The half-burnt forest is still standing firm despite the intense battle earlier, as are the few soldiers who haven't flee despite dangerous risk of stray attacks. However, they cannot run, not without shame in their heart for letting such courageous man fends for himself against an adversary beyond his power.

The two sides engage in a stare off. Gust is holding firm of his blade. On his face is a smile brimming with confidence. Even when facing against an nigh-immortal Dragon, the nomadic swordsman does not show any cowardice or anxiety. He overcomes his fear of fighting a living Dragon, solely thanks to his devotion for his comrades, a fact which makes any attempts to intimidate the man useless, and Deborah is fully aware of that.

'So my eyes are useless.'

Thinks Deborah. Her red slit-dragon eyes are not there just for aesthetic purposes. When Deborah channels her dragon powers, her eyes awaken, emitting an intimidating aura to induce fear onto the enemy's psyche. This, too, is one of the dragons' innate natural ability, 「Death Glare」. This ability affects all living creatures to remind the dragons' birthright as the true rulers of this world. Deborah frequently abused this ability of her to scare off her opponents and avoided unnecessary fights. However, today isn't a successful day for her to play the boogeyman. After all, courage is gained through overcoming fear. Those with strong will can dominate their fear of death and resist Deborah's glare, reducing its effect.

The one before her, Gust of the Empyrean Mercenaries, is too determined to complete his mission to be scared of Deborah.

If she uses more of her latent dragon powers, maybe her eyes will be strong enough to work. But Deborah has very good reasons not to.

'Well, no matter. It's already too late.'

Deborah makes up her mind. She can no longer settle this fight peacefully. Her blood-soaked hands from killing the human soldiers remind her that she is no longer worthy to preach peace and non-violence. The time for sermons is over. There is one thing left for her to do: Granting her enemy a quick death.

The two resume their stare off. Deborah prepares her fists. She knows naught about hand to hand combat techniques. Deborah just obeys her instincts to guide her punches. On the contrary, Gust's current sword stance is flawless, it offers no holes to exploit, a fact that someone who lack fighting skills like Deborah cannot tell just by looking. He hides his shaking hands beneath a façade of cockiness, but nonetheless has complete trust in the skills he has honed up till this day.

Without any prior warning, Gust lunges toward Deborah, leaving a huge mess of snow behind his path. He's not running rapidly, he merely launches himself at the girl. In a span of a blink, Gust has already closed the space gap between him and his enemy. Deborah throws a punch, but she's too slow to actually hit the swordsman when he's at the top of his speed.

-I'll be taking this!

Gust attacks. He sweeps by her left leg and cuts it down. The sudden attack leaves Deborah no way to react for the loss of her left leg. She stumbles for a bit, losing her balance from the wound. On Gust's part, he too can't regain his stance for another combo, since he's still flying like a living bullet. As he flies out of Deborah's attack range, the man strikes his sword down the ground as an emergency brake, slowing him down from hitting the nearby trees.

-What's the matter, Dragon? Failed to stand your ground?

Gust taunts as he regains his stance. The pain of losing her leg isn't comparable to the annoyance she feels from her "respected" opponent. To think such a jovial guy is the one behind the solemn facade of General Origen…

Her leg is slowly regenerating. Deborah is a bit vulnerable during her regeneration period, not that Gust will let that chance slip by. Once again, he launches himself from the ground. Gust is like an arrow fired by a ballista, armed with a blade to cut through anything in his path. And that arrow once again finds its mark by piercing through Deborah's right arm, just when she finally restored her leg back.

-Tch.

Losing limbs is not something new to Deborah at this point, but she can still feel pain, and pain is never a pleasant feeling to have.

-How hurt was it on the "scale" of ten? Oh wait, should have make it five instead.

Gust is dominating the fight, too dominating, in fact. Deborah offers little to no resistance even when she's losing her limbs. Sure, she can endlessly grow more to replace what she lost, but in Gust's mind, that's not a reason to be completely passive like she currently is.

