Claire stood motionless with the Can Opener in hand, gunpowder smoke rising slowly from the muzzle.
The Stranger had once believed victory was firmly in his grasp.
Yet the moment Claire’s group stepped onto the battlefield, the situation reversed in an instant.
The surviving city defense soldiers, under Liz’s command, reformed into a volley firing line.
The black-armored Kheshig fought fiercely in the center of the casino hall.
Steam erupted around his body as the Crescent Moon Blade in his hands whirled into a circle, clashing violently with the sub-dragonkin that lunged at him from every side.
Blood sprayed around him, forming rings of red halo.
Claire charged forward through the gunfire, crossing the hall where trajectories of bullets intertwined.
Only after she had seen with her own eyes that Flora was unharmed did she turn back into the battle.
Her figure flashed rapidly across the battlefield.
The Can Opener, which should have been able to load only two rounds at a time, continuously sprayed firelight in her hands.
With every gunshot a sub-dragonkin fell into a pool of blood.
No one had ever possessed such speed of slaughter.
No one could clearly see her movements.
Whether claws or bullets, every attack that approached her missed its mark.
The black-clad members of the Dragon Worship Cult leaped up despite the risk of being shot by Claire or the city defense army, carrying crate after crate of gold coins as they withdrew toward the casino doors.
The Stranger should have retreated together with them.
Yet at this moment he was forced to remain behind to cover the rear, for the edge of Ophelia’s sword was right before his eyes.
The slender sword and the straight sword collided in midair, sparks flying in all directions.
Metal rang out with a sound as if it were about to snap.
The Stranger’s fencing steps were orderly, advancing and retreating with measured precision.
Ophelia was completely different.
This girl with her braided hair who appeared delicate possessed swordsmanship that was extremely sharp and fierce.
The Stranger did not dare to let his slender sword collide easily with Ophelia’s straight sword.
Clearly the straight sword was of superior quality and heavier.
The tip of the slender sword wandered around Ophelia’s body like a hunting viper, waiting only for the slightest gap before it would pierce in.
Yet Ophelia had almost no openings.
After the tip of the Stranger’s sword touched Ophelia’s blade, he suddenly seized a black-clad accountant and forcefully shoved him toward Ophelia’s sword edge.
The accountant was like a piece of meat thrown toward a guillotine.
His chest was pierced in an instant, and he did not even have time to scream.
In that moment the Stranger found his only opportunity to attack and thrust his sword straight forward!
No matter how sharp a sword might be, there would always be a brief moment of delay when it pierced an object.
What the Stranger wanted was precisely that instant.
The silver-snake-like sword drove straight toward Ophelia’s face.
She hurriedly leaned backward.
Just as both the length of the Stranger’s sword and the length of his arm had reached their limit, only a few inches remaining from the tip of Ophelia’s nose, the sword suddenly accelerated!
The sword that should have already exhausted its power trembled slightly, left the Stranger’s palm, and continued to thrust forward.
This thrust was almost impossible to block, for it was as unpredictable as a ghost.
Ophelia finally saw it clearly.
The tip of the Stranger’s sword concealed a retractable section.
When the sword’s length was fully extended, that section was driven out by a powerful spring, faster than a human thrust.
This crude mechanism could produce an unexpected effect only the first time.
Yet a single unexpected effect was enough to become a killing move.
At this moment Ophelia had already leaned back to her limit, yet the tip of the sword still came at her with fierce momentum.
In the instant before the tip of the sword could strike, a black-haired, red-eyed figure appeared between Ophelia and the Stranger.
The wind pressure lifted the long coat she wore, revealing its blood-red lining.
The smoking muzzle pushed the thrusting sword aside and then aimed at the Stranger’s bronze mask.
“Do not kill him! He is the Dragon Priest!” Ophelia shouted toward Claire.
In the next moment a thunderous gunshot rang out.
The bullet capable of piercing steam armor smashed the Stranger’s right arm that held the sword with irresistible force.
Flesh and bone splattered in every direction, and blood gushed like a spring.
Claire had still held back.
Otherwise this shot could have shattered the Stranger’s head.
Contrary to Ophelia’s expectations, the Stranger, so severely wounded, did not let out any cry of pain.
