Answering Leon's question, Adelio gave an order to [Odin] within his mind.
'[Odin]. Put up a barrier over [Eldorado].'
[Yes. Activating [Multilayer Barrier].]
The [Multilayer Barrier] contained within the Ultimate Skill [Odin], [King of Inquiry].
After restoring the barrier over [Eldorado] in place of the still-fighting Ria, Adelio vanished from the ground the instant the barrier was fully formed.
Whoosh
The clash between the [Primordial Demons] raging in the sky was violent enough to call to mind the battle between Chronoa and Veldora.
A white whip and a yellow longsword.
Whenever the two demons' weapons brushed past each other, currents of magic burst out like sparks in empty air, unleashing fierce shockwaves.
The [elemental spell] they fired in between as probing attacks fell short of Nuclear Magic, but with curses woven into them, they were terrifyingly lethal all the same.
But there was something even more frightening than the brutality and killing power of those attacks.
"Haa... haa... Is that all? For someone who got a name, you haven't changed much."
"...Heh. As if. That was just a warm-up to get used to this body. The real fight... starts now."
The dense killing intent soaked deep into both demons.
That was the most terrifying thing of all.
Their emotions were so deep and dark, it almost felt like simply standing near them made you hallucinate the scent of slaughter spilling out from their souls.
Clang!!!
And yet, even so.
The empress and the tyrant did not stop.
"Did you really think someone who knows nothing has any right to insult what Adelio and I share?"
Ria had long since abandoned any thought of letting the tyrant's twisted nonsense slide.
She could not ignore it—no, she did not want to ignore it—that this demon had insulted the bond between herself and the man she loved beyond measure.
After all they had gone through, after the separation they had endured before finally meeting again, what right did a rival who had only met him a few times have to deny what existed between them?
Driven by that rage-filled killing intent, Ria brought her whip down.
"Ha... isn't it obvious? Why would I need some grand qualification to yell at someone who only got a chance through luck and a silver tongue?"
But Jonne, swinging her longsword, was no less fierce.
Just as the empress could not overlook the insult, Jonne could not give him up either.
Part of it was her pride as a king, but an even greater reason was the salvation he had given her, and the strange feelings she herself did not understand.
At first it had been a sticky, clinging obsession. But after hearing his words, that damp, suffocating fixation and gloom had faded, replaced by a peculiar curiosity and fervor—an emotion she had never once felt before.
That feeling was goodwill, the first foothold that would one day lead to love. But there was no way the Jonne of now could possibly know that.
Crackle...!!!
The female demons' killing intent did not let up.
Even as fatigue steadily piled up, neither demon bent her will in the slightest. Instead, their will to fight only swelled along with the darkening bloodlust.
But unexpectedly, the battle between the two female demons came to a rather anticlimactic end.
Shing...
A pitch-black blade shot in from the side of Ria and Jonne, slicing apart the entire space where whip and sword had been about to collide.
Then ash-gray magic power poured from the sword and completely split the two demons apart.
"Ria, Lady Jonne—"
The owner of that magic power was Adelio.
"—let's stop here."
Suppressing the tension rising by the second, he kept his expression as calm as possible and looked from one demon to the other.
"...!!" "What...?"
Ria and Jonne, whose gazes still brimmed with killing intent, were both taken aback by Adelio's intervention.
"Stop here...? What is that supposed to mean?"
For Adelio standing before her, Ria slightly eased the killing intent in her eyes, but her will to keep fighting did not lessen in the slightest.
"Tch... As long as that woman keeps deceiving you, I have no intention of stopping."
Jonne was no different.
'...Just as I thought. They're not going to stop just because I ask.'
Realizing that if this continued, the fight would only drag on, Adelio sheathed [Overlord Black Star] and spoke in a bitter tone.
"If this goes any further, no one gains anything from it. Not you, Ria, and not you either, Lady Jonne."
Adelio turned to Ria first.
"Ria, I know why you're angry. If I were in your place and heard something like that, I'd be just as furious. I might even have fought with the intent to kill."
"......"
"But haven't you already made her suffer enough for now through this fight?"
At a glance, the battle just now had looked evenly matched, but in truth, it was one Ria could have ended with ease.
The only reason it had dragged on so long after entering close combat was because Ria had chosen not to end it quickly, wanting Jonne to pay for her insult through pain.
The cruelty she was once known for as her defining trait had never disappeared. She simply chose not to show it to Adelio.
"And Lady Jonne, you don't need to push yourself this far either."
Then Adelio shifted his gaze from Ria to Jonne.
"You were already badly injured before coming to the material world... If you keep fighting beyond this point, even a [Primordial Demons] would have a hard time recovering easily."
After fighting Noir and then Ria, her body was covered in wounds.
As a spiritual life-form without a true physical body, she normally would have recovered from most injuries almost instantly.
The fact that so many wounds still remained meant her injuries were that severe.
And the fact that she had not even had the room to tend to them meant her heart had been driven that far into a corner.
"So this fight ends here."
Looking at Jonne's injuries with regret, he reached out a hand toward her.
There was no one here who would care for her wounds, so he thought he should step in himself.
She was a demon known by the epithet of tyrant, but in truth, she was closer to an unruly girl, and he could not simply stand by and watch.
Fwaaa...
A healing spell from the dark magic branch, especially effective on monsters.
Adelio cast a light healing spell on Jonne.
It was an extremely simple spell he could activate without chanting, but that was enough.
"...Th-thank you..."
Jonne's heart, which had been driven to the very edge of a cliff, found that this one act alone felt like more help than she could contain.
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