Chapter 377: Strategically Balanced

"You know, this is interesting, don't you think?" Qyraen says, taking a step forward. I take a deep breath and take a step too. I should make use of my speed — with her wearing armor and me without, it's the only advantage I have.

"There's nothing interesting about this, you lunatic!" She gives a scornful smile.

"You really don't know how to seize possibilities." She advances, and the movement forces me back. She kicks the ground, hurling gold coins at me. To avoid getting hit, my tail presses against the floor and launches me upward, and I dodge a thrust from her spear.

"I-If I die, wouldn't that be a failure?!" I say, alarmed by the strike as I land softly on the ground. That wasn't a restrained blow — she clearly meant to seriously injure me.

"Yes, you need to be alive, but alive doesn't mean intact. If I wound you, that's even better." She grabs a handful of gold and starts throwing coins at me. I dodge, uncertain what to do, as she closes in until the coins in her hands run out.

She swings her spear at me, slamming it hard against my katana, which makes my hands tremble.

"I had given up on transcending in the past when I found out about this. Your 'father' was too strong. The Demon King would have defeated me even if we were both without magic." She speaks while pressing the spear downward.

"But you... you were an opportunity. The heavens are favoring me, don't you think?" She throws a kick that I block with my knee, but it hurts because she's wearing armor and I'm not.

"!!!" Her spear nearly grazes my shoulder, but I manage to tilt my katana to the side, deflecting her spear. I try to move the blade toward her throat — an exposed area — but she blocks with the armor plate on her right hand.

"You have good combat instincts. If you weren't so weak, you'd be a worthy opponent." She tries to kick again, and when I move to block, she pulls back and spins her entire body in a 360. I duck, dodging the spear, but I take a kick to my chest that throws me backward.

I roll on the ground, dodging a strike from her spear, while my tail aggressively slaps the coins, hurling them at Qyraen, who shields her eyes with her hand.

Clank.

I throw a dagger I found on the ground against her armor, forcing her a step back. I start grabbing any weapon I can find on the floor, forcing her to protect her face with her hands since she has no helmet or any defense for her head.

"Seriously? You're going to keep running and throwing things like some desperate fool?" She runs toward me, shielding her face, but when she gets close, my tail grabs her leg and pulls. I spin my body and kick upward from below, striking her chin with one leg while my hands on the ground serve as support to increase the force.

"What an amateur move." She grabs my leg and spins me, slamming me against a pile of gold. My tail seizes her hand and twists, forcing her to let go to avoid breaking her hand.

'She's being cautious... she can lose!' Her defensive attitude fires me up. She's really relying on her armor to protect her, so as long as I keep pressing her with attacks to the face, she won't be able to fight fully.

"W-Whoa!!" She throws her spear at me, nearly piercing my stomach. I dodge by a hair's breadth — to the point where my clothes are still cut, almost touching my skin.

When she tries to move, I throw my katana at her, leaving myself unarmed. She takes advantage of this to rush at me fast. As she closes in, I jump onto her, my tail wrapping around her waist while I try to strike her with my sharp claws.

"Oh?" She grabs my hand and sees the electricity coursing through my claws. It's not magic — it's natural bioelectricity that my dragon body generates, so I can use it.

"Clever girl, not bad." She punches me in the face, throwing me backward. I touch my face and see blood starting to drip.

'I-It hurts...' I stagger back, feeling intense pain. It seems the pain reduction isn't working fully — it's not completely inactive, just working partially.

"Th-This is unfair! You're wearing armor!" I complain about the injustice. I didn't imagine this vault would strip away our magic — that's why I agreed to enter. I anticipated an attack, but not in this sense. It was impossible to predict.

'If I could manifest Esther Marionette...' I complain, more as an attempt to buy time.

"Unfair? I was simply smart. If you never learned how to fight, that's hardly my fault, is it?" She says, kicking a pile of coins. From the pile of gold, she picks up a large, long sword.

"Haaa..." I wipe the blood on my clothes so it won't hinder me while I grab an axe with my tail. The muscles in my tail are much stronger than those in my arms, so it can hold the axe reasonably well, and since it's not unruly, it'll be more useful than me trying to hold it.

"..." Qyraen begins to fly, though I notice some difficulty due to the weight of her armor. She soon plummets from above. I'm not an idiot — I obviously can't block that — so I just leap upward, beating my wings to fly.

