Author: Be sure to make your choice and vote at the pool in the end of the chapter.
Bakunawa was stunned for a moment, but that state just lasted for a quarter of a second before Sophia pounced at her, pointing the tip of her modified rapier into one of Bakunawa's eye, upon seeing that she was about to lose initiative, she immediately made her move.
Snow cold mist surrounded her body, freezing the sand tentacle binding her whole body, she then used her brute force to get away from the frozen binding given to her by her opponent and dodged the attack with a hair's breadth.
Sophia, however, did not just let go of her lead, she immediately pointed her fingers, and three spheres of super condensed fire that were shining brightly like stars materialized and immediately made their way into the direction of Bakunawa, Bakunawa anticipated her attack and used magic to create three spears of ice as they countered the rapidly approaching plasmas.
The collision of the two seemingly casual created loud explosions and a cloud of thick smoke that separated the two for a moment, for other people it would be impossible to look at the other side of this dense obstruction, but it is the opposite for Bakunawa as she can see it, a silhouette of a child as tall as herself pouncing to her at full speed, she used magic once again and made gauntlets out of ice and also dashed in the middle of the smoke, another collision, this time, between the sword and the glove made the smoke disappear immediately, alongside it, the vicinity that is once a complicated maze of thick-bodied trees became like that of a badly made clearing.
Trees were strewn over and monsters that failed to escape early were mutilated beyond recognition, however, the culprits did not even bat an eye to the destruction they made as they continued to clash with what all of their immense power could give.
The rapier slashed and stabbed while the fist Bakunawa blocked and punched, Sophia once again pointed her index finger at her front and shot a water bullet, Bakunawa tilted her head and dodged the projectile, the water attack, however, grazed her hair, causing her long silver hair to be shaved off in uneven halves, furthermore, the shockwave of the seemingly supercharged water bullet caused Bakunawa to momentarily lose her balance.
"Got you."
Sophia sneered as she clenched her fist and punched the jaw of the silver-scaled opponent of hers, or at least that's what she aimed for because Bakunawa immediately supported her falling frame by stomping her foot as she put the back of her palm in front of her jaw and then used her other palm to support the blocking arm, the defense successfully guarded against what would be a devastating blow, but the impact still caused her to be flung away into the air, shattering the gauntlets made out of ice in her arms.
"Oh, that might not be a very nice idea... good thing it heals immediately..."
Bakunawa stood right up and looked at her opponent, her whole body was smeared with blood and even her ears had some of it, she must have been surprised and attacked by the sound pulse that happened earlier, good thing that the alliance had a very good scouting monster in the form of the queen of arachnids, thus she already prepared her ice earplugs beforehand, though the sound is so strong that the earplugs shattered, at least she was not damaged before the fight.
_Seems like what she said was true... Sophia is a strategic menace, with a fatal family complex._
Bakunawa started to snicker, a snicker that turned into muffled laughter and then became audible became a little rasped until it became like that of a madman declaring some random bullshit in the streets, Sophia stared at her with a little creeped-out eye.
_... She did fall for it, huh?_
Sophia could not help but shake her head as she raised her hand and then materialized a water orb that had a mini typhoon swirling inside it, she then disappeared in front of the still laughing Bakunawa and appeared in the sky in which the direction Bakunawa was looking to.
Bakunawa was stunned for a moment but then sneered once again and rematerialized her gauntlets once more as she jumped off to meet the attack of Sophia whilst saying.
"Your smarts... seem to be overrated."
After she said that the "rasengan" and the frozen gauntlet collided, causing another devastating damage to the landscape of the forest, water blades mercilessly slashed around trees and destroyed intact soils as if they were hot knives cutting through butter, but in the middle of all that chaos, Sophia wore a smile while she is upside down facing the greatest challenge of her two lives, her dress was still drenched with blood and her face was no exception to it, she then said whilst smiling, her face a kiss away from Bakunawa's as the two attacks continued to collide and went on with their destruction.
"People who said those words before ended up with PTSD."
With this exchange of words, the two rivals backed down and lowered their postures and as they pounced at each other, the battle continued as the two participants abandoned their sense of surrounding and just focused on the enemy in front of them.
_____
Meanwhile, while the battle between the two strongest participants of the war is unfolding, all of the marching of either the alliance or the settlement forces came to a screeching halt, one force has their soldiers, generals, and commanders writhing in pain whilst they clutched their ears that have a flood-tier amount of blood coming out of them.
