The fact that Belial was trying to stick me with his stinger told me he was either desperate, or he had a dastardly plan. Well, it was actually neither. The only thoughts running through his head were the fantasies of beating me.

He wasn’t like Belphegora with her abnormally powerful Mind or his other sisters with their ridiculous physicality. In comparison to the other Valkybees, he could be considered something of an all-rounder. While he excelled in both the realms of Mind and physical power, competing with his sisters was an exercise in futility, and so, he had already developed a way of closing the gap using the modified guns he became so fond of. But now, he didn’t have those to help him. All he had was his speed, his strength, and his Ability.

I wanted time to gather myself, so with a mighty push of Mind, I completely halted his advance, sending him careening back towards the trees. It wasn’t enough to send him flying far, though, and he righted himself. His Mind ballooned, and his eyes took on a dangerous sheen. If I didn’t know better, I might almost say his compound eyes were multiplying; looking closely, it was actually the work of tiny vibrations and glimmers of light.

[Piercing Gaze of the Insect] was an interesting Ability that actually had two effects. The first was quite intriguing, being a simple passive boost to his vision. I couldn’t recall an Ability that just worked without the user’s influence like that. Of course, an Ability of that nature would never match up against Ben, whose entire Ability was based around sight. The boost was nice, a useful tool to provide Belial an extra edge against his specialist siblings, but it was nowhere near enough to elevate him to match their full strength. But the second part of the Ability….

Myriad beams of light streaked towards me, and I only just managed to defend myself, redirecting them with my Mind. Speak of the devil. The beams continued, increasing in number and frequency as I had to employ more and more Mind to fend them off. I definitely didn’t want to get pierced by those things, but as long as I knew they were coming, they posed no issue with the insane combination of my Mind’s raw power and the CBU’s calculations. Despite the hundreds of streaks of light flying towards me, I could quickly move each one out of the way with a tiny adjustment, processing them much faster than I could hope to achieve with a lumpy human brain.

Those beams of light Belial shot from his eyes were the real strength behind his Ability. If I were to be pierced, they would create a tiny localized disturbance of Mind, draining my energy as my Mind fought to rectify the issue. It was diabolical. One's mind is a tough thing to quantify in one's head, a sort of ethereal energy or presence that one can simply manipulate with a thought, and that has no bearing on the real world until one uses it. But Mind did exist in the physical world. It really was like a typical aura, as I’d learned in my focus training. My issue had become that my untrained Mind was throwing its weight around the forest, scaring creatures including the fernen.

Typically, you can’t interact with that presence Mind takes up, even with your own Mind. If someone inside of the forest tried to push away my Mind’s presence with their own, nothing would really happen, besides maybe making that person feel a bit better because their own Mind was taking up more space. But with certain Abilities, it was most likely possible to interfere with the presence of another’s Mind directly. For example, Belial over here. That was how his beams of light worked. They could only pierce the physical presence of Mind. Otherwise, they were weak when it came to interacting with anything else. Simply blocking or redirecting them was enough to make them useless. For example, I was using little gusts of wind to redirect them, however that worked. But that weakness was, in turn, its strength. When a Mind takes up space, it likes to keep filling that space with a sort of uniformity, like water or something. The disturbances caused by his lasers would make my Mind panic and try to smooth over the affected area. Those tiny adjustments might not amount to much at first, but with the sheer number of little lasers Belial could produce, a regular Mind would become exhausted in a hurry.

If I hadn’t undergone my focus training and reigned my Mind’s presence in, his Ability would be tough to deal with. He could just throw them willy-nilly and mess me up! But now, rather than a rampaging beast spread across the forest, my Mind only filled most of this clearing. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew exactly where to keep Belial to prevent his Ability from affecting me. Unfortunately for him, I had turned from a bad match against him into a decent one. Bad timing on this challenge, I suppose.

Such a shame. With some development, I was sure his Ability would become something amazing, maybe even beyond Belphegora’s [Permeation Instillation]. But as it stood, against someone who properly trained themselves or knew how Mind worked, he would have a tough time. I suppose he would make up for it with his power.

