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“If you’re the ruler, why are you here? Should you not be on the throne?”
“You say strange things. If we fight in the castle, all we’ll do is destroy it, no?”
“It won’t be any different even if we fight here.”

The Queen of Nigel laughed out loud at my question. I snickered back with a witty remark, not liking her response at all.

“Huh, so you’re that worried about the castle? And here you are, killing off my kind like it’s nothing. You’re a funny guy.”
“That’s not it.”
“I know. I just don’t want to be buried alive.”

Well, she had a point. It wouldn’t be any fun if she ended up living after being buried alive. I’d expected to fight the Demon Lord in the throne room, but it couldn’t be helped now.

“Well then. Shall we get to it?”
“I’ve answered your question, so you have a right to answer mine, don’t you?”
“What do you want to know?”
“You are one of the heroes summoned by Fraus, are you not? Can I assume that you are the strongest among them?”
“That is right.”
“I see. Well then, I can go all out.”

With that, the Queen of Nigel pulled out a bright red spear from nowhere. Then, without a pause, she leapt at me and slashed with the spear. She was fast. Probably almost as fast as me.

I shouldn’t have expected anything less from the Nigel Kingdom’s ruler. She was not like the others. If I could defeat her, I was sure I would become even stronger. That thought excited me.

I raised the sword given to me by my kingdom to block the spear, but the spear slipped past it and came straight for my body.

“Tsk.”

I activated my Hero skill to boost my stats and jumped backward. I heard the wind whistle past me as the spear grazed my chest.

“I thought I had you. You must have used some kind of skill.”

I kept my distance as the queen observed me. I was surprised she could move that well in her clothes. I couldn’t figure out how her attack had reached me despite my guard.

I figured it must have been some kind of trick, but then I looked at my sword, and it all made sense. Half the blade was missing. Rather, it was better to say that the body of the blade had melted.

“That spear was made with magic, wasn’t it?”
“It’s not that unusual, is it? That’s why I can use it like this.”

As if to demonstrate, she released the spear, sending it floating in the air. The weapon was faster than the queen had been just now. If I had a sword, I could have deflected it, but even then, it probably would’ve melted again.

However, now that I’d seen it once, I knew what to do. After all, I had the Messenger of Light skill. When it came to Light Attribute magic, I was as good as some of the top-ranked Wizards. However, creating magic from scratch on the spot was difficult, so I made a blade of light modeled after my melted sword.

When I tried to strike the flying spear with it, the blade easily deflected its trajectory. The blade was easy to use.

As I admired the blade, I saw numerous bows floating around the queen. Every single one of them was aimed at me. What caught my attention was that each arrow was a different color.

While I was trying to figure out the situation, the queen raised her hand toward me, and at the same moment, the arrows fired. She didn’t even need to chant. It was almost as if she had the Remove Incantation skill. If she did, then this would get tricky.

But I had no time to ponder this.

I wasn’t going to let her control the pace, so I fought back. I watched the arrows carefully, moving forward while dodging them. She constantly sent a barrage of arrows my way. It was like I was moving through a rainstorm. But right now, I had no trouble passing right through the rain of arrows.

I used my sword to deflect the arrows I couldn’t dodge, and just before the queen entered my range, the rain of arrows finally stopped. A bad feeling washed over me, and I stopped in my tracks. Right after, a line of spears whooshed right past me.

Just in time. Feeling cold sweat drip down my face, I entered her range again. She had just finished her attack. I swung down my sword of light, thinking she’d be defenseless, but she, having now discarded her spear, easily dodged the strike. Having unlimited weapons at her disposal was quite annoying.

“Now then, it’s time we got serious.”
“Hmph? You’ve been holding your punches?” I asked.
“You’ve been responding better than I thought.”

The queen sniffed, and Mana began swirling around her, forming into shapes. There was nothing particularly new or interesting about the shapes themselves—a spear and a bow. But unlike earlier, these weapons were aimed from all directions. The density of the attacks was on a whole different level.

In addition, all the weapons were purplish—nearly black.

“Can you hold this off?”

The queen chuckled and brought her open hands together in front of her face. Then, all the weapons came flying at once. I swung my sword around like a madman in all directions. It felt as if walls were closing in all around me. Everywhere my blade passed, the magic dissolved.

That’s when I understood that all of the magic around me was of the Dark Attribute. Light was strong against Dark. It was an often-seen trope in games and stories.

This meant that the queen had made the wrong choice. She’d used dark magic against me, the Messenger of Light. Knowing that, all I had to do was strike back with everything I had, since her Mana wasn’t infinite.

If I could withstand her attacks, I’d win. If I couldn’t, I’d lose. It was the start of our endurance battle.