The voice went on, and on, and on.

And on.

In the blink of an eye the barbarian stood stunned, five of the moving shields had materialized again, one after another as they bypassed the window of time he had been accustomed to.

And it was a blink he could ill afford, for the hooks, rattling at the head of their silver chains, were darting towards him.

By the split of second he managed to dodge the strike. It being too close for comfort, his body felt the heat and sheer intensity as they whistled through the air to strike the ground a second before he had stood.

A simple word like explosion no longer sufficed to describe the hook’s impact. The ground did not explode so much as evaporated following the deafening clamor. No fragments of stone left to count, not a piece of grass to pervade the air with a scorching smell. It was a pocketed nuclear reaction, leaving not so much as ash behind in the area of impact.

Upon seeing that aftermath, or the lack thereof, the barbarian, for all his maddened rage and recklessness, knew not even his absurd regenerative capability could withstand such a power head-on.

When they came again, and the wall of shields surged forward to seal his fate, the barbarian put all the power and agility his legs could muster to make a great leap away, and still was flung by the blast wave.

Even then the red light kept on flashing, without failing and only intensifying at a rapid rate.

Without a thought for offense left in him, the barbarian lapsed fully into defensive mode, straining his body just to keep himself alive as the hooks came and came again at him with unwavering ferocity. Leaping and ducking to evade the shields were all he might do now.

In a battle where the difference in strength was multiplying by the second.

Meanwhile, across the field, a remarkable change had come over his opponent.

It was something prior to now the barbarian was more than familiar with.

Anger.

Anger comes in many shapes and forms, born from many sources and causes.

Indignation. Outrage. Hurt. Hate. Even the tiniest annoyance.

But the most primal, the purest form of anger, can only be found in the hurt and harmed.

The anger of the wounded. The thirst for brutal vengeance.

An eye for an eye.

A notion as old as time.

It is a fact of life that anger is a privilege, exercised only by those with the power to afford it. While the prey, threatened by talons or fangs it could not contend with, must dampen its emotions to survive, their chief tool for survival often being the direct antithesis of which: fear, caution, meekness.

And yet when the weak grow strong, by chance or amassed numbers, even they may fight back against their oppressor.

And thence anger manifests.

Throughout history, even mighty lords were overthrown by meek peasants. For the strong, no matter how strong they are, all eventually end up under the mobbing claws of their subjects. Only upon the foundation of deep-seated anger, the wrath silently seethes even in the days of peace and oppression, that revolutions are made possible.

Without fury, a healthy dose of indignation, there could only be obedience. Only submission. Only acceptance of the established truth.

You can even say the only thing keeping the world changing instead of standing still throughout the ages is anger.

No matter how low someone's self-esteem, how little is their confidence, even they could turn a different face when they gain the strength to fight back.

So even that girl, who had until then constantly regarded herself as a stepping stone, wailing at every turn of the battle, could make that face.

A face that astonished even Agravain when he saw it: crumbled with hatred, cruelty, a sadistic need to inflict as much pain as she could muster. To match the hurt she had been the victim of and some.

Ultimately, it wasn’t Agravain’s fault. They both had agreed to battle knowing full well there would be hurt.

They weren’t playing pretend.

But all the more.

All the more, because this was a battle, a battle in which she had finally, at long last, gained the upper hand, that she could go all out with all of her pent-up frustration, without being hampered by morality, conscience or reason.

You get angry when you are hurt.

So you want to hit the person who hurt you.

Simple as that.

“Haha, so you’re capable of making such a face too!” was Agravain’s remark to her changed state. All the while he was running away.

She was none too pleased, of course, feeling mocked. With such intensity she rained destruction on his path.

There was a limit to how far and the directions the barbarian could run. Towards the non-combatants was out of the question, and he had to mind Rania too. If Agravain could not survive a single strike, the maid stood no chance.

He had to keep running. Leaping.

