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'It seems luminous is finally taking this fight seriously.' I look at her as she pumps all the mana she can into her wings and rushes at max speed toward me.
I can still see her with my perception boosted by thought acceleration. Now my thoughts can be boosted by a factor of 1000. But even like that I am still late and just barely manage to parry her sword.
I go for a slash to her left shoulder, but she does something I didn't expect. She reaches for my abdomen with her free hand.
I am confused by her move, but I don't sense any magic being prepared, so I continue my slash. I regret it an instant later when her hand makes contact with my body. I sense my energy leaving my body and a pain like I had never felt before.
I power through the pain and continue my attack, forcing her to step back and the pain to stop, but a part of my energy has been drained, and I still feel the deep soul pain's lingering effects, leaving me out of breath for some time.
Luminous capitalizes on my moment of vulnerability and presses her advantage, not letting me recover. She launches a fury of slashes and magic attacks in between the slashes, forcing me on the defensive.
I am forced to take some hits, and apparently whatever she did to me affected my regeneration, as I take far more time than normal to regenerate my wound.
But while I am clearly at a disadvantage, I still find myself smiling like never before. The feeling that I can die at any moment if I make a mistake pushes my body into overdrive, and at the same time Emotion Devourer, making it suck every emotion near me to replace the energy I lost.
The sensation of so many emotions being absorbed at once put me in a trance like state. I only focus on the emotion that rushes to my stomach, immediately being transformed into energy. My body moves by itself, and as time passes, fewer attacks manage to touch me as my swordsmanship evolves to be more precise and deadly in real time.
Luminous is starting to be overwhelmed and even take some hits imbued with the effect of Joy, making her more susceptible to the next one due to the weakening of her mental defense, making her stunned each time for a longer period, and making me able to hit her again more easily.
When it seems that she is losing advantage, Luminous goes for a desperate move to retake advantage, abandoning all defense to launch herself at me, her hand extended in the hope of replicating the attack that put me at a disadvantage and regaining the upper hand.
And I let her do it. She has a look of confusion on her face when she sees that I don't try to dodge or attack her, but she doesn't stop and touch the same spot as before.
I feel my energy being drained, and the pain assaults me, but I don't care. The joy of all the emotion being absorbed like never before overpowers the pain, and my ability replaces the energy that is being sucked at the same rate that it is being absorbed.
I interlock my arms behind Luminous and press her against my body to make sure that she can't escape, locking her in a deadly embrace, and then I activate an art I only theorized and never tested.
"Eternal Bliss"
I use Joy to destroy all the mental defenses of Luminous and use Emotion Devourer to directly eat the emotion at the source, the soul. I immediately replace all of them with profound sentiments of happiness, annihilating any will to fight.
Luminous senses that something is wrong, but she can't do anything; all her defenses have been negated, and while her soul will normally defend itself against attack, it doesn't register what I am doing as an attack thanks to the effect of Joy.
Has the last of her emotion is replaced. Luminous stops her attack and slumps down on me, her face resting on my shoulder. I fly down and gently set Luminous down on the floor. She has a big smile on her face and seems to not want to do anything except relax.
Normally the effect of Eternal Bliss should be permanent, but on powerful people the soul will gradually replace the happiness with their natural emotion, so in an hour she will be back to normal.
I look around. The spectators all look confused at what happened. Valentine cancels the barrier and goes to check on his daughter. "What happened? Is she okay? She better be because if you have done some lasting damage to her. I swear to Veldanava, I will subject you to the worst experiment I can think of for the rest of time."
He was speaking in a calm tone, but the bloodlust he was realizing was no joke. So before he acted on his menace and made experiments on me that would even make a certain group of Germans disgusted, I explained the situation.
"She is fine. In fact, she is better than fine. She is in a world of happiness. She will wake up in an hour." He looked at me and then at Luminous, and after analyzing her, he took her with him and left the training ground.
After he left, people started to discuss the fight, and I was assaulted by three girls that embraced me.
"That was amazing, Lady Lilith! You were like, 'swoosh swoosh!' And then you went 'blam!' I was worried for a moment, but then you did something super cool and defeated the mean girl in one attack!"
"Sherry! Stop bothering Lady Lilith! But I think you were amazing, and I never doubted you would win."
"Y...yeah. Yo...you looked super cool, Mama..."
I looked at the three little succubus and smiled at them. They truly are little bundles of joy. I extricate myself from their embrace and look at them. "Thank you for believing in me, but now I will go rest in my room. I am a little tired."
"Can we go with you?" I shook my head at Wendy and saw the deception on the three girls.
"No, you still need to train. I will see you after at lunch, okay? " They regained their smile and nodded.
I looked at them one last time before leaving to go to my room. I may not show it, but the attack of luminous has taken a toll on me. It was an attack at the soul level, after all, and I will need some time to recuperate all of my strength.
I entered my room and lay down on one of the couches, relaxing my body and mind. I recalled my fight with Luminous. It really was a close one. At first everything was under control, but whatever happened to her after I kicked her gave her a real fearsome ability.
I have my suspicion of what happened, but I will need to speak to her to be sure. Rethinking of the fight, I find myself smiling. It was truly a wonderful experience, and I want to do it again. I may be becoming a battle junkie, but if it's the price to pay to have such a good meal, then I will become the biggest battle junkie to have ever lived.
