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Volume 2 Chapter 4 Part 2

「Don’t flinch! As long as you have the power of the Crest in your crossbows, just keep on shooting. If you are not sure you can hit her with single shots can’t hit your target, fire a barrage of rapid fire! 」

At that time, Franz, the vice-captain of the unit scolded his fellow heavy knights. When he heard his voice, Elmer was brought back to his senses.

Franz is always daring on the battlefield, and the more he is outnumbered, the more he encourages himself and his comrades to push themselves forward. While he is alone under the enemy’s concentrated attack, he is quick to carry out one-hit kills and recover the situation. Thanks to this, Elmer can calmly survey the battlefield and give his orders in greater details. In the previous battle of Selvis, Elmer’s corps took down one gate of the enemy castle and made a great achievement by stealing the Crest of the monarch who was the captain of the garrison that defended that gate. It was an achievement that they were all proud off.

「That’s it! Werewolves are not immortal! They bleed and can be killed, and the same thing should apply to their Queen! 」

Elmer also encouraged her companions, and the remaining nine heavy knights quickly fired their heavy crossbows. Bullets of light shot continuously at the Werewolf Queen.

Clara dodged the bullets with instinct alone and ran towards the fifth prey. She pretended to want to attack from above, jumping over the edge of his sword, landing behind him and delivering a back kick. The heavy knight got his spine shattered and flung himself forward, bending his body into an upside-down dogleg.

The sixth heavy knight was hiding near the wall of the building, so she pierced his stomach with a kick from a triangular jump using the wall. As she retreated, she grabbed the entrails of her prey with her claws and pulled on them hard. The knight fell forward holding the internal organs that were being pulled out of his stomach with both hands.
「Five… six… 」

Clara was now breathing heavily, because she took several of the Crest-infused crossbow bolt shots to her body. However, for the time being, she decided to leave her injuries be without letting them regenerate, because activating the Arts responsible for the healing of the damage that she sustained always had a side effect of severely her strength and physical condition, and that was something that she could not afford right now. It is true that Werewolves are several times stronger than regular humans, but that inhumane strength of theirs is by no means inexaustable.

「On to the next one… 」

Clara scolded herself and hooked her fingernails and toenails onto the ivy clinging to the walls of the building, trying to quickly climb all the way to the top of it, because two more heavy knight who were destined to be her prey were already waiting for her on the roof. However, when she was about halfway there, the vines and ivy that she was holding onto with her hands and feet suddenly began to move as if it had its own will, and then it they tried to get themselves entangled around Clara’s hands and feet.

「So you have finally decided to show yourself, huh? 」

Clara chuckled. These vines moving like that now must have surely been the work of the witch working together with the heavy knights. She was hiding herself until now, completely indetectable by any of Clara’s five senses, and now must have been the moment that she was waiting for.

The surrounding ivy and vines grow one after another until they completely covered the Werewolf Queen’s body, leaving her immobilized like an animal caught in the hunter’s net about halfway up the building’s wall.

「Now! 」
A woman’s voice came from somewhere. At the same time, several more bullets pierced Clara’s body.

「There you are! 」

When she shouted that, the animal hair that covered Clara’s whole body emitted a silvery white light. Then, with all her strength, she kicked the wall. The entwined vines and ivy were torn apart with a loud and unpleasant noise, after which the figure of the witch with thick, black wavy heir was finally within her sights.

「You’ve got to be kidding me?! 」

Yana involuntarily let out her surprised voice when she saw that the Werewolf Queen managed to break herself free from her magical vines trap with brute force alone and was now heading straight towards her. In a panic, she hurriedly grabbed hold of the broom that was laying beside her.

「Wall, rise, oh wall! 」

Yana activated her spell, which caused a physical barrier that emitted a faint light to be deployed in front of her. A blow from the Werewolf Queen’s claws was blocked by the barrier and caused Clara to bounce back, but it did not stop her. From the left, from the right, from above, time after time she tried to attack Yana from every possible direction, so Yana had no choice but to deploy barriers all around herself to keep herself safe. However, even though she managed to keep herself from harm for the time being, she will not be able to keep that up infinitely, because each of her deployed barriers had durability, and once the barriers were broken, she would need to deploy them again, and that would take time that she did not have. Right now, if her spells are going to be even slightly delayed or she fails to properly cast even a single barrier, she is going to be torn apart by the claws of the Werewolf Queen in the blink of an eye. Yana felt his body freeze with anxiety at the mere thought of that.

Ideally, she hoped that she could just kill the Werewolf Queen by summoning the Demon Lord and trapping her inside of the Dimensional Barrier just like she did when she summoned the Demon Lord that killed the heads of the two Archduke families on the day of 「The Tragedy of the Grand Cathedral 」, but unfortunately for her, the Chaos Concentration in the air was not high enough for her to go through with that. The Demon Lord of the world of Diabolos, whose name she knows, can only be summoned at maximum Chaos density possible, and achieving that is not something that she could do by herself.

「Do something about her! 」

Yana cried hysterically, but the heavy knights were just as afraid of getting hit with Clara’s attacks like Yana was, and so they hesitated to fire their heavy crossbows at her.

「Don’t move! 」

At that moment, Elmer’s voice echoed around the entire area.

「Mother! 」

And then the scream of the Werewolf girl followed suit. The Werewolf Queen stopped her movement in an instant and turned around. Yana also looks at Elmer with only one eye, not losing track of Clara with the other.

Elmer drew his sword and held its blade next to Emma’s throat.
(I should have done that from the beginning.)

Yana murmured in her mind. But still, while she would have been fine with using the hostage to their advantage, it was actually Frantz, the vice-captain of the heavy knights who decided that they should fight the Werewolf Queen fair and square, and the other heavy knights foolishly agreed with him, which forced Elmer to go along with the collective opinion of his peers

And Elmer adopted the opinion of her peers.

(And besides, how exactly can setting an ambush for someone be considered fighting them fair and square?)

Yana could not understand the sense of chivalry that the heavy knights of Waldrind were still clinging onto so desperately.

The idea of the powerful protecting the powerless, as was so often advocated by those who held the positions of power, was nothing but a deception meant to appease the masses. The more natural state of being is the one where the strong rule over the weak and have complete control over their right to live or die. That is how it is in the other worlds where the demons live. There is no laws, no morality and no religion that would hold them down there. If you don’t want to be ruled, you have no choice but to become strong; that is the only rule applying to the worlds of Diabolos and Abyss. And if the times of Extreme Chaos are going to be brought back into this world, that rule is going to be this world’s new law as well.

「You did a great job, Queen of the Werewolves. However, this is as far as you will go. Stay right where you are. If you move even one step forward, I am going to kill this girl. 」

Elmer shouted while his body was shaking in an unnatural way.