A small blessing--the tiniest of blessings, was Maria’s growing inaccuracy.

It was less a technical issue and more a mental issue.

She was angry, elated with violence, and perfectly assured of victory.

If she was less so, she would have taken more care to end the fight efficiently.

There was no way for her to lose now. The fight, once the snowballing effect had rolled in, was pretty much done with, just as Hanael had declared.

“Stop running!” his opponent cried harshly. Gone was any trace of the timid and demure look.

She was out for blood.

And she had uttered an absurd and unreasonable command that could only come from a smug person on the winning side.

Stolen novel; please report.

Well, it was the exact same thing the barbarian had done.

With every red flashing, her power grew, and the barbarian’s chances diminished.

“Stop running!” she repeated, inanely.

“You want to get me?” the barbarian growled, “then put more heart into it!”

Another strike arrived deadly close, the hook stabbing the earth as he leaped away. The blast wave thrust him into rolling circles on the ground. The world wheeled, warped. But again the barbarian leaped to his feet, his hand still clutching the heavy club. That thing hindered his movements, and the logical thing to do perhaps was to cast it off.

But doing so would be giving up any attempt to fight back. He might as well yield then.

But not yet.

Not yet.

He hated losing more than anything.

In that aspect, he was quite similar to his angel.

“Jophiel!” he cried, “Say something! What should I do?!”

Perhaps it was too much to expect that angel to come up with something now. After all she was the one who spent the whole night contriving an explanation that this fight was for him to lose.

To begin with, he had no secret weapon to turn this fight around. His Rage bar hadn’t been depleted, but even the boosts it granted him could not avail a single direct hit. Before this, he hadn’t been able to destroy the shields quickly enough to get to the girl, so what chances had he now that the white crystal had been activated?

Its effects were clear now: with its activation, the white crystal had greatly reduced the cooldowns of the other crystals’ effect. Healing, generating shields, and boosting Maria’s attacks, all of which were happening rapidly.

His only chance was to get to the crystals and destroy them, but that was nigh impossible, now that Hanael’s strategy had come fully online, with Maria using the shields and the chains to control the battlefield. Destroying the shields fast enough while keeping himself alive was out of the question.

The situation really had snowballed out of control.

“Jophiel!” he roared again.

“I’m thinking!” Her voice was shrill with panic.

Upon this lackluster response, the barbarian threw a glance in the direction of Soraya and the angel.

She was on all fours on the ground, the codex lying open before her, but wasn’t flipping.

She was screaming intelligibly.

“What the hell!” cried the barbarian, “Pull yourself together!”

But to be fair, even he knew it was easier said than done.

Not that he was expecting some last-minute brilliant strategy.

But this was a desperate enough situation that only such a thing could salvage it, or a miracle.

Even then his feet never ceased moving, a row of shields were dropped blocking his path. Menacingly they stood, even as the crackling twin bolts were homing in. Once again he made a narrow escape, leaping sideways, using the edge of the shield wall to block most of the impact.

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that this was the first remotely difficult fight he had got into. In the barbarian’s previous, he had overwhelmed each and every foe, only coming close against the desert ogre because of a self-inflicted handicap.

This one was different, overwhelming.

That girl, Maria, might be being inaccurate with her attacks due to her anger. But it was also thanks to this anger that she was coming on all the fiercer, meting out punishment after punishment. Almost as though she never paused for breaths.

This ruin that had seemed so idyllic and unremarkable before was now horrendously scarred with enormous craters, like a battlefield bombarded by artillery strikes.

It was no time to act dumbfounded.

“But what else is she supposed to do, eh?” Hanael broke in with a jeer, “Well, she may accept defeat, that is! Or does as she’s doing now: wallowing in despair,” A grating and unending guffaw followed. She was really getting into good spirits. “And here I was wondering what got her so confident. I bet she told you something like there’s a limit to how much a person can grow in a couple of days, eh?” She sighed. “Well, that one is always like that, so lacking in tactical awareness. Of course you can only teach someone so many tricks in a day. But you can teach different tricks to many, a simple one to each, and so coordinate them towards an effective battle plan, thus combining their strength. It is so elementary only someone who keeps funneling everything into her main character could overlook.”