The silly sight of gigantic ogres rolling around like a boulder of flesh or the annoying screeches of the obsidian mantises however, are not something that can gauge the pain being felt by the four male pink bats as they squirm in the ground like worms, bashing their heads into the soil trying to ease the pain.
"GYAAAAHHH MY EARS! MY EARS!"
"UWAAAAH! UWAAAAH!"
They cried as if they were children and could not do anything to further describe how painful it was to have their oversensitive ears be overloaded with information, but really, you will just wonder, how did this happen? How is a war that is supposed to be hard because of these bats becoming something like comic relief?
Who is the person who did such a horrendous thing to them? No this is not a war crime anymore, this is not even about a war anymore, this is about using the greatest advantage of the bats against them, using something that they are so proud of as the main source of their humiliation.
This is a crime of humiliation.
Well, to know how these things happened, we have to go back some hours ago before the bat queen went outside their lair and even before all of the alliance monsters marched.
Every single person involved in the war, in this case, the battle in the first layer, is busily scurrying for their individual preparations. In the dead of the night, ballistae were slowly being revealed out of the sand, pointed in a perfect arc angle creating a mini net out of their trajectory, clearly the goal of these siege weapons is so obvious and does not need any further explanation.
Or at least that's what the enemies are thinking, at the camp of the Pink bats, the 4 male bats are singing an inaudible rhythm that only can be heard by their brainwashed army, prompting them to march forward like mindless zombies as they drool like one and walked like one. The commanders of the attackers in the first layer settlement were giddy because of how predictable the opponent would be.
But of course, they cannot blame the commander of the settlement, after all, how can she just hide a huge siege weapon like a ballista, right?
They continued to march sure of their victory without even using their illustrious illusions to conceal their flapping wings or their eye-catching color.
_I am not so proud of being a monster right now..._
The named goblin soldiers, who for days have set camp on the formation given to them by their temporary commander are thinking of the same thing, first, the bats, even though they already saw the formation of the named goblins that make it so that the unnamed goblins in the front of the enemy formation will get inside first and the orcs in the back will get destroyed by cavalry, they did not plan any form of counterattack.
Looking at the size of the hole that the oval-shaped formation they made, this fact is too obvious to ignore, so they can overload the place with bigger size so that the army can put up a fight and give an apt. time to make the 4 commanders prepare their attacks, of course, that is to say, that their commander will allow them to even attack.
These days, the people who are closely linked to the preparations of Eleanor get to know how diligent and thorough she is in smoothening any gaps created by their disadvantageous position of having a lack of anti-avian powers, so much so that the soldiers feel like they are not even in a downhill position.
_How admirable, no wonder she's the apple in the eye of Hara Sophia._
That's what the soldiers and the other war-related non-fighting personnel were thinking inside the settlement which is currently clogged up with a large boulder created by Eleanor, however, people who are not and were strictly forbidden by the commander to partake in the preparations, in short, the normal civilians was thinking something otherwise of what those people were thinking.
The civilians were completely forbidden to touch any kind of preparation materials or even participate in lifting things, only construction workers and a little bit of exemption on the non-combat sectors can have the clout to Eleanor's preparations, this is to prevent any accidental leakage of their underground preparations, the civilians were just ordered to use the Bayanihan to transfer their houses in the deeper parts of the cave, and just stay there and pray that the defense battle will be a success.
Of course, if one is to be kept in the dark about a certain matter, he or she will instinctively lean on the worst-case scenario and that is 'The settlement has slim chances of winning.' after this thought people will start to find someone to criticize, and for the goblins, the best one they can criticize is Eleanor.
First, the day the battle starts, she is nowhere to be seen inside the settlement as if she just disappeared out of existence, second the only thing she thought of, or at least they knew she thought of to counter the sound-based powers of the pink bats is a cork with dripping sands on them that they have to wear in the duration of the war, she has no plan how to kill the bats nor did she plan to partake in the frontline of the battlefield considering that her presence is yet to be seen up to this day.
_If only it was Lady Sophia who was commanding us, then we would win for sure._
All of the civilians of the first settlement were thinking of such a thing, but of course, the subject of their ire cannot give a single damn about what they are thinking about, after all, she has to win this war and not impress the public whatsoever.
