281 Red hair

The damage was not nearly as serious as the time he was attacked by Evlin's rampage, but the fact still remained that him getting hurt was not something that should be done easily.

"How in the world did you manage to do that...?" the old man asked.

Detra released a small giggle before replying, "Is it not obvious? I used the power of love!"

"Eh...?"

The woman then proceeded to spin her staff around and several new shards of ice began to take shape around her aimed at the dragon demon.

"For me... There is nothing that I love more than showing demon scum like you the shortest path back to hell..." Detra commented while releasing her wave of ice on her opponent.

Wrath saw the icicles coming and hurried to smack the ground and use the pieces of debris from the floor to block the attacks.

"Not gonna work..." Detra whispered.

The shard then moved around the debris and performed a circular motion to strike Wrath from the back.

"Aaaarghhh!!" the dragon shrieked.

Knucker watched the whole thing while holding his chin, "I see... They sent out the two people that had the weakest connection with the telepath to avoid boosting Wrath's power... Not bad..."

The kings and queens of the four kingdoms began to recover a bit of hope at seeing Knucker's servant struggling, but they knew better than to underestimate him.

"Ugh... This is rather unfortunate..." Wrath mumbled while kneeling down and watching his blood dripping on the ground.

"You already done? Come on! Get up so I can push you down one more time!! Show me the pathetic sight of a lowly demon begging for his life!!" Detra laughed.

Daren just scratched his chin while seeing Detra enjoying the humiliation of her opponent, "She really hasn't changed, has she...?"

"No..." Evlin corrected, "She changed a lot... It's just hard to see... But she definitely is not the same woman she was before..."

Wrath stood up and rushed towards Detra with his fist raised to smack her, but the woman reacted faster by creating a wall of ice by waving her staff upwards.

The demon managed to break the wall with ease, but Detra was already waiting for him with another attack ready to strike.

"I hope this hurts..." she whispered while blasting him with a beam of ice that launched Wrath towards the sky.

[This is gonna be easier than I imagined...] Dia commented inside Detra's mind.

"Too easy if you ask me..." the ice mage replied, "Is knucker just gonna let me bully his servant like this? Even with your power, this fight shouldn't be so unbalanced..."

[You think he is hiding his power?]

"I think... He is waiting for something..."

Smoke and rubble began to fly all over the place hiding the figure of the old man.

"This should be enough..." Knucker alerted.

"Oh... Dear..." Wrath mumbled.

Detra suddenly felt a shiver crawling down her spine and instinctively leaped back while keeping her guard up.

[Detra...? What's wrong...?]

"I'm... I'm not sure..." She admitted while gazing at her arms and legs shivering, "But for some reason... Every muscle in my body just told me to run away for a second..."

The smoke finally cleared up and revealed Wrath's body, completely covered in red scales from head to toe, with a pair of black horns above his head, and a long tail that was half his size.

"You guys did it now..." Knucker explained, "You made him angry..."

Wrath stepped on the ground and made the entire arena shake from the power of his foot alone, "Indeed..."

[D- Detra...]

"Don't panic... We still have the upper ha- Oh my Lord!!" Detra cried as she was suddenly forced to leap away as Wrath immediately jumped on top of her with his fist aimed at her face.

The woman rolled on the ground trying to catch her breath and gazed at the hole Wrath had managed to create.

"One second later... And that would have been me..." she whispered while staring at the crater.

"One second later, and that WILL be you..." Wrath stated while stretching his arms.

Detra waved her staff to launch another icicle but Wrath just raised but hand to stop the frozen shard from moving.

The woman tried to use her cryo-kinesis to shatter the icicle into smaller shards that started to fly around Wrath like homing missiles and started to strike his body one after another.

Once Detra was finished, she took a glance to analyze how much damage she had caused, but all she saw was Wrath cleaning the pieces of ice from his body as if it was dust.

"These won't work on me anymore..." he stated.

Wrath began to charge at Detra with immense speed and began to throw punch after punch at her who tried her best to react by creating several walls of ice to defend herself. Unfortunately, each wall would just come down as soon as the demon's fist came in contact and turned it into small fragments.

[He's not stopping!!] Dia gasped.

"I can see that!!" Detra shouted as she continued to be backed into a corner.

