"Grrr…! You filthy insect, where are you hiding!!"
Bagest wildly swung Galatine at empty air. The massive black-flame cleaves shattered the sand and stone walls of the arena without mercy, but nothing caught on the tip of her blade.
Presence Concealment, and the technique of erasing oneself by synchronizing one's breathing with the surrounding atmosphere.
Bagest's overwhelming mana and fighting instinct alone were not enough to break a skill that formed the very foundation of a Heroic Spirit.
Clang!!
"...Kgh?!"
A crimson demonic sword suddenly burst out of empty air and sliced diagonally across Bagest's back. The moment blood sprayed, Kay's figure once again dissolved like a heat haze.
"You coward! You can't face me head-on, so you resort to these rat-like tricks…! I'll erase every place you can dodge to!!"
With a beast's roar, Bagest swung Galatine in a wide horizontal arc.
A massive area-cleaving slash that swept away half the arena.
The blade's perfect trajectory, impossible to evade, was about to cleanly split Kay's waist in two the instant he appeared in midair.
"Who are you calling a rat?"
Swish!
"...W-what?!"
Bagest's eyes widened in shock.
The instant her greatsword touched Kay's body, his solid flesh grotesquely warped like a boneless mollusk and turned jelly-like.
Transformation.
Kay had altered the structure of his own body into a slime-like liquid form.
Bagest's terrifying slash passed uselessly through Kay's now-sticky waist, and the moment the blade went by, his body was instantly reassembled into its original hard, muscular form.
"What the hell was that just now…? What kind of sorcery is that!!"
Kay, taking advantage of Bagest's momentary loss of balance, drove a fierce somersault kick straight into her jaw.
Thud!!
The massive body was sent floating into the air. But the title of strongest warrior in the Fairy Kingdom was no empty boast.
While airborne, Bagest twisted her body on pure fighting instinct, crushed Kay's kick with her arm, and then plummeted straight down like a meteor.
KWA-BOOM!!
"Guh…!!"
Before he could evade, Kay was crushed beneath Bagest's overwhelming mass, and red blood burst from his mouth. Three or four ribs were shattered, and his organs were torn apart in a horrific agony. For an ordinary human, it would have been a fatal wound that would have reduced him to pulp and killed him instantly.
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The fairies in the stands gasped in horror, and Queen Gloriana shot to her feet.
"Hahaha! Got you! In the face of my overwhelming mass, even your little tricks are fin—!"
Just as Bagest was about to laugh madly, certain of victory, Kay's voice came from beneath her, far too calm—no, disturbingly unharmed.
"...That was close. I almost died."
Self-suggestion.
It was not a mere skill. It was a forcing technique that cast a powerful hypnosis upon one's own mind and deceived one's own causality.
I suffered no damage. That attack did not touch me.
If one endured the fatal pain for an instant with sheer mental force and survived without dying, it was a rule-breaking miracle that forcibly returned the body to the pristine state it had been in just before the attack landed.
Limited invincibility. Limited immortality.
"W-what…?!"
As Bagest reeled in shock, Kay slipped out from beneath her. His body, which had just been vomiting blood, had already restored the shattered ribs and torn organs, standing there in perfect condition.
Kay's eyes sank coldly, like the abyss of a demonic realm.
Bagest, having rolled back across the sand, panted hard and ground her teeth.
"Hahaha!! Amazing… You're amazing, Kay! You truly are a strong one! But this isn't over yet!"
Bagest drove Galatine deep into the sand.
At once, the atmosphere of the arena turned blood-red, and a dreadful pressure descended. Her fairy domain had expanded to its maximum.
And within the black flames, Bagest's enormous body began to twist and swell, losing its human shape.
Her clothes tore apart, and her hair transformed into the coarse fur of a beast. Where the flames receded stood a horrifying black-flame giant, easily over ten meters tall—the true form of the Black Dog laid bare in all its monstrous glory.
"Grrrrrr…!!"
Bagest, having lost half her reason, charged at Kay with only the pure instinct of a predator, Galatine clamped in her jaws.
A slash like a black sun that seemed ready to swallow an entire building flew, cleaving the arena in two.
The protective barrier over the stands cracked with a sharp crack, and the fairies screamed at the sheer devastation of the bombardment.
But Kay, standing right in the path of that calamity-like slash, did not dodge.
He gripped the crimson-burning demonic sword Crudin with both hands at his waist and lowered it horizontally.
Then Kay kicked off the ground and charged straight toward the descending slash of the sun.
"[Cúrdinn Alternative]!!!!"
KAAAAAAANG!!!!!!!
The black beast's slash and the red demonic sword's single strike collided head-on.
A massive white explosion that paralyzed sight and sound.
"K-KRAAAAAAAAGH!!!!"
What burst from the center of the explosion was the beast's dying scream.
The sun's slash was split cleanly into two by Kay's crimson arc and scattered into the air.
And Kay, having pierced through the slash, drove his demonic sword through the Black Dog's thick hide and deep into Bagest's chest.
Crunch.
"Kh... huh..."
The shape of the Black Dog crumbled and scattered like shattered glass dust.
The giant beast's form collapsed, and the fiercely burning black flames died away.
But when the aftermath of the explosion and the remnants of the black fire cleared, the sight of Bagest left behind was miserable.
