‘No... I can’t lose. Then I will really be finished.’
Raphael intuitively sensed it.?He might lose...
The understanding that archangels were?born with far?transcended the general category. The more Raphael exchanged blows with Hayate, the more he realized the difference in level.?He decided not to ask ‘why.’
Raphael had experienced it with Grid.
A human being who grew at a tremendous rate over time.
After thinking that such an existence had appeared again, he could understand Hayate’s strength.?He also couldn’t use the excuse of being suppressed by the dimensional effect of the Overgeared World, which was dominating h.e.l.l.
The other person was just a soul.?He was already dead. He was in a much more disadvantageous position than Raphael.
Therefore, Raphael reflected on himself.?It was about the part of himself that hadn’t developed despite being born before any other human being and living for nearly eternity.
'... First of all, let's get over this crisis.'
After that, he would also struggle like he was an ephemeral being.?He would never go through this humiliation again.
The determined Raphael fought desperately.?He spread all seven pairs of hidden wings and flew in a manner that was lighter than a b.u.t.terfly. From an advantageous alt.i.tude, he fired beams of light, stabbed his spear, and suppressed Hayate like a deadly bee.
‘There is no room to intervene...’
The Black and White sisters became contemplative as they rushed to stop Raphael.
Hayate stood still and swung his sword.?Every time dozens of flashes of light crossed around him, a shockwave was generated.
In the sisters’ eyes, Raphael’s movements couldn’t be read properly.?Even the hierarchy of a great demon was shabby in front of the 1st ranked Archangel.?The gap was bigger than expected, so the sisters who had been following Raphael with the goal of ‘I’ll interfere with Asgard at a critical moment’ became frustrated.
They said they would betray Raphael when the opportunity came, but they found that they couldn’t have done much damage to him.?It was a situation that would’ve been frustrating if they had a normal mentality.?If they were the sisters from a few years ago, they would’ve run away with their eyes tightly closed, turning a blind eye to the situation.
In reality, they repeatedly ran away because they couldn’t handle the humiliation they suffered due to being ugly. They had completely become used to it.?But it was different now.?After being trampled on by Grid several times and continuing to challenge him, their mental strength was trained. Eventually, it became so solid that they reached out to Grid first and offered him a deal.
Thump, thump...
The sisters managed to calm their trembling hearts and gradually narrowed the distance to the battlefield.?They focused on the flashes that spread nonstop around Hayate.
Just once.?The sisters waited for that moment of chance, the opportunity to catch Raphael’s movements.
In the meantime, Hayate continued to get hurt.?His posture was as upright as it was in the beginning, but his clothes were already in tatters.?He had already been cut several times and blood-red vitality drained from the stabbed soul.
“How dare you...!”?Raphael quickly sensed the intentions of the lowly demons.
In fact, he was expecting a betrayal from the beginning.?How could he trust evil beings??However, even if he knew it in advance, he couldn’t control his anger when he saw how they were trying to betray him.
How dare you...Even you guys are ignoring me...!
The trajectory of the rain of feathers pouring down toward Hayate was twisted. It swirled like it had been swept away by a typhoon and bombarded the Black and White sisters.?At this moment—
Step.
Hayate had been standing upright and preventing the rain of feathers, the rays that continued to bend as if reflected in a mirror, and the flowing and smoothly connected spear strikes. Now Hayate took his first step.
Raphael’s eyes widened and gooseb.u.mps appeared on his arms.?The all-out offensive that was aiming to kill Hayate—in the aftermath of briefly withdrawing some of them, he lost the means to stop Hayate’s advance.
It meant that with his strength, all he could do was tie up Hayate’s feet.
Hayate’s sword soared like lightning and collided with Raphael’s wings.?Raphael folded his wings to form a sphere, using them as a s.h.i.+eld. Then his vision spun a few times. The shock that penetrated deep into the s.h.i.+eld was shaking him wildly.
“Kuek...!”
After shaking off Hayate’s counterattack, Raphael spread his wings again. Hayate’s rapid pursuit filled his vision. Raphael adjusted the halo’s?trajectory to shoot a beam of light to destroy that b.a.s.t.a.r.d’s posture. Then he stabbed his spear.
A fierce air battle ensued.?Hayate’s swordsmans.h.i.+p seemed to have been trained by repeating the same movements tens of thousands of times and was very solid. He repeatedly blocked Raphael’s spear and dug in.
Raphael’s spear finally started to move sideways.?A spear was inherently more powerful when it was stabbed.?However, the advantage of abandoning the speed of a stab and swinging horizontally was also great. The large area made it difficult to defend.?Thanks to this, Raphael narrowly fended off Hayate’s attack. However, he couldn’t withstand the force and fell to the ground.
It was strange.
Dragon Slayer Hayate—he was much more powerful than the rumors.
Raphael quickly judged as he was forced on the defensive.?The odds of winning were small.?This wasn’t the time to save his strength.
Raphael’s wings grew by hundreds of times and dominated his territory.?It was the construction of a mental world.?He planned to use a secret move to overcome the dimensional effect and turn the situation around.
Then Hayate opened his mouth for the first time.
It was a dry, but solid voice.
He was exhausted, but unshakable.
Voices with two sides that couldn’t be mixed flowed out.
“n.o.blesse Oblige.”
“......!”
