50 of the knights stay where they were and fire a swarm of arrows that rain down to where Ray and Ken are.
“Sylphie.”, Lilly says calmly.
Sylphie lets out and little roar and gives a graceful yet powerful flutter of her wings towards the arrows, an unbelievably giant gust of wing flies towards the arrows blowing them far away. The gust of wind is so powerful in fact that it stops the horses in their tracks.
“I-is that a dragon?”, The head of the female knights says in horror.
“Nice Lilly and sylphie.”, Ray says thumbs up.
“So how are we dividing this battle?”, Ken asks Ray as the knights calm their horses.
“Rock, paper, scissors, winner gets the boss lady”, Ray says smiling.
“Bet, I’ve been practicing.”, Ken says.
They chant rock, paper, scissors and throw. Ray threw scissors, Ken threw paper.
“UGH. I never win.”, Ken says disheartened.
Ray smiles, “Let's see how powerful you are lady knight.”.
Ray charges towards the lady knight, injecting his flame aura into his mana blade turning it orange. Ray jumps up, avoiding hitting the horse and slashes at the female knight.
“Defensive stance.”, The female knight states. As Rays blade collides with the aura around the blade it repels Ray, his blade bouncing off, resorting in Ray having to backflip and land on the ground.
Lilly lines up a shot on one of the archers.
“Time to test this new bow.”.
As she infuses her mana into the arrow, its properties change and spark yellow, the arrow had become a bolt of lightning. She released the arrow, it was incredible. It flew with speed superior to anything she had ever produced before, with speed like this, she may even be able to land a shot on Ray. The arrow flew through the air, striking one of the knights in the chest. Lilly had used the piercing shot, which should have pierced through the armour, however with the effects of lightning, on impact the metal armour blew open and around the area the arrow had imbedded itself was severely burnt, the man dropped his bow, his eyes rolled back and slipped from his horse. The rest of the archers looked up in horror.
The female knight looks at her hands, her hand shaking from the sheer force Ray had inflicted. She steps down from her horse and faces Ray, behind them, Ken was currently decimating her forces who were trying to help her, whilst Lilly was one by one picking off the archers who had begun to scatter.
“W-who are you guys...?”, The female knight stuttered.
“Can I ask you a question?”, Ray asked, completely ignoring the female knight.
“What.”, she said sharply.
“Did you know that your king is a demon?”, Ray asked straight forwardly, he was curious on what would happen if they were asked such a straightforward question, If Clair was able to resist, then surely there were more people out there with the capability to resist the demon's manipulation.
The female knights' eyes widened as if the question had unlocked some kind of door in her head. She fell to the floor and let out a soul shivering scream.
“I-I-I... KING... NOT HUMAN, KING NOT HUMAN, KING NOT HUMAN, KING NOT HUMAN... H-HELP P-PLEA-”. Suddenly a mist of purple and red leaked out of her ears, mouth, nose, and eyes, and surrounded her head. She tried to scream, but no sound came from her mouth.
Ray was completely caught off guard, he didn’t know what that weird mist was, but it seemed to be the remanence of the hypnosis spell.
“A-are you okay?”, Ray asked the female knight, edging towards her slowly.
However, the mist faded, and her eyes rolled back to normal, she looked dazed and held her head in pain.
“W-what did you say demi?”, She asked confused.
Ray was taken aback, what the hell had just happened to her. He needed to speak to Claire, he was sure Claire must have tried to talk to humans about this during her 5 years however she had never mentioned this. What had happened, Ray thought about it and then and idea clicked in his head.
“Perhaps the stronger your mental fortitude is, the more resistant you are to the demon's hypnosis. That hypothesis may be correct as Claire stated that the heroes herd voices in their heads but easily shook them off.”, Ray thought. He wasn’t sure, but this was something he needed to test and show the others. He was going to bring this knight in, if he could bring in someone with a lesser mental fortitude to test the theory as well that would help.
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“Hey, make sure you leave one of them uninjured!”, Ray shouts to the others.
He faces the female knight.
“You’re under arrest.”, Ray says, smiling.
