She had thought the fort lost when she saw the force surrounding it, and when two saint candidates were confirmed to be present, she decided that although it would likely mark her for the rest of her life, she would not be able to take more than a few people with her when she herself made a desperate run for it.

Kirian would not help. It was much more likely for him to shut her down and knock her out before bringing the both of them away.

She was surprised when the summoned spirit created a giant hole in the first charge, even more so when he had increased his prowess out of nowhere and easily sent what seemed to be a homing spell through the enemy's shield, breaking it in the process.

Even that much was enough of a tactical advantage that, with her irritable bodyguard's help, with heavy casualties, they could probably make the humans retreat in defeat.

Then one of the saints was killed and somehow that made everything go wrong.

"We need to go, your highness." Said the shadow spirit.

"Kirian, if you don't at least tire him, that man is going to burn the entire fort to the ground by himself and then they are going to find us and I will be forced to ask you to kill me. For the sake of your mission, can you kill the angel's chosen while he grows familiar with his power?" She didn't deign to turn to look at him. Her poise couldn't hold to his scrutiny right now, and they were absolutely fucked if that man didn't start to crack and burn from within.

If he could become a true vessel because of her actions then she might as well just take her own life out of shame and ask her ancestors for forgiveness.

As it stood, it was questionable if any demon's soul would even reach hell with that giant pillar of golden mana shining all over the battlefield. It was receding, sure, but the red skinned human now burned with flaming wings and an aura of pure heat, to the point that even as retreat from the wall around him was sounded, she could see minor routs of panicking people.

At least not even his allies dared approach him, but she knew whoever was in command would soon send over whoever they could to reinforce the soon-to-be-true-saint.

"I cannot. Even through the calm shadows, no blade of mine would reach him. We must run." His monotone betrayed no emotion despite the situation, but she didn't relent either.

"We stand where we can find support. Stall for as long as you can, try to tire him out. Kill him if the chance shows itself, I will get help." Not turning back to see whether he actually followed her orders was the best she could do, because if he did not agree, then she'd be waking up with a hurt neck in some cave.

But luckily that didn't happen. She was able to find the gray spirit, who had apparently blinded himself with his own attack or by gazing too much at his own opponent.

After sending him to fight though, she didn't know what else she could do. With no actual military ranking and only half her training complete, it’d be a terrible idea to try and take command despite being royalty, and her healing magic might as well be inexistent considering it’s inefficiencies. If this was all she could do, did she even help?

As the least useful child of the royal couple, she was looked down by her peers even as her family accepted her and refused to just sell her for political capital. She couldn’t bend steel with her hands, develop new spells every week or even govern properly.

Crouching, she shielded the fallen soldier beneath her from the flying rocks coming from an exploding part of the walls, the dispersing heat hurting just as much as the pelting pebbles on her back. With a growl, she lifted the man by the armpit, barking an order of retreat to his face and watching as he scrambled away.

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It hurt this much to try to save even one measly life. She needed to try harder, learn more, faster. At this point everything just seemed so… meaningless. She needed to do better.

……………….

After what felt like hours, they finally won. In great part because he had realized that using one person’s feelings to drown another’s was batshit inefficient, so instead he used the entire fort to fuel his emotional bombardment. Which was quite easy considering all the crying and misery currently happening all around.

All he’d needed to do was to create a vortex of mana that drew the respective concepts he’d been using from the surroundings and suddenly he had the need to smack himself silly, because of course a fort filled with soldiers failing to do anything would have more than enough juice to do what he intended.

Now if only he had realized that sooner… well, he’d probably have sent several more people into a catatonic coma of apathy, but as it stood, quite a few of them already lay in the infirmary by his side.

He’d been trying to sleep the after effects off, but that had yet to work overly much. At least no one had tried to feel stuff by doing things they considered taboo or anything, but he had managed to convince his new handler to post more guards around to at least stop people from self mutilating.

The whole thing would probably hold little meaning to him even if he did have his normal bandwidth of emotions though, as smugness would surely follow with all of the rewards the system had thrown his way.

Be it killing people several levels higher, effectively facilitating their victory despite not participating in either the beginning or the end of the fight, stabilizing then healing several troops after the battle, helping complete the basic repairs of the fort or even hunting down and harassing the retreating human troops together with special detachment…

He had felt absolutely nothing during those three days and wasn't feeling anything now, but he was used to acting on small impulses backed by even a bit of logic, and his memories of being happy while playing games helped him pursue accumulation within the system's parameters despite the same joy being, at best, muted.

Honestly, it was a lot like a mixture between drugs having him focus on one thing at a time and depression making him rapidly stop taking care of himself.

Despite attempts to directly solve his current problem however, it seemed like he'd need to actually deal with it, as manipulating emotion directly or through mana apparently took some of his own emotional force. Of which he had none to wield, so unless someone came around and stuffed him with SOMETHING, then he was as fucked as everyone else in the infirmary.

Perhaps the system could have solved his problem, but a random powerup, from the perspective of the people around him, would draw too much attention and also set wrong precedents even if he did not recover with more level ups. Something he could actually have done even back before he started to try and kill the second saint apparently.

While his class had maxed out at level 10, he had apparently also received an advancement quest telling him to challenge himself and obtain quest points, be it through achieving milestones, completing quests or killing enemies above his level. It had not needed him to accept it to begin cataloging his actions, but it was asking him to complete it and tallying the points he kept making despite having long surpassed the required 2.5 K points.

Due to his ‘Extreme’ rating on the quest he took to help win the fort battle, which had also not been turned in because of the likely chance that he’d get some kind of trait power up from it, he also had another ten thousand quest points marked in to add to his counter, so these power ups would be better saved for a time when he was at least partially recovered and could use the effects of the system to derive joy from his statistics going up.

Whether that would entail seeing his statistics going up and feeling the joy of a brain programed to give meaning to numbers on a screen going up or him going to a brothel to take advantage of his increased stats to and try to forge some kind of meaningful ocasion was up to debate, but either way, he was finally being moved to a city at princess Sera’s orders, where he was to both be introduced to the army so they could determine how to use him and so he could be rewarded for the blows he allowed them to strike against their enemies.

Apparently being level fifty was quite the feat around here, so it was a great tactical advantage to have killed off two of those at the cost of some small injuries to the shadow spirit accompanying the princess and some damage to the fort and it’s inhabitants.

The implications of that were not lost on his emotionless mind, but besides wondering whether this was a cultivation centric realm where some places were simply weaker than others or a more normal planet where that was the genetical soft cap in power of the people around, he also didn’t really ponder too deeply about it. He had a long and uncomfortable journey to come, because apparently they couldn’t just teleport now that running away was not a time sensitive matter anymore.