Pri couldn't comprehend the sight unfolding before her. Or rather, she simply didn't want to.
These were the dolls she had birthed into existence—unlike humans, they were her beloved children who would never betray her. Now, they emerged from the Magic Circle one after another, throwing themselves at Oricule in his Man-Demon form, only to be systematically obliterated by the razor-sharp arms protruding from his shoulder blades.
"Sto... p..."
A faint, broken voice escaped her lips.
No one was listening. Not the dolls, who charged toward Oricule as if eager to offer up their lives, nor Oricule himself, who swatted them aside with a casual indifference, destroying every doll he touched.
Pri was helpless, forced to watch the massacre of her creations.
If her opponent had been a mere human—even an A-Rank or S-Rank Adventurer—she might have found a way to fight back. Regardless of her actual chances of winning, she would have unleashed the full results of her research, casting spell after jewel-fueled spell.
But Oricule, in his Man-Demon state, treated her magic as if it were entirely beneath him. He slashed through the Lightning Cage with ease and ignored her spells to wipe out the dolls appearing from the circle.
"I am starting to grow bored. Is there truly nothing else you can do?"
Oricule's mocking voice grated on Pri's nerves, and she ground her teeth together, fighting back against the rising tide of despair.
When she had first entered this chamber, Pri had been overflowing with confidence, carrying herself like the true ruler of Exil. But ever since she realized that her jewel magic—the foundation of her power, harvested from the very humans meant for sacrifice—was utterly useless against him, her composure had shattered.
She now looked like a pathetic middle-aged woman on the verge of collapsing to the floor.
Though her body was adorned with numerous jewels that cost a fortune, their monetary value did nothing to hide her shabbiness. Strip away her magic, and she was nothing more than a frail woman who relied entirely on her dolls for protection.
"Master, please escape while you can!"
Another doll emerged from the Magic Circle and called out to its frozen master before lunging at Oricule with a knife.
Oricule didn't even bother to face it properly. He merely jerked his head, and his waist-length hair traced a wide arc through the air. The sharp, needle-like tips of his hair pierced the doll in an instant, reducing it to scrap.
Some dolls tried to parry the hair with their weapons, but a doll only had two arms. There was no way they could fend off the countless strands of hair that seemed to move with a predatory will of their own. At best, they delayed their destruction by a few seconds.
"Stop... stop it!"
Watching her children perish, Pri forced her Magic Power into her voice and screamed.
"Like the Wind!"
With those words, the Yellow Jewel set into Pri’s right ankle flared with light. What should have been a simple hop became a movement so swift it was as if the wind itself had blessed her. In the blink of an eye, she was standing right beside Oricule.
"Ice's Embrace!"
The Blue Jewel on her right thumb took effect, and the air around Oricule was instantly plunged into a deep freeze.
"Futile."
Oricule let out a sadistic chuckle—likely an influence of his Man-Demonification—and swung the two arms protruding from his shoulder blades to disperse the freezing mist. As he stepped forward to intercept another doll lunging through the opening, he suddenly found his feet wouldn't move.
"What?"
Even then, he didn't panic. He raised his primary arms, caught the incoming spear tip, and snapped it with a casual flex. With a flick of his wrist, he hurled the broken tip back at the attacker. The doll was blown away as the metal pierced its chest, bouncing several times across the stone floor before lying still.
Indifferent to the doll's fate, Oricule looked down to see his feet frozen solid to the floor.
"Flame, Dance!"
Pri touched the jewel earring on her Right Ear and poured her Magic Power into the command. Over ten Fist-sized Flames appeared simultaneously, dancing through the air as they converged on Oricule.
"Child's play."
Oricule spat the words as he swung the arms from his shoulder blades. The sharp tips of his extra limbs made contact with the fire, and as expected, the flames dispersed into harmless mist.
(The ice on his feet wasn't nullified. Why? No, wait... maybe it's not an unconditional passive field. Is Oricule manually intercepting the spells?) Rei analyzed the situation from the sidelines.
That would explain why the sudden ice magic had worked.
(If he were to nullify all magic unconditionally, he wouldn't even be able to benefit from Recovery Magic if he were injured. I don't know how much of Oricule's consciousness remains in that Man-Demon form, but he’s a shrewd man. I can't imagine he hasn't planned around that.)
Rei pushed his thoughts even further.
(If the nullification is tied to that blue skin or those tattoo-like markings, then the effect is likely limited to his surface. Magic that targets his internal organs might work—or at the very least, it might not be fully neutralized.)
As Rei calculated his options, the battle between Oricule and Pri reached a new level of intensity.
"Stone, Exist!"
At Pri’s command, nearly ten sharp stone arrows—or rather, projectiles large enough to be called Stone Spears—materialized in the air. They were launched in a single, coordinated volley.
Oricule’s Second Arms met the attack. Moving at a dizzying speed, the sharp limbs shattered the Stone Spears on contact.
However, Pri hadn't expected the spears to land a killing blow. They were a distraction. The stone projectiles shattered into a cloud of dust and fragments, creating a screen that obscured his vision. Furthermore, despite the fire magic from earlier, Oricule’s feet were still encased in ice, rooting him to the spot.
"Now! All of you, attack! Avenge your brothers!" Pri screamed as the cloud of pulverized stone blinded her opponent.
She knew her magic couldn't kill him. Her only hope lay with the dolls she had spent her life creating. The dolls responded to her desperate cry with singular focus.