She is currently in the middle of the magic circle, and both of her hands are clasping each other as she continuously chants a song of some sort that makes the magic circle emit bright light, she continues to pray, not bothering about anything, about the fact that she's covered in sweat or the fact that all of the subjects of her beloved are doubting her, she only thought of one thing.
_Victory, overwhelming and one-sided victory._
As a disciple of the Hero of the People, she has the pride of a winner, thus she cannot think of any outcome nor will she accept anything other than victory, as she was thinking of such things, the prayer stopped indicating the successful casting of the magic circle.
Eleanor slowly closed her eyes, and alongside it, her clasped hands slowly released each other, she then muttered one thing.
"Boom."
The moment she muttered those words, the covering of the funnel-shaped hole she made crumbled and a loud pulse of sound resounded.
Eleanor immediately dug deeper into the ground to avoid the damage of the pulse, but the monsters of the enemy who did not even know that such an attack would come could not evade such a thing, out of a sudden all of their ears were damaged and spurted blood that flowed like a flood, every single one of them screeched as if they are about to die as they clutched their bleeding ears and rolled to the ground.
"My ears! My ears! My ears are damaged!"
"What the hell was that!?"
All of them shouted such things as they sprawled their whole body as if they were sentient stones, however, these creatures have one thing in common, all of them use their eyes to see, so what will happen to a certain race who uses sound to "see" things?
The pink bats didn't have just a simple ear rupture, they felt like their brains were cramped with a 3d hd live feed of the whole situation of the forest, the fighting of the two hero prospects was projected to play by play, the screeching monsters, their dripping blood, the escaping bunnies, anxiously chirping birds, the rustle of trees, everything was fed directly into their brains without warning.
""What... was that...""
They cannot even scream and just slump quietly to the ground.
And just like that, the alliance lost the only tactical advantage of their war against Sophia.
______
Meanwhile, Jin, Bernardo, and Ruphas began running towards their target, the pink bats that were specially commanded to them by Eleanor, however, Bernardo and Jin could not help but notice something strange.
"Isn't Ruphas more eager than he usually is?"
Jin asked to which Bernard replied.
"Yeah... But I guess this is it?"
"What is?"
"The day that Ruphas will give justice to his name."
Author: Be sure to make your choice and vote at the pool in the end of the chapter.
Bakunawa was stunned for a moment, but that state just lasted for a quarter of a second before Sophia pounced at her, pointing the tip of her modified rapier into one of Bakunawa's eye, upon seeing that she was about to lose initiative, she immediately made her move.
Snow cold mist surrounded her body, freezing the sand tentacle binding her whole body, she then used her brute force to get away from the frozen binding given to her by her opponent and dodged the attack with a hair's breadth.
Sophia, however, did not just let go of her lead, she immediately pointed her fingers, and three spheres of super condensed fire that were shining brightly like stars materialized and immediately made their way into the direction of Bakunawa, Bakunawa anticipated her attack and used magic to create three spears of ice as they countered the rapidly approaching plasmas.
The collision of the two seemingly casual created loud explosions and a cloud of thick smoke that separated the two for a moment, for other people it would be impossible to look at the other side of this dense obstruction, but it is the opposite for Bakunawa as she can see it, a silhouette of a child as tall as herself pouncing to her at full speed, she used magic once again and made gauntlets out of ice and also dashed in the middle of the smoke, another collision, this time, between the sword and the glove made the smoke disappear immediately, alongside it, the vicinity that is once a complicated maze of thick-bodied trees became like that of a badly made clearing.
Trees were strewn over and monsters that failed to escape early were mutilated beyond recognition, however, the culprits did not even bat an eye to the destruction they made as they continued to clash with what all of their immense power could give.
The rapier slashed and stabbed while the fist Bakunawa blocked and punched, Sophia once again pointed her index finger at her front and shot a water bullet, Bakunawa tilted her head and dodged the projectile, the water attack, however, grazed her hair, causing her long silver hair to be shaved off in uneven halves, furthermore, the shockwave of the seemingly supercharged water bullet caused Bakunawa to momentarily lose her balance.
"Got you."
Sophia sneered as she clenched her fist and punched the jaw of the silver-scaled opponent of hers, or at least that's what she aimed for because Bakunawa immediately supported her falling frame by stomping her foot as she put the back of her palm in front of her jaw and then used her other palm to support the blocking arm, the defense successfully guarded against what would be a devastating blow, but the impact still caused her to be flung away into the air, shattering the gauntlets made out of ice in her arms.
