Luminary

Episode 21 - Eaten Alive

Draco: And this was the last one...

Mari: Thank you, I could take care of all of them, but probably your support helped a lot.

Draco: Well, thanks to the fire, taking the city back was a useless endeavor, so we came to assist you guys.

There were layers upon layers of fallen Saisem soldiers. It looked like there were over 500 of them and some 10 that surrendered.

Draco: But why didn't you fight seriously?

Mari: Hmm?

Draco: You were surrounded on purpose. Why were you?

Mari: Ahahaha, I thought if I cleared them out so quickly, it would be too boring. It's more fun when I'm almost getting caught.

Draco: ...Why would you do such a thing? No matter how skilled you are, it's not like swords and spears recognized beauty and missed on their own. You could get a life threatening injury if you made a mistake during your acrobatics.

Marisia laughed at Draco's words and he sighed, to them the battle was won at least. The city was lost, sure, but they could rebuild it later.

Mari: But what about this fire? Entire city will be consumed by flames like this.

Draco: Our enemies did it purposely.

Mari: So those guys don't plan to keep the territory?

Draco: Seems so... But if they didn't want to keep the city, why do they want to?

They stopped to think while IBI soldiers patrolled the area, fortunately the palace's walls were keeping most of the fire at bay.

No one had anticipated this kind of development. It didn't make sense for Saisem, who had superior forces that controlled the territory, to set fire on a city.

In that moment, a piece of the tank from before charged in, breaking the Palace's gate and killing any unfortunate soul in front of it.

Draco and Marisia could only look in shock as they were lucky to not be there, but noticed Paris coming from the destroyed gates, so the two of them ran to him to see what was that all about.

Paris: Wait!

The second half of the tank also flew in inside the gates, as if someone threw it to finish the job.

Someone ran in and forcefully pushed Paris away who rolled away on the ground and raised his head up quickly. Surprisingly, Marisia was aiming her bow even though she had just pushed him away by throwing her own body.

But Draco wasn't so lucky.

Paris and Marisia looked at the place where the second part of the tank landed and saw Draco's armor.

Paris' heart beat loudly from an ominous feeling soon as he saw the elegant crimson hair waving as Merlin came walking towards them. Marisia was trying to fire a freezing arrow at right in front of her...

Paris: Dodge!!!

Merlin dashed forward, they both jumped in different directions to avoid the sword that the dragon just swung down at them.

Impressively, even amidst this astonishing ambush, Marisia did pull her body back instinctively. But the dragon wasn't aiming at Marisia especifically, the tip of the sword hit the ground and called upon pillars of blood, similar to Paris' attacks.

Marisia screamed as she got consumed by dozens of meters of waves of stinging blood that looked like they could burn away the sky, throwing her away.