Xania grabs the talking book who she refuses to call by its name as it suddenly starts absorbing mana from her at a slow speed. Slow to Xania at least.
“I don't care if you're a demon lord! Give me your mana! Give me your body!”
“You want my mana, huh? Be careful what you wish for.”
Xania starts forcefully pushing mana into the book.
“Are you giving up and letting yourself die painfully? Pathetic excuse of a demon lord!”
Xania ignores its mocking remarks, forcing more mana in as its mocking remarks start to die down.
“Wait…wait, wait, wait! How can you keep injecting so much mana?!”
“Stop this at once you stupid demon!”
“I told you, be careful what you wish for.”
“If you do this, this whole area will blow up from the mana! You are friends with the elves, are you not?! If so, stop this at once!”
“You think I care? It'll be a shame if the elves died, but at most only some will die, not the important ones. If they can make a shield around the world tree, they can make one to contain you.”
“Stop this at once or this place will really be flattened!”
“Too late, there are no second chances in life.”
“I'm confident there are! Stop this at once!”
Xania stops forcing mana into it while glaring at it and tightening her hold on it.
“5 seconds.”
“What?”
“5 seconds to tell me how you can benefit me, or a reason not to blow you up.”
“How dare you, a demon, dare to threate–”
Xania interiors it by slowly starting to push mana in, making it stop speaking.
“Hurry up, 2 seconds left, and that's being generous.”
Xania grips it tightly, slowly using even more mana, making the book panic slightly.
“Fine, fine, I can take over a person's body.”
“That's it?”
“I can transfer my strength to the vessel I'm in.”
“Anything else?”
“I can only tempt people to grab me while I take over their body! If that isn't enough then too bad.”
“You better think of more reasons, and quickly.”
“I can transfer knowledge from my old vessels to you!”
“What kind of knowledge?”
“Treasures, spells and that sort of stuff.”
“Don't need that.”
“Skills then, fighting skills.”
“Fine, now tell me what you meant earlier.”
“What?”
“When you say ‘blessed by a god’.”
“That's it? It simply means a god is helping you.”
“I need you to be more specific, now.”
“I have no clue what it means, not even the requirements, only the chosen would be blessed with greater mana capacity, regeneration, stamina, stamina recovery, strength, memory and everything, as long as it doesn't go against their gods.”
“Then you also said I'm the second, whose the first?”
“Isn't it obvious? It's your first demon lord who started a new era.
“Oh, makes sense.”
Xania feels a surge of knowledge enter her mind, learning hundreds of fighting methods at once, all of no use to her except for one.
“I suppose I can keep you alive… for now.”
Xania teleports to Anise, passing her the book and teleporting away, annoying Anise before teleporting to Devian.
“Miss Xania? I thought you were busy?
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“ ‘Were’ now come train with me.”
“Why so suddenly?”
“Long story short… actually it's a short story.”
“I found a talking book, it gave me knowledge since I threatened it.”
“So I wanna test it out.”
“Sure?”
Xania teleports them both to the training grounds, making a makeshift trash wooden scythe as Davien takes out his sword.
“Miss Xania, since you're so much more physically stronger, I'll use my normal sword.”
“Sure, let's start?”
“I'm ready.”
“Let's go”
Xania starts attacking, gaining a momentarily advantage due to how much more different her fighting style became in just a couple weeks at most due to not having trained with Davien.
As the fight continues, Davien starts getting more used to Xania's new style, not being pushed back anymore and even slowly pushing her back until… she loses, like always, falling onto the floor.
“Seriously, I don't get it, I get that skills are important but I feel like you're still pretty strong.”
“Miss Xania, when I was alive, I was a pretty successful swords mana you know?” Davien says with his arms on his side with a promise tone like a child's.
“...”
“Miss Xania, it seems like you suddenly gained a lot of knowledge at once which you are very used to but knowing it and using it are different, if you keep practicing that style of fighting, it'll probably grow to be stronger then your current method.”
“Sure, if I really need to kill someone, I can just brute strength it anyways.*
“Miss Xania, you're one of the few people who can say such a thing.”
“That's just how amazing I am.” Xania acts like how Davien did earlier with a proud tone just like his, similar to a child's.
Suddenly, Anise teleports back, looking panicked, holding the book in her arms.
“My lord!”
“Yes?”
“First, this book is a problem, but I'll deal with it later.”
“My lord, the elves, the humans are about to attack!”
“Elves? Miss Xania?”
“Davien, Anise is going to fill you in, I'll go deal with the problem.”
“My lord… why me?”
“Cus I'm lazy.”
“...”
“So you'll do it, ok?”
Xania teleports away without waiting for an answer.
