A third man has successfully pulled out his sword, a claymore, by now, and is in the middle of trying to cut downwards into Shaula's shoulder. If she doesn’t move, she will face a bisection.
However, she simply bats away his heavy claymore with the back of her left hand, throwing him off balance. He wasn't expecting such strength and finesse from a woman half his weight. He tries to regain his footing but she pokes his eyes with her index and middle finger.
The moment her fingers touch the man’s eyeballs past his helmet, a tremendous heat is forced into his head. Blood falls down his eyes as he falls backwards while bubbling and evaporating away, leaving behind only a nearly black sludge. His brain turns to glass.
Two left. One of them is standing in front of another. The guy being defended is probably the leader, or at least a figure of some importance.
Although, I'd feel a little bad if the guy was protecting his little brother or something. Eh, whatever, still just a cop.
She had heard someone who spoke like a leader give a speech from afar, but she wasn’t able to match his voice to his face when she walked into this alleyway. He was talking about some interesting things.
The Twin Moons and their secret relationship to the guards was no small thing, though she didn’t know who the Twin Moons were anyways. She could get some context clues later but it wasn’t important currently. Right now, she simply needed to get rid of the leader of this group of city guards and make it look like her, a “noble”, had wiped them all out.
In the worst case, she simply cuts off the head of this operation to capture Barden and the guards go ahead with their plan to capture Barden anyways. At a minimum, with their commander(s) gone, they would not be able to deal with the situation with clear heads. If this were to be, she would need to rush back to Barden while wearing her noble face.
If she told them that she had just killed their commander while also showing up shining like the sun, she wouldn’t have to say anything else. Just like earlier when she had destroyed the statue, they would simply flee with their tails between their legs, so to speak.
They’re just cowards after all.
There is also a best case, but she doesn’t know how feasible it would actually be.
She had sincerely not wanted to kill people. She had not killed anyone on Omicron because she didn’t want people to come after her or Ajax. Killing people, even those who deserved it, could carry unwanted effects. In the back of her mind, she also wondered how Ajax would look at her if she showed her a true part of herself.
In some ways, her values and his were fundamentally different. She had told him of her dream but she knew that he could not fully grasp why she was so committed to making it a reality. Perhaps he simply had not lost enough to do what needed to be done.
Yet, she had to go so far as to kill these five here so that Barden, Prisca and Angelidis would be unharmed, even if Ajax found out eventually.
If she killed her targets in a way that demonstrated that the person who performed the killing was the same person, a noble, who destroyed the diamond statue, would the guard force escalate the issue with the demihuman community?
Why would they?
A noble would not have any ties to the demihuman community. They would not care for the affairs of commoners at all. If it looked like a noble who came after the Baron and his guards, then the situation would be viewed differently. All she would then have to do is lay low for a while to avoid the grasp of the Baron.
Even if he somehow came after her specifically, he would have no reason to turn his attention to the demihumans in particular to provoke a response from a mystery noblewoman.
There is one proper fighter left and one person too scared to act. It doesn’t surprise her that the fighter is the subordinate of the man cowering in fear. It’s just how the world seems to work wherever she goes.
The fighter is covered in glowing armor. His sword, a large machete, is criss-crossed in a glowing gray pattern. It smells like nothing at all. Even to her extreme senses, she cannot smell what is wafting off the blade. She feels like it would be bad to take a hit from that, but she's also curious about what would happen to her if she did so.
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She hasn’t met many things yet that could overcome her healing factor.
She waits for the man to make a move. She doesn't just want to kill the leader of them yet, she at least has to show him that he has no chance against her. Perhaps she can pull this card now. They probably already figured out her identity anyway…
Tom and Yin start trembling as they see Shaula smiling. She removes her head covering and puts it under her dress. While she smiles, her hair starts turning bright red. Light emanates from the top of her head, slowly covering her face in white until her jawline. Yin struggles to stay here. The only thing he can do is buy an opportunity for his Captain to escape.