-Well, playtime's over.

Says Gust. He prepares his stance again. His current aim this time is Deborah's pretty white neck. He always find women's neck pretty, especially when their heads are still attached. However, this time, he certainly finds Deborah even more pretty without her head on her neck. It's not something he just suddenly thought of, though. Gust does not know the limits of Deborah's regenerative ability, while his stamina and soul energy do has their limit. He's aiming for a kill, but he does not know how to deliver a killing strike on a creature that can endlessly regenerate itself. The only option the nomadic swordsman can think of is decapitation and destruction of the brain.

Like before, he continues his routine of taking stance and launching himself like an arrow. Gust quickly fills the gap between the two of them. The combined strength of his own and the momentum from launching himself pour into his curved blade coated in soul energy. Even when Deborah guards herself with her now-regenerated arms, they will still be useless before Gust's blade.

CLANG!

Provide those arms are still made of flesh, that is.

Deborah is holding the top edge of Gust's curved blade. Her right arm right now is no longer that of a human's. Red scales cover most of her arm, ending with five black claws on her finger. Her current arm is an arm befitting her status as a living Dragon. Even with the full force of Gust's attack, Deborah is unfazed and firmly grabs Gust's blade like it is just an oversized butter knife. With his sword stuck in the hand of the enemy, Gust has no other means to attack.

-What!?

Gust is surprised. He doesn't think Deborah has something like this up her sleeve. He has to make a quick choice: Abandon his weapon, or try to struggle to regain it. He doesn't have time to choose though, as Deborah certainly won't let him. With her human left arm, Deborah throws several quick but deadly punches. One hit from those and he's dead meat. Gust himself is a nimble fighter, dodging punches on that level is not a problem, but he's still bitter as he's forced to slip his weapon away just for a chance to escape death.

-Damn Dragon!

Gust groans. He flips back from the punches and keeps his distance from Deborah.

-One thing nice about being immortal is you can take a trial-and-error approach to troublesome problems, like fighting to the death.

Says Deborah.

Deborah wasn't just passively taking hits earlier, she was learning and analyzing Gust's attack pattern. He always begin his attack with a stance that involves heavy use of his foot. By concentrating his soul energy to his foots as a propeller, when he releases the hold, the force generated helps launch himself to the air like an arrow fired by a ballista, gaining more momentum for his slashing attack. This helps him gain more strength to cut through Deborah's limbs like nothing, unlike the battle prior to this.

However, this technique has its own weakness, namely, Gust's own unique blade. It's a sword designed for slashing, and Gust always used slash attacks from the beginning of the fight. Unlike the straight design of the Demon Realm' swords, his curved blade isn't very effective at thrusting and stabbing, even more when facing someone with skin as tough as iron like Deborah. When combined with the aforementioned, it will create a devastating technique, but has a very clear weakness because of its own strength: the flying direction. He needs a clear path to land himself after the attack, which is why Gust only goes after limbs for most of the fights. He can't directly attack her torso without risking himself for a counter-attack.

With the information Deborah gathered, all that left is to devise a counter-strategy.

-You can take this toothpick back.

Deborah throws Gust's blade back to his own side, which gets nicely caught by its master.

-Are you sure? I won't hold myself back anymore, dragon girl.

Gust asks.

-Neither will I.

And stop holding back, she does. Deborah rushes at Gust, throwing barrages after barrages of punches. Her new red dragon arm adds more weight to the force of her right arm, slightly reducing her attacking speed. Deborah counters this by combining her attacks with her nimble human arm and some surprise kicks added to the mix. An experienced fighter like Gust has no problem dodging them all, but he also can't find any opening for an attack when his life's on the line. In the rare chances he gets an opening to attack, his sword slash is either not strong enough to deal serious damage or it gets blocked by Deborah's dragon scale arm.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

-Tch. What a pain in the ass.

