“Oh, come on! Is this some kind of troll nest!? What’s with this endless stream of things coming out!”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that’s what battles with powerful factions are like!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says he probably can’t completely defend against this one either, so she should be careful on her own!]

“What?”

Dorothea was momentarily perplexed by the Tin Knight’s words.

It was very rare for her familiar to speak so weakly like this.

However, there was no time to demand a detailed explanation.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ shouts to lower your body!]

Adelaide was the only one who could react in time to the Tin Knight’s shout.

Adelaide grabbed the waists of Dorothea and Sophia, who were treating her, and laid them on the ground, and immediately after, something grazed over their heads.

Slash!

Still lying on her back, Dorothea tilted her head back and took a glance—

“Huh?”

She couldn’t help but involuntarily let out a breath.

Everything higher than an adult’s waist had been cut off.

Buildings, trees, and even the undead Dorothea had summoned, without distinction.

Seeing everything in sight neatly bisected horizontally, it felt like her head was freezing with bewilderment before any logical analysis.

Wait, then what about him?

Dorothea, flustered, hurriedly raised her body, looking forward.

There, the Tin Knight and the Lion Duke were engaged in a terrifying melee.

Whoosh!

The Tin Knight narrowly avoided the sword swung by the Lion Duke with a roll.

The Tin Knight took advantage of a brief opening to precisely stab the Lion Duke’s neck, but the Lion Duke launched a counterattack immediately without even flinching.

Right after sword and shield clashed with a roar, the Tin Knight’s body was pushed back.

The Lion Duke tried to rush towards Adelaide’s direction, ignoring the Tin Knight, but the Tin Knight struck the Lion Duke’s side with his shield first.

This time, it was the Lion Duke’s turn to be pushed sideways.

Immediately after, the Tin Knight’s sword emitted a dazzling light, and his mana drained out.

Swoosh swoosh swoosh swoosh swoosh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dozens of slashes unleashed in a single breath sliced all over the Lion Duke’s body.

The sword energy that shattered the black armor then rushed in to cut the Lion Duke’s flesh inside.

However, the Lion Duke’s body, wrapped in golden flame-like mana, deflected that attack head-on.

Several scratches appeared and blood flowed, but it was far from a fatal wound.

The Lion Duke’s eyes pierced through the Tin Knight.

Whether he recognized him as a threat, or realized that he couldn’t slaughter the Lennarts without getting past him, fighting spirit rose from his body.

Clang! Clang! Crack!

After three sword strikes were exchanged, the Tin Knight’s sword broke as if it could no longer endure.

Immediately after, an eerie rotation flowed from the Lion Duke’s sword.

Crackle!

At first, the Tin Knight tried to receive the attack with his shield, but for some reason, he excluded the shield from the sword’s trajectory.

Slash!

As a result, the Tin Knight’s left arm was cut off from his body.

No, more precisely, it was torn off. The force contained in the attack was so enormous that the wound was closer to being mauled by a huge beast than being cut.

Even in this shocking situation where everything between the shoulder and wrist had disappeared, the Tin Knight didn’t panic.

As if he had expected this much, he quickly rolled his body and retrieved his left hand and shield, rolling on the ground.

“Sir Knight!!”

With a cry almost like a scream, Adelaide’s body shot forward.

Just before the Lion Duke’s eyes, whose armor had been shattered, glared at Adelaide and his sword was about to strike down again.

The Tin Knight, who had somehow approached, forcibly interrupted the Lion Duke’s attack with a body slam.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ shouts, ‘Attack!’]

As if responding to her teacher’s call, Adelaide’s sword struck the Lion Duke’s side.

Thud!

“Ugh!?”

Adelaide’s eyes were tinged with bewilderment.

It felt like swinging a sword against an incredibly tough and elastic bundle of fibers.

The slash that could instantly turn a huge carriage into waste and bisect a heavily armored knight along with their armor stopped after barely penetrating as much as a single coin.

Grab.

The Lion Duke’s hand grasped Adelaide’s wrist.

Adelaide tried to quickly pull her hand out, but then she was shocked once again.

What strength…!

Since becoming adept at handling the power of the belt, Adelaide hadn’t fallen behind anyone in physical abilities.

But now, the Lion Duke’s strength trying to snatch the sword from Adelaide’s grasp was even more powerful than hers. Even though Adelaide was gripping the sword with both hands and putting her whole weight into it, the Lion Duke was simply holding it with one hand.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ shouts, ‘Dropkick!’]

Adelaide immediately executed the Tin Knight’s instruction that came into her mind without any doubt or hesitation.

Curling her body like a ball as if hanging from the Lion Duke’s left hand, she kicked the Lion Duke with all her weight and momentum added.

The moment the Lion Duke’s body momentarily lifted and lost balance, the Tin Knight, who had somehow switched the sword in his right hand for a shield, struck the Lion Duke.

With the blow containing tremendous mana, the Lion Duke flew back greatly with the air pressure.

Dorothea and Sophia approached the two.

“Hey, you, what’s with that arm!?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ argues that this is better than having the shield shattered!]

In other words, it meant that even the Tin Knight would have had his shield shattered if he had tried to block with it.

Realizing this threat again, Dorothea grumbled but placed her hand on the Tin Knight’s left shoulder.

As she poured more mana separately from the remote supply, the speed of the Tin Knight’s repair function increased rapidly, and he regained his complete form once again.

Dorothea asked briefly and concisely, “Give me the plan.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ requests shield reinforcement and a new sword from Dorothea!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ tells Dorothea that since targeted attacks probably won’t hit properly anyway, she should scatter attacks over a wide area!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ requests Sophia to protect allies from getting caught in Dorothea’s attacks!]

The two’s reactions were immediate.

