“As your former ally . . . I give you this final mercy. You will die without pain,” she said.

“Huh? You seriously think you’ve defeated—” In the moment he turned to confront Glass about her declaration of victory, the guy with the scythe split into chunks, then simply turned into a red mist and was blown away.

Impressive. She hadn’t left any trace of him at all.

Enemy women were looking around with shocked expressions on their faces. All the women who had been fighting alongside him started screaming. Among the noise, it sounded like some of them were shouting his name, but it was too distorted to hear.

I wondered for a moment if this was some kind of curse, some kind of ritual, that I had to go through. It had been much like this with Takt.

“Raph!” From her position riding on my shoulder, Raph-chan leapt down and whacked at the spot the enemy had been standing with her tail, sending something else flying.

“Isn’t it a little merciless to also destroy his soul?” Glass asked.

“We don’t want him coming back like Kyo,” I reminded her.

“Good point. I apologize for my naivety,” she responded. A moment later, a faint light appeared from the spot the enemy had been standing in and then flew toward L’Arc. Once the light vanished, the scythe vassal weapon appeared back in L’Arc’s hand.

Then I noticed something. In the moment the scythe returned to L’Arc’s hand, an accessory attached to it flew off. What was that all about? There had been a similar accessory when we were dealing with Takt.

“Your boss is dead! This scythe being back in my hand is proof! Will you surrender or continue to resist? Choose!” L’Arc shouted. Seeing L’Arc proclaim victory, most of the enemy started to retreat.

“You’ll pay for killing—” The name was again lost amid more cries as a number of women rushed in, screaming for revenge. Our forces quickly took them down. I noticed that Witch-like woman trying to make a break for it too, so I grabbed her by the collar to keep her close.

“Let me go! Do you even know who you are daring to fight against?” she spat.

“No idea. But if you’re important, then we really can’t let you go,” I told her.

“Well done, Naofumi!” Glass proceeded to smack the woman in the stomach with the handle of her fan, making her pass out. “She’s an ally of the ones we are fighting, supporting them. We’ve no idea what she might have done if we didn’t catch her.”

“Fair enough. Still . . .” It felt a bit anticlimactic to have wiped them out so easily. There were still more of them out there, apparently, but this looked like it was going to all be over more quickly than I had imagined.

“We need to form up a pursuit party and capture these enemies of the state in order to make our victory certain in this war!” L’Arc shouted. His forces roared back their agreement, and then they started to chase down the fleeing enemy.