Gust falls back, takes a stance, and uses the launch attack once again. But as Deborah cracked the secrets behind his attack, predicting where he will strike is no longer a problem.

CLANG!

Once again, Deborah catches a hold of Gust's blade as he aims to disable her mobility by taking her right leg. An opening reveals itself as Gust tries to regain his balance, which Deborah doesn't let it slip by. Using solely her human bicep, Deborah throws an arm swipe at Gust's torso, shooting him out to a nearby tree, crushing that tree from the sheer physical force alone, and only stop when he gets hit by another tree again.

-Buah!

Gust coughs out blood. He feels like he just got hit by a horde of bulls, and this is solely from getting hit by Deborah's bicep alone. He wouldn't even be in one piece if she struck him directly with her fist.

As Gust slowly regains his feet despite his wounds, a blade flies in front of him and stabs the ground. His own blade. Once again, Deborah shows to the men even a demon like her has a shred of honor, but does it actually matter in a fight to the death with an immortal being like her? Her little show of honor is nothing more than a mockery to insult her opponent for their hopelessness when facing a powerful Dragon like her. And Deborah knows it.

-Stand up. Fight. This is what you chose to do, wasn't it? Or do empty words the only things that come from your mouth.

She knows from the start he will never be able to defeat her. She knows from the start she will eventually kill him, one way or another. So easy to predict, so hard to fight against. That's why she never fight, why she doesn't want to fight. Fighting brings her nothing, not the satisfaction from being triumphant, only the despair from her enemies, and her own despair for letting such things happen.

Deborah hates fighting, but this world doesn't work that way. It works by fooling fools into believing there is glory in battle, there is honor in death, there is victory in sacrifice. Deborah has enough of it, of this world full of bloodshed, and people sugar coating it with glittering prizes like glory and honor.

-This is your last chance. Run, and live to fight another day. Or die…by my hands. Your life is precious, don't meaninglessly throw it away.

Says Deborah. She keeps her distance and waits for a response from Gust, who's still having trouble regaining his balance.

-So…I guess you mean: As long as it's meaningful, it's okay to throw my precious shitty life away, right? Hehe, got it, girl. Because this punk here will back down only in death!

Gust spits out the remaining blood in his mouth. He doesn't immediately pick his blade up for another go, but instead, Gust holds out his arms, making some sort of seal. Light dusts start to gather around him. He's concentrating his remaining soul energy to use a spell. His last resort. His trump card.

「Hɘɘb my dɘɔʞoninǫ O ɒnǫɘlƨ oʇ winb

Ꭾɿɒnƚ mɘ winǫƨ ɒnb lɘƚ mɘ bɒnɔɘ ƚʜɘ bɒnɔɘ oʇ ɒnǫɘlƨ」

Deborah knows what that spell is from hearing the chants alone. After all, she used it once, right in this forest, solely to make a foolish man understand his place in the world.

The 「Speed Enhancement」 spell. A spell that boosts the user's speed to the utmost limit, in exchange for the agony of exceeding the limit of humans. To think a nomadic swordsman like him has to use this sort of spell, that means he is truly out of other options.

'Is this karma?'

Gust picks up his sword and goes back to his sword stance. He seems to have recovered a bit, but still wounded nonetheless. If he goes all out, even if he win, he will still die. Gust has accepted his death the moment he picks up his blade again. But will that stop him? It's easier to live for another day, but as someone whose comrades depend on him, Gust choose to die the hard way, especially when there is a slim chance of victory.

History may forget the name of simple soldiers like him, but even so, he will surely left his mark on those who bear witness to his deeds, be it his comrades, be it his enemy. This is his final dance, a man's most beautiful moment of his existence.

-Watch this, Dragon. The dance of angels.

Gust disappears, leaving behind a wave of snow from his track, and a slash on Deborah's neck. Even when she discovered pretty much everything about his technique, she can't see Gust's attack coming. He's too fast, and he's not stopping.