“Oh shut up!” Jophiel was saying something coherent at last, though it was something quite useless. “I’m trying to think!” she added, amazingly enough.

Wasn’t that her entire job?

What else was there for her to do?

She was mumbling under her breath, but the barbarian could hear every word clearly in his head.

“Red: two seconds, blue: one second, green: three seconds, break in three, leaving two...timed to half one! Red, red, red, though, red, why two seconds! How much does white reduce? The green, no the gold, what does the gold... argh...no the biggest issue here is the white, I think one hundred and fifty percent is the boosted rate if so... if we can break white then go red then blue then green, that leaves five second for a cycle...but what about gold, what does it do?...AAAARGH!”

Suddenly, with a cry of exceeding frustration, the angel banged her head on the ground--the hard marble under her. Like someone kowtowing and apologizing frenziedly on all four, she slammed her head repeatedly. Except the sounds accompanying the act was the wild shrieking of a beast.

On and on her forehead struck the stone.

And when she got up, there was blood trickling down, painting half of her face red.

Now that was new. He didn’t know angels could bleed.

Or that their blood was red.

Her eyes were wide. A stupid sound escaped her mouth, “Ah!”

“What are you doing?!” asked the amazed barbarian.

Could angels actually go mad as humans do too?

Or could it be...

A special move to rattle her brain and come up with a solution for this desperate situation?

A desperate measure for a desperate time.

Surely it must be worth it.

“Did you come up with something?” he called, dashing still across the ground, “If so, be quick! I can’t afford much time here!”

“Not really,” she said, eyes blank, blood dripping, “my head hurts so much I can’t think of anything!”

“Then what in seven hells did you do that for?!”

Forget being inept, her tactic until now had been nothing but harmful. If he had focused on destroying the crystals first instead of the girl in the first place, then it wouldn’t have turned out this bad.

And now she had gone and inflicted herself with further brain damage.

Fine then.

No use crying over it.

It is what it is.

Time to face reality.

His opponent was only getting stronger the longer this fight dragged on.

The crystals were not going to destroy themselves, but he had no way to get to them either.

The angel, who was supposed to be the brain of the operation, had proved beyond doubt her uselessness.

Both the brain and the muscle had failed.

And there was no secret technique in his arsenal to turn the situation around.

Nor was he going to be granted a convenient skill or something right at that moment to fight back. Nothing that convenient was going to happen, even if he was foolish enough to hope for it.

There was then only one thing left to do.

And that is to face defeat like a man.

What the hell was he doing, running like that?

If he was going to lose anyway, if there was really no way to come out of this alive, then why not face death with his head held high?

So he wheeled around. Facing the coming shields and the coming hooks and the coming death.

The face of his opponent as soon as the barbarian came to a halt was not one of mercy. It was of delight. Without hesitation, she went in for the kill.

He couldn’t ask for a better final foe.

“Stop it.”

Said someone. Just then. A strange voice.

The barbarian wheeled his head around.

Could a new ally have arrived to save the day?

But no such things either.

The voice might have sounded strange at first, or rather the tone was, but it was someone he knew.

Someone he knew too well.

“Aren’t you getting a bit ahead of yourself?” said Soraya in a cold and detached tone.

The tone his sister used to employ when she wasn’t amused in the slightest.

“I mean, this is hardly a desperate situation as you make it out to be, isn’t it? So stop fretting already.”

“Oh come on,” Agravain growled, “it’s not as easy as it looks--“

“Oh shut up.”

He would, of course, not go as far as saying it was her true voice. No, she only used it so often. But it was one that most reflected her mental capacity.