[You should know them as the 'Blue Devil'. Inversion and Counter are their Authorities. That clone over there possesses a fragment of the Pseudo-Authority bestowed by them.]
The instant Eleanor heard Amith's words, her eyes widened.
Clone.
Bestowed Pseudo-Authority.
Attack Reflection.
Those three points connected in her mind, and she instantly realised the identity of the man behind the mask who had just risen to his feet, his magic power rousing, and she unconsciously muttered,
"Archbishop… Herad."
This wasn't just some division leader of the Azure Sky Cult.
'He's a fucking Executive!!'
Catching Eleanor's mutter, the man who had roused his magic power in preparation to attack Helga suddenly froze, his gaze snapping towards Eleanor.
His eyes narrowed as he muttered, "You…? Recognition Inhibition?"
He immediately realised that Eleanor was wearing an artifact carrying that effect.
"Exactly how do you know that name?"
The man stepped toward her, but before his foot fully landed, the ground beneath him split apart, and a spear of blood erupted upward.
Reacting instantly, he leapt back to avoid it, and in that moment, Amith's voice rang in Eleanor's mind.
[Eleanor, if you want to beat this clone, you're going to have to cut off his left hand, using your Mach Step skill at full power.]
Eleanor's eyes widened at Amith's words.
'What do you mean by full power?! My body can't handle supersonic movement!'
Her Mach Step skill allowed her to reach and even surpass Mach speed, but in her current weakened state, her body could not withstand that kind of strain without suffering severe backlash.
Years of training allowed her to toggle the skill on/off in fractions of a second, enabling short bursts of speed, which she had been using all this time to make it appear as though she was teleporting to the masked men.
Even so, the fastest she pushed herself was around 150 m/s, and even that was straining her limits. If she dared approach 300 or more, her body would undoubtedly suffer serious damage.
[It's your only choice,] Amith shot back. [You have to move fast enough to surpass his dynamic vision and stop him from raising his left hand.
If he does, he'll invert the damage of your attack from high to low, and then use his right hand to counter the attack.]
While she spoke, several of the other masked men attacked Helga, trying to pin her movements so she couldn't avoid the magic missiles Herad was already preparing to fire.
At the sight, Eleanor immediately swung the gun in her hand toward them and pulled the trigger, firing at the masked men to stop their interference.
But just as she did, Herad's right hand extended toward her, and five glowing magic missiles appeared above his palm, launching in her direction.
Already expecting an attack the moment his hand moved, Eleanor rolled across the floor to evade, but the force of the blasts gouging out earth shook the floor beneath her, causing the gun to slip from her grasp and clatter out of reach.
The moment she rolled upright, she activated her Arsenal Shift skill, summoning a spear from her pouch and hurling it at Herad with all her strength.
Herad's barrage had already been launched at Helga, but with fewer distractions thanks to Eleanor taking down the attackers who had tried to pin her down, Helga was able to easily dodge most of the magic missiles, raising a shield to block the last one she couldn't avoid.
Meanwhile, Herad was forced to leap aside, the spear slicing past him and embedding itself into the already crumbling balcony above.
His frown behind his mask deepened as his gaze returned to Eleanor, who still stood in the same place, summoning another spear into her hands, clearly prepared to throw again.
'Does she know the limitations of this clone?' he questioned internally.
Even if the true 'Archbishop Herad' was an immensely powerful figure Eleanor could never hope to defeat, the one before her was only a clone being controlled remotely, burdened not only by its own power limits but also by the inherent restrictions of the Pseudo-Authority.
Herad could not counter a weapon that was simply thrown at him.
While his Inversion could reduce the damage of an attack from devastating to negligible, so long as it surpassed a certain threshold and was classified as 'high damage,' his Counter relied on absorbing the magic power within attacks.
Against a purely physical strike with no magic power behind it, even if he caught it directly, he could not counter it.
Eleanor immediately summoned a third spear, ready to throw it, but then remembered she didn't have a fourth since she had left one upstairs after impaling the traitorous elf who had attacked Alessia.
As such, she changed her approach, springing to her feet and charging at Herad while swinging the spear. She unleashed a wave of magic power with the motion, sending it at the ground in front of Herad instead of targeting him directly.
Her magic power wave shattered the tiles and cracked the earth beneath it, forcing Herad to leap back to avoid the explosive force and flying debris.
Still moving, Eleanor struck several chunks of broken rock with her spear, and while some shattered instantly on impact, others, infused with a bit of her magic power, remained intact and transformed into projectiles flying at Herad.
The man blocked with a simple magic barrier, but just as he did, Eleanor thrust her spear towards his leg, forcing him to step back again.
His left hand reached for the spear to absorb the magic power coating it, while his right extended to release the magic, but Eleanor quickly swung the spear diagonally upward toward his right hand, forcing him to withdraw as his left immediately retaliated by firing bolts of magic at her.
Magic power condensed rapidly before Eleanor, forming a shield, but it shattered almost instantly, the bolts striking her torso and hurling her across the clearing.
Her back slammed into the wall, the impact driving the breath from her lungs, and Herad's follow-up blasts struck her chest, cracking several ribs.
[Eleanor!]
Amith's voice rang in her head as she slid down to her knees, and Herad briefly shifted his gaze toward Helga, who was just finishing off one of the other masked men with a stab.
He sighed, raising a hand to call back one of the stronger squads fighting the Imperial Knights outside, when movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention.
His focus couldn't shift to Eleanor, however, as Helga charged at him with her blood-forged sword, swinging low in a strike that made him click his tongue and retreat, since his palm couldn't reach low enough to invert the blow's damage.
'These girls know my power's limitations!'
Herad convinced himself of this, but in truth, only Eleanor knew about his power. Helga had simply analysed how he had dodged Eleanor's low attacks and inferred that he couldn't block and reflect incoming strikes unless his hand made direct contact.
The vampiress' sword swept towards Herad's legs, cutting the air close to his shins. The moment his left hand reached down towards it, she abruptly pulled back the blade and brought her second sword whipping upward in a diagonal slash aimed at his inner elbow.
Herad quickly conjured a magic barrier around his left arm to block the strike, while his right raised and fired condensed magic missiles with the speed of a rifle, all of which Helga blocked with a blood shield.
Above her head, the orb of blood drawn from the corpses of the other masked men hovered, its surface rippling as droplets separated and sharpened into crimson projectiles that curved through the air before shooting toward Herad's exposed back.
He covered himself in a multi-layered spherical magic barrier, but each impact cracked a layer, with each shattering by the third, forcing him to conjure more as Helga's blades cut close from the front.
Above her head, the blood orb formed from the corpses of the other masked men hovered, its surface trembling as droplets peeled away and hardened into crimson projectiles that curved through the air before darting toward Herad's unguarded back.
He enclosed himself within a multi-layered spherical magic barrier, but each impact fractured a layer, the third shot breaking through and forcing him to summon new ones as Helga's blades swept dangerously close from the front.