It was the unfolding of the mental world.?Hayate’s mental world spread out urgently like he was being chased by something.?Perhaps due to the inherent nature of the mental world, there was no delay so the completion was faster than Raphael’s.
Waaahhhhhhhh!
An illusion of countless crowds appeared behind Hayate.?They were all screaming urgently.?They must’ve been chased by something and were on the run.?They looked like people pushed to the edge of the cliff.
A cliff rose under Hayate and Raphael’s feet.?The ground was far away. Everything seemed to be a small dot.
Raphael’s heart sank.?Suddenly, the wings that had returned to seven pairs had hardened as if they had been petrified. He realized that he could no longer fly.?If he fell from here, he would die...
An Absolute and an archangel falling to his death??It was impossible in reality.?However, this was Hayate’s mental world.?He didn’t know what would happen.
Raphael was engulfed by an ominous feeling and tried to unfold his mental world again, which had become blocked halfway. But for some reason, it was unsuccessful.
Kurarararara!
A dragon was seen flying from the other side of the sky.?It seemed to be the main culprit that drove the large crowd to the cliff.
“Uhh...? Even if this is your mental world, how did you materialize a dragon?”
Dragons—a very n.o.ble species that was an Absolute from birth.?It wasn’t easy to fully embody it in reality, no matter the power used. If that was possible, Asgard would’ve used the dragon as force a long time ago.?However, there was a guy who did it right in front of him.
“Don’t be afraid.”?Hayate didn’t respond to Raphael’s questions.?He just shouted to the frightened crowd, “...You can rest a.s.sured that I will offer myself as a sacrifice to deal with the dragon’s wrath.”
This was the shout of a n.o.bleman who hadn’t forgotten his duty even in death.?‘n.o.blesse Oblige’ wasn’t the mental world of Dragon Slayer Hayate.
It was the mental world of the ‘n.o.bleman Hayate,’ who was powerless but still shouldered responsibility.?It was a mental world that had its potential buried as the Dragon Slayer in his lifetime and blossomed only after he died and forgot he was the Dragon Slayer.
‘This...?’
Raphael saw through the ident.i.ty of n.o.blesse Oblige.?A world created to protect those weaker than oneself and killed enemies stronger than oneself—the purpose was mutual destruction.
This was a place where both the master and the intruder were sacrificed to the dragon.?Due to the sacrifice of the master of this world, it exerted tremendous coercive power. As a result, Raphael couldn’t function properly.?The evidence was that in addition to the function of his wings and halo being sealed, the mental world he had been training for years had become ineffective.
“How can a human have such a n.o.ble mental world...? Or is this mental world possible because you are human?”
Responsibility and sacrifice—these were the keywords that ran through n.o.blesse Oblige.?Those who were born an Absolute could never have this mental world.?Ironically, n.o.blesse Oblige was powerful because it was the mental world of an underdog.
“Eh...?”?Raphael’s body floated in the air.?Hayate grabbed his wrist and along with Raphael, they started to fall down the cliff with no end in sight.
“Let...! Let go!”?Raphael struggled desperately.?He didn’t want to die in this way.?It would be a disastrous failure.?He would never regain his position again.?He was already afraid of the humiliating gazes he would receive when he opened his eyes in heaven again.
.
Kurarararara!
The dragon chased after the two people as they fell into the darkness.?Thanks to this, the crowd survived, but Hayate and Raphael’s deaths became even more certain.?It was literally a sacrifice.
“s.h.i.+t...!”
He never thought he would die at the same time as a human being, and it was even someone who was already dead.
...No, it was too early to give up.?Raphael’s eyes, which had been shaking, s.h.i.+fted fiercely.?He noticed that the dragon chasing after them and firing a Breath was full of wounds.
Raphael cut off Hayate’s hand holding him.?He moved quickly and stomped on Hayate’s shoulders. Then he leapt toward the dragon.?He was confident that he could handle the Breath of a dying dragon.?He intended to break through the Breath head-on, grabbed hold of the dragon’s wings, and hung on.?But at this moment—
“......!”
The dragon’s body started to swell. The head, body, and wings grew many times larger and the scales all turned red.?The ambient temperature rose rapidly.?The wind carried a hot fire.
“...Trauka?”?the completely mesmerized Raphael murmured.?The process of a dragon, so wounded it didn’t seem strange if it would die soon, transforming?into Fire Dragon Trauka, which was said to be the strongest of the Old Dragons...
The shock of witnessing it in real time was indescribable. Raphael’s mind went blank.
There was a sharp friction sound like hundreds of blades ricocheting off each other. It rose like a melody.
Raphael, who was now tired of being surprised, s.h.i.+fted his gaze.?He could see a silver aura rising from Hayate’s shoulders.?The ident.i.ty of this energy, which was eerie just to look at, was naturally known to Raphael.?It was the strength that could kill a dragon.
The moment he was chased by a dragon, Dragon Slayer Hayate’s subconscious mind was reminded of Fire Dragon Trauka and he revived this power.
It was the moment when the n.o.bleman Hayate and Dragon Slayer Hayate were in perfect harmony.
“One man, two mental worlds...”
Raphael saw a miracle he had never imagined and shuddered.?At this moment, he couldn’t even blame Hayate or become jealous.?This wasn’t a fairy tale about a sudden change in personality or a different way of seeing people.?It was just pure reflex.
Finally, the clean eyes of the angel were swallowed up by the sword energy of a Dragon Slayer and the fire of the Fire Dragon.