Frustrated, he shot towards me, still shooting tiny beams from his eyes. It really was suited for insects and our compound eyes. I pitied humans and their measly two. How would they stand a chance against this? It took more Mind than I would have liked, but redirecting his lasers and halting his advance took little more than some rapid calculations and a few percentage points. He slowed to a crawl, eventually coming to a full stop, far before he could reach me again. He was right on the edge of my Mind’s presence, so I decided that was a fine place to keep him. Just like Belphegora, he would get pressed to the ground and incapacitated, putting me one step closer to victory.

I didn’t want to keep redirecting his lasers, though. Which he was still shooting me with, by the way. So, I decided to push him into the dirt, making sure his eyes were covered by burying his entire head underground. With a few percentage points dedicated to holding him down, that was two of the Valkybees mostly dealt with.

A small grimace crept to my mouth. Belphegora knew the situation, and was struggling against my restraint with all her might. I couldn’t prevent her from using her Mind or her Abilities, so she was still fighting against me. Keeping her down took more strength than expected, but I knew it wasn’t the end. She was waiting for an opportunity to strike. Her Ability was still effective, and as long as it was, I couldn’t lower my guard surrounding my emotions and thoughts. As if that weren’t enough, Belial struggled as well, and he was even worse to keep down. The full weight of his Mind was pushing against me and was simultaneously trying to get his head to emerge from the dirt. And unlike Belphegora, his physical strength was nothing to scoff at either. All told, the amount of effort it was taking to keep them down and out was way more than should be reasonable.

A quick glance upwards revealed the third and final Valkybee. Behemoth was still high in the sky, coming down to the ground in jerks and halts. She was trying to break her fall without actually flying, poor girl. I felt bad using her buried fear of heights, but this was a serious fight, right? I could only go so easy on these ferocious little monsters. Her especially. Forget the fact that her Ability could probably do me in by itself; have you seen the size of her? Just one of her claws was nearly the size of my entire body, not unlike the vultures’ talons. I did not want to be on the receiving end of a hit from her.

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“Bedivere’s Handy Strategies, Number Thirteen: An Overwhelming Foe.”

Belphegora’s voice gave me pause. She was speaking directly towards Belial and Behemoth, but she wasn’t trying to hide her thoughts from me.

“If our opponent can physically overpower us, we should rely on trickery, Mind, and teamwork to tire them out and perform a swift finish, not allowing them to recover their strength. If their Mind is overpowering, rely on our Abilities. Redirect all energy towards physical power and combination tactics to become unpredictable and dangerous. If both, good luck, and hope there are more than three of us present. Mother, you’re a truly dangerous opponent. We can’t fool you and we can’t surprise you. It really is an unfair fight. But we’re still stronger.”

It all seemed to happen at once. The thoughts of the Valkybees rushing into my head, just as I saw them move with my eyes. They got me! Somehow, they all had the same idea, the same plan, all at the same time. I could only process what they were doing thanks to the B-box dedicated to this battle.

All the mental weight Belphegora was pushing against me suddenly vanished. That would have been fine, but my emotions flared up as my Mind became free of resistance, giving me pause. Above me, Behemoth suddenly accelerated downwards, pulled to the ground by Belphegora’s Mind. Her soft screams of terror mingled with a sense of determination as she aimed right at me. With all his might, Belial freed one eye from the dirt, wasting no time in sending his Mind-disrupting lasers my way. He was already close to my Mind’s area before. Now he was inside it, thanks to the disruption of my focus, courtesy of Belphegora’s Ability.

I had seconds, no, less, to react to Behemoth’s incoming attack. Her Ability was active. If she got me, the fight was over.

A thunderous boom echoed across the trees as Behemoth slammed into the air in front of me. Wispy cracks spider webbed through the air between us, her enormous claw inches from my face. I quickly breathed a sigh of relief as Behemoth's face displayed undisguised surprise. That wouldn’t stop her for long.

The sudden attack was a masterclass of teamwork, and I couldn’t help but admire the way they pulled it off. They had barely been in any real fight, and certainly had had little time to fight together against superior opponents, and yet they could be this effective.

But! No time to gush over my warriors. If I wasn’t careful, they would beat the crap out of me. Behemoth was going to break through my guard at any moment. In a moment of true brilliance, I remembered the Force Field Lock I’d once used to reinforce the ball of dirt we once called our home. It had been strong enough to repel the vultures and to keep the mercenaries trapped that one time, so it was a bit of a gamble on whether it could withstand an attack this strong. And whether it would work on the air as well as it did on a ball of dirt. It survived one hit, at least.

