Asuna didn't wait for another one of Gamesh's tricks. She raised her claymore overhead with both hands and shouted, "Crimson Blade!"
A bloody energy engulfed the claymore and went several yards past the tip of the blade, extending the range of the weapon to absurd length. And, unceremoniously, Asuna swung the claymore right at Gamesh.
The princess wasn't anywhere close to the captain but the range of the crimson energy eached so far that it sliced one of the damaged outer walls of the fortress they were fighting beneath, causing another minor collapse.
"Ha!" Asuna laughed, sweating and visibly exhausted, when she saw no remains of her opponent.
"Commander!!" the palace guards screamed when they saw Gamesh behind the princess.
"Agh!" Asuna narrowly escaped with her head intact but had to use up another charge in her Bloodoath to heal a fresh wound across her shoulder, chest, and arm when she failed to fully evade Gamesh's strange flashing attack.
"I will not hold back from killing you," Gamesh said. "But I will allow you to live if you surrender right now and command the others to do the same."
"Fuck you!" Asuna gasped, struggling for air.
"Suit yourself-eh?" Gamesh noticed several dark energies form at the surface of the rubble behind him.
-33 HP
-30 HP
-31 HP
-32 HP
-30 HP
-29 HP
"Argh! Fuck!!" Beatrice cursed after another barrage of nails scored several annoying wounds in her flesh.
Though at first the minor wounds were nothing that Beatrice couldn't heal through with her absurd +1.84 Health Point per second regeneration, this quickly grew to be a problem.
"What's the matter!?" Annie laughed. Rather, Annie's laughed. Several of them. From behind the rippled effects of concealment magic.
With no way of telling which Annie was real, or if any of them was real, Beatrice had an increasingly difficult time dealing with Annie's attacks while Annie showed no sign of stopping. The number of her nails just kept increasing with every attack. And that was between the wild hammaxe swings that looked like they'd break every bone in a human body in one hit.
Fuck this! Beatrice thought and ran toward the thickest group of palace guards, behind which Melody was hiding.
"Hammer Fall!!" Annie crashed right in front of Beatrice's path and followed it up with another, "Nail Barrage!!"
"Tch!" Beatrice dodged the delayed nail barrage and counterattacked the princess who finally appeared to be the real one. But this time her attack was thwarted by several palace guards.
"Pests!" Beatrice broke their spears, only to be forced to dodge several more as they ganged up on the succubus in larger numbers.
"Don't worry princess, victory is as good as ours," one of the palace guards told princess Melody just before the sweat from his forehead all poured into his eyes. "Ahck!"
"What—?" Melody turned around and suddenly choked. Her vision went blurry and her nose filled with water.
While everyone focused on Beatrice Lieutenant Mimi sneaked up on Melody and conjured a water bubble over the princess's head while her men cut down the sweat-disoriented guards.
"Surrender, right now!" Mimi shouted to Annie and the other palace guards. "Or she drowns!"
"Then I just have to kill you—" Annie's words were cut short when she got pierced by two extended claws from behind. "Khuh-you—"
"You heard her," Beatrice said as she viciously tore through Annie's back, letting blood pour freely.
"ARGH!" Annie growled and dropped her hammaxe. She was forced to lean with her entire weight against its long handle while blood stained her fresh white robes.
"Huh!? Aren't they losing?" the onlookers in the increasingly large crowd chattered.
"No! Princess Melody!!"
"Let the princess go, you demon prostitutes!!"
"You heard them," Beatrice heard a young woman's voice.
Just then two dark skeletal warriors from the rubble behind Mimi and raised their giant dadao swords over their head.
"Eh!?" Mimi only had the time to turn around and see the threat when both blades came down on her head.
"Fuck off!" Beatrice said after slashing the blades to pieces with her claws before beheading the ghostly skeletons.
"T-Thank you," Mimi gasped and was able to maintain the water bubble around Melody's head. Melody fell on her knees, drowning on solid ground, clawing at the water bubble with no effect.
"No problem," Beatrice said, happy to finally strike down some enemies, even if they appeared to be summoned ones. Beatrice watched the two skeletons disintegrate into mist. Destroying the soldiers was the easy part, but it cost Beatrice the four minute cooldown on her [Blink (+1)] Skill to get there in time.
"Oh?" a pale goth girl with a giant feathered top hat on her head and bright crimson eyes noted Beatrice's performance as she walked onto the improvised arena. She was escorted onto the battlefield by an increasing number of dark skeletal warriors that kept rising up from dark pools on the surface of the rubble one after another, snarling and hissing like animals.
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