"Oh, that might not be a very nice idea... good thing it heals immediately..."
Bakunawa stood right up and looked at her opponent, her whole body was smeared with blood and even her ears had some of it, she must have been surprised and attacked by the sound pulse that happened earlier, good thing that the alliance had a very good scouting monster in the form of the queen of arachnids, thus she already prepared her ice earplugs beforehand, though the sound is so strong that the earplugs shattered, at least she was not damaged before the fight.
_Seems like what she said was true... Sophia is a strategic menace, with a fatal family complex._
Bakunawa started to snicker, a snicker that turned into muffled laughter and then became audible became a little rasped until it became like that of a madman declaring some random bullshit in the streets, Sophia stared at her with a little creeped-out eye.
_... She did fall for it, huh?_
Sophia could not help but shake her head as she raised her hand and then materialized a water orb that had a mini typhoon swirling inside it, she then disappeared in front of the still laughing Bakunawa and appeared in the sky in which the direction Bakunawa was looking to.
Bakunawa was stunned for a moment but then sneered once again and rematerialized her gauntlets once more as she jumped off to meet the attack of Sophia whilst saying.
"Your smarts... seem to be overrated."
After she said that the "rasengan" and the frozen gauntlet collided, causing another devastating damage to the landscape of the forest, water blades mercilessly slashed around trees and destroyed intact soils as if they were hot knives cutting through butter, but in the middle of all that chaos, Sophia wore a smile while she is upside down facing the greatest challenge of her two lives, her dress was still drenched with blood and her face was no exception to it, she then said whilst smiling, her face a kiss away from Bakunawa's as the two attacks continued to collide and went on with their destruction.
"People who said those words before ended up with PTSD."
With this exchange of words, the two rivals backed down and lowered their postures and as they pounced at each other, the battle continued as the two participants abandoned their sense of surrounding and just focused on the enemy in front of them.
_____
Meanwhile, while the battle between the two strongest participants of the war is unfolding, all of the marching of either the alliance or the settlement forces came to a screeching halt, one force has their soldiers, generals, and commanders writhing in pain whilst they clutched their ears that have a flood-tier amount of blood coming out of them.
The silly sight of gigantic ogres rolling around like a boulder of flesh or the annoying screeches of the obsidian mantises however, are not something that can gauge the pain being felt by the four male pink bats as they squirm in the ground like worms, bashing their heads into the soil trying to ease the pain.
"GYAAAAHHH MY EARS! MY EARS!"
"UWAAAAH! UWAAAAH!"
They cried as if they were children and could not do anything to further describe how painful it was to have their oversensitive ears be overloaded with information, but really, you will just wonder, how did this happen? How is a war that is supposed to be hard because of these bats becoming something like comic relief?
Who is the person who did such a horrendous thing to them? No this is not a war crime anymore, this is not even about a war anymore, this is about using the greatest advantage of the bats against them, using something that they are so proud of as the main source of their humiliation.
This is a crime of humiliation.
Well, to know how these things happened, we have to go back some hours ago before the bat queen went outside their lair and even before all of the alliance monsters marched.
Every single person involved in the war, in this case, the battle in the first layer, is busily scurrying for their individual preparations. In the dead of the night, ballistae were slowly being revealed out of the sand, pointed in a perfect arc angle creating a mini net out of their trajectory, clearly the goal of these siege weapons is so obvious and does not need any further explanation.
Or at least that's what the enemies are thinking, at the camp of the Pink bats, the 4 male bats are singing an inaudible rhythm that only can be heard by their brainwashed army, prompting them to march forward like mindless zombies as they drool like one and walked like one. The commanders of the attackers in the first layer settlement were giddy because of how predictable the opponent would be.
But of course, they cannot blame the commander of the settlement, after all, how can she just hide a huge siege weapon like a ballista, right?
They continued to march sure of their victory without even using their illustrious illusions to conceal their flapping wings or their eye-catching color.
_I am not so proud of being a monster right now..._
The named goblin soldiers, who for days have set camp on the formation given to them by their temporary commander are thinking of the same thing, first, the bats, even though they already saw the formation of the named goblins that make it so that the unnamed goblins in the front of the enemy formation will get inside first and the orcs in the back will get destroyed by cavalry, they did not plan any form of counterattack.
