Damn Reincarnation

e wasn’t wrong.
Once his sword had passed through Iris’ darkness, the pieces of darkness instantly reattached themselves.

However, his attack had not been a vain attempt.
Along with his strike, Eugene had used the magic formula.
He infused his mana into the formula to cast space expansion spell.

Wooosh!

The darkness, which was a cohesive mass, inflated as if somebody had grabbed the top and bottom of the cluster and stretched it.
It was impossible to use magic to break through Iris’ darkness itself, but he could physically slash the darkness apart and push his magic through the gap.

‘She’s tricky to deal with,’ Eugene thought.

She had also been like that 300 years ago.
Noir Giabella was way stronger than Iris, but Iris was by far more troublesome.
The reason was simple — Sienna and Anise had perfectly shielded the hero party from Noir Giabella’s attack.
However, Hamel had dealt with Iris alone most of the time.

‘She wasn’t great at hand-to-hand combat at the time.’

Crash!

Iris’ front kick pushed Eugene backward.

Before her kick reached him, Eugene had already cast seventeen barrier layers, plus an aura shield.
However, her one kick had been enough to shatter Eugene’s defensive bubble and make him fly back.
Not only that, but she had done all this while still sitting on the sofa.

“…Ahahaha!” Iris brightly giggled as she crossed her legs once more after the kick.

Creak… Creak…

During the process of pushing Eugene backward, Iris’ sofa creaked.
She placed her arms on the sofa’s headrest and raised her head.

“You are the Silver Lion of the Lionhearts, am I correct?” Iris asked with interest.

Instead of answering, Carmen pulled out her fingers from the ceiling.
She wasn’t far from the ground, so it didn’t take long for her to drop to the floor.

As she fell to the ground, Carmen was already launching attacks on Iris with her leg, leaving hundreds of afterimages.
It was unbelievable that she was able to strike so many times in what was nothing more than the blink of an eye.

However, Iris wasn’t flustered; her wide-open eyes followed Carmen’s every attack, then she summoned her darkness to block.
Carmen’s kick made Iris’ darkness disperse.
Yet, the darkness that was scattered away gathered once more; no matter how much it dispersed, it never disappeared.

Carmen’s feet were on the ground once more, while Iris did not move from her sofa.
As for Eugene, the wall behind him had put an abrupt stop to his flight backward.

It had only been several minutes since Carmen had come to this place, but the Third Division of Black Lion Knights arrived.
These knights, whose skills were recognized by all countries, ran down the stairs.

“Don’t come in,” Carmen spoke as she kept her eyes on Iris.

“Just watch.
Don’t interfere.” Iris grinned, feeling the creaking sofa as she leaned against it.
She was speaking to the dark elves who were standing behind her.

Eugene’s body slid down to the floor.

Squeak.

Carmen pulled the gloves back on with her teeth to make sure they stayed on.

Crack.

Iris’ finger made a cracking sound.

Badump.

Eugene’s heart beat hard.

Just like the first time, everyone began to move at the same time.

Iris generated more darkness to cover up the basement; her darkness spread like an ink drop staining a white paper.
The floor of the basement now looked like a portal that led to God knew where — it was hard to distinguish if Iris had simply covered the floor or created a passage that led to some abyss of darkness.

This was why fighting against Iris was tricky.
No one could identify the dark lump without touching it.
It was a bizarre power that couldn’t be understood even through Akasha.

‘I know since I have experienced it several times.’ Eugene shrugged.

Would Carmen know? He wasn’t sure, but there was no time to let her know about Iris’ power.
Carmen was already moving forward.
The three were engaging in very close combat — he was familiar with this type of combat.

Clink. 

With his left hand, Eugene drew out a karambit knife which he had hidden on the inside of his belt.
Putting his index finger through the ring pommel, he tightly clenched his fist around the grip.
Then, he condensed his sword-force into a thin layer that covered the blade.

Pzzz.

Lightning sparked around his body again as Eugene accelerated forward.