From behind, from the front. From above, from below. From the right, from the left. Like a hurricane, Gust slowly tears Deborah apart. There's not a place his blade can't cut. Even when she knows he's coming, her own speed is too slow to neither block nor counter the attacks. Eventually, she loses track of Gust's neverending attack barrages, and resorts to be defensive. But that doesn't stop him, nothing can.

Every few seconds, Deborah finds herself having a new wound on her body. The swordsman is rapidly aiming at her neck. Slowly and surely, step by step, her wound gets bigger and bigger, eventually become centimeters apart.

Splash!

Deborah quickly finds herself without a head.

Gust's attacks worked. Rapidly slashing Deborah's neck finally lets him accomplish what thought to be impossible. Her head gets sent flying, letting her headless body behind.

However, before Gust can gloat about his final victory, Deborah's now headless body suddenly makes a move. It throws an arm swipe, right in the direction of Gust as he flies by her position. The force created from the dragon arm breaks through Gust's blade and his own body, separating his torso into two halves. Gust's upper body falls to the ground full of snow, and his broken sword lands nearby, in the same sorry state as its master.

As Deborah's head starts to fall, her headless body throws its human arm out to catch it by grabbing her crimson long hair. Like a detachable doll, Deborah "re-equip" her head back to her neck. A small flame mends the separated part, and soon, Deborah returns to be herself once again. The wounds on her body also heal itself, revealing her silky white skin under her now tattered clothes. Nobody is aroused. The dragon girl is too bizarre for them to think about her that way. In the spectators' eyes, she's not human, she's not even a monster.

If there is one word that can be used to accurately describe Deborah, the most fitting word would be "abomination".

-H…ow…?

Asks Gust. He keeps bleeding nonstop. The nomadic swordsman is already far beyond saving.

-I won because I try to keep my head in a fight.

That's not a good answer. That's not even an accurate answer. But somehow, Deborah feels such an answer will comfort this man in his final moments by leaning on his true personality beneath the helmet.

Surely, Deborah has no way to keep track with Gust's amazing speed. But as she once used that spell upon her familiar, she knows both the advantage and drawbacks from abusing that spell. Speed Enhancement increases the user's speed, but it does not increase the speed of their perception. She doesn't think Gust can invent something to solve that drawback, unlike her familiar. Which results in several "pause" between each attacks for Gust to think of his next move. It was quick and short, but it was there, enough for Deborah to calculate the next attack. Gust's slowly declining soul energy didn't help. His strength wasn't as strong as it was, it took him several attacks just to wound her. If she didn't make a counter attack, he would eventually die from energy exhaustion anyway. No matter what happened, death is already at the doorknob, waiting for Gust to come by his side.

-Heheh…never thought…you're the funny type...

Gust mutters. He puts a smile on his face, even when facing death. The ivory haired man already knew what will happen when he picked up his sword once again. He made his choice. There isn't any regret, because this is what he willfully chose.

When the dance ends, the dancer fades into the background. The music stops, but there is no applause, only the silence as the curtains fall down the stage.

-Tell me…your name…

Says the dying man. Deborah never once introduces her name directly to the swordsman, even when he already introduced his.

-Deborah Draconis.

Gust closes his eyes and smiles.

-To die…by the hands of a…beautiful girl like Deborah…doesn't seem so bad…

Gust doesn't wake up, never again. He takes his last breath, and dies with a smile knowing he did his very best. The fake general dies, along with the hope of the remaining soldiers in the area.

-So, who's next? Who's in the mood to die today!?

Deborah turns to the soldiers. No one answer. Silently, they fall back, without even bother to take Gust's corpse back, at least not now. They have their reasons, since it's not like Gust is the only one who died today, and they are a special unit that comes to this place by climbing a deep valley, they cannot easily escape the place with their comrades' corpses by their side. Deborah may be "merciful", but the demon soldiers defending the place are not.

Eventually, silence returns to the North-East area. Deborah has prevail over her adversaries, but she did not win.

Today, nobody won.