"Hehehe! I won this time!"
Amid the shrill, creepy laughter, Phryne looked at Ais lying on the ground and coughing up blood, her entire body trembling with excitement as the long-awaited feeling of revenge, coupled with the miserable sight of the one she hated, caused an unprecedented rush of pleasure to surge through her heart.
"Just look at how pathetic you are, you ugly freak. Seeing you like this, do those fools in Orario still dare to say you’re prettier than me?"
"You thought you’d won just because you reached Level 6? Even if I’m only Level 5, I still wouldn’t lose to a little brat like you!"
"And now I’m someone who can challenge above my level too, just like that Liberator by your side!"
Phryne laughed smugly as she shamelessly claimed all the credit for herself, completely forgetting—or rather, choosing to ignore—that without the power of Uchide no Kozuchi, she would never have been able to stand against Ais at all.
In fact, even with the power of Uchide no Kozuchi, if not for the curse, she absolutely would have been unable to injure Ais while the wind of Ariel surrounded her.
Thanks to all sorts of external factors, Phryne had been able to threaten Ais like this, yet she seemed to have forgotten all of that, completely intoxicated by the wild joy of defeating her nemesis, so elated that she had lost all sense of direction.
Not only that, she even seemed intent on humiliating Ais as she walked up to her.
"Oh, right, I heard you’ve kinda got a thing for Liberator, huh?"
Phryne giggled like an annoying frog on a summer night, grabbed Ais’s head, and lifted her up.
"It’s just a rumor, but a doll like you actually fell for a guy?"
"What? You wanna roll around with Liberator and have his babies?"
"Why don’t I do it instead? Compared to an ugly freak like you, Liberator would way rather spend the night with a beauty like me!"
At these words, the fingers of Ais, who was being held in midair, twitched slightly.
Phryne, who failed to notice this, laughed out loud with a vicious expression.
"Hahaha! I’m gonna take the guy you’ve got your eyes on, pin him down, and drain him dry."
"You can watch from hell!"
"Watch me take the guy you fell in love with! Hehehe!"
As she spoke, Phryne moved as if to smash Ais’s head into the ground and crush it beneath her foot.
However, Ais’s pair of transparent golden eyes had already opened silently.
*Swish!*
Without any warning, a streak of silver sword light suddenly erupted, tearing through the air as it slashed toward Phryne’s face.
*Clang!*
In an instant, the slash from the silver sword exploded into sparks against Phryne’s helmet, the force bursting outward.
"What?!"
Caught completely off guard, Phryne screamed as she was blown away, tumbling across the ground and rolling far away.
*BOOM!*
At the instant her feet hit the ground, Ais kicked off violently and shot forward, unleashing countless arcs of sword light at Phryne as she rolled across the ground.
*Clang!* *Cling!* *Clang!* *Cling!*
*Clang!* *Cling!* *Clang!* *Cling!*
In an instant, sword lights fell one after another onto Phryne’s body, repeatedly striking her armor and sending showers of sparks flying everywhere.
With a cold expression, Ais swung her sword mercilessly, carving white marks all over Phryne’s full-body armor.
"You ugly freak!"
Phryne finally reacted, erupting with towering rage.
She flipped over and sprang to her feet, turning herself into a living battering ram as she roared and charged at Ais, swinging her great axe.
Her monstrous, superhuman strength, even if it did not match Revis’s, was still not to be underestimated.
Facing that power, Ais no longer chose to block it head-on.
A deep green light suddenly flared around her body, and her speed skyrocketed in an instant.
If the earlier Ais had been a gust of wind, then the current Ais was a raging tornado.
Ais avoided the oncoming axe swing at extreme speed, then slashed back with even greater velocity, continuously bombarding Phryne’s armor and forcing her to retreat again and again.
*Kacha—*
At some point, cracks appeared in Phryne’s armor, and when she heard that cracking sound, a sudden chill shot through her heart, and her body began to tremble uncontrollably.
"DON’T GET SO DAMN COCKYYYYYY—!!!"
To drown out the fear in her heart, Phryne roared madly as the great axes in her hands came down again and again, relentlessly smashing toward Ais.
But Ais continued to evade the incoming axe blows with astonishing speed, ignoring the ground being shattered by the impacts, and stubbornly kept slashing at Phryne’s armor, carving out more and more damage.
