982: Fran's Defense

「Roooooooh!」

「Haaah!」

The battle between Fran and Resalva the elder was seemingly evenly matched.

Though Fran had the advantage in swordsmanship and speed, Resalva shrugged off all our attacks and kept up a furious assault. Moreover, his sheer strength meant each swing contained tremendous force.

『He’s tough!』

（Nn. Those scales are like armor.）

Perhaps due to being strengthened by the Sacrament of the Dragon God, Resalva’s red scales were extremely durable. He didn’t take so much as a scratch from our lighter hits.

We managed to cut through his scales with a powerful slash, but his regeneration skill quickly restored them to the original state.

This guy was really troublesome, especially in terms of resilience.

It wasn’t only the scales. The cuts making it past his scales were instantly healed too. We were using life magic to inhibit his healing, but it didn’t seem to do anything.

He seemed unbothered by the black lightning repeatedly piercing his body, as well as the paralysis effect.

In fact, he even purposely took some attacks in order to counter us when we least expected it. That expert sense of timing proved he had a lot of experience in battle.

However, Resalva remained quite irritated in spite of his experience. Being evenly matched with a small girl like Fran seemed to have hurt his pride. Maybe the mental manipulation was negatively affecting his ability to suppress his emotions.

Besides, both fighters knew the truth. They were not truly even. Fran had yet to get serious, while Resalva’s mana was steadily draining away.

He was overexerting himself with the repeated usage of regeneration and physical enhancements.

And while the elder was pushing himself too hard, Fran was preparing for the future and fighting in a way that would limit her own exhaustion. This only aggravated Resalva’s rage.

He came at us with more fury than ever before, but Fran parried all of his strikes. Meanwhile, I kept blasting Resalva with spells. The damage was piling up.

Fran’s parrying techniques had gotten even better than before, so she dealt with Resalva’s greatsword perfectly. Was this thanks to observing Izario’s style?

Resalve’s greatsword had enough force to deal collateral damage to our allies, but Fran managed to mitigate this by redirecting the impact towards the sky.

I could see Fran growing as she fought.

But our opponent was a sly and experienced warrior. Even with his mind dulled by the mental manipulation, he quickly realized that Fran was trying to save her friends from harm.

「Think you can you block this!?」

「Mrgh!」

「Groooh!」

Resalva shot out a giant mass of flame from his mouth. It wasn’t super powerful, but a direct hit on the average soldier or adventurer would be enough to end their career.

Moreover, he did it over a huge range.

「Haaah!」

Fran quickly unleashed a spell and a slash to cancel out the blast of flames. However, this was exactly what Resalva wanted.

Resalva had intended to stall Fran’s movements, giving him time to prepare a more powerful technique. He arched his body backward and inhaled so deeply that his chest plate expanded to almost twice the size.

「GRAAAAAAAAAAAAH!」

An explosion of red light. His flame breath incinerated the air as it flew in a straight line toward Fran, who had just finished intercepting the earlier breath.

Fran could choose to dodge it, but our comrades behind her would take casualties if she did so.

「Haaaaaaah!」

「GAAAAAAHHHHHH!」

Fran’s barrier clashed with Resalva’s flames, staining the battlefield in a red glow.

『Fran, hold on for two more seconds!』

「Daaah!」

Fran made full use of her mana release to disperse the breath. This must also be a result of watching Izario’s style. All of her defensive techniques had improved, not just with the blade.

But she still paled in comparison to Izario. Fran’s extended hand began burning up in the heat, then…

『I won’t let Fran’s efforts go to waste!』

I activated my dimensional magic, just as I had when blocking the titan’s projectiles. I’ll return all of his flames with my Dimension Gate.

However, I had to be careful since our allies were everywhere around us. That’s why I opened the gate right above Resalva.

「Gaaah!? What!」

Resalva didn’t take much damage due to his extremely high fire resistance, but he definitely panicked after the sudden attack from an unexpected direction. He reflexively canceled his breath and looked upwards.

A huge opening.

Fran did not miss that moment and struck back with all her might.

Even though Fran said nothing, I could sense exactly what she wanted to do. I squeezed out my divine energy and mana, cloaking my entire blade with it.

Accelerated by her magic and skills, Fran only left behind an afterimage of black lightning. She moved at a speed that was practically instantaneous, and closed in on the veteran dragonkin.

Resalva immediately noticed this, but Fran had already finished swinging me down on him.

「Impos…sible……!」

「……Phew.」

Resalva fell to the ground, cut in half from the shoulder to groin. A very quiet end to our battle.

「Gah…… Gugah…… Why am… I here……?」

He managed to avoid dying instantly, but there’s no way he could regenerate from an attack with divine energy. He obviously didn’t have the ridiculous vitality of greater antidemons, so that ended up being his last breath.

『We managed to defeat such a powerful foe while barely exhausting ourselves.』

（If he was smarter, we’d be in trouble.）

『Yeah, definitely. We would have needed to bring out the big guns.』

（Nn.）

Even at a moment like this, Fran looked a little disappointed. She must have felt a desire to fight the real Resalva.

『But more importantly, we need to back everyone up now.』

「Nn!」

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