“She's not gonna be happy.”
Xania teleports to the wall where the queen is overlooking her own army with the human army at the opposite side being many times bigger and geared with stronger siege equipment too.
“Hey, elf queen.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“What's going on? Didn't you guys have an agreement?”
“They used the excuse of us working with demons to wage a war.”
“Don't they need you guys?”
“No, they've been planning to take this from us for quite a while.”
“Didn't you guys need a ritual to make a hero?”
“Apparently after seeing it so many times, they memorised the ritual.”
“You guys need better security”
“Yes… I'm very aware.”
“So… just kill the humans.. right?”
“Yes.”
“Give me a minute, I'll take my time to enjoy this.”
“Enjoy?”
“Yea? It's nice seeing people I hate die all at once.”
“... To each their own.”
““Get your troops off the battlefield.”
“Can't.”
“Why?”
“I want to let them see.”
“See me commit a massacre?”
“Yea, this way they'll know your strong and are protecting us.”
“Won't this backfire?”
“Not if you use slight seduction magic along with our magic to help manipulate them.”
“You're the queen, should you really be telling me to trick your citizens?”
“Yea but… can we deal with that first?”
The queen points to the barrage of arrows heading for the walls along with boulders from catapults and bolts from ballistas.
“Cant this wall hold?”
“Yea but it's already taken damage from the monsters before, and you agreed to help.”
“I guess I did.”
Xania materialises a massive shield, a technique she learned despite it not being in the library by studying the shield around the world tree.
“Done, what now?”
“You already know, so just do it.”
“Nope, I need to hear your permission so I don't get anything wrong by accident.”
“How would you get anything wrong?”
“I often take longer to pick up on things.”
“Fine… go kill all the humans, destroy their weapons and make sure none survive.”
“Easy enough.”
Xania teleports in between the elves and the human army, pulling out her scythe and walking towards the humans slowly.
At the human side of the army.
“I can't believe I have to attack the elves, I'm not even the one with a grudge on them.” Lucinder thinks to herself before noticing a random woman with demonic features approaching alone.
“Whose that?”
Lucinder walks over to the other Kisar who is contemplating the situation.
“Do you think they sent someone here to surrender?” Kisar asks, clearly not thinking much of a single random woman even if they have clear demonic features.
“Not possible, they have a pride bigger than Cranzer’s”
“I have a bad feeling about her.” Lucinder warns, making him look at her like she's crazy.
“Even if the demon lord was here, she can't fight us alone and that woman clearly isn't her.”
“Let's just go observe first.”
As they go to the front of their armies, watching the lone woman walk towards them, a pink-haired demon suddenly appears, bowing slightly at the woman.
As they squint their eyes, they find the woman to be the demon they thought was the demon lord.
“Hey, what's going on?” Kisar asks, with the other equally or more confused.
“Why is the demon lord bowing to that woman?”
“How am I supposed to know?* Lucinder says back quickly, annoyed at how the situation is progressing.
As they keep watching the woman slashes at them despite being still decently far away.
”What is she doing? Lucinder, you are the ruler of the holy kingdom, demons are your specialty.”
“I have no clue… wait… shield yourself!”
A second later, they shield themselves with something breaking their shields instantly as they look back, coughing blood from the leftover attack. Their armies all reduced from a person each to just their foot left, still geared in armor except for the ones directly behind them. The dark mana causes the air to turn lethally poisonous within seconds, causing everybody to start struggling to even stand with most coughing out blood.
“Crap, run!” Lucinder pulls out a weird stone looking similar to a mana stone.
“Who is she?!”
“That's not important right now!”
“They both break the stone, sending them and their armies to the meeting location of the 3 rulers as refuge where Cranzer is sitting in shock, originally expecting food results.
As he approaches, Lucinder uses the rest of her strength to purify their bodies of the dark mana affected air before fainting due to a lack of mana left.
Back at the elf kingdom.
Xania is standing over the remains, confused at how they managed to escape so quickly, holding Desaret in her hands as Anise gave up with the annoyingly noisy book.
“Hey, you're an old ancient kinda smart book, what happened?”
“They stored a teleportation spell inside of the mana stone.”
“You can do that?”
“It's common sense, the fact you didn't know proves your lack of it.”
Xania sighs, not wanting to go back with failed results before teleporting back to the queen reluctantly.
“So you see…”
“Yea? They escaped, I know.”
“You… don't seem disappointed?”
“Even if you did kill them, they have methods to save themselves so only their armies were a big problem.”
“Then the armies can't save themselves?”
“It's expensive to save someone from death and takes preparation beforehand.”
“Ah… will it–”
“No, people with dark mana can't due to it requiring holy magic.”
“Ah…"