Loren was able to smoothly execute the first step of his plan, as it was something he had done multiple times: performing self-boost with the magic received from Gula. He didn’t really understand the details, but he somehow managed to do it by following the sensation and mental images. He had never failed at executing self-boost, maybe because Lapis’ teaching method was good.
“That again? Your skill doesn’t match your determination, does it?”
Luxuria moved first this time, as if he could sense magic coursing through Loren’s body.
Instead of using his fist, the Evil God attacked with a kick. Loren used the flat of his sword to defend himself from the impact and wordlessly focused his awareness towards Shayna.
[‘There’s a somewhat strange aura, so I feel a bit reluctant…’]
Shayna didn’t know what was happening in the outside world since Loren wasn’t sharing his vision with her.
Normally, Loren found her state to be quite pitiful and would try to share his senses with her as much as possible. But this time, he thought he shouldn’t share his vision even if she asked. Lapis and him were old enough that shocking sights didn’t have that much impact on them anymore. But Shayna was much younger, and Loren was worried about the mental impact she would take.
After sharing that thought with Loren, Shayna began supplying him with magic power.
The power he had received from Gula was immense and powerful, but it would be exhausted soon if he kept using it. In order to push back the point of exhaustion, Loren had asked Shayna to supply him more power with Energy Drain. This would dramatically extend the length of his self-boost; Loren himself couldn’t even predict for how long he would be able to use it.
“Is this a war of attrition, I wonder?”
Sucking from Lapis would mean preying on an ally. Since she still didn’t know how much power an incomplete King of Death like Shayna could absorb, Evil Gods like Gula and Luxuria were out of the question. Hence, the targets of Shayna’s Energy Drain were the trees in the surrounding and the naked men, almost all of which had fallen.
It seemed like Shayna had also realized that Loren was using a stronger version of self-boost. The effect of Energy Drain was stronger than ever: the trees withered in the blink of an eye while the men’s bodies became wizened.
Receiving such an immense supply of power from Shayna, Loren focused only on the greatsword he was holding. Even while dodging punches and kicks that held deadly power, his mind was wholly occupied by the thought of slaying his opponent.
Before long, Loren could feel something clicked in his mind.
“You won’t make any progress if you continue to defend only… huh?”
Luxuria broke off in the middle of the sentence. Loren had suddenly attacked. The Evil God leapt back to dodge, his eyes widened at the speed of the strike. He was built much larger than Loren, and the scene of him leaping lightly looked rather unpleasant for some reason.
But Gula and Lapis didn’t have time to pay attention to him; they were captivated by Loren’s strike. It was released at such a speed they had never seen from Loren.
“What was that just now?”
“That is…”
Loren let out a roar, his voice making the air vibrate like a jolt of electricity. Lapis reflexively covered her ears with her hands and recoiled. Gula stood still, her expression stiffened slightly and Luxuria unthinkingly stopped moving at Loren’s sudden change.
Loren raised his greatsword and charged at Luxuria. He didn’t seem to have a specific aim, didn’t even set up a proper path for the blade. He simply struck at the Evil God consecutively.
Luxuria was able to somehow dodge the first few blows, but he soon gave that up. He reinforced his hands with magic and instead chose to meet Loren’s attacks directly.
That showed how fierce Loren’s attacks were. Even if Luxuria had chosen to continue dodging them, he would have needed to prepare to take some hits.
That said, even though Luxuria’s hands were reinforced with magic, him parrying Loren’s strikes with bare hands was still quite extraordinary. But Luxuria himself also found Loren’s attacks to be extraordinary.
“What’s with this boy?! Isn’t he too fast?!”
Speed-wise, Luxuria should have had the upper hand, seeing how he was using bare fists while Loren was wielding a heavy sword. But he noticed that the attacks successively coming at him matched the speed and frequency of his fists.
Luxuria shot a magic shock wave from his fist in order to gain some distance from Loren. But Loren not only cut off the shock wave but also continued to pursue him.
“What is this?! If you’re capable of something like this, do it right from the beginning! It’d be much cooler, right?”
Seeing Loren suddenly switch to offensive only, Gula complained with a voice full of expectation.
Next to her, Lapis scowled intently at Loren, who was attacking continuously with a power she had never seen before. His movements seemed to be different from his usual rampages, even if she also counted the ones she had just witnessed.
“Maybe that’s what it is?”
“What? Lapis-chan, if you know he was hiding a secret talent like this, you should have told me.”
Gula pat Lapis on the back as she told her this. But the next moment, she was surprised by Lapis grabbing her top.
“It’s not that! This is unlike what I know!”
“W-wait a bit, Lapis-chan. If you pull that hard, it’ll show!”
Gula frantically pulled down her tube top, which had ridden up thanks to Lapis’ grabbing.
Lapis didn’t notice Gula’s distress at all. Her mind was full of the realization of the god damn thing Loren had done.
“He is combining them!”
“Combining… what with what?”
“He was combining self-boost technique with his rampage!”
Lapis had guessed correctly.