Wrath was giving her no time to fight back and she couldn't do anything bt defend and evade his attacks.

Noticing that she was losing the advantage, Detra began to freeze the terrain and used the ice to slide away from wrath as if she was a professional ice skater.

"You running away from me? What's wrong? I thought we were having fun!!" Wrath shouted as he began to stand on all four and proceeded to chase Detra like a wild beast.

Detra continued to use the ice to skate all over the arena while throwing shards of Ice at her pursuer at any chance she had, but everything would just shatter once it clashed with the powerful dragon scales covering his skin.

"Ugh... This is so annoying..."

[Shoudln't terminal energy harm dragons?? Why isn't it working anymore??] Dia shouted.

Detra could feel the panic in her voice, "We might have terminal energy on our side, but this is still just an experimental version of the real thing... If we want to damage these scales, we will need to try something else?"

[Like what? His whole body is covered in scales... Unless...]

"Unless...?"

[Well... You know...]

"Oh! Oh... That... That is gonna hurt a lot..." Detra cried.

[I know... But... Maybe we can do something about it if we work together...]

"..."

[Do you trust me...?]

"..."

[Detra...?]

The ice mage finally stopped running and turned around to gaze at the red demon dragon charging at her.

"Sure... Why not...?" Detra whispered while trying to focus on her extremely risky idea.

"Finally stopped running?" Wrath yelled while giving one final leap to close the distance between him and the mage, "Are you finally ready to accept your fate, fallen goddess!!??"

Detra closed her eyes and all of sudden, her entire body began to glow with a strong red light, the color of Dia's cursed energy lurking inside her body.

For a moment, the former goddess began to feel a sense of disgust from relying on a power that she despised so much, but once she realized how much she was at stake, how much she had to lose, and how much others had already lost to reach the point they were there today, all the sacrifice that was made, all the damage she had to still fix from the people's lives she ruined, she realized that forming a brief alliance with this power was more than a fair price to pay.

Aside from that, she had a young girl by her side that she needed to protect, and she swore to never let the same thing that happened to Marcella happen ever again.

Dia began to feel Detra's feelings flowing inside of her, and suddenly, using the strongest ability of the living weapon, the two became one being.

Detra was now completely covered in red metal and even her hair had turned red.

She observed as Wrath's powerful fist came down, and using a combined layer to cover her skin with ice and metal, all while powered by terminal energy, took the strike head-on.

"Guaaaaahhhh!!!] both Detra and Dia cried as they received all the force of that punch directly injected into their bodies.

By a miracle, the layer they had created managed to stop the blow from taking their lives, but the two were moments away from losing their consciousness.

"You just stood there and took it?? You must be completely crazy..." Wrath commented.

"I'm not crazy..." Detra commented while raising her bleeding face that was now inches away from Wrath, "I'm just finally paying for my past sins... Ugh... And taking the punishment I deserve..."

At that instant, the woman raised her arm, turned it into a blade, and stabbed Wrath's mouth with it before he could escape.

"Kraaahhhh!!!" the dragon shrieked while having its jaws pierced by the red metal.

"Now..." Detra began to say while charging all the magic power she had left, "How about you join me??"

"S- Stop!! What are you-" Wrath cried as he felt a freezing sensation taking over his insides.

The last thing he saw, was the image of Detra with her red hair smiling at him while summoning a giant icicle inside his throat.

"Oh... Dear..." Wrath mumbled before being completely blown to pieces by Detra's frozen spell that flew all over the arena until it stopped after crashing against a wall inches away from Knucker's ear.

The woman released her fusion with Dia and the two fell on the ground exhausted.

"You... Okay...? Ugh... Little miss..." Detra asked while she still remained awake.

"I'll be fine..." Dia replied as she giggled upon her first victory from a real fight.

Evlin and her group soon came to help the two as well as congratulate them on their job well done.

Ria began to kiss her sister's head and hug her, "I'm so proud of you!!"

Dia smiled upon hearing these words and almost began to cry at that moment.

The crossbow mage then traded glances with the white-haired man and began to silently spell the words "One down..." while holding the biggest grin on her face.

Knucker just smirked back at her and replied in silence as well, "Six to go!"