From the warehouse connected to the Magic Circle, every remaining doll surged into the room. Over a hundred of them swarmed Oricule, brandishing swords, spears, hammers, clubs, daggers, battle axes, halberds, and scythes. These were all the dolls Pri had left to command, save for those guarding the upper floors.
"..."
Rei watched the battle, but a faint sound of grinding teeth drew his attention. He looked over to see Byune. Her usually stoic face was twisted into a scowl of pure disgust.
For Byune, the fact that Pri—the woman who murdered her parents—was speaking of "avenging" her dolls was an insult she couldn't stomach. No matter how much she tried to suppress her hatred to avoid another reckless mistake, Pri's hypocrisy pushed her to the breaking point.
Byune’s knuckles turned white as she gripped her dagger, but a hand suddenly rested on her shoulder. It was the hand that had protected her, the hand of the person she had nearly killed earlier in her blind rage. That touch alone was enough to quell the storm of hatred brewing in her chest.
"Byune," Vihera said softly.
"Vi... hera," Byune managed. Her voice was strained and unfamiliar, as if she were still learning how to use it.
"Wait... she spoke?" Elena's eyes widened.
She had suspected something had changed with Byune in their short time apart, but hearing her speak was another matter entirely. The reason for the change was obvious, though. One look at the way Byune glared at Pri as she fought Oricule made the source of her resolve clear.
Unaware of the glares directed her way—or simply lacking the leeway to care—Pri threw everything she had into the fight. Even though her jewel-enhanced magic was faster than any ordinary spell, it was being snuffed out and destroyed almost as soon as it left her hands.
She refused to stop. She kept casting, trying to overwhelm Oricule with sheer volume, desperate to blind him or draw his attention away for even a second to give her dolls a chance to strike. It was the only tactic she had left.
But it wasn't enough. The dolls attacking Oricule were being dismantled unilaterally, failing to inflict any meaningful damage. At some point, the ice on Oricule's feet shattered, freeing him. Every sword swing, spear thrust, and axe blow was parried or redirected by the arms on his shoulder blades, or simply caught in his bare palms.
It was a battle with no hope of victory, yet Pri fought on with the desperation of the damned. However, the power Oricule had gained from Man-Demonification was not something Pri could overcome through effort alone. The compatibility was simply too poor; her jewel magic was his prey.
"Is that all?" Oricule muttered, his tone suggesting he was a man who had grown tired of a mediocre street performance. "If you have nothing left to show me, then you've outlived your usefulness."
The extra arms on his shoulder blades blurred in a sharp, horizontal flash.
"...Eh?" Pri blinked, not understanding what had happened.
A moment later, she saw two objects flying through the air. They were arms—her own arms—still adorned with her precious rings and bracelets. They landed on the cold floor with a dull thud.
"Aaaah... AAAAH... AAAAAAAAAHHH!"
A massive spray of blood erupted from her shoulders. Pri lost her balance and collapsed, her screams tearing through the chamber.
"MASTER!" the dolls cried out in unison. They immediately abandoned their assault on Oricule and rushed to the side of their creator, desperate to help the woman who could do nothing but shriek in agony.
Oricule watched them go, a cold smile playing on his lips. It was exactly what he had intended.
"No... stop! Don't... don't stop the attack!" Pri gasped. Whether it was the pride of the Head of House Marstchel or a genuine concern for her creations, she tried to command them to keep fighting. But the dolls prioritized their master's life over her enemy's death.
"Hahahaha! Die... no, better yet, break!"
Oricule stood over the bleeding Pri and used his Second Arms to systematically dismantle the dolls as they crowded around her. He did it slowly, making sure she watched every second of it.
To Pri, it was like a mother being forced to watch her children being slaughtered. The psychological trauma was so great that she momentarily forgot the physical pain of her missing limbs.
"Stop... please! I beg you, stop it!"
"Hahaha. To think a woman like you could actually feel love. A shame. If you had truly believed in our God's teachings from the start, it wouldn't have ended this way."
With a laugh that combined pity and mockery, Oricule swung his limbs again. He tore the arms and legs off dolls that looked like young girls, twisted their heads off, and ripped their torsos in two.
"AAAAAH! AAAAAAAAH!"
With her final dolls destroyed, the rage finally eclipsed Pri's fear. She opened her mouth to chant.
"Light Spear, Exist—"
"I don't think so."
Oricule didn't let her finish. His Second Arms and needle-sharp hair slashed through Pri's body in an instant. He severed her remaining legs at the knees and used his hair to snap her necklace, sending the jewelry skittering away.
He left the hair ornament on her head untouched. It wasn't an act of mercy; it was a calculated cruelty.
The jewel in that ornament possessed the power to heal the wearer's wounds—specifically, it kept them alive by stabilizing their condition. It was intended as a stopgap measure to allow someone to use Recovery Magic or a Potion. But Pri couldn't use magic, and she had no potions left.
Oricule had ensured that Pri would remain alive, trapped in a state of horrific agony with all four limbs severed, unable to even find the release of death.
"You bragged about the power of that hair ornament once, didn't you? That's why I've left it for you. Consider it a gift."
Oricule kicked her body aside like a child discarding a broken toy. The impact of his Man-Demon strength shattered most of her ribs and pulverized her internal organs. Even as she coughed up blood, unable to scream any longer but still conscious and suffering, Oricule turned his back on her.
"Now then... where were we?"