Swish-! A leg swung at blinding speed, grazing Hermila’s bangs. Then, fists barreled through the golden hair dancing in the air.
Just before Aaron’s arm fully extended, Hermila’s left hand shot up, raising his elbow while her right hand aimed at his abdomen.
But Aaron wasn’t just standing still.
He immediately retracted his raised arm, smoothly resetting his stance to launch a stable strike.
Boom-! The concentrated force of destruction collided with the purifying force, creating a massive wave that pushed them apart.
“Whew… Guh… Spit.”
Hermila expelled a thick lump of blood that crawled up her throat, orchestrating the remaining elixir within her body.
Her right hand’s bones were shattered to the point that, without the bandages, she’d struggle to maintain the shape of a fist.
A broken rib pierced her lung.
The shinbone temporarily glued together with magical power.
A distorted liver.
In contrast, Aaron’s condition appeared to be perfectly fine.
The only visible injuries were a scrape on his cheek and a faint smudge of blood on his fist.
The arms, legs, and breathing.
Nothing was out of place as Aaron silently stared at Hermila.
“Are you letting me off the hook?”
There was no response.
“Haah…”
Letting out a deep sigh, he looked down at his forearm, which had been hit directly by the purifying force.
The skin was burnt black, still healing despite the elixir.
The purifying force.
A power solely for breaking demons.
Once a force that protected him and opened paths, now it sought to break him.
Hermila bitterly laughed as she contrasted her past with the current situation.
“It seems my master thinks I’m a villain.”
“That is not for me to decide.”
“Then is it Lilith’s judgment?”
Again, there was no response.
Only clenched fists generating a force.
“Considering that, those experiment bodies burned quite well.”
Unlike the rough, fiercely burning destruction force, the purifying force gently flickered.
“Who sets the standards of good and evil?”
Remembering something from over a hundred years ago, Aaron recalled his words.
“Master, you clearly said that good and evil are not absolute and that no one can decide.”
Because of that, the purifying force only targeted demons.
“So strong and righteous, even my master himself claimed he was not absolute good… You remained steadfast.”
Confirming that all of her wounds had healed, Hermila raised her head and gazed at Aaron.
He was not merely stubbornly opposing evil.
He had simply confronted the world to protect his people.
“At that time, I thought it was the nonsensical ramblings of an old man wanting to sound important. Seeing you standing before me now makes me think… Yeah, perhaps those standards really can’t be decided by anyone.”
Yet, a pitiful man who had lost everything and finally succumbed.
A fierce flame of gruesomeness ignited in her eyes.
“So, I too will abandon the notion of deciding the ‘standards’ of good and evil like you did in the past.”
The purifying force erupted.
“We, we are the absolute justice of this world.”
A different, harsher flame than before.
Engulfing everything and even burning her own body as fuel, the destruction surrounded her.
“Those who oppose our will—”
Are absolute evil.
Thud- In an instant, Hermila’s new form surged forward, creating ripples on the ground in front of Aaron.
Startled for a moment by her explosive emergence, Aaron quickly steadied his breath and opened his senses.
But—
Crack- Before he could perceive it, Hermila’s fist, made of Mistilteinn, struck his temple. Piercing through the force, the intense pain accompanied by the destruction.
Extreme agony gripped Aaron’s body at a cellular level. All the while, Hermila’s assault continued relentlessly.
Temple, brow, philtrum, jaw, rib, solar plexus, liver.
Calmly evading the deadly blows targeting critical points, Aaron, in the midst of action,
Crack- Let the purifying force flow past, breaking the rhythm.
Creating a fleeting opening. And through that, a straight punch extended.
The punch wrapped in condensing flames began to turn from purple to white. The purifying force, burning the space, twisted the very foundation of the world.
Having witnessed death through a future vision, Hermila twisted her waist, narrowly avoiding Aaron’s punch.
Boom- The barely missed punch tore through Hermila’s left ear, erasing everything behind her without a trace.
Feeling the hot blood trickling down her neck, Hermila straightened her bent back and drove a fist into Aaron’s abdomen.
Crack- The sensation of ribs shattering transmitted through her fingertips.
Again.
A vision of dying from a broken neck flashed through her mind. Immediately, she opened her senses to find the cause.
The cause was a knee barreling up from below.
Huff-!
She drove her elbow down onto Aaron’s knee. Crack- The sound of bones shattering. Followed by the overwhelming fire of pain.
Concentrating the destruction force that had flowed into her, Hermila obliterated Aaron’s force. Using the elixir, she forcibly rejoined her shattered bones.