My thoughts are interrupted when I hear someone at the side of the couch. I look and see my secretary, who followed me, as it is her job to be by my side. She is looking at me, and even if she tries to hide it, I can feel her excitement and lust for me. It seems that seeing me fight turned her on. After all, in this world, strength is as important as beauty, and when you are powerful, you tend to be more beautiful, something to do with the magicule erasing your body imperfections and bringing your appearance to your perfect self. I honestly didn't listen when it was explained to me. After all, succubus are naturally beautiful, strong, or not.
But back to the aroused woman beside me, I think of my option and come to the conclusion that it will permit me to relax some pressure, so I get up and approach Elysia and, without waiting, start to kiss her. My tongue invading her mouth, she doesn't resist and clings to my body, one of her hands grabbing my head and pushing me deeper in the kiss and the other hand groping my ass. As she rubs her body on mine. My hand roams her body, stopping on her ass as I give it a little slap, making her moan in my mouth.
After a minute of making out, I separate my lips from hers, leaving her panting in my arms. Her gaze tells me she wants more, so I give her a second smack on her ass and take her to the bedroom, where we rest for 3 hours and stop only when it's lunchtime.
I leave the bedroom feeling well rested and totally relaxed. I let Elysia on the bed as she is in no condition to move for now.
I go to the cafeteria, where people go more to socialize rather than to eat since many people here don't need to eat to survive except the human, but they are a rarity here.
On the way I meet Wendy, Sherry, and Shiro with their sisters also going to the cafeteria, so we go together. When we arrive, we take our seats at different tables since there are too many of us.
I sit at a table with Wendy on my right, Sherry to my left, and Shiro on my lap. We order something to eat, and we are served immediately, one of the perks of being powerful.
The girls take something out and sprinkle it on the food. Shiro also put some on my food, and when I smell it, I realize it is the emotion of Luminous they had taken before the fight.
I smile at the delicate attention, and we start to eat our meal. I have eaten half my plate when Sherry asks me a question. "Lady Lilith, what did you do at the end of the fight? You just embraced Luminous, and then she stopped to fight."
The other girls look at me, and I sense that people at the other table are also listening attentively. "I used an art I created called Eternal Bliss. It permits me to annihilate the will to fight in a target and put her in a state of extreme happiness."
I looked at the look of awe from the three girls at my side. It's not a big deal if people know what I did. After all, the only means to defend against it is to have a good enough resistance against mental attack, to be more powerful than me, or to have control over your soul and be able to consciously defend against the attack. It is not something you can prepare for.
"C...can you teach us, Mama?" I looked at Shiro. She seemed to be eager at the prospect of learning something from me.
"Sorry, sweetie, but you need a special skill that only Mama has, but if you want, I can teach you some swordsmanship." Her mood soured and immediately lightened up in an instant.
I could see Wendy and Sherry pouting and trying to hide it. Wendy had more success than Sherry. "You two can join us if you want." They stopped pouting and nodded frantically.
I could hear a commotion at the other table. I turned my attention on it and heard people discussing heatedly about what that skill I talked about might be.
After all, not many people have unique skills. They certainly know that they exist, but not many people possess or have the potential to develop one by themselves without help, and they are far and beyond. Even here, where I had been told the average strength of people is far above what is considered normal in the various kingdoms. But even there, there are only two people with unique skills, me and Valentine. Luminous is a maybe.
Having a unique skill is not a mark of power but more of potential. Someone with overwhelming strength could pass all his life without gaining a unique skill, but a normal human could get one after a significant event in his life if his potential and energy are sufficient, and when you get a unique skill, you are far more likely to develop another one.
But in the end, what is more important in a battle is control, power, and experience. Because in the end, even if someone were to have a dozen overpowered unique skills, if they don't have the control and energy to use them correctly, they will be just a slightly stronger ant in a fight against really strong people.
As I am thinking about the importance and significance of unique skills, I sense two familiar presences enter the cafeteria.
I look to my left at the entrance and spot Valentine and Luminous. Valentine guides Luminous to his table, but Luminous seems to be searching for something, and when her gaze lands on me, she ignores Valentine and goes directly to my table.
She stops beside me and wants to say something but hesitates. She seems to be embarrassed. So I ask her what she wants.
"What can I do for you? If you are here for a rematch, I am not in the mood right now, but tomorrow we can do it again if you want." Luminous didn't say anything, still hesitating. After ten seconds she finally spoke.
"D...do you want me to start serving you now? Or do you perhaps wish for me to start later when you judge I will be more useful to you?" I was surprised by what she said, and so were all the people who heard her. Valentine was the worst, as he has gone totally stiff, and it seemed that his brain was rebooting.
"Why would you be my subordinates? I don't want to have you as my subordinates, and Valentine over there will probably kill me before I even think of it." I don't understand why she would willingly want to be my subordinate. I see her more like a good meal. I'll be somewhat sad if she were to die, and I want to pass time with her and enjoy her presence. 'Is it what people call a friend?'
"B...but you won the bet. So from now on, I am your subordinate for the rest of our lives. It was what we agreed on." I realize now why she said that. It's true she wanted me to be her subordinate if she won, but I never said what I wanted, so she assumed I would ask her the same thing.
"I never said what I wanted if I won the bet, did I?" She has a look of confusion on her face and then of realization when she understands what I said.
"Then what do you want me to do?" I think for some time. Honestly, I didn't think of it. I just wanted to motivate her and make the fight more interesting.
Then I think of the perfect reward. It would make it so she never forgets her defeat and is even more motivated during our next spar. After all, I want her to continue to grow so she can continue to give me good fights.
I smiled at her and saw her shiver. "I know what I want. From now on..."