“Where the hell did Rarelian go? I can’t hear him anymore… There’s no way he could have been killed…’’

  Tilimia had known the lionfolk for several years at this point. They had both worked in this line of work as agents of the crown stationed in rural areas for a long time, and she had seen him take hits much stronger than she had ever imagined anything alive to be capable of surviving, and he would shrug them off without even a bruise.

  Such as when a rhinofolk criminal attempted to charge him by surprise, the rhino’s horn had struck Rarelian directly in the back, right into his spine, and he hadn’t even budged. In fact, the criminal’s horn shattered, and he got knocked unconscious on the spot due to the impact against the lion.

  It was safe to say, her fellow feline knew how to take hits, his sheer defences outclassed all of his already impressively high attributes by a wide margin, and that was just his natural, physical defences. When he decided to use mana augmentation? It was whatever the opposite of a massacre should be, literally nothing Tilimia could think of would harm him in the slightest.

  As such, the idea that a human woman had been able to defeat him was hard to believe unless she had some sort of special ability… Which she probably did have, to be honest, what little the tigress had seen about this purple-eyed woman had been rather odd.

  She had quite literally broken into the room they had been in, in less than a second, without making a noise or disrupting the air. It had felt like a teleportation, yet with the fact that the door had been broken down… Which disqualified teleportation altogether.

  Tilimia could only try to guess for now… She glanced back at the other people with her. They were scared out of their wits, most had dropped their weapons the moment something had gone wrong… None of them was a warrior. They were all regular citizens without a lick of experience dealing with such an overwhelming situation where death was not just likely, but one of two possible outcomes.

  Beastfolks and humans, for the most part… People of Heldinot and Rootriska who had been minding their own business until they were struck by the nightmare plague, tormented through several trials, until they ended up here. The end of the road. Where the coup de grace was to be delivered.

  Tilimia sincerely wished to protect them, but she had to be truthful with herself, if the woman were to appear, or if pale monsters managed to make their way to the roof of the city hall–There were going to be casualties. She wouldn’t be able to defend herself and everyone else at the same time, especially not if panic struck.

  “Just what could be her ability? It can’t just be about those monsters that appeared out of the blue… Is it a sort of accelerated movement? No… The sound of her breaking down the barricades would have still rung out… And again… If it were teleportation, the barricades wouldn’t have been shattered altogether”

  “Also, the sound should have also been heard even if she had teleported several times in a row to break the door open for some reason…”

  She smelled blood.

  Her eyes moved to her right, and there, she soon saw a bloodied arm reaching upward. The woman pulled herself onto the roof. She was completely and utterly covered in pale blood. Literally drenched in it from head to toe, even her teeth were stained with the liquid–It looked like she had eaten her way into the intestines of something that was still alive…

  “Ah… I nearly thought I wasn’t going to make it”

  Tilimia flexed her paws, bringing her sharp claws in full as she assumed a combat stance, mana flower throughout her body–If this woman had somehow been able to deal with Rarelian, then there was no point in not going all-out from the very beginning…

  The tigress may not be anywhere near as good a fighter as the lionfolk–In fact–She was more of a utility mage than a warrior to begin with… Nonetheless, in case the purple-eyed woman had used a cheap trick or some ability to defeat Rarelian, it could mean that she wasn’t that strong overall.

  …Anyway, it wasn’t like there was another choice available. Tilimia wasn’t going to just run away and leave all of these people behind to be butchered.

  “How are you still alive after fighting Rarelian?”

  The beastfolk asked a question she did not expect to receive an actual answer for, but as long as the other party was willing to humour her with a response, it was a little bit of time bought.

  “How am I still alive, you ask? I don’t know, to be honest. I sort of have the habit of not dying even when I really should have no chance of survival… Oh, but you are asking about Mister Lion specifically, right? Well, I won’t tell you. Even if admittedly, I really want to because I am quite proud of myself, but it would reveal too much, and also… It took me much more eating than I had expected, so let’s wrap this shit up”

  “...By the way, special offer, let me rub that fluffy belly of yours, and you can live… Maybe a little bit of belly huff, too? You know, when you get your face against the belly and blow air against it?”

  The tigerfolk looked at the blood-soaked woman weirdly.

  “What about these people?”

  “No negotiations, do you see how pathetic they are? Way too easy to kill for me to pass on”

  Tilimia did not respond to this and instead wove a spell. The body marks upon her fur brightened up as spectral claws made from ambient mana appeared all around the purple-eyed woman, lashing out at her without delay.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “...So, no belly pets?”

  ___

  I had to admit, I was a bit disappointed that she didn’t agree to my offer. Maybe I should have lied and said that I was going to let the rest go? Ah, what a fool I am! I am just too honest, truthful, and righteous for my own good!

  I stopped myself from laughing out loud at my own joke and instead moved forward, narrowly evading the swipe of the claws–Even I could tell that these things were dense with energy.

  The pain I felt as my motions pulled on the wound upon my chest gave me just enough of that sweet extra clarity to avoid a simple mana bullet aimed at my throat… Though it still ended up chipping the top of my left shoulder as I tried to evade it.