He has to do at least that much, even if his opponent is a noble.
He discreetly sends a message using his receiver node towards the commander node of the Captain behind him. All he has to do is input some magic into the device in a specific pattern to get his message across.
{Sir. Please, run once I start my attack. You still have the opportunity to escape this.}
He doesn't know if his Captain has received the message but this is all he can muster right now.
The noblewoman doesn't seem to be moving to kill him quickly, but he knows that she's going to kill him. There will be no opportunity for surrender, especially after that old prick sergeant disrespected her. Yet, she's waiting for Yin to make the first move.
Perhaps she wants him to fight at his full power. He decides to take this opportunity to activate a special sword skill. The blade changes from its bright gray color to a silvery sheen. This time a smell of earth wafts from the blade. He knows that she must know his next attack will be, just from the color and smell alone.
If she's not too proud as a noble, she will dodge the blade and survive the encounter. However, Yin knows about her healing magic. She was impaled and still survived. Still, he has no choice but to do this.
He swings the blade upwards. She dodges it. However, she doesn't use the opening he had left, allowing him to swing down diagonally. Though Yin cannot see, the Captain uses this opportunity to slowly move away. He worries that if he outright runs, the noble woman will stop toying with Yin and come after him.
He slowly steps away, keeping their fight in his view. However, he stops as the woman finally catches the blade in her right hand.
You idiot! Tom feels elation.
The moment Shaula catches the man's blade in her right hand, the blade stops glowing. Her opponent looks dumbfounded, not having expected her to catch the blade. She soon realizes why as her hand touching the blade starts turning gray. It starts to crack.
Oh… Hm, that's something, isn't it…
Using the moment of her opponent's dumbfoundedness, Shaula slices Yin's head off with her left hand. She does it almost absentmindedly as she notices her hand already petrified and the petrification creeping up her wrist.
At this moment, while her forearm starts turning to something like rock she realizes that her quarry, the leader of the guards, had started sprinting away. She keeps an ear on his footsteps while examining her hand. What can she do about this? A petrification effect was not something she expected. The petrification slowly creeps up her hand.
In the worst case, she feels like it might work to simply cut off her arm, but it's not like she has lost complete feeling in her arm. The surface of her arm has solidified, yet blood flow, even into her fingers, has not stopped yet. So, she decides to force her blood to continue flowing into her arm. Her blood carries with it energy specifically meant to heal.
While she can force her body to add strength to various body parts, she learned somewhat recently that if she wishes to hasten the healing of a lost limb, she can do so in this manner.
Within seconds, the petrification starts receding. So, she simply applies more internal healing towards her arm. After a couple more seconds, her arm returns to normal. Luckily, the petrification on her arm isn't like a pestilence that keeps growing. It's more like a poison that was trying to crawl up her arm.
The poison, rather than remaining a separate agent in her body and continuing to petrify her, became subsumed by her divine blood and became inert.
Tom feels joy that he is able to escape. He doesn't feel good about having to leave Yin behind but he truly showed Tom who he was in the end. He was loyal, nothing less than loyal. Tom is running to the entrance of the alleyway. He raises his voice.
"–"
However, before he can even start his shout for help, he feels a hand covering his mouth. His helmet is forcibly pulled off his head with his assailant's other hand and thrown away. The enemy's left arm headlocks him and forces him back into the alleyway. The force applied to his neck stops him from shouting out and makes him feel drowsy.
With this state of mind, he can only walk backwards with his enemy, still in their headlock. He is pulled back far enough and then brought to the wall. He faces her again and is brought back to wakefulness. This is when he notices the heat. The noblewoman's shining face is staring at him.
How is she still ok!? Yin!!
She has not succumbed to petrification. He can even see her arms, both fine Her scorching bright face returns to its human appearance. She looks at him with a slight smirk.
"So. I think it's time we have a little talk."