath of the massive collision of two forces cleared the entire surrounding area where the two stood. Adjest staggered, coughing up many mouthfuls of blood. Her internal injuries were serious, and her sword-wielding right arm was completely broken.

“Sigh… Sigh… ”

Rhea was not in good condition either. One of her wings was nearly severed, left completely functionless, and her body refused to move properly with how much force she exerted all at once.

Due to this, the pair found themselves in a lull during this life and death battle. Even still, Rhea’s dominance was too obvious. The ground was crawling with lava and cylinders of flame were spiraling around herself, while Adjest was struggling to maintain even a small area of ice.

“In a few moments, I promise that you… !” Suddenly, Adjest opened her mouth.

“Was it Priscilla who saved you from the underground battlefield?” “Huh? You want to quiz me?”

Adjest raised her head without a word, her silver hair gracefully parting to reveal an intense pair of eyes. For some reason, Rhea felt compelled to answer her question.

‘I’m going to die anyway. Might as well learn why she’s like this.’ “Yes, you guessed it.”

“Is that why you follow her to the detriment of tens of thousands of lives?” “…I recognize that is an unpardonable sin.”

Her entire life had been distorted by despair. She had long given up on anything naive as hope. Her only wish was to live a normal life, so she spent every waking moment cursing the ability she had been forced to receive.

One day Priscilla led a group of soldiers into the arena where Rhea was being held captive, saving her from her cursed fate. After spending years in the church, finding genuine purpose in her life, Rhea’s devotion was rewarded when she became the Head Inquisitor, and finally learned the origin of her Inheritance.

“But the Holy Saint promised.”

She was finally allowed to feel hope again; shown compassion despite believing she was worthless. This was the point Rhea was set on a path to redemption. She willingly pledged her undying loyalty to Priscilla.

“Once all of this is over, humans will never suffer again. Past, present, and future, there will never be anyone like me ever again.”

The superficial evil, the Outsiders, were gone, but the position would one day be filled by some other group. Victims like herself would continue to exist throughout the future, and had obviously existed in the past.

Rhea could not tolerate such a thought. The world should exist without sin, and Priscilla was going to create just that. Everyone who followed her had their own trauma, their own vices, that Priscilla would end as though their suffering had been no more than a plague on the land fixed by a simple cure.

“I would do anything for that.”

Priscilla gave her the mission of eradicating heresy, and she would fulfill it for the betterment of the whole world. That was why Adjest would die here and now.

“I see.”

The eyes of Adjest Kingscrown sank in disorder. Rhea was mysteriously irritated by the sudden show of sympathy.

“You will never understand.” *Squeeze*

Rhea tightened her grip around her hammer, her eyes narrowing on Adjest’s drained face. She kicked hard, dashing towards her opponent to land a finishing blow.