And using my position in the air, I spin my entire body like a ball, using the rotation's force to swing the axe through five full rotations and then release it toward the Queen of Angels. Qyraen dodges by a narrow margin as the axe embeds itself in the ground.

"H-Hahaha, can't fly so well?" I taunt her as I start flying low, picking up daggers that are lighter, and then begin circling above Qyraen, throwing daggers at every spot her armor doesn't defend well.

She dodges everything with some difficulty, but I keep up this kind of flight — diving close to the gold, grabbing daggers, and ascending again to throw them around her.

"Ghmmmm!!" I groan in pain when she throws one of the daggers she managed to catch into my wing. I stop flying, grabbing the dagger and pulling it out of my wing.

"Cheap tricks like these won't defeat me. Honestly, why don't you just give up? So far you still haven't truly wounded me, while you've nearly been severely injured multiple times." She proposes, more as an attempt to end this quickly.

"..." I start flying, "fleeing" through the large shelves. She runs after me, but I quickly throw myself against a shelf, toppling it as I ascend to get out from underneath.

"YOU WRETCHED BITCH!!" She screams as two large shelves collapse on top of her. I hear the sound of metal groaning and cracking. If she has no magic, her endurance is nearly that of a human's — only slightly superior, and she has the armor's defense — so very heavy weights should hurt her.

"You white-winged rat, I'll destroy you right here!! You think I'll let you win this, Queen of Angels?!" I insult this damn woman. Even if I have to topple every shelf onto this bitch, I'm still going to win this.

"..." I see the shelves shifting with difficulty as she emerges from beneath them, several scrolls rolling to the side. When she sees this, she looks at me with pure hatred.

"I'll make you regret messing up the treasure vault." I look at her armor and see multiple dents and even one of the plates that came loose. Instead of continuing with the armor, Qyraen begins to remove it.

This naturally reduces her defense, and now she won't be able to defend herself so easily anymore, but now my only advantage — speed and flight — is gone. And worse, my wing is injured, so I must be slower than her.

"..." Qyraen grabs a heavy club from the ground and flies toward me fast. I barely dodge as my tail grabs her leg and I spin her, breaking her balance.

Before she can strike, I grab her hand, fighting for the club. I kick her stomach, but she defends with her knee. She tries to knee me, but my tail grabs her leg.

"I never thought you'd be such an insane woman!!" I say critically as she pulls her leg, dragging me closer.

"You think you're going to transcend and evolve? That doesn't even make sense!! If our ancestors had an 'evolved' form, I doubt it would be a transcendence to a higher state." When I say this, she gives me a look of rage, as if I'd offended something personal to her.

"Why the hell don't you think about that?!" It's basic evolution. Even though magic exists in this world, everything still followed evolution through natural selection. I don't doubt that these so-called "True Demon" and "True Angel" existed, and I don't doubt her that we can become that.

But I deeply doubt it's a transcendence to a higher life form. It would probably be closer to a biological regression to a past life form — like a human gaining traits from humans of millennia ago.

"Shut up, you know nothing! I'll show you. I will be the first angel in millennia to go down in history as a true angel!" She pulls the club hard, trying to wrench it from my hands.

"I'm already of the True Ancestral Angel race, which shows my lineage that comes from our queen of over 25,000 years ago."

"I have everything I need to evolve, and the words of a filthy demon won't make me question what I've discovered." She speaks as if biology hardly mattered.

"You're crazy! Insane!" I realize I'm losing this contest of strength, so I try to buy a few more seconds with this conversation to think of what to do.

"Is your brain made of jelly or something? You think you'll become some kind of god if you evolve? If that were the case, our ancestors would still be alive!!" I pull the club from her hands, but she pulls back harder.

"That doesn't matter. What else could I expect from someone who didn't even know the truth!" She spins her entire body, releasing the club and going upside down. Then she spins downward, kicking the top of my head and forcing me down. The blow disorients me, making me let go of the club, and to avoid getting hit, I fly backward, putting distance between us.

"..." My vision is somewhat blurry from the blow, but shaking my head, I manage to recover in time to dodge a strike from the club that would have hit my head. I put distance between us again, breathing deeply and thinking about what to do. It's obvious this lunatic believes she's going to become some kind of divine being, when she'll probably just unlock traits that our strongest ancestors had.