All they did know was:
“What…? What are you?! Whether you’re a Primal or not, there’s no way an Arch Demon can have that much power!!”
Davis was shouting now, trying to paint over his own fears.
“Y-yeah! You weren’t this overwhelming the last time we fought! What the hell did you do to evolve this much…? Evolve?”
Davis and Gordon looked at each other. Hearing his own cries, Gordon now understood exactly what was going on with Testarossa—no matter how much he didn’t want to. The same went for Davis. Incarnated, named—and thanks to that, what kind of being had Testarossa, the Original White, become?
Testarossa gave them a bemused look, leisurely eliminating all doubt.
“Oh, how clever of you! That’s right. Now that I have a name, I’m higher level than even an Arch Demon. Have you ever heard the term Demon Peer before? It’s something completely different from an Arch Demon. A pity I need to spell it out to people before they understand, isn’t it?”
It only plunged the two of them deeper into despair.
“D-Demon Peer…”
“The second coming of Guy Crimson…”
Only then did Davis and Gordon realize the gravity of the situation. This Primal hadn’t manifested herself just for a laugh—she had a firm will, and she used it to fully take root here.
“But didn’t you lose interest in this world when you lost the princess’s body…?”
“Not quite. By the time you came along back then, my contract with the girl had already been fulfilled. That’s why I left, although certainly not without my regrets.”
“No…”
“Oh, I’m sorry! Were you laboring under the assumption that you could beat me? Well, silly, I think you see that’s not going to happen now.”
Davis could feel his own confidence shatter.
“I still haven’t forgiven you for interrupting my meal back then, you know.”
“…”
“H-hey… Davis…”
Neither Davis nor Gordon were able to move. Testarossa’s crimson eyes bolted them to the ground, like a snake staring down a frog.
“…Your meal?” Davis repeated.
All he could do was keep talking to buy more time. With that precious time, he desperately tried to figure out what was happening to his body. Anything so he could have a shot at Testarossa, proud and confident in her victory.
“That’s right. That beautiful lake was bathed in enough blood to turn crimson red, but that still didn’t make me full, you know.”
“…Nearly ten thousand innocent people died.”
“Well, that’s how our deal worked. Besides, you interrupted me before I could enjoy the main course, the most important part. Now that we’re all together and everything, why don’t we take this opportunity to have you atone for your sins?”
“Youuu…!”
Testarossa was the very one behind the Bloody Shore tragedy—but to her, that regretful disaster was just a simple meal.
And it’s still not enough…?
Davis’s heart seethed with rage. Flames of justice burned through the kindling of his fear. This evil, he thought, could never be left unchecked.
“An evil like you—”
Raising the gleaming sword in his hand, Davis struggled to escape Testarossa’s binding spell. The initial results were promising; he could feel his body regaining its strength…but Davis’s despair had only just begun.
“You’re not gonna kill them yet, Testarossa? …I don’t mean to interrupt, but I think it’s time to end this.”
A cute voice, not at all appropriate for a battlefield, was heard from above. It belonged to a girl with bluish-purple hair in a side ponytail—Ultima.
Even Davis, ranked eleventh in his nation’s hierarchy, could sense there was something unusual about her.
“Oh, is that you, Ultima?” said Testarossa. “Did I make you wait long?”
“Mm, I’ve just been taking my time with Gabil’s band, so I’m not one to talk…but Sir Rimuru asked us to give our all, so if we don’t finish this fast, he’s gonna be mad, y’know?”
“I sure don’t want that.”
“Right?”
“I just ran into some old acquaintances of mine, so we wound up chatting a bit… But you’re right. Let’s end this before Sir Rimuru gets angry.”
Davis couldn’t understand the conversation unfolding in front of him. Or really, it’s not that he couldn’t—he just didn’t want to.
No, no, no, noooo!!
Testarossa and Ultima were both doubtlessly on the same level.
Two Demon Peers…
Taking on just one of them was difficult enough. Having backup just sealed the deal. Davis’s flames of righteousness, burning hot inside him, had been painted black before he even knew it. Black with fear. The glory of being the eleventh Imperial Guardian was meaningless in front of this duo.
If it was just one Arch Demon, Davis might’ve been able to take care of it himself—but the reality of two Demon Peers almost broke his heart. He couldn’t be blamed for that; in fact, Gordon was already crouched down and sobbing. Once a quiet, reliable man, now he was behaving like a little child. Suddenly, Davis felt jealous of Balt, dying before him and all. He had passed on without even realizing the true identity of what he had been up against. How fortunate for him…
“Great idea!”
“Well, I’m sorry to say goodbye, but I have to go. I know—since we’re old friends and all, why don’t I show you the magic you wanted to see?”
Testarossa sounded as amused as ever, speaking to the stunned Davis. He didn’t know what it meant, but he did know the end was near.
From the deepest darkness, a black flame was called forth.
The flame, condensed to the size of a fist, shone on the palm of Testarossa’s hand. It was an abyss core, a notoriously hard-to-control type of hellfire, but Testarossa crushed it into her hand with ease.
Laughing to herself, Testarossa whispered in a singsong voice:
“…Death Streak.”
Davis’s eyes widened. He didn’t know what this magic was. He couldn’t comprehend it. No idea. But one thing was for sure—it was incredibly evil.
“And you over there; you know Guy Crimson, huh? In that case, you know what this magic is, don’t you? The same one Guy used when he became a demon lord…”
Sadly, Davis’s consciousness cut out at this point—plunging into an even deeper abyss of desperation, wishing he had never known anything at all.
………
……
…
The abyss core crushed into Testarossa’s hand became a black light that shone across the surroundings. It had the property of penetrating through almost all types of matter—a dark light that never occurred naturally. When it passed through a living being, it directly affected their genetic sequences, forcibly rewriting their genes to kill almost anything it encountered.