Loren had known that he wouldn’t have been able to compete against Luxuria if he fought the usual way. So, he had decided to activate his rampage state, but not from a normal state as usual: he had activated it from the enhanced state after using self-boost. He had simply thought that if going into rampage from a normal state could make him become relatively strong, then going into rampage from an enhanced state would make him become even stronger. And he wasn’t wrong about that.
“Isn’t that a good thing? Physically fighting against one of us Evil Gods is overwhelming for humans.”
Luxuria couldn’t make any effective counterattacks against Loren. Whenever he was about to throw a punch or a kick, countless slashes would come at him, driving him into a defensive stance.
From the look of it, the fight had become one-sided, with attacks coming from Loren only. Some of Luxuria’s defenses had come a bit late, and Gula believed it would only be a matter of time before he took a blow.
“This is not good! Loren always loses consciousness as a backlash from his rampages! If he forcibly enhanced his rampage, do you understand how much backlash his body will have to take?!”
If he forcibly did something he shouldn’t have been able to do, he would have to pay an appropriate price.
Rampages caused a lot of damages to Loren’s body to begin with. It hadn’t been fatal so far and he hadn’t sustained any irrecoverable damages because he had always exhausted his strength and lost consciousness before reaching that point.
But this time, Shayna was continuously supplying him with power, and Lapis worried that this rampage might cause dangerous damages to Loren. Not to mention that he was supplementing the rampage with the power received from an Evil God. Lapis wasn’t sure how harsh the backlash would be.
“We must stop him!”
“We can, but… It’ll mean he gives up.”
“That…”
Once the battle was stopped, it was unlikely that Loren would be able to enter the fight again. Unable to continue fighting would mean giving up, which meant he lost.
If it was just losing, then Lapis wouldn’t hesitate at all. But it was not an exaggeration to say that losing here meant death to Loren.
“He might not be able to recover… But if the fight stops here, he’ll die mentally…”
“If that’s the case, we should quickly make a decision… Even if that idiot is completely rotten, he’s still an Evil God, and he won’t just simply take a blow anytime soon… If there’s an opening now, Loren probably can make it.”
“An opening…”
Loren continued to attack, and Luxuria continued to dodge, even though just barely. Lapis watched them and thought about how to create an opening for Loren.
With folded arms, Lapis contemplated for a while. Then she threw a question at Gula, who was watching her with interest.
“Gula, is it correct to say that Luxuria is lustful, and a philanthropist who is alright with both men and women?”
“Your words are a bit too generous, but that’s right.”
“Which does he prefer, men or women?”
“He has no preference. He likes anything and everything with no discrimination. Macho or lanky, men or women, young or old, they are all the objects of his lust.”
“Hm, in short…”
Lapis unfolded her arms, extracted both arms from her sleeves, and put her hands inside her clothes. She rummaged for a while, then finally placed both hands on her lapel and took a deep breath.
“Luxuria!”
She didn’t need a response. But when she confirmed that the Evil God had turned away from his fight and looked towards her, she pulled her lapels open.
Of course, her clothes fell away from her upper body as a result. Moreover, Lapis had taken off her chest cover during the rummaging earlier, and her naked upper body was now fully exposed with not a single thing concealing it.
Her action was so sudden that both Gula and Luxuria were surprised. They had thought she would do something, but she had just undressed and exposed her upper body. Gula thought Lapis had been thinking too much and lost her mind, but Luxuria was captivated by the naked sight of the two bulges and their darker tips.
“Well! Those look delicious…”
To someone who liked both men and women and could associate anything with lust like Luxuria, the sight of Lapis’ half-naked body was so beautiful that it was more than enough to distract him even during a fight.
However, his opponent, Loren, was in a berserk state, and wouldn’t be distracted even if Lapis had gone completely nude.
The result was, even though Luxuria had only been distracted for one moment, it was enough of an opening for Loren, who had nothing in mind but the fight.
The first blow was a direct hit on the top of the head.
Luxuria’s head wasn’t split open as his magical defense seemed to be still working, but the impact made him stagger. An upward slash followed right after, and a scream erupted from the Evil God’s mouth.
Even so, Loren’s attacks didn’t stop. Luxuria’s defense seemed still held on tight, so the blade didn’t cut into his flesh. But the sound of steel continuously clashing against flesh and the Evil God’s high-pitched scream reverberated in the air.
Amidst all that, Lapis straightened her clothes with a slight blush on her cheeks.
“That idiot. Even the way he got defeated is so stupid that I’m speechless…”
“He’s been hit quite a lot of times, so could you put Loren to sleep now?”
“Let Loren hit him a bit more to weaken him, then I’ll stop this fight. Nevertheless, Lapis-chan, it was really brave. And nice boobs you have there.”
“I-it’s not like it’s the end of the world if I show them.”
It was clear from Lapis’ expression that her reply had been just a bluff. She had literally taken her clothes off for Loren, and Gula decided that it would be cruel to tease her further. She went to check and confirmed that the injuries-covered Luxuria had been sufficiently beaten up, then took a nibble at Loren’s magic and stamina as she had done before, stopping the fight. If not for this, Loren would have still been slashing at Luxuria.