[3RD POV]
Looking at the red-eyed elf who was walking slowly towards her, Clarette became confused. As she looked behind him, she saw another elf's sitting in the distance, watching. She thought that instead of just one of them, all four elves would attack her. But after only a moment of confusion, she realized that only one of them was coming at her. It was clearly their way of telling her that those knife-eared savages looked down on her. Getting slightly angry, she stomped the ground, causing it to break beneath her feet, and rushed towards the red-eyed elf.
Seeing Clarette rush towards him with her sword aimed at his stomach, Malgath slowly turned around. He dodged her strike and easily kneed her in the face, which surprised him a little since he thought it would be harder to hit her.
The reason he hit her so easily was that while Clarette accepted that they were looking down at her by only sending one of them against her, she still didn't let her guard down and pay attention to the elves in the distance who were sitting and watching the fight. It didn't help that all of them attacked her when she first arrived.
Malgath's knee hit Clarette's face, which was not where he was aiming, but due to the height difference, he was only able to hit her face. Clarette hurriedly covered her face with magic and stumbled backwards, plunging her sword into the ground. She stopped herself as she felt a slight dizziness and warmth on her nose. Bringing her hand to her face, she saw blood dripping from her broken nose. Gripping her nose with her hand, Clarette forcefully put it back in its place and snorted to clear the blood inside her nose.
Realizing that the red-eyed elf was not an easy target, Clarette decided to stop paying attention to the elves in the distance.
Imbuing her foot with fire and increasing her speed, Clarette rushed towards Malgath, who was pulling his sword from one of the corpses.
Arriving beside Malgath in the blink of an eye, Clarette swung her sword towards his leg as if to cut it off. But Malgath jumped backwards, avoiding her sword. Without waiting for Malgath to land on his feet, Clarette jumped and kicked toward his chest.
Blocking Clarette's attack with his left arm, Malgath slashed towards her with his sword as he was pushed back. However, Clarette was able to deflect it with her own sword.
Landing near one of the corpses, Malgath, not wanting to touch a human more than necessary, stabbed his sword into one of them and lifted the corpse up. He looked at the corpse, which had no limbs and a hand sticking out of its mouth. This was something Malgath did when he was killing the soldiers in the barracks: after ripping off all of their limbs in front of him, he, on a whim, shoved one of the arms of the few soldiers he had ripped off through their throat.
Seeing that Malgath was picking up a corpse with his sword and examining the human body like some filthy incest, Clarette became angry. The air around her started to become humid, and smoke began to rise from the ground beneath her. The air, except where Clarette was, began to get colder since Clarette was absorbing the heat in the air to gain more power.
"Let go of him, you filthy knife-eared savage fuck, or I will turn you into a fucking roasted chicken!" Clarette yelled angrily as she covered herself with fire.
Upon seeing Clarette's anger and her use of fire magic, Malgath changed his mind about how to use the human corpse. Initially, he wanted to burn the corpse while covering their skin and insides with magic to make them like stone statues, making the corpse harder and more durable. He intended to use the burning human corpse to attack Clarette in order to humiliate her. However, realizing that fire magic wouldn't do much damage to Clarette, who was absorbing fire around her, he decided to drain the blood from the corpses around him and freeze it.
Turning the frozen blood into a dozen different weapons that were triple the size of his own, Malgath sent them to Clarette. Upon seeing dozens of huge weapons made of blood coming towards her.
"firewall" Clarette lifted her hands and created a firewall to defend herself.
Just as Clarette created the firewall, Malgath plunged his sword into the ground. Since he never liked using weapons that much, he preferred to use his own body as a weapon and rushed towards her. The blood weapons were never Malgath's main attack; they were merely a distraction to either divert Clarette's attention or block her vision. And with her creation of a firewall, she blocked her own vision.
As Clarette gritted her teeth and defended herself with the firewall, while also using wind magic to clear the smoke that came out after the ice weapons got vaporized when they hit her firewall, she suddenly sensed danger and felt an entity enter her firewall. She saw a pair of red strings before she was barely able to cross her arms and defend herself.
Before she could understand what was going on, something hit her arms, but instead of flying backwards, her attacker slammed her to the ground.
Hitting the ground heavily, Clarette felt her breath leaving her body. But before she could inhale again, she was struck in the stomach, causing her to vomit blood. While her blood was still in mid-air, she was struck in the side of her ribs, causing them to creak. This sent her flying against the really thick wall just beside her, the wall that Malgath had created to prevent Clarette from being sent away by his strike.
As Clarette was crushed against the wall, Malgath grasped her face and pulled her away from it before slamming her against the wall repeatedly. He also kneed her body, breaking one bone after another, while Clarette was too stunned to defend herself.
'Fuck, that fucking tiny creature made me consume a significant portion of my stamina and magic, making me weaker. I have... to do something or this big fucker... will surely kill...me,' Clarette thought as she covered her skin with a fire shield, but that didn't do much since Malgath was able to destroy and hit her, and with each hit, her consciousness faded away little by little.
Meanwhile, Sylvanas, Alleria, and Naesala, who were watching the fight from behind, conversed with each other.