He merely clutched the stump of his wrist and staggered back toward the casino counter.
The golden pupils beneath the bronze mask revealed a deep and bitter hatred.
The sub-dragonkin crawled forward to surround Claire and Ophelia, seemingly intending to take revenge for their Dragon Priest.
Yet every one of them died on the way under the Kheshig’s Crescent Moon Blade and Liz’s sniping.
The black-clad men at the rear of the group staggered out through the doors while dragging money crates.
The last sub-dragonkin had its chest pierced by a bullet.
The gunfire and roars cut off abruptly.
The casino fell silent.
The melee had finally ended.
Half of the casino’s facilities had collapsed during the melee.
A single sweep of the eyes was enough to know that the only place inside where someone could hide was the large iron cabinet behind the counter.
It trembled slightly.
The Stranger who lived for gambling was shivering inside it.
“Where is my child?!”
Talen removed the lion-head helmet and walked toward the iron cabinet.
Yet Claire stretched out her arm to block him.
Claire lowered her voice and asked, “An iron cabinet for storing money—what kind of trembling could make it shake?”
Talen froze.
He had not considered the weight of that iron cabinet.
That iron cabinet was standard equipment for a bank vault.
In order to prevent thieves from carrying off both the cabinet and the gold coins together, it usually weighed several hundred pounds.
Could one person’s trembling shake an iron cabinet so heavy?
Even an adult rhinoceros would probably find it difficult!
What exactly was inside that iron cabinet?
He had not yet finished thinking through these questions.
A chilling sound of metal bending suddenly came from the iron cabinet.
The two solid iron doors were slowly twisting and deforming.
The iron doors were violently flung outward from inside by something.
They flew up and then crashed down, smashing the casino’s tiled floor into fragments.
The exquisite bronze mask lay shattered on the ground.
A deformed body slowly stood up from the remains of the iron cabinet, radiating a nauseating aura from its entire body.
The creature that had once been called the Stranger could no longer be regarded as human in any way.
On that face whose features could no longer be distinguished, blue-purple veins like those of a snake pulsed.
The red long robe had been completely torn apart by the swollen muscles.
A spine covered in thorns rose high from the back.
A long tailbone dragged along the ground.
In a pair of enormous claws that were extremely disproportionate to the body, a crimson arc-shaped sword was tightly gripped.
“Gram!” Ophelia cried out in shock.
The sword now in the Stranger’s hand was the very dragon-soul-devouring sword that she and Claire had seen in the final mural.
This sword that had once belonged to Queen Christine should have been sleeping in the Londinium Museum.
Yet at this moment it had appeared in Parisie.
“What the hell is that thing?” Talen stared fixedly at the Stranger who had walked out of the iron cabinet.
Nothing could better explain the meaning of the word “ugly” than his current appearance.
“A blood sacrifice of the Dragon Worship Cult. They obtain the power of dragons by drinking dragon blood,” Claire said indifferently.
In truth this was information attached to the project proposal provided by Sibyl.
The power of the dragon race originated from their blood.
Their blood was a corrosive deadly poison to other living beings.
If a human drank dragon blood directly, the dragon blood would destroy the human’s tissue cells, and the dragon genes within the blood would also rewrite the human genes into dragon genes, transforming the person into a monster between dragon and human.
This was the origin of the sub-dragonkin.
Dragon descendants were merely the fortunate ones who retained their reason.
Yet clearly the Stranger, who had drunk a large quantity of dragon blood this time, had not received that fortune.
“You beast! Give me back my Abigail!” Talen roared at the transformed Stranger and raised the Crescent Moon Blade in his hands.
The moment those words fell, as if declaring the start of war, a deafening series of explosive cracks came from every bone in the Stranger’s body.
The skin on his back was torn open, and a pair of membranous dragon wings suddenly unfurled, covered in blood.
At the same time the Stranger and Talen charged toward each other at high speed.
The deformed dragon-man spread both wings and dove downward.
The black-armored Kheshig charged forward accompanied by steam.
The two figures crossed past each other.
A continuous series of sparks flashed through the air.
Gram in the Stranger’s hand was successfully blocked by Talen’s Crescent Moon Blade.
The Stranger had fallen from above the iron cabinet.
When he swung Gram there was no rule to follow.