Carmen had already moved, a bit ahead of Eugene; she leaped across the floor to avoid getting swallowed by the darkness and swung her fist against the wall of darkness that Iris had created.
When her fist touched the wall, however, Carmen simply pulled back.
Her clairvoyance-like intuition, which she had developed during years of training, had warned her that something was wrong the very first instant that her fist had touched the wall.

If she had pushed through any further, Iris’ darkness would have swallowed Carmen’s fist.
Her clusters of darkness communicated with each other through space, so if Iris had made her darkness disappear while Carmen’s fist was swallowed, her hand would have been mutilated.
It didn’t matter how much Carmen had trained or how much of a treasure her gloves were.

Carmen changed the angle of her punches, flexibly turning her torso and attacking Iris’ darkness from the side.
This time, just before her fist reached Iris’ darkness, her strike created an explosion, blasting apart and dissipating the darkness.

Eugene’s instantaneous velocity was faster than Carmen’s.
When Carmen had burst Iris’ darkness, Eugene had already moved past her and entered Iris’ attack radius.

There was one thing that was much better than 300 years ago: there were many more kinds of weapons tha Eugene could use right now compared to when he was Hamel.

Wynnyd’s wind was one of them.
Surrounding Eugene’s body, it moved ahead of Eugene, so it touched Iris’ darkness before Eugene did.
The wind either got swallowed by the darkness or was blocked.
It didn’t do much, but that was all Eugene needed to figure out the characteristics of Iris’ darkness.

‘She could only control two clusters of darkness 300 years ago.’

That had been the case before, but she had clearly developed her ability so much that she now had perfect control of her darkness.
Maybe she had also gained other powers, but for now, Eugene could only be vigilant against powers that he knew about for sure.

ㅡZiiinng!

The karambit knife’s curved blade shone with Eugene’s sword force.
As Carmen swung her fist from the side, Eugene used his knife to attack from above.

Iris was still sitting on her sofa, but her eye was covered with darkness again.
Her darkness swallowed Eugene’s attack — or, rather, Eugene let his attack be swallowed.
He had various weapons, but he had chosen a karambit for one reason: it was easier to move his own limbs than swing a weapon.

‘And I don’t care if this one breaks.
My attack will be less powerful, though,’ Eugene quickly thought.

Iris’ darkness undulated, turning into waves.
The waves of darkness rushed over Eugene and Carmen.
In response, Eugene summoned more fierce winds to shield them against the waves as the sword force wrapping his knife let out sparks.

Carmen was now standing beside Eugene.
They had shortened the distance between them and Iris in no time, and at this point, Iris could no longer stay still on her sofa.

The darkness summoned by her Demoneye pushed Iris forward.
After she unsteadily stood up from the sofa, as if someone had pulled her up, she created a shield to protect the dark elves standing behind her.
Then, she raised her hands.

Dozens of attacks struck at Iris in virtually a single moment.
Carmen punched and kicked at Iris, in an attempt to push her back, then tried to grab her head and twist her neck.
Timing his own attacks in tandem with Carmen, Eugene aimed slash after slash at Iris, assaulting her relentlessly.
Actually, there was no point in discussing each attack separately — what happened was that, without interfering with each, Eugene and Carmen attacked Iris in every possible way.

Iris moved her arms with a twisted smile.
Her darkness spread out, blocking every angle from which Carmen and Eugene could strike.
Their options were already limited anyway, and even though they had launched hundreds of different attacks, hardly any of them had impacted Iris in any significant way.
In the ten minutes elapsed since the start of the battle, their attacks had amounted to nothing more than vain attempts; no matter how formidable the duo was, they both failed to reach their target.

In spite of many powerful attacks being exchanged, never mind the basement collapsing, the building hadn’t even been shaken once.
The only things that had been destroyed were the table, the sofa, and the door — the table and the sofa had been smashed by Iris, while Carmen had crushed the door as she entered.
That was how precise their attacks were.
Without wasting any power, each of the three focused solely on their target.

“Form Change.” Carmen took a lateral stance.
“Heaven Genocide.”

With her ragged leather glove, she grabbed her pocket watch.
“Alastor Form.”

The name didn’t give Eugene the slightest clue as to what Carmen’s technique was.