  The timing between those two spells had been quite rough indeed, and it was far from over. While I was busy evading, the tigress had been multitasking and had drawn a small circle behind her using her tail as a brush.

  I am fairly certain that tigers don’t have prehensile tails, but that was beside the point.

  Nara, any clue what this circle is about?

  It simply manifests spells in the stead of the one who drew it–It will fire simple, crescent blades of basic mana at you every few seconds… The timing is randomised, but it only has a limited number of spells it can cast before running out of mana since it is charged with Tilimia’s own inner mana. It isn’t detailed enough to draw mana from its surroundings

  Always perfect, Nara. You’ll get those belly huffs in Tilimia’s stead, you can count on it.

  I- This feels a little embarrassing…

  Don’t worry about it.

  I activated my time stop–It was only a single second long now, but in a fight, it was more than enough to be very useful. When time resumed, Tilimia’s focus was on the wrong place entirely. In this small period of time, I was able to close the distance significantly.

  My opponent reflexively swiped at me with the claws of her right hand, but as I had hoped, she was nowhere near as skilled or powerful as Rarelian. Her forearm hit my own, stopping her claws from reaching me, allowing me to deliver a straight punch directly to her stomach.

  The she-tiger growled in pain, but did not let me get away with a free hit. As I tried to back off from a counterattack, my back hit a barrier that had just been cast.

  Uh oh.

  Tilimia struck me right across the face with the claws of her left hand. In reaction, I grabbed her arm and the fur of her chest, slamming her right through her own barrier and throwing her hard against the ground.

  Ah… Sweet agony… I love it, but…

  That attack had absolutely decimated my right eye, and unfortunately, I did need to see properly. I could say goodbye to vision on this side, as well as proper depth perception. Tilimia hadn’t just damaged it deeply. Her hooked claws had nearly gouged it right as well…

  Now, I had a slashed, useless piece of meat dangling from an empty socket–And may the gods know that the pain it caused me was greatly enjoyable. It had been a while since I had felt such acute pain while in a body of flesh and blood. It felt quite different from the suffering inflicted upon me when in my regular form.

  It was more raw this way… More personal even.

  Had this been the human me of the past, I probably would have proceeded to cuss the tigress out and promised to lead her entire bloodline to extinction before turning their final resting place into a septic pit–But I was a different woman now. Pain brought me too much ecstasy to react in such a manner.

  So I just laughed to my heart’s content, barely avoiding a crescent slash of mana accompanied by a spray of mana bullets.

  …Now, I can’t fight properly like this. With my inability to sense mana, she is just going to take advantage of my blind spot to absolutely stomp me. I needed to cut my losses.

  Time came to a freeze for a short period, and when time resumed, I was already too close to the helpless crowd for anyone to do anything about it. I snatched up a spawnling from the arms of its mother.

  “You are one of those freaks who think these creatures are of tremendous importance, right? I do agree that they are important to keep a country going, but this isn’t what most people think about first, do they? They just think that these… Ugly things have some sort of right to be protected and cherished from a moral standpoint”

  “...I am just babbling because I want to. To put it simply, get out of my sight, or it goes splat”

  “And what am I supposed to do? Trust that you won’t kill it and everyone else once I am gone?”

  “Hey, you can’t trust me in the least, but can you really take it from my arms? Better try believing that I can keep my word rather than rush to me. This thing is so fragile, I could squash it without even meaning to”

  The tigress looked at me with a grave expression.

  “I can tell very easily that you will kill it no matter what… Therefore, I will not leave and let you kill everyone”

  “...Huh… I was hoping you would react more emotionally, you know? Oh well, not that it matters anyway…”

  I chucked the spawnling backwards into the crowd, where the people scrambled to catch it. Just then, a large, pale limb reached upon the roof, digging its fingers through it to pull itself upward, revealing a large, grotesque, serpent-like creature with human arms and hands near the sides of its maw–As though they were mandibles.

  With a guttural sound, the serpent regurgitated many other pale monstrosities it had been stocking up.

  I had spotted this one earlier as it was gobbling down its own kind. Seeing that the serpent had more brain activity than the rest, I did my best to give it a hand so that it would be able to climb up onto the roof. Clearly, I had been successful in this regard.

  In the face of so many monsters and nowhere to run, chaos descended upon the herd of prey. There was nothing Tilimia could do to help them–Certainly not with me standing in her way.

  I was able to prevent the tigress from saving anyone, but with my missing eye, I wasn’t able to put up a proper fight and ended up being struck by a mana bullet straight in the mouth. The only reason I wasn’t instantly done for was because I used my freaking teeth to stop the bullet from piercing through my cervical spine.

  The result wasn’t pretty in the least, and I ended up being thrown back with enough force to be sent stumbling down the roof. I barely managed to catch myself.

  I don’t give a damn, as far as I am concerned, I won.

  Something climbed up behind me, I felt its weight stomping down.

  Oh. Looks like Rarelian managed to cough up what I forcefed him…

  The last thing that I saw before awakening inside my steel body in the royal attic was the lionfolk’s foot stepping down upon me…