To make matters worse, Belial was still firing his lasers, and though my Mind was too powerful to be brought down just by that, it didn’t help my already scattered focus. I had about 50% of my Mind to work with, and the three Valkybees were already taking more out of me than I had originally expected. Taking more of Belial’s lasers wouldn’t bode well for an extended fight. As best as I could with Behemoth’s giant fists rearing back to destroy my little shell of air, I reigned in my Mind and defended against Belphegora’s Ability. Hers was easy enough to deal with when I was affected by it; emotions are easy to suppress.

A felt a gentle tap on my brain. Queen wanted another layer of force field, so I obliged, just in time for Behemoth to punch straight through the first barrier. I hadn’t even had time to move away, damn it! My body was frozen in place, essentially unable to move. Not that I couldn’t physically move, but my brain was now the only thing that could keep up with the Valkybees’ movements. It was like time slowed down, but only for my body.

I had to do something about Behemoth. Her Ability, [Burst], was as simple as its name. All it did was give her body resistance against Mind as long as it was active. But the simplest Abilities, I’d found, could become the most dangerous. Sure, one could say she was dangerous to me because I couldn’t throw her around like a rag doll while her Ability was active, and that might be true. But much worse than that was the other implication. If she hit me, she wouldn’t just be hitting my body. She would be directly attacking my Mind. It wasn’t like Belial who could interact with the aura of Mind that flows out. She’d be punching me straight in the brain, pretty much.

I had to avoid that. But she was too close. The combination had succeeded, even if she hadn’t landed that blow. Her Ability made it impossible for me to push her away in this state, at least without using so much Mind that the other two would be freed. Waiting it out wasn’t an option either; the drawback of her Ability was that it drained her stamina at an incredible rate, but she was close enough to me that she wouldn’t collapse in time.

“Hold on…”

Wait, yeah. Hold on. If the problem was that I wouldn’t be able to push her away with Mind because she was resistant to it, why not just use something other than Mind? The answer was currently cracking right before my very eyes. I’d never tried manipulating the force field before, mostly because I’d only ever gotten it to work as a Lock, but if I could recreate the hardening effect it had on the air directly with my Mind, I should be able to do with it as I pleased.

So, how was it working? It wasn’t making a force field out of Mind, per se. It was more like reinforcing the structure of the air to the point that it hardened. The same was true for the dirt ball - the ball wasn’t being surrounded by a barrier or anything, it was the barrier. It was sort of hard to envision how air could harden, though. Instinctively, I thought of the science behind it. How it might be possible to condense the molecules in the air, or some other nonsensical things like that. But it just didn’t feel right. Maybe I could find inspiration in the barrier put up by the Knights in Lemonholm? Not that I actually knew how they did that.

“Who cares how you do it? Just make it happen! She’s about to get through! Mind makes the world yours to mold, remember? Do it now!”

Ah, screw it! I imagined a curved wall of hardened air as best as I could, pouring as much Mind into it as I could spare. Another mighty blow shattered the second barrier, and Behemoth’s fist miraculously stopped as she hit my face. She’d come up against a third barrier.

She tilted her head. So did I. What I felt was a strange sensation, slightly different from how I usually used Mind. I typically used it as if it were a pair of extra hands, just something born of imagination. This was much the same, except it made my brain sore. But it worked. A curved section of air pressed up against my face, leaving no space between me and Behemoth. To her, it must have seemed like she just punched me square in the mandibles to no effect. Though the cracks from her blow might shatter the illusion.

My next moves were quick and decisive. Only with tremendous effort, and nearly all of my remaining Mind, was I able to manipulate the barrier. But as I did, it curved the other way, cupping against Behemoth’s giant body, and I pushed with all my might. She couldn’t fight the force field with her remaining strength, and her body smashed into the ground, getting dragged until a collection of tree stumps broke her momentum. With any luck, she would be out for the count, exhausted by her Ability.

This battle was all but won. And I dreaded having to continue the meeting afterwards. I think I’d prefer a nap after all this.