Yet during that time, attacks laden with lethal intent relentlessly swung toward Aaron.
A punch accelerated through the rotation of her waist, barreling toward Aaron’s shoulder. Aaron’s forearm intercepted halfway, twisting her fist.
In response to the twisting movement, Hermila threw her body forward. Her leg naturally rose into the air.
The softly lifted leg swung wildly toward Aaron’s nape. Sensing this, Aaron released Hermila’s forearm and raised his guard.
Boom- The shockwave scattered their hair. Hermila’s form, crashing back to the ground, vanished once more, urging forward toward Aaron.
Feeling Hermila’s presence between the widely spread purifying forces, Aaron swung his arm toward that direction. Snap-! Hermila’s leg was halted mid-air by Aaron’s forearm.
Immediately, Aaron’s hand reached for Hermila’s shin.
Without hesitation, Hermila twisted her body.
Feeling her shinbone shatter, she added rotation from her waist and kicked Aaron’s temple with her right foot.
Crack- The clear sensation of bones breaking at the tip of her toes. And the delayed pain from her shin rose.
Stumbling as she landed, Hermila drove a shape as thin as a wire into her shin.
“That reckless fighting style hasn’t changed.”
Wiping the blood flowing across his face, Aaron gazed at Hermila with still an impassive expression.
The ribs that had surely shattered were now miraculously healed and returned to their places, while the deformed skull was once more upright.
“Haah…”
His heart raced abnormally.
Blood flowed rapidly.
The heat within surged dramatically.
The body deteriorated with each moment.
His lifespan swallowed by the destruction.
The soul igniting without a trace left behind.
Feeling all of this, Hermila let out a heated sigh and unleashed the purifying force once again.
“You say you’ll save me and take me away, yet you’ve tried to kill me countless times.”
Aaron was the same.
He fervently ignited the purifying force, which had been quietly blooming until now.
Aaron’s murky golden hair turned snowy white.
The purifying force, now the same color as destruction, blazed white like his hair.
“With your soul intact, you can be saved.”
Crackle- Sizzle-
The white flames ignited the surrounding air.
As Hermila observed this, visions of thousands, tens of thousands of deaths flashed through her mind.
In the fleeting moment, transcending the limits of a perpetrator, Hermila began to seek a future to evade death.
Her head explodes. Her neck twists. Her heart stops. Her limbs are ripped off. They crumble. They vanish. They burn. Her eyes are plucked out. Her body splits. Her waist is torn. Her body bursts. Her insides spill out. Her abdomen is pierced. Her limbs contort.
She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies. She dies.
Then.
She found it.
Starting to condense the destruction force in her left arm, Mistilteinn disappeared from Aaron’s view.
A fist crowned with white flames surged toward his abdomen. She lifted her knee to deflect Aaron’s punch.
Slamming the shattered knee with magical power, she prepared for the next attack.
The elbow dropped toward his crown. Twisting her waist and bending over, she kicked her leg back high.
As she smoothly moved, the elbow flowed forward. With that, the purifying force erupted, forcibly slamming her raised leg to the ground.
She roughly blocked the sharply rising knee with her right hand and barely managed to deflect the punch aimed for her heart with her shattered knee.
Amidst the unbearable pain, Hermila channeled everything into Mistilteinn.
With the overwhelming force that should have led to her demise, the Mistilteinn creaked, starting to bend under my will.
Aaron’s once-imperturbable expression showed signs of strain as he narrowed his brow. A glimmer of color appeared in his once-empty eyes.
A sharper attack surged forth. The purifying force, sizzling as if it would burn just by looking at it, gaped wide.
Deflecting, parrying, blocking, occasionally sacrificing flesh.
Hermila poured every bit of her remaining lifespan into Mistilteinn.
Finally, the purple flames began to burn black.
Mistilteinn swallowed everything.
Only the force of destruction sought annihilation.
Hermila’s all-encompassing blow, infused with everything, extended toward Aaron.
The technique she had first learned from him.
A technique, if it could even be called that, was a simple punch.
The concept of destruction, shattering thousands of deaths, extended toward Aaron.
And then.
Just before making contact with his body.
A vastly different scene than what Hermila had witnessed in the future flashed through her mind.
The Mistilteinn that had stretched forward halted.
Aaron’s body, which had continued its assault, also came to a standstill.
Hermila’s gaze turned skyward.
Aaron’s expression distorted.
Then.
Crack-!
Dozens of spears swiftly closed the distance, piercing through Hermila’s body.
