Sharp strands of hair, now hardened into lethal needles, streaked toward her.
Pri likely never imagined they would be aimed at her—least of all that Oricule would act with such chilling lack of hesitation. She could only stare at the incoming projectiles in a daze.
"Master!"
At that cry, the surrounding dolls threw themselves in front of her. An instant later, nearly thirty needles tore through their porcelain frames.
The difference between these and the needles Byune had used was their sheer, terrifying power.
While Byune’s needles had struggled to lodge themselves into a single body, the needles launched by the Man-Demon Oricule didn't stop after the first impact. They punched through one doll, then a second, a third, and a fourth before their momentum finally failed.
"Ma... ster... are you... sa... fe?"
The doll Pri had poured her very soul into creating, her most cherished masterpiece, spoke in a flickering, mechanical voice.
Snapped back to reality by the sight, Pri reached out with trembling fingers toward the doll. Its body had been riddled by nearly ten needles.
"Yes, yes... I am safe because you all protected me. You did wonderful work."
"As long as... Master is safe... nothing else matters. Please escape... Master... that creature is... dan... gerous..."
With those final words, the doll’s Light of Will faded. The hand it had reached toward Pri went limp and clattered against the floor.
The scene mirrored the tragedy of a human death.
Distorted though they were, these dolls possessed firm egos and a sense of self. In that light, it was no exaggeration to say that the doll had truly died.
"Hmm, I seE. It seems I haven't quite masteRED this body yeT."
The architect of this destruction, however, was checking his own vitals with utter indifference, seemingly oblivious to the tragedy he had caused.
(Wait...)
Rei caught Seto’s eye as the gryphon looked back at him, commanding it to stay put with a sharp glance.
Ordinarily, this would be the perfect time to launch a surprise attack. Fortunately, the sequence of events made it clear that any friendship between Pri and Oricule was officially dead.
(They were obviously just using each other from the start... but why betray her now? Tactically, it would make more sense to join forces against us. Is it an side effect of the Man-Demonification? I can't rule it out.)
Rei kept his thoughts internal, making no move to intervene. Seto remained still on his orders, while Elena and Byune kept their distance from Pri. Vihera, having finished off most of the other dolls, also stood back to see how the confrontation between Pri and Oricule would unfold.
The air hung in a precarious balance. Pri gently laid the lifeless doll on the floor, then turned a gaze thick with rage and hatred toward the Man-Demon Oricule.
"Oricule, what is the meaning of this? Have you forgotten your place?"
Her voice was even more venomous than her glare, yet Oricule merely shrugged.
"What is there to be anGRY abouT? What does it matteR if toys of that caliber are consuMED to test my abiliTIES? Rest assuRED. I will kill every last one of these intruders, and then I shall destroY House Silwa and all the rest."
"Don't you dare mock me!" Pri screamed, her eyes bloodshot.
The order she had given Oricule—or more accurately, the Holy Light Religion—was not to kill Rei’s group, but to capture them alive. They were useless as sacrifices if they were dead. While Bosk was marked for death, she could no longer trust Oricule to follow any instructions.
Above all else, Pri could not tolerate her dolls being called "toys."
Consumed by fury, she thrust her right palm toward the Man-Demon.
"O flame, O ice, O wind, O thunder, O stone—behold!"
All five rings on her right hand flared to life, gorging on her Magic Power.
Following the incantation, a mass of fire roared forth, accompanied by a barrage of jagged Stone Arrows and ice shards. Wind Blades sliced through the air, and lightning crackled across the chamber.
Oricule didn't move. He simply stood there and let the onslaught wash over him.
The spells collided against his frame in a chaotic explosion of elements.
In the confusion of the blast, Pri pulled a tiny gemstone—less than a centimeter wide—from her pocket. She flooded it with Magic Power and hissed the keyword.
"Return all of thee to naught."
She hurled the gem into the thick of the smoke shrouding Oricule’s massive form. An instant later, a gargantuan explosion erupted, making the previous magical barrage look like a mere prelude.
This was Pri’s final resort: an attack that detonated the blood, flesh, life, and Magic Power wrung from her sacrifices all at once.
Though she didn't hate the fleeting beauty of a gem shattering in a flash, she loved her jewels too much to enjoy an attack that obliterated them completely.
But Oricule had insulted her dolls. He had broken—no, killed—them just to test his strength.
That was a sin she would never forgive.
The blast from the self-detonating gemstone was so violent that Rei and Seto felt the shockwave even at their distance.
"Guruuu!"
Seto lunged in front of Rei, using its large body as a shield against the pressure.
The explosion had been magically tuned to cause damage within a Specific Range, sparing the rest of the room from total collapse, but the sheer force of the wind still managed to push Seto back several steps despite the gryphon's braced stance.
"Rei, are you all right!?"
Once the wind died down, Elena and Vihera regrouped with him. Vihera was holding Byune’s hand to ensure the girl's small frame hadn't been swept away.
Further away, Ecethesus was struggling just to keep the unconscious Nakt from being tossed across the floor by the shockwave.