Looking at the size of the hole that the oval-shaped formation they made, this fact is too obvious to ignore, so they can overload the place with bigger size so that the army can put up a fight and give an apt. time to make the 4 commanders prepare their attacks, of course, that is to say, that their commander will allow them to even attack.
These days, the people who are closely linked to the preparations of Eleanor get to know how diligent and thorough she is in smoothening any gaps created by their disadvantageous position of having a lack of anti-avian powers, so much so that the soldiers feel like they are not even in a downhill position.
_How admirable, no wonder she's the apple in the eye of Hara Sophia._
That's what the soldiers and the other war-related non-fighting personnel were thinking inside the settlement which is currently clogged up with a large boulder created by Eleanor, however, people who are not and were strictly forbidden by the commander to partake in the preparations, in short, the normal civilians was thinking something otherwise of what those people were thinking.
The civilians were completely forbidden to touch any kind of preparation materials or even participate in lifting things, only construction workers and a little bit of exemption on the non-combat sectors can have the clout to Eleanor's preparations, this is to prevent any accidental leakage of their underground preparations, the civilians were just ordered to use the Bayanihan to transfer their houses in the deeper parts of the cave, and just stay there and pray that the defense battle will be a success.
Of course, if one is to be kept in the dark about a certain matter, he or she will instinctively lean on the worst-case scenario and that is 'The settlement has slim chances of winning.' after this thought people will start to find someone to criticize, and for the goblins, the best one they can criticize is Eleanor.
First, the day the battle starts, she is nowhere to be seen inside the settlement as if she just disappeared out of existence, second the only thing she thought of, or at least they knew she thought of to counter the sound-based powers of the pink bats is a cork with dripping sands on them that they have to wear in the duration of the war, she has no plan how to kill the bats nor did she plan to partake in the frontline of the battlefield considering that her presence is yet to be seen up to this day.
_If only it was Lady Sophia who was commanding us, then we would win for sure._
All of the civilians of the first settlement were thinking of such a thing, but of course, the subject of their ire cannot give a single damn about what they are thinking about, after all, she has to win this war and not impress the public whatsoever.
She is currently in the middle of the magic circle, and both of her hands are clasping each other as she continuously chants a song of some sort that makes the magic circle emit bright light, she continues to pray, not bothering about anything, about the fact that she's covered in sweat or the fact that all of the subjects of her beloved are doubting her, she only thought of one thing.
_Victory, overwhelming and one-sided victory._
As a disciple of the Hero of the People, she has the pride of a winner, thus she cannot think of any outcome nor will she accept anything other than victory, as she was thinking of such things, the prayer stopped indicating the successful casting of the magic circle.
Eleanor slowly closed her eyes, and alongside it, her clasped hands slowly released each other, she then muttered one thing.
"Boom."
The moment she muttered those words, the covering of the funnel-shaped hole she made crumbled and a loud pulse of sound resounded.
Eleanor immediately dug deeper into the ground to avoid the damage of the pulse, but the monsters of the enemy who did not even know that such an attack would come could not evade such a thing, out of a sudden all of their ears were damaged and spurted blood that flowed like a flood, every single one of them screeched as if they are about to die as they clutched their bleeding ears and rolled to the ground.
"My ears! My ears! My ears are damaged!"
"What the hell was that!?"
All of them shouted such things as they sprawled their whole body as if they were sentient stones, however, these creatures have one thing in common, all of them use their eyes to see, so what will happen to a certain race who uses sound to "see" things?
The pink bats didn't have just a simple ear rupture, they felt like their brains were cramped with a 3d hd live feed of the whole situation of the forest, the fighting of the two hero prospects was projected to play by play, the screeching monsters, their dripping blood, the escaping bunnies, anxiously chirping birds, the rustle of trees, everything was fed directly into their brains without warning.
""What... was that...""
They cannot even scream and just slump quietly to the ground.
And just like that, the alliance lost the only tactical advantage of their war against Sophia.
______
Meanwhile, Jin, Bernardo, and Ruphas began running towards their target, the pink bats that were specially commanded to them by Eleanor, however, Bernardo and Jin could not help but notice something strange.
"Isn't Ruphas more eager than he usually is?"
Jin asked to which Bernard replied.
"Yeah... But I guess this is it?"
"What is?"
"The day that Ruphas will give justice to his name."
