Imp to Demon King: A Journey of Conquest
Chapter 433: Pride of a Mother, Fury of a Warrior

Chapter 433: Pride of a Mother, Fury of a Warrior

"But if these demons you call ants troubled you, I wonder how you’ll fare against me."

Almost as fast as Bahamut’s breath, Shihan’s fingers pinched the black feathers of three arrows. In the same graceful motions, she nocked them and pulled the shadowy string of her bow to her cheek, her jaw clenched, belying the icy fury that stormed within her heart.

All the meticulous plans they had worked on had turned for the worse. Her children had nearly been buried alive. Her husband had come close to dying with his friends in their foolishness. And yet, the corners of her lips rose, and her chest swelled with pride.

"Foolishness or bravery—the line is thinner than a cicada’s wing." She let the string loose, the twang’s blast hurling her green hair up, brushing at her fox’s ears, and sending her nine tails and war gown billowing. "To me, you’re all precious, brave fools. I won’t waste your efforts. I vow it on the lord’s name."

Bahamut glared at her, but it was already too late to answer. The sheen of three demonic green arrowheads bolted from the arrow rest, which was shaped like the head of a roaring dragon that seemed to mock the order he embodied with its protruding, irregular scales and jagged fangs.

The arrows whistled, and his hand shot in their trajectory. The sphere of light clutched in his palm crackled with energy, enough to dissolve a mountain, much less three projectiles.

He watched as their whistling faded into his divine mana like pebbles swallowed by the ocean. Yet, where he had expected the sizzle of their vaporisation, he heard a soft, persistent buzz. It felt... distantly familiar, something from eons ago—when demon words still beguiled mortals, who summoned them only to learn never to trust this damned species. Those who survived, that is.

Arrows, buzzing, demon... Leraje’s quiver? His eyes widened—just as the side of his sphere that protected his neck rippled. Light splashed as the first arrow, shrouded in energy, disruptive mist, emerged.

The other two followed, their whistles turning into haunting rumbles that seemed to weep in remembrance of the horror they had once unleashed upon men.

He craned his neck—too late.

CRACK

The first arrow drilled an accurate hole into the reversed scale, cracks spreading around it. He felt the layer of mana protecting it shift erratically, then collapse a split second before the following one crashed against the first.

Met with much less resistance, it dug deeper, shattering the remaining layers of keratin. He sensed its cold bite brush against his skin as he swallowed. It was a hair away from piercing it.

Yet delight never flashed in his eyes, for he knew the third one remained.

It shattered the second arrow shaft, striking and shoving the first two heads into his skin. His control over mana instantly grew hazy. He lost grip on his breath as it thinned a kilometer above the ground before it faded two hundred meters from its target.

The wound, however, didn’t bring him pain. Aside from a little blood trickling through his golden scales and a sensation as though a thin needle had prickled him, he was as good as five seconds ago.

But in another five seconds?

"You wretched creature. I’ve known about Leraje and his disgusting arrows long before your birth. And I know their weakness, too." He clenched his jaw, hurling his claws at Shihan. He squeezed his claws around Shihan, his lips curled over his gum, his nose scrunched. "Fade from existence, and they become no more than sharp sticks!"

He reopened his palm, the mangled body he had expected absent. Instead, he heard Shihan’s voice above his head.

"With how old you are, you’ve known everyone long before anyone’s birth. Does it make you any smarter, I wonder?" Emerging from the shadows, she gripped Bahamut’s horn for support, her gaze locked on increasingly dense blood flowing through the wounded scale.

It was merely a soft stream, but she knew it would turn into a river, then a waterfall. But how long would it take for such a tiny wound to spread on the colossal Bahamut? A question she had pondered with their best artisans for over a year.

She slammed her right palm against her left, her demonic essence rumbling through her veins. Shadows slithered around her at her call, rising like dark curtains and shifting into thousands of halberds.

With a spin of her hand, they swirled around her, gaining momentum before she hurled them all toward the wound. She knew a single finger from Bahamut could stop them all. Yet she smirked as she smashed a button hidden inside her quiver.

If the first arrow disrupted energy, while the third turned the smallest prickle into a gaping wound, what could the second do? Disturb its target’s thoughts like Leraje used to? No!

She had wanted to capitalise on the wounds and therefore asked Muramasa to modify it. After all, something narrow took time to widen, but something already wide?

Bahamut’s pupils constricted. He had felt it—the scale’s swelling, the heat spreading from within.

BOOM

The second arrowhead detonated in a sea of green flames, hurling shrapnel like fragments of keratin. Blood poured like a fountain, and a draconic cry of agony—the first one since the battle started—engulfed the sky.

Breath ragged, he clutched his neck, the mere touch adding to the torture of charred skin and sulfur. He spaced his fingers around the wound, feeling it spread to the nearby tissues like an insatiable beast or the most disgusting curse from divine memory.

A mistake, expected by the smirking Shihan. "A pity you didn’t bother to learn a trick or two from Leraje, or any noble demon for that matter. Look, you forgot these."

With his words came the whistle of the halberds, each plunging between the space fingers, into the wound. From needle-sized, it had grown to match a fist after the explosion and was now broader than her head.

"I’ll kill you, whore!" Bahamut roared, but Shihan’s smirk only broadened.

"Is that how the dragon god, a slave to order, should speak? I must say you’re a disappointment, a pathetic creature wallowing in its delusions of grandeur. Kill Tiamat? Her equal? Don’t make me laugh. Not only did she not deign to waste her time fighting you, but Adam would have ripped your scales like paper had he been here. You’re lucky. Or perhaps... not that much."

Her shadows swallowed her as Bahamut slammed where she stood, her last contemptuous words lingering like a curse. "Your vain resistance would have been much shorter against him. Now you’ll suffer, physically, mentally, forced out of your delusions—forced to see your beliefs crumble under our assault. There won’t be a tomorrow for the great dragon king. Only death."