Chapter 379: Learning the Tricks

"..." I push myself up from the floor as Qyraen returns with a short-hafted spear. The spear has blades on both ends and is a far more complex weapon than the simple ones she was using before.

"I see you preferred to rest rather than find a weapon," Qyraen says, running a hand across her forehead and sweeping it upward to push her hair back, wiping the blood that had trickled down. The blood stains the blonde strands a vivid, rusty red in the matted patches.

'I still have the bracers... they're good enough to defend myself with...' I notice Qyraen is wearing some kind of belt with four spheres on it. I wonder what that belt is, because she wasn't wearing it before.

"Whatever, come on," I say, concealing a dagger I found buried in the gold while I was resting.

"You're in such a hurry. I bet you had time to think about what I said, didn't you?" She takes a calmer step forward, seeming to stall so she can rest at least a little.

"I've thought enough, and I don't care about your madness, and I won't accept anything."

"...What a shame. Your foolishness is simply unbelievable. What's the point of being a queen if you don't seek more power to maintain the top you're on?" She takes another step, and so do I. The tension before this fight begins is terribly high.

"I don't need more power. My wife and I can already handle everything we need to."

"Hahaha, what a joke. You think a wife is worth more than transcending to a higher state of life?"

"That isn't transcendence. Even I can see that, knowing almost nothing about it." She takes a deep breath, burying her hatred inside herself as she charges toward me.

"!!!" She's too fast for me to dodge, so I'm forced to grab the dagger I hid and block the blow, because the bracers alone wouldn't have been enough.

"You think your opinion, which goes against mine, is more solid without any proof?" She kicks me in the stomach while spinning the blade to try to hit me with the spear's other edge, forcing me to take the kick to avoid being struck by the blade.

The blood on my hands from my broken nails makes it very hard to grip the dagger, but I don't let go of it so I'm not left completely defenseless.

"There are 30,000 years of history." She delivers another brutal strike with her spear, aiming at my dagger to disarm me.

"30,000 years. An era of my history that I studied incessantly since childhood to understand." I try to shift the dagger to the side to slice her fingers off, but she spins the spear, using the other end to thrust at me, forcing me to retreat backward.

"You—"

"SHUT UP!" She cuts me off with a shout, delivering a high kick that throws me backward. I feel an intense pain in my back because of the pillar that had crushed me earlier, and I end up unable to handle the blows well.

"I'm still speaking. It's rude to interrupt someone like that, don't you think? I gave you the chance for a fair fight in this vault, a fight where personal experience is worth more than brute power."

"A scenario where YOU are the one with the advantage. You are weaker than me, you have less magic than me, you have less physical strength than me, you have less mobility than me, and you have less combat experience." She presses me even more intensely with a rapid sequence of spear strikes, no longer allowing me to retreat.

"As a queen, I gave you an advantageous scenario, where everything that would define the winner would be your own ability to fight. I showed you a piece of our history and gave you the chance to become something better." She spins the blade, striking the shaft against my palm and forcing me to drop the dagger.

"And how do you repay me? Running away and throwing things at me like a desperate child." I leap upward using my wings while my tail, which grabbed a fistful of coins, hurls them at Qyraen.

Before she fully recovers her vision, I drop down on top of her, using my weight and the scales on my tail as a weapon to strike her, which violently throws her backward and sends her crashing into a pile of gold bars.

"..." I grab a fistful of coins from the floor, and since I no longer have my nails to carry electricity, I discharge it into the gold and throw them at Qyraen. The coins heat up to the point where the gold turns reddish, which is about 500 to 600 degrees Celsius.

"!!!" Qyraen leaps upward, narrowly dodging the coins as I throw more heated ones at her. Of course, I have to be quick to avoid the coins burning my hand, but I keep throwing them, spending the electricity my body has, since I don't know how to generate grand electrical attacks, and I don't think I even can.

"That's exactly what I was talking about. You're a pathetic coward. You need stupid tricks just to have a chance of hurting me. You haven't landed a single fair blow on me. You're a failure as a queen." She starts flying to get out of the coins' range and then hurls her spear at me.

I jump to the side to dodge, but she takes advantage of this to execute a swift dive and grab me by the waist while flying. She spins her entire body to shatter any sense of balance I might have and slams me into the ground.

"Ghhnnmm!!" I hear the snap of my wings breaking, and before I can get up, I feel her weight on my stomach. The violent impact makes me vomit blood.

"That's the same trick you used just a few moments ago. If tricks are all you have to beat me, then you're going to need a lot more tricks than that."

"You don't— GhaaahHhhhh!!!!" She lets out a scream, writhing, as I touch her belly and release all the electricity left in my body. Even though her body conducts electricity well, it doesn't cause as much damage as I'd like, but it opens up a window for me to pin her to the ground and mount her.

"The way I fight... isn't something you can judge... y-you don't know me! You don't know what I've been through!" I punch her face without stopping, even though my punches aren't nearly as strong as hers.

"Gyaaaa!!" She screams again when I bite her neck, trying to tear a chunk out, which would be lethal, but before I can bite down harder, she shoves me off and manages to break free, throwing me backward as she clutches her shoulder.

"Are you serious? Biting me like an animal?" She picks up a leather pouch from the floor and shakes it, dumping the contents onto me.

"A-Ahh!" A kind of platinum-gold powder falls into my eyes, making them water and making me cough. I stagger backward to my feet, seeing everything blurry.

I grab the first thing I touch on the floor, something long, and throw it at her. She catches it and tosses it aside, charging at me with her hands. She tries to punch me, but I block with my bracers and hear a cracking sound, which makes her recoil, shaking her hand.

'I-I'm in so much pain...' I try to see her properly, but everything is completely blurred. I take a deep breath until I hear a kind of "vusshh" sound and a faint buzzing before I'm struck by something that throws me to the ground.

"!!!" I try to get up as my tail thrashes violently against the floor and my broken wings attempt to move.

"Haa... that took long enough," I hear Qyraen's exhausted voice as she approaches.

"Stop struggling. It's a set of bolas made of very strong chains. Even I couldn't break these..." She collapses to her knees on the floor near me while I still see everything blurred.

"Y-You cheater!!" I realize now that that strange belt with the balls she brought on her waist was the bolas.

"You want to talk about cheating now? You're just a stepping stone for me to transcend. I just need you to stay quiet... haaa..." Despite everything, Qyraen is gasping, coughing blood onto the floor.

I try to move my hands to push the chains upward, but Qyraen leans in and grabs a section, pulling it, which tightens around me even more. I thrash around, trying to kick her even though I can't see anything properly.

"Once I learned your stupid fighting pattern, your effectiveness dropped a lot, didn't it? There's a limit to how far cheap tricks can take a warrior. But take pride in this— at least you lasted far too long... and I admit, you could have won with very high odds." She says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"...Y-You bitch..." I start to cry, not believing I lost to something as stupid as that strange belt she was wearing. I wonder if the pouch with that powder she threw in my eyes was luck or planning.

"You're lucky, Demon Queen. I need you alive, otherwise I would cut your head off... I'm going to look for one of the medical kits in the vault. I'll be back in a few minutes," she says, getting up while practically dragging herself. I try to break free in the meantime.

Even trying to gnaw at the chains with my teeth to maybe break them. If my hands could reach the top of them, or if my wings weren't broken, it would be so much easier.

"S-So unfair... why did I lose... I-I tried so hard... I was so close..." Even though I struggle to break free, the defeat is demoralizing, falling on me like an anvil that crushes my weak resistance.