Ch.113Chapter 113. All-Out War Against the Demon Army (4)

Lucy’s slash cut through Adora.

“Tch.”

When she didn’t feel the sensation of cutting through flesh, Lucy clicked her tongue.

This one was also an illusion.

As the phantom collapsed, Adora appeared from thin air, pressing down on the sword with one fan while attacking with another.

The Hero deflected the fan with her gauntlet, neutralizing the attack.

Clang-!

She had struck with the intention of completely destroying it, but the fan was surprisingly sturdy.

Lucy’s gaze remained fixed on the illusionist.

She couldn’t afford even a moment’s distraction, not knowing what falsehoods the illusionist might create next.

Her judgment was that since Adora was wrapped in bandages from head to toe, continuous close-quarters attacks would make it difficult for her to use illusion magic.

In the midst of unleashing a storm of attacks, suddenly Adora’s fan grew to the size of a person.

With her vision blocked, Lucy immediately slashed at it, but in her haste, she put too little force behind the strike and was deflected.

Seizing that opening, Adora thrust through the large fan with a stabbing attack.

It was an attack based on pressure point techniques, targeting either vital points of the body or the pathways of magical circulation.

“Got you!”

Lucy countered by grabbing the enemy’s arm and striking down with her sword hilt.

This time, she definitely felt the impact connect.

Crack

“Aaagh!”

She tried to strike again, but the fan spread open and throwing weapons flew out.

By the time she dodged and regained her stance, the distance between her and the illusionist had already widened.

“I’ll join in!”

“No!”

As Lin tried to activate Cosmos, Lucy stopped him.

“She might have already cast an illusion. Lin, stay there and protect the soldiers.”

Since Lucy was already overwhelmingly pushing Adora back, Lin readily complied.

Agreeing with Lucy that it would be better to block any variables the illusionist might create, Lin used his top-tier skills of presence detection and mind’s eye.

This was about capturing a Demon General.

There was no reason to hold back on skill grades.

Clang!

Adora’s attacks continued.

However, they were merely desperate attempts to keep her opponent immobilized.

As Lucy calmly defended and dodged, a gradual ease spread across her face.

Indeed, the wounds inflicted by the goddess were no ordinary injuries.

“This is too easy compared to Valtercruz. Have you become an honest shepherd girl in the meantime?”

At Lucy’s taunt, the illusionist gritted her teeth.

The mocker and the one forced to swallow the mockery.

The positions had completely reversed since Valtercruz.

“I… wasn’t always good at lying from the beginning.”

It was true.

She originally had no talent for lying.

She had only been forced to do so.

Adora, once an innocent girl and dancer from an artists’ village.

One day, she accidentally witnessed the well-respected village chief having an affair with another man’s wife.

Adora had been quietly practicing her fan dance when they sneaked in elsewhere and engaged in their affair.

“Have you seen the village chief?”

When the chief’s wife came looking for him, they were still in the midst of their tryst.

Not wanting to disturb the peace of the village, Adora shook her head.

“No.”

Noticing the wife’s visit, the chief fled with his mistress.

As he escaped, Adora saw him give her a slight nod.

This was her first lie in life.

“Ugh…!”

“Damn, you’re surprisingly tough!”

When she paused her attack due to exhaustion, Lucy immediately followed with a flurry of strikes.

Adora was tracking the trajectories with incredible concentration, barely managing to dodge.

Just one hit.

It seemed like one direct hit would be enough to capture her, but somehow the fight kept dragging on.

At some point, Lucy realized she was being drawn into the rhythm of movements created by the illusionist.

She found herself wanting to swing her sword according to Adora’s guidance, as if they were filming a meticulously choreographed action scene.

Seeing Lucy’s predicament, Adora smiled through the gaps in her bandages.

“Shall we continue dancing like this?”

After the village chief’s affair, Adora witnessed an old man regularly stealing from the village granary at night.

He was a pitiful person who had lost his son and daughter-in-law early and was raising his grandchild alone.

The villagers immediately suspected the old man, but Adora felt sorry for him.

When the dancer who performed every night in the square in front of the granary said she had never seen the old man, people withdrew their suspicions.

That was her second lie.

“Don’t get cocky!”

Lucy finally broke the flow.

She overcame the compulsion to keep swinging and sheathed her sword completely, freeing herself from the rhythm Adora was controlling.

The startled illusionist tried to spread her fan to bewitch Lucy, but Lucy thrust her sword first.

As Adora twisted her body to dodge sideways, Lucy’s fist was already striking her chest.

“Kuhuk!”

The illusionist, sent flying backward, struggled to get up.

Unable to even wipe the blood from her mouth, she had to calculate how to counter Lucy’s next attack.

But she hunched over and coughed up blood again.

“Adora, I was grateful to you back then.”

The dancer no longer wanted to lie.

But people’s wrongdoings kept increasing and were never corrected.

The village chief continued his affair.

The chief’s wife and the mistress’s husband harbored suspicions that rotted their hearts.

The old man kept stealing.