At the same time, the same scene was also unfolding on the other side of the battlefield.
"Dammit!"
"It hurts!"
Tiona and Tione, who had originally been lying on the ground coughing up blood, both braced themselves with their arms and stood back up, one letting out an angry shout, the other crying out in pain, looking somewhat disheveled but far from the kind of grievous injury that would leave them unable to rise, as others might have imagined.
"They stood up?"
Argana seemed surprised.
"Tiona, you..."
Bache was also momentarily taken aback.
They had shown no mercy just now, unleashing Telskyura’s pride—the martial arts specialized in destroying the human body—on Tiona and Tione without restraint, and while it might not have guaranteed instant death, shattering some of their bones and making it impossible for them to stand again should have been easily achievable.
Yet Tiona and Tione stood up, and they did not even look particularly strained, which left the two strongest and most ferocious amazonesses of Telskyura genuinely surprised.
Only after a short while did the two of them notice that a faint green light was flickering around both Tiona and Tione.
"...Magic?"
They finally understood why Tiona and Tione were able to stand again.
Veil Breath, capable of resisting all attacks and protecting the caster’s target.
Raumure, which strengthened END.
When the Loki Familia’s advance group split into two smaller groups, Riezel had cast both of these magic spells on everyone except himself, and they were enhanced versions that consumed a great deal of mind.
These two protective magic spells had now been triggered, causing Ais, as well as Tiona and Tione, to be far from the state of being so badly injured that they could not even stand, contrary to what others had imagined.
"Argana!"
Tione had already lost control, whether out of anger at being sent flying by Argana or not, as she roared and charged forward.
With Raumure activated, Tione’s AGI, like Ais’s, had been heavily enhanced, her speed surging as she effortlessly closed the distance to Argana and threw a punch that carried a sonic boom.
"Good! Come, Tione!"
Argana was delighted rather than alarmed, licking her lips as she rushed forward like a pouncing beast.
*BOOM!* *BOOM!* *BOOM!* *BOOM!*
The two first smashed their fists into each other, the impact whipping up violent shockwaves, and then immediately launched into a super-high-speed close-quarters brawl, fists and kicks firing like cannon shells, either colliding head-on or slamming into each other’s bodies, bone-rattling impacts that shook hearts and eardrums ringing out without pause.
"Why? Why are you people here?!"
Tione questioned her as she went berserk, her eyes bloodshot as she attacked Argana with everything she had, her speed already surpassing Argana’s.
When Argana threw one punch, Tione answered with two or three, and when Argana kicked once, Tione retaliated with four or five, continuously carving wounds into Argana’s body in a brutal exchange of damage for damage.
However, this, in turn, stirred the ferocity in the heart of Telskyura’s strongest amazoness, causing her reptilian-like eyes to redden with blood.
"Heh, this isn’t important—none of it is important, Tione!"
Argana executed martial arts whose precision still surpassed Tione’s, not seeking victory through the number of attacks, but instead pouring greater force into each strike in an attempt to make up for the disparity in attack frequency by inflicting heavier damage.
She was indeed highly skilled and deeply versed in combat—the moment she realized that Tione’s speed had surpassed her own, she immediately adopted the optimal method to win.
Unfortunately, the results were not obvious.
After all, Raumure on Tione’s body also reinforced END, and with defensive magic like Veil Breath layered on top of that, as long as Tione avoided vital points and did not suffer heavy blows like before, it was extremely difficult for Argana to inflict damage decisive enough to determine the outcome.
It was precisely for this reason that Tione adopted this damage-for-damage combat style.
Of course, the fact that Tione was already so enraged that she only wanted to attack Argana, with no spare rationality left to care about defense, was also an important factor.
Argana was much the same.
Faced with Tione’s relentless assault and feeling her body accumulate more and more injuries, her emotions, in a certain sense, grew even more inflamed than Tione’s.
"Wherever there’s a fight, we’re there too! That’s the kind of people we are, isn’t it, Tione!"
Argana cheerfully traded blows with Tione, likewise only avoiding strikes aimed at vital points and ignoring attacks to the rest of her body, doing nothing but throwing punches and whipping out kicks, growing stronger the longer the fight went on.
"Stop spouting bullshit!" Tione only grew more irritated and furious, roaring again and again. "Don’t lump me together with killing machines like you!"