"Malgath is truly a prodigy. Even I wasn't half as strong as he was when I was his age. His infinite strength, monstrous stamina, and pure battle instincts make him a truly perfect warrior... and a perfect husband," Naesala said with a proud face, approval, and awe in her voice as she whispered the last part.
"Of course, he is perfect. After all, he is my Mirwa," Sylvanas said with hearts in her eyes as she looked at Malgath, full of love. "It looks like that tiny human is a good training puppet for him since she is durable enough to take hits from him and still able to stand."
Alleria didn't speak; she just watched the fight with her ever-cold face. However, her eyes revealed an unhealthy obsession and possessiveness towards Malgath, while blood dripped from her hand as she tried her hardest to stop herself from getting up and ripping the tiny human to shreds because she dared to attack her beloved brother.
While the elven generals were talking, Malgath never stopped hitting Clarette. But it didn't take long before the pain in Clarette's body dulled and her vision began to fade away, replaced by her past.
She was born in a brothel and abandoned in the slums the next day by her mother, who was a prostitute. She was then adopted by a homeless woman who had lost her own baby, a child conceived through rape. Although her life was miserable and she was constantly hungry, at least she had her mother's love. Unfortunately, this didn't last long. When she was 5 years old, she was caught stealing a loaf of bread from the market a bread that she had intended to bring it to her starving mother, who was so weak from hunger that she couldn't even move.
The stall owner, who caught her first beat her nearly to death before selling her to a slave master. However, she didn't stay with the slave master long enough to fully understand what being a slave meant. After just a few days, a group of priests came and took her away, bringing her to a church in the woods along with many other children, numbering in the thousands.
They bathed her, gave her a warm meal, provided her with nice clothes, and gave her a soft bed to sleep in. She asked the priests about her mother, but they claimed they couldn't find her. Later, she learned that this was a lie and that her mother had actually died from hunger.
A week after arriving at the church, the priests began training her and other children. It was hard, so hard that in the first year of training, half of the children that were brought to the church died.
At the end of the first year of training, the priests in the church explained why they were there. To become heroes, they were chosen to be saviors of humanity, to protect humanity from evil, bring justice to the world, be loved and respected by everyone, and become a pillar for humanity.
And after the priest told the tales of heroes, how powerful and respected they are, their influence and wealth, it made being a hero the dream of all those kids brought to the church. After that, the intensity of the training increased. After a decade or so, only a hundred remained. The priest concluded that the training was enough and began the selection of heroes. Determined by a duel to the death.
The priest made them fight their closest friends and perhaps even lovers to the death in order to make their dreams come true, perfect slaves... no, they were going to be heroes of humanity. It meant the same thing for them. She was one of the few who was naive enough to not bring herself to kill companions who had been with her for so long that they had become like sisters and brothers to her.
But it was a mistake since when she refused to kill her opponent in the first death match to become a hero, they poisoned her opponent with a poison that made her flesh slowly decay and forced her to listen to her opponent's screams of agony and pain. And as if that wasn't enough, they turned her opponent into an undead and chained her in her room so that she could always see her regret. The undead of her champion made her lose sleep so many nights and meals because of guilt; while she could kill the undead and end both of their suffering, she couldn't bring herself to do it.
In her second death match, she once again hesitated to kill her opponent after defeating them until she remembered the fate that awaited them if she didn't kill them. It was her first kill. After that, with each passing time, it got easier, and with the undead friend of her in her room reminding her of the consequences of her actions, probably causing her to lose a few screws in her head, her emotions slowly dulled. And it didn't help that the priests who raised and trained them told her that she was doing the right thing, and their sacrifices only made her a better hero.
While revealing her memories, Clartte awakened some of the dormant memories she had long forgotten, like the one where, with every win, a priest would take her underground and tie her onto an altar while they chanted something strange and it would make her feel like someone was stretching her brain with long nails. She also remembered how they would feed her a strange potion's that made her feel like her blood was boiling, her bones were melting, and her organs were caught on fire, bringing her unimaginable pain.
When she killed everyone she had ever called her family, the priest sent her on a mission. Her mission was to destroy an orc camp near one of the villages, which she completed easily since the orc camp was filled with children, the elderly, and the sick, and only a few warriors. When she killed those defenseless orcs, including the children, she didn't feel much remorse since they weren't 'human'. She returned to the human village to report. The happiness and sense of accomplishment she felt when the village chief introduced her as the hero who saved them from the orcs, and the glory and superiority she felt when humans shouted her name and worshipped her, were things she would never forget. It was the moment she knew that all of her suffering and sacrifices were not in vain.
Remembering the past made Charlotte awaken the passion in her heart that was lost along the way. With renewed purpose to be the hero humanity needed again, she opened her eyes and gathered all of her magic power to blast the red-eyed elf on top of her.
Meanwhile, Malgath, who was about to hit Charlotte for the final time, felt his instinct scream at him to get away. Feeling the magic power emanating from Charlotte, Malgath gathered all of his magic power to boost his eternal shield. Thick, dark red smoke began to emit from his body as he jumped back with his arms crossed in front of his face, just as a massive wave of fire hit him.