The villagers began to suspect each other.

One family’s child played instruments with genius talent, but it was the result of abuse.

The recently married newlyweds’ union was actually hastily arranged after the man had raped the woman, with both families hushing it up.

Each time, Adora was there.

She knew the truth behind every incident.

“You should stop doing this now.”

She no longer wanted to lie.

“You just need to look the other way, Adora.”

But the villagers forced her to lie.

Inevitably, Adora’s lies multiplied.

Ironically, the more she lied, the more the villagers began to fear her.

“Adora is a witch! She dances day and night, casting curses on our village!”

Gripped by fear, they captured the powerless dancer, led by the village chief, and tied her to a tree.

Adora begged for her life, claiming her innocence, but there were more who wanted to bury the truth.

When the dancer’s head was cracked open by stones and her eyes became bloodshot, the chief quickly set fire to the tree to silence her.

“AAAAAAAAHHHHH-!!!!”

Screaming in agony as her body burned, Adora was finally consumed by rage.

As the flames burned through the ropes binding her, the freed dancer spoke the truth, not lies.

“You are all sinners!”

And she showed them the falsehoods they wanted to see as illusions.

The village chief excitedly pointed to an illusion showing his innocence, but his wife stabbed him after seeing an illusion of him cheating.

The old man insisted he was not a thief, but he was beaten to death in the brawl that erupted among the suspicious villagers.

His young grandchild soon joined him in death.

Everyone denied their own faults while judging others according to their own assumptions, committing slaughter.

By the time the fire on Adora’s body had died down, she was the only one left alive.

Adora, who had unwillingly become a liar, sat down in a daze.

In the end, the villagers only believed what they wanted to believe as truth and self-destructed.

“Look, here’s someone who wasn’t rewarded for her good intentions.”

“Hmph, there’s only complacency in lies, what good intentions?”

The Demon Lord and the Dual Swordsman who came to her.

Before she could frown at the Dual Swordsman’s harsh words, the Demon Lord extended her hand.

“The betrayed, the abandoned, the unsaved. That’s what we demons are.”

At those words, Adora took her hand as if entranced, and thus became the illusionist of the Demon Generals.

“Adora! Surrender now!”

Lin shouted toward her as she collapsed again.

But the illusionist rejected the offer of surrender.

“I still hate humans, and desperately need affection.”

She raised her fan to point at the Hero and screamed in a fit.

“We are the betrayed, the abandoned, the unsaved. Lin, you are no different from us! They don’t cherish you!”

“That’s not true. Lin is the most precious person to me!”

“Don’t make excuses! You only think that way because he’s useful to you! If Lin had become a demon, you would have tried to cut him down without hesitation! Lin was destined to be our comrade! Because of you all! He was destined to fall due to your contempt and torment!”

“Stop lying!”

[It’s not a lie. If the goddess hadn’t sealed Lin’s emotions, the porter would have become a top-tier demon, and you would have died by the Shield Knight’s betrayal.]

“What…?”

When the Abyss suddenly intervened and confirmed it, Lucy staggered greatly.

And the illusionist didn’t miss that opening.

Thud!

“Ugh?!”

The pressure point strike aimed at her shoulder hit its mark, but due to lack of proper force, it had no effect.

Still, it was enough to make Lucy step back several paces.

“I will neither surrender nor die here.”

“Tch, if you can’t even use illusions properly, don’t act so high and mighty!”

“Illusions?”

Through the gaps in her bandages, Adora gave a terrifying smile that stretched to the edges of her mouth.

“Why do you think I can’t use them?”

The illusionist raised her open fan.

Lucy took a combat stance again, but the fan transformed into black smoke and dispersed into the air.

“Ultimate Skill”

[Falsehood: The Truth You’ve Been Ignoring]

At this time, as the sun set and even the twilight seeped into darkness, countless eyes of monsters appeared from within that darkness.

That line of gazes extended and continued, connecting from the northern front through the central region to the southern front.

It was literally a massive single front line of monsters revealing themselves after dropping their concealment.

“I couldn’t use it any better than this.”

A large unique mutant monster snatched the illusionist and tossed her onto its back.

Simultaneously, all the monsters began running toward the central front.

“No!”

The shocked Lin and Lucy slashed at the monsters in all directions, but there were too many for them to handle.

It had been a trap from the beginning.

While the succubus and incubus units, along with a small number of monsters used as bait, were being eliminated between the front line and Rowellina, the demon army had succeeded in concentrating all their forces.

They were completely outnumbered.

The Demon Lord’s command capabilities were questionable except for herself?

It was the opposite.

The Demon Generals’ troop deployment was superior.

They had been completely outplayed.

But Lin had prepared something for this moment.

“Lucy! Use the teleport scroll!”

The very thing he had requested from Tigria during the strategy meeting.

A wide-area teleport scroll with coordinates set around Tigria.

Lucy activated the scroll without hesitation.

A massive light enveloped the surroundings and soon disappeared, taking the Hero’s party and soldiers with it.