It was deathly magic, the epitome of pure evil—but according to tradition, it existed for a different purpose. The only ones who could withstand this magic were spiritual life-forms or those whose souls had memory-retention skills. Living things who could completely reconstruct their bodies after they were completely destroyed could escape this magic—and nobody else.
Spiritual particles, the tiny matter that made up magicules, emitted a special sort of wave. This was the light of darkness itself, difficult to counteract with magic and impossible to counteract via physical means. The only way to resist them was with other spiritual particles, and thus, the only way to resist dark light was with more dark light. No other type of protection was possible.
Exposure to this light produced a 99.999 percent fatality rate. But not even that was 100 percent—and so, extremely rarely, there were survivors. One in a million would react by turning their body into a monster and gaining new life. In other words, this magic also selected those most suitable for monster transformation, granting the victims their blessing.
It was the worst, most taboo kind of spell, this nuclear-level Death Streak. Instead of destroying physically like Disintegration, it accurately bore down only on the particles that created life memory. It was the ultimate forbidden magic, one that could destroy the very souls of people.
………
……
…
And so Davis, ranked eleventh in the Empire—and Gordon, ranked sixty-fourth and pretty much just along for the ride—became the first victims of Testarossa’s Death Streak. It didn’t end there.
Shortly thereafter, a ferocious rampage of death blew across the land, affecting everything within a five-hundred-yard radius. It didn’t distinguish between friend or foe, killing every living thing within that range, and that’s why Testarossa used Magic Sense to ensure there were no allies close by before launching it. And this was her going easy. If she had cast Death Streak with all dampers removed, everything within several miles would’ve breathed their last.
Death Streak was just as effective against spiritual life-forms as it was to anything else, but Testarossa had been careful to activate it in a way that wouldn’t affect their souls, so it was harmless to her and Ultima.
The two of them casually surveyed the results.
“Doesn’t look like there’s anything alive in this whole area. By the way, you did a really good job with these, Testarossa.”
“Oh? What do you mean?”
“These toys they call tanks, I mean. They all look in perfect shape, so we can bring them back intact and examine them more.”
“Well, of course. That’s why I cleaned out only the humans from here.”
“Mmm. Y’know, maybe I should’ve cast Death Streak, too, instead of cutting corners up there. Then maybe I wouldn’t have broken up all those toys in the sky.”
“True, Ult, you could say you were a bit too flashy there. But if we can recover that first sample that crash-landed, that ought to be enough for reference.”
“…Sure. Although I sure did cause a lot more damage to them than I thought. Those toys are so fragile! I only meant to destroy one, but I wound up breaking a whole bunch of ’em.”
“Well, so be it. Now that Sir Rimuru named us, we’re both stronger than ever. We’re gonna have to be more careful from now on, Ultima.”
“Yeah. I feel bad about it, too. But y’know, what I’m really worried about is Carrera. I’m not sure if she knows what the word restraint means, and you know how much she loves flashy magic…”
“That’s why she’s on standby over at our headquarters. Rimuru had the foresight to assign her to that, which I was certainly glad to see.”
“Ohhh! Well, that’s a relief!”
So they merrily chatted on. They may have been misreading Rimuru in a few ways, but nobody was around to point it out to them.
“And Benimaru’s a real worrywart, huh? Talking about how he thinks there are people in the Empire who can harm Sir Rimuru and all. Even asking us to go easy so we can find out who it is!” said Ultima.
“That is a little troublesome, yes. If all we wanted was to win, they should’ve just sent us out alone from the start. Then Sir Rimuru wouldn’t need to bother with anything at all.”
“Well, it was Sir Rimuru’s idea, wasn’t it? He even told us not to fight. I think he wanted to give Gobta and Gabil and their forces a chance to grow a bit. It’d be easy for him to just evolve them upward, but the only way to get experience is to actually do it, after all. Some dolt with a lot of power and nothing else is just a wimp to us.”
“That’s a great idea, I think. I get it and all, but…well, you know.”
“At least we got to perform in the end. That’s nice.”
Testarossa and Ultima were enjoying themselves well enough, but as they spoke, they were also carefully gathering up the souls of all the dead around them.
The forbidden spell Death Streak had a secret—there were no known successful cases of someone turned into a monster by it. The only way it ever would do the trick was if you had a soul left to be transformed. But if those souls were all being harvested, as they were right then, the chance of survival went from one in a million to exactly zero. They said the devil never gave you a straight deal, and this was maybe another example of that. A great way to hide the real probabilities, though. Testarossa and Ultima were aware of that, naturally, and that was why, once they were sure there were no survivors out on the field, they declared the battle over.
Witnessing the fate of those who messed with her never moved Testarossa’s heart. There was no real emotion; she treated them the same as anyone else. They had never been in Testarossa’s mind in the first place, so this was only natural.
And with that, the battle with her cohort was finished.
Two departments of the Armored Division that participated in this operation—the Magitank Force and the Flying Combat Corps—suffered total defeat. With the death of Lieutenant General Gaster, the Empire had lost its local base of operations, leaving the soldiers out on the farther reaches isolated and struggling to flee. Now the only question in this battle of annihilation was how long it would last.
Gaster’s Magitank Force numbered two hundred thousand servicepeople, while Major General Farraga’s Flying Combat Corps had forty thousand. Without a commander, there was no way for the imperial army to request a cease-fire… And so all the imperial forces on the ground and in the air lost their lives on the battlefield.
At that moment, the Tempest side was confirmed the victors. But this didn’t mean the end of the war. That was because General Caligulio, commander of the Armored Division, still had no idea about this defeat. And at that very moment, the Restructured Armor Corps—the heart and soul of the whole Armored Division—was about to hit the road for Rimuru, capital of Tempest.