His clear purpose in attacking was to cut off Talen’s head, which was not protected by armor.
Talen easily perceived this and blocked it accordingly.
After the Stranger’s downward slash from high in the air failed, the counterattack of the Crescent Moon Blade arrived in an instant.
Talen’s nearly perfect cut should have been able to slice the Stranger into two pieces in midair.
Yet the Stranger clamped the hilt of Gram between his uneven sharp teeth, freed his enormous claw covered in scales, and used that claw to forcibly pinch the blade of the Crescent Moon Blade.
Using the edge of the blade as a fulcrum, the Stranger swung his head and cut Gram diagonally toward Talen’s carotid artery with the sword held in his mouth.
In the next moment a thunderous gunshot rang out once more.
Claire stood as nimbly as a cat upon the Stranger’s exposed spine.
This time the muzzle of her gun was aimed at the Stranger’s body.
The Stranger collapsed with a roaring boom.
At this moment a large hole had been blasted open in his chest by the Can Opener’s bullet.
The edges of the hole were charred and curled, and wisps of black smoke rose curling from the wound.
It was finally completely over.
Claire sat down on a broken step, fragments of brick and stone scattered all around her.
Exhaustion washed over her like a tide.
Liz sat down beside Claire. “How many seconds did you use this time?”
Claire slightly raised her eyes, her voice a little hoarse. “Eight seconds.”
Liz raised her hand and lightly chopped the side of Claire’s head with the edge of her palm, then gently smoothed the hair on her forehead with her fingers.
“You still pushed yourself too hard. Drink some quickly.”
As she spoke she took a blood bag from her pocket and handed it to Claire.
Claire nodded silently, took the blood bag, and wordlessly drew the sweet red liquid through the straw.
The red liquid slowly flowed into her mouth through the straw, as if restoring her strength little by little.
Claire raised her eyes and looked over.
Behind the ranks of the city defense army that stood ready, Flora was waving vigorously toward her, looking as if she wanted to rush to her side at once.
Anne was behind her, struggling to hold onto the hem of the princess’s skirt in an attempt to restrain her.
Claire raised her arm and made an X sign above her head, shaking her head at Flora.
Only after seeing this gesture did the princess quiet down.
Talen walked slowly toward the Stranger’s corpse… No, that thing was not yet dead.
It was still slowly crawling while clamping Gram in its mouth.
The dim pupils burned with the residual light of hatred.
What an alien form of vitality this was.
Talen violently seized the Stranger’s already twisted and deformed head and roared, “Where is my daughter?!”
The Stranger let out a bone-chilling hissing laugh.
From that already mutated mouth came words like a curse.
“Your daughter? Hahahaha, that little spawn is a demonkin, a banshee! She was taken away by the demonkin of the Mutual Aid Society. That is her true destination!”
Talen was filled with extreme rage.
His iron-armored fists smashed down like a violent storm onto the Stranger’s twisted face, one blow after another.
The wind of the punches howled until that enormous dragon body completely stopped moving and collapsed onto the ground like a pile of rotten meat.
Ophelia walked over to his side. “Your daughter is a… banshee?”
Talen nodded slightly.
“Banshees are a single-sex reproductive demonkin race. You cannot possibly have a banshee daughter.”
Talen showed no expression of panic or anger.
He merely smiled. “Yes. I am not her father, but she is my daughter.”
Ophelia heard the warmth and sorrow within those words.
Talen was filled with hatred and gritted his teeth. “The trail is broken again.”
Claire slowly walked forward and said quietly, “It is not broken yet. Those fellows from the Mutual Aid Society are right outside the door.”
The sounds of iron whistles, gunfire, and roars intertwined outside the casino in the underground plaza.
Earlier they had been deep in the chaotic battle and had no time to pay attention to the sounds outside.
Talen suddenly froze, shocked by a certain sound from beyond the door.
He remained silent and strode quickly toward the two limestone doors of the casino.
Claire also heard that sound… No, it was a song, a fragile and mournful ballad.
Ophelia heard it as well.
Her expression tightened, and she rushed forward intending to stop Talen from opening the door.
Yet everything was already too late.
The door opened.
Several long spears cast from black flame pierced through Talen’s black Kheshig armor in a single instant.