"Yeah, I’m fine. Seto, what about you!?"
Rei ignored Elena's question for a moment to check on his partner.
"Guruuu."
Seto let out a short, reassuring trill. It was perfectly fine.
"Guru... gururururu."
The gryphon continued to rumble as it backed further away from the smoke-filled center of the room.
Rei glanced at Pri. She wasn't looking at him, or Seto, or even the girl she had been so obsessed with only minutes ago. Her eyes were fixed on the heart of the blast, narrowed in hateful anticipation.
She was ready to strike again the moment anything moved. In her hand, she already gripped several more of the detonating gemstones.
(I should probably take this chance to pin her down, but...)
The thought crossed Rei's mind, but Oricule's Man-Demon form was still an unknown quantity. If the two villains were going to tear each other apart, it was better to stay back and analyze his abilities while they weakened each other.
"...Nnuu..."
Beside him, Byune let out a small sound, as if fighting the urge to rush Pri.
Elena noticed that the girl’s usual "Nn" had changed to a more emotional "Nnuu," but she decided now wasn't the time to ask. Like Rei, she judged that gathering intelligence on Oricule was the priority and kept her eyes locked on the smoke.
"I say... what sort of farce is thiS? I thought we were cooperaTING?"
The smoke cleared to reveal Oricule, completely unscathed.
He brushed at his armor and mantle—which had inexplicably grown in size along with his body during his transformation—as if concerned about dust. He tilted his head, seemingly genuinely baffled by Pri's hostility.
(They had been working together until now. His speech and logic seem mostly human... but his empathy is gone. Is that the Man-Demonification? If so, that's a weakness we can use.)
Previously, Oricule had protected Tibia in the Magic Circle simply because it was the master's order. Now, his attitude had shifted into something entirely different.
"Don't you dare mock me! You called my masterpieces 'toys'? You will regret every breath you take!"
Pri leveled her left hand at him, pouring Magic Power into her words.
"Lightning Cage—activate!"
The large Amethyst in the bracelet on her left wrist flared, conjuring a cage of crackling electricity around Oricule.
Rei and the others watched intently. This was the same attack that had nearly killed Vihera; surely it would at least do some damage, if not end the fight outright.
However...
"Do you really think such a thing could harm mE?"
Oricule swung a Second Arm—a skeletal limb that had sprouted from his shoulder blade—in a violent Horizontal Slash.
With a single motion, the lightning vanished as if it had never been there.
"Wait... did he just parry Magic Power itself?" Vihera muttered, her voice laced with bitterness.
As a Battle Maniac, she lived for strong foes, but even she sounded exhausted by this revelation.
It was a nightmare scenario. If he could repel Magic Power, then almost every form of magic was useless against him. Rei’s massive Flame Magic, Elena’s Wind Magic, and even her Dragon Language Magic would be nothing more than a light show.
"It’s certain he repels magic," Rei said, glancing at his weapon. "The question is whether physical attacks can get through."
He looked at the Death Scythe. The weapon’s lethality increased exponentially when channeled with Magic Power, but would even that be parried?
(It should work... but that’s just a hunch. I won't know for sure until I'm the one swinging.)
To Rei's eyes, Oricule's blue skin seemed to be physically bouncing the Magic Power off. If the magic wasn't "released" as a spell but kept within a blade like the Death Scythe, perhaps it could still bite.
"What!?"
While Rei’s group analyzed the situation from the sidelines, Pri was reeling. She was a Mage, not a Warrior; knowing her magic was useless meant she was utterly defenseless.
Or at least, she would have been. But her obsession with her craft saved her.
"Protect the Master!"
At the command, ten more dolls leaped in front of her.
These dolls, identical to the ones that had just died, kicked off the floor and ceiling, lunging at the Man-Demon.
And they weren't alone. More and more began to pour into the room, gushing from the Magic Circle on the floor as if from an endless spring.
This was why Byune and Nakt had been unable to thin their numbers.
As the chamber where Tibia was being held as a sacrifice, this room was the most vital location in the residence. Naturally, it was equipped with the house's ultimate defense: Puppet Summoning.
Dolls flooded in from a Magic Circle linked directly to the Puppet Storage Facility located elsewhere in the mansion.
The Marstchel family were descendants of the Mage who had discovered the Exil Dungeon. Through generations of research into the Dungeon’s Teleportation Device, they had mastered the Space Magic and Summoning Magic required to create such a portal.
But even this feat of engineering was nothing before the creature they now faced.
"HahahaHA! HahahahaHA!"
Oricule laughed as his skeletal arms tore through the air.
The needle-sharp tips of those extra limbs pierced and shattered the dolls as if they were made of glass.
Still, the dolls Pri had spent a lifetime creating continued to spawn without end, only to be systematically eradicated by Oricule the moment they touched the floor.
Amidst the carnage, Rei and his companions remained silent, their eyes fixed on the Man-Demon as they continued their cold, calculated analysis of his strength.