The clothes she had been wearing had been swept away by Kay's attack and the black flames, evaporating into a literal handful of ash. She was completely naked, not a thread on her body.
Bagest knelt on the sand with a wound that had narrowly missed her heart, and let out ragged breaths.
Kay pulled out his sword, and with a strained exhale, shoved Crudin back into his waist.
The arena fell silent, thousands of spectators holding their breath.
The bloodied, naked Bagest seemed to feel no shame at all. Though she had originally been under an incurable curse, Kay's will had lifted that curse, and Bagest had restored her body with the mana of predation.
In her eyes there was only blind reverence and joy toward the overwhelming strong one who had completely subdued her.
"Ha... hahahah!!"
Bagest burst into mad laughter, then dropped flat at Kay's feet, placing both hands on the ground and pressing her forehead into the sand.
"My defeat, Kay. According to the Fang Clan's law, the weak must offer everything to the strong."
Ignoring the fact that her voluptuous naked body was getting covered in sand, she cried out in a feverish voice.
"Come, eat me! Tear apart my flesh and blood and make it your strength… Or if not, take me under you right here and now! Make me your wife and your female, chew me up completely in every sense, and reign as my lord!!"
"...No, where the hell did all the women of Britain learn to do dogeza like this? Even Alter's like this. What the hell are you doing, face-down naked on the ground in front of thousands of fairies!!"
Kay staggered backward in alarm.
In the stands, fairies were already dropping one after another with nosebleeds, while Britomart's face had turned so red it looked ready to burst as she covered her eyes.
"Make yourself some clothes with mana, right now!! There's nowhere to even look!"
"There is no need to be ashamed, my husband! To submit to the strong and bare one's flesh is the Fang's rightful courtesy…!"
"Courtesy my ass! Put something on already!"
At that moment, Queen Gloriana descended from the stands and covered her mouth with a fan, smiling awkwardly.
"Sir Kay. I know this is deeply embarrassing, but… the Fang Clan's custom is absolute. If you turn her away, this proud beast may take her own life from shame. Please, take her in."
"...Haaah, this is insane."
Kay pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a deep sigh.
He had barely finished being tormented by his sisters in Ireland, and now he was being saddled with Britain's strongest giant-breasted demon hound as a subordinate.
"Fine, fine. I'll take you in under me, so put your clothes on already. And since a verbal contract alone isn't enough to stop you from doing something crazy again, I'm going to bind you properly."
The red patterns engraved on his hand began to glow with mana.
It was no ordinary Command Spell.
A Command Spell of the demonic realm, made by Scáthach.
A specially crafted mark of contract that twisted the original rule binding only Heroic Spirits, allowing mana paths to connect even with phantasmal beasts, spirits, and even elemental fairies.
"Come here."
Kay placed his rough hand on top of Bagest's silver hair.
"By the name of Kay, I command you. I take you, Bagest, as my subordinate and retainer. If you do anything foolish, I'll make you kill yourself with this Command Spell, so behave. Since Scáthach made it, the coercion should be strong enough."
Fwoosh!!
The Command Spell of the demonic realm flared red, and Kay's and Bagest's mana circuits were forcibly intertwined as one.
"Aah…!! My master, my husband!! This deep, sticky connection of mana… it is truly exquisite!!"
Bagest completely mistook the master-servant bond formed by the Command Spell for a marital tie and was moved to tears.
In the end, following her lord's order, she hurriedly recreated her clothes with mana and only then let go of Kay's trouser leg.
"Oh, husband! Even if you used the wisdom of the demonic realm, you really overdid it!"
Afterward, Tamamo was slapping Kay's back as he lay face-down on the bed in the guest room, lecturing him nonstop. With her sorcery, she was gently massaging and healing his knotted muscles.
"Ow! Take it easy."
That was when Kay, hugging a cushion and grumbling, heard a knock at the door.
Knock, knock.
"Master! It's me! I'm coming in!"
With heavy footsteps, the door opened, and Bagest stormed in carrying an enormous amount of food that looked like it might collapse the tray.
"What is all this…?"
On the tray were huge chunks of meat piled mountain-high, along with carrots, potatoes, and whole roasted garlic cloves as thick as an adult's forearm.
"Since you took me in, as your wife I've come to cook and nourish my master's body! I saw the food you made yesterday and tried my own hand at imitating it!"
The appearance was like a barbarian barbecue, rough and unsophisticated compared to the sugar-drenched fare of the fairies.
Kay eyed it suspiciously, cut off a piece of meat, and put it in his mouth.
Crunch.
"...Huh?"
There was no sweetness of sugar. Instead, the meat's heavy natural juices, the saltiness of the coarse rock salt sprinkled over it, and the faint smoky aroma from the rough roasting blended together perfectly.
"...What the hell. This is way more edible than I expected? No, it's good! For a Fairy Kingdom resident, your sense of taste is actually pretty normal?"
"Hmph. The Fang Clan hunted and studied how to make use of beast flesh."
Bagest sat down beside Kay with a thump, her hips swaying as if her tail were wagging.
"Eat well, my master! You need your strength… Tonight, with that overflowing demonic-realm stamina of yours, you'll satisfy this body all night long like you did last night, won't you?"
"...Ask Tamamo about that."