Ray deactivated his flame sword, that weapon was not the right one for this current situation.
“What are you doing? Are you taking me lightly because I’m a woman?”, she says angrily.
“No, you’ve just piqued my interest and so I can’t afford you dying.”, Ray says, engulfing his body in flame aura.
“What... flames?”, She says amazed.
Ray creates a ball of flame weak enough he knows she can defend against and shoots a ball of flame at her. However, she once again uses defensive stance to block it. But that was part of Rays plan, 5 balls of flame appear above her head.
“WHAT THE F-”, she shouts as Ray snaps his fingers.
The balls of blame descend at her feet calling small explosions, bring dust up all around her, blocking her vision. She swipes at the dust, clearing her view however, Ray had already made her move.
“That move was called Land mines. And this one's called Repel.”, he places his hands on her back sending a purposefully small explosion through his hand, his hands fling backwards launching her forwards out of the smoke tumbling across the ground, eyes rolled backwards. However, she wasn’t going to be done by something weak like that, she regains her composure, landing on her feet, but Ray wasn’t finished, he flew towards her, using explosive flames to boost his speed. He rockets towards her and deactivates his flame aura, he had to be careful not to hit her too hard, he reaches the knight before she can fully recollect herself and slams his fist in her stomach, Ray had pulled back at the last second to reduce some of the impact however, the force was still incredible.
On impact, the punch had dented the thick metal plating of her armour before shattering it all, exposing a woman with long ginger curly hair and her dark brown base layer, The female knights' eyes rolled backwards, and she coughed up spit before collapsing into Rays arms. She went down easier than he expected, but he had an idea on why that was, whatever had happened to her after being asked that question, had taken it out of her.
Ray hoists the Knight onto his shoulders and carries her back towards Lilly and Lee as he did, he noticed Ken doing the same, dragging a frantically struggling knight who was screaming obscenities in human tongue.
“What's going on.”, Lilly asked confused, “I heard a loud scream earlier, what was that all about?”.
“I’ll tell you after, but first I need to test something.”, Ray said seriously.
“Let go of me you stupid monster shit!”, the knight says. Ken throws the man to the floor before Ray who crouches down to him.
“What do you want you damn DEMI BASTARD, unhand me and captain Tia.”, He says, spitting at the floor at where Ray stands.
Ken raises his axe, but Ray holds out his hand.
“So Tias her name?”, Ray says calmly in human tongue. The knight freezes, he had clearly been talking all that crap assuming he wasn’t being understood.
“Answer me this. Did you know that your king is a demon?”, Ray asked the man.
The man's eyes twitched slightly.
“Are you fucking mental you damn animal DEMI TRASH; the king isn’t a demon.”.
Ray sighed, this just proved his theory even more, though it still wasn’t 100%. The man kept on chattering, so Ray punched him hard in the face to shut him up, his nose exploded with blood and his eyes rolled back.
“Ray, what was that about?”. Lilly asked, the other nodding in agreement. And so, Ray explained to them what had happened between him and the female knight.
After hearing that the group sat back in thought.
“If that's true... the maybe we could turn some of the humans back onto our side.”, Lilly said.
“My, thoughts exactly, it also shows that the demon's power isn’t all mighty, there's a way to fight it off. If we could find a sure-fire way to rid it from all humans that would be ideal, though that's just wishful thinking. I think we should take this human with us. We can show what happened to the others and maybe they could find a way to lift the hypnosis.”.
With that, Lilly and Ray finally depart, bidding Ken and Lee another farewell and see you soon and begin their somewhat long journey back to the southern beast tribe. The journey went off without any issues, although the woman awoke and was confused, after Ray informed her that they weren’t going to kill her and if they were they would have already did it, she complies and came along, though she didn’t utter a single word when talked to, which was not so unrealistic, as a knight she was definitely trained to not answer any questions. However, she bared the 2 no hostility, Ray didn’t know whether this was because she knew she would lose in a battle or because the demon's hypnosis didn’t affect her as strongly as some other humans. Only time would tell.