When Dorothea’s staff tapped the Tin Knight’s shield, the barrier that should have been deployed in a spherical shape to protect the user was highly compressed and wrapped around the shield’s surface as if coating it.

The white light emitted from Sophia’s body enveloped the Tin Knight and Adelaide, harmonizing with their mana without harming each other.

And just as that work finished—no, half a beat faster, the Lion Duke charged towards the party.

Adelaide rushed forward first to buy time, and the Tin Knight, grasping a sword summoned by Dorothea in mid-air, followed behind.

Boom!

The moment the Lion Duke and Adelaide’s swords clashed, a tremendous shockwave occurred, and a dust cloud rose.

Adelaide, who was inferior in weight and destructive power, couldn’t withstand it and was pushed back, but thanks to the time she bought, the Tin Knight was able to reach them.

This time, too, the Lion Duke swung a terrifying slash as if to shatter the weapon, but the result was different from before.

The shield, overlaid with the Tin Knight’s mana control, shock deflection, and Dorothea’s barrier, excellently blocked the Lion Duke’s strike, which meant the conditions were met for the Tin Knight to utilize his own techniques.

Bang! Crack! Thud! Crunch!

The Lion Duke’s combo attacks were truly fierce.

With each strike, the earth split and the air screamed, and his appearance with golden hair fluttering like a mane made it instantly understandable why he was called the Lion Duke.

However, the Tin Knight didn’t yield either.

If lacking in strength, he took positions that made it difficult for the opponent to exert their power, if inferior in speed, he maintained a distance where it couldn’t be utilized, and he responded by grasping the classification of destructive sword energy and breaking its flow.

Although mana drained in chunks every time he crossed swords with the Lion Duke, thanks to Dorothea’s close position, even smoother remote mana supply compensated for that consumption.

The other companions weren’t idle either.

Realizing that even decent undead would crumble just from getting near those two, Dorothea began to dye the surrounding area with malice and curses indiscriminately.

The Lion Duke didn’t flinch even at malice that would make ordinary people feel a life crisis just from breathing it in, but when she raised the output to the point where even building debris melted, the Lion Duke’s movements also began to slow down little by little.

Of course, doing this much would make it difficult for even Dorothea and Adelaide with living bodies, not to mention the inanimate Tin Knight, to avoid adverse effects, but because Sophia’s holy power was protecting their bodies, it was possible to inflict damage only on the Lion Duke.

Under the armor shattered by the Tin Knight, the Lion Duke’s exposed flesh slowly began to be dyed by the poison.

It was Adelaide’s role to increase the wounds on that body so that the poison could spread more effectively.

Bang! Boom! Boom!

Every time Adelaide’s sword strikes touched the Lion Duke’s body, a noise that was hard to believe came from metal and the human body colliding echoed.

The will to cut hundreds or even thousands of times if unable to cut at once was clearly felt.

Of course, it wasn’t an easy task.

The Lion Duke’s body, strengthened by golden flame-like mana, was like a natural barrier in itself, so light check attacks didn’t even leave a scratch, and only when Adelaide poured attacks using her whole body as an axis could meaningful damage be possible.

In other words, it meant having to expose tremendous openings with each attack.

A tactic that was practically suicidal against a strong opponent like the Lion Duke.

But Adelaide didn’t hesitate. She wasn’t afraid either.

She had trust that her teacher would block all attacks aimed at her.

The Tin Knight responded to his pupil’s trust in kind.

Even when faced with the Lion Duke, who was like a storm in human form, he didn’t retreat at all and blocked all of his fierce attacks.

And finally, the Lion Duke lost strength and staggered.

The Tin Knight and Adelaide’s slashes left a large scar on his body, drawing an X.

It was then that Dorothea, watching from behind, clenched her fist tightly.

Rumble boom!

Suddenly, thunder sounded from the sky, and soon after, rain began to fall.

Originally, this would have been nothing more than a simple natural phenomenon.

Something that happened commonly all over the world, repeated many times, just so happened to occur here at this time.

But the Lion Duke was looking at the sky.

As if attributing some meaning to this phenomenon now, as if some fragment of the self sunken in the abyss had been stimulated.

And then, lightning struck.

Not from the sky, but from the ground.

Crackle!

As violet lightning surged from the Lion Duke’s entire body, his body began to regenerate as if time was reversing.

The skin that had turned dark from being dyed with malice regained its original color, and the wounds engraved all over his body also filled up again.

The armor was still broken, and the mana emitted from his body had also decreased somewhat, but physically, he had returned to almost perfect condition.

Sophia analyzed that phenomenon.

“It seems he’s activated the healing ability inherent in the human body to its limit.”

“Is this his trump card?”

“It would be nice if that were the case, but as expected, it’s probably possible several times unless we completely deplete his mana or instantly kill him.”

“That’s cheating!!”

After complaining as if lamenting, Dorothea looked forward again.

Repeating attrition warfare several times against an opponent who could regenerate an unknown number of times was something she was very reluctant to do.

This was especially so because the Lion Duke, unlike a mere berserker who simply smashed the enemy before him, had shown behavior that seemed to grasp the core of the battle several times, appearing to aim for Dorothea and Sophia in the midst of combat.

Jabberwock? No, that might cause a catastrophe if unleashed in the middle of a city like this, unlike in the library. Curse bomb? I can barely see them moving now, how could I throw and hit with that?

It was then, while Dorothea was deep in thought.

“…I’m truly curious how things got tangled up this way. At this point, I seriously want to throw you all into the heavenly realm. I feel like you’d overturn everything if left there for just a week.”

A voice that went beyond being dumbfounded, somehow even tinged with a sigh.

Seeing Algind descending from the sky to the ground, cradled in the arms of a masked stranger, Dorothea unconsciously spoke in Tin Knight vernacular, “The ranged DPS has arrived.”

***

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