Looking at Argana’s face and listening to her laughter that continued even as she was injured, the most unbearable and painful memories in Tione’s heart were dredged back up.
"Stop it! Bache!"
On the other side, Tiona had also reengaged Bache, the two unleashing punches and kicks no less intense than those on Tione and Argana’s side, their fists and feet crashing together with thunderous force as they spoke in the middle of the fight.
Unlike Tione’s anger and revulsion toward Argana, however, Tiona maintained her usual attitude and shouted loudly at Bache.
"I don’t wanna fight you anymore!"
Even as she shouted this, Tiona rarely launched counterattacks, mostly limiting herself to forced blocks and responses.
"Didn’t I tell you to shut up?"
Bache showed no mercy as she pummeled Tiona, her hands and feet darting out like striking snakes as she unleashed rapid blows with a cold, serpentine voice.
"What did I teach you before? When facing an enemy, the only thing you should be thinking about is how to kill them, not shouting nonsense like that."
In the past, Argana and Bache had respectively been Tione’s and Tiona’s teachers.
In a place like Telskyura, once an amazoness was born, she would be branded with the Falna of Goddess Kali, and as soon as she was able to walk and run, she would be driven straight onto the battlefield, forced to slaughter monsters or even her own kin.
Tiona and Tione were born there and likewise were driven into the arena almost as soon as they gained awareness.
At that time, the ones sent by Kali to their side to instruct them in combat were Argana and Bache.
Argana and Bache themselves were also a pair of amazoness sisters.
However, their personalities were completely different.
Argana was bloodthirsty and battle-crazed, deeply enthusiastic about Telskyura’s rituals, and thus never considered herself Tione’s teacher, nor did she truly teach anyone how to fight. Instead, she only attacked and brutally beat the still-young Tione, forcing her to grasp Telskyura’s combat techniques through combat itself.
Bache, on the other hand, was taciturn by nature and cold in temperament, forming a stark contrast with the lively and energetic Tiona, but because the two interacted frequently, or rather, because Tiona clung to Bache one-sidedly, Bache ultimately had no way to refuse.
Tiona’s common language had been taught by Bache.
Bache had even read storybooks aloud to Tiona, and their relationship could be described as both teacher and friend.
Because of that, Tiona harbored no negative feelings toward Bache.
Tione, in contrast, had always despised Argana and always hated Telskyura, feeling deep resentment toward its ritual of kin slaughtering kin. As a result, from the moment she gained awareness, she had always been angry, always furious, and aside from her feelings for Tiona, everything within Telskyura was, in Tione’s eyes, nothing more than an unpleasant source of irritation.
Coincidentally, Tiona also disliked slaughter, and even more so the killing of those around her.
Hence, the sisters made their demand to their goddess, declaring their intent to leave Telskyura.
Afterward, the two sisters traveled the outside world for several years before finally arriving at Orario, where they encountered the Loki Familia.
Aside from top executives like Finn, this past was known to no one.
Until today, when Tiona and Tione reunited with their teachers from Telskyura once more within this Man-Made Dungeon Knossos. And with this reunion, Telskyura’s unique ritual descended upon these two pairs of twin sisters, these two pairs of masters and disciples.
Tiona, seeming simple but in fact perceptive, finally understood why the Kali Familia had appeared here.
"You came here to do the ritual with us, didn’t you?!"
Tiona deflected Bache’s punch and demanded loudly.
"That’s right."
Bache did not deny it in the slightest, announcing it in a cold voice as she threw an elbow strike.
"Originally, we only came to this Labyrinth City under Kali’s orders to cooperate with the Ishtar Familia and prepare to challenge a certain powerful familia."
"They invited us, whose members are also mostly amazonesses, to come here and slaughter others."
"Kali agreed. After all, she loves nothing more than a feast of blood."
"And you were unfortunate, because you and Tione reached Level 6 and arrived at the same height as us—that’s when Kali took an interest and had us conduct the ritual with you here."
"In Telskyura, there’s no one left who can fight us anymore, and just at that moment you leveled up and entered Kali’s field of view—one could only say it was extremely bad timing."
Bache sent Tiona flying with a punch as she spoke expressionlessly.
"So stop the chatter. Raise your fists and fight me."
"Otherwise, I’ll kill you."
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[A bonus Chapter for every 300 Power Stones.]
[Support me and read next Chapters early at: /VALRRR]