Chapter 478

The deaths of August and Bradman were also sensed by the two remaining people nearby.

Though Neinhart, who was fighting the Sin of Sloth, had unleashed his Magic Summon: Histori, it had no effect whatsoever against the gold.

After only a few exchanges, he died at the hands of the gold's Spirit Lance, a Divine Artifact.

And when only the Desert King Aiger alone remained.

Aiger's expression gradually began to turn panicked, and under his control, countless grains of yellow sand kept attacking Maren.

But the woman before him, wearing a faint smile, remained inside a barrier the whole time.

Not only did she suffer not a single wound, she also looked at him with the same gaze Bai Chi gave her.

This was utterly unacceptable to Aiger; his arrogant temperament and extremely strong pride drove him to keep channeling his own magic power.

He kept launching fierce attacks toward Maren.

"So the Captain and the others have already finished..."

"Then I suppose it's about time I finished this guy off too."

"Absolute Forced Dispel!"

Maren slightly raised her right palm, and a dazzling purple light shot forth; the sand like a wave—

In an instant, it fell downward like raindrops.

It was as if the connection between Aiger and it had been severed; even as Aiger kept trying to mobilize the magic power within his body, he seemed completely unable to do so.

"What's going on... Why can't I mobilize my own magic power?"

"Why can't I use magic..."

"You wretched woman! What the hell did you do to me!"

Aiger glared with a savage face at Maren, who stood high above; at this moment, he finally felt a trace of fear.

He himself had been lifted up by the sand, and now he plunged down from the sky; had the ground below not been a sea of sand—

He would surely have died, or at the very least been left half-crippled from the fall.

It was only thanks to the sandy ground below that Aiger was spared disaster.

"I merely severed the link between you and the sand itself."

"You could also say I directly cut off your source of magic."

The corner of Maren's mouth curved up slightly, as if she were describing something utterly trivial.

But once those words left her mouth, even Aiger's face could not help but turn pale.

From Maren's words, he understood perfectly well what she meant.

Cutting off his connection with the sand was equivalent to making him unable to cast any more magic.

It was equivalent to saying that, before Maren, Aiger—one of the Twelve Holy Shields—had already become an utterly ordinary commoner.

Even without Maren needing to lift a finger here.

The sand that kept swallowing him was already more than enough to claim his life, to suffocate him completely within the sand.

"Dammit! How could something like this happen!"

A flash of anguish crossed Aiger's eyes; the power he had always taken such pride in had, at this moment, become the very thing most capable of cutting down his life.

The sand summoned below by his own magic power now began to collapse downward directly.

Like a swamp, it left Aiger utterly unable to move his body; instead, his feet seemed unable to find solid ground.

He kept sinking downward; if this went on, he, a dignified member of the Twelve Holy Shields, would die beneath his own magic.

To be swallowed by the sand and die unable to breathe—such a death, for Aiger, was the most wretched, and the one he could least accept.

"Wretched woman! Kill me quickly!"

"Kill me! You bastard!"

A flash of fury crossed Aiger's eyes as he kept roaring at Maren.

But with his own violent thrashing, he who had already been half-swallowed by the sand—

Now had only the area above his chest still above the surface; in moments, he would be completely buried by the sand.

"Dying beneath your own magic must feel pretty good, right."

A cold smile curled at the corner of Maren's mouth, and without looking back, she simply left.

A gleam of unwilling tears appeared in Aiger's eyes; both his hands tightly gripped the sand that had always been his pride.

He slowly closed his eyes, and his entire body was swallowed into the desert.

At this point, of the Twelve Holy Shields, aside from Selene who died before even joining, six had been killed, one knocked unconscious, and one had fled.

Eight of them had essentially been removed from the battlefield entirely.

Only three remained, still fighting on another northern battlefield.

On the other side, in the Kingdom of Fiore, Princess Emerald, who had already received word of victory from one battlefield—

Her eyes were filled with joy; at this moment, even the Albion Empire, looming like a colossal beast—

No longer seemed so terrifying in her eyes.

She had even, in her heart, thanked every single member of the Seven Deadly Sins one by one.

"Princess my lord! At the coastal defense line, the mercenary group Akatsuki has successfully repelled the Albion Empire!"

"And killed two of the Twelve Holy Shields, seriously wounded one, and one fled."

"Of the hundred-plus fleet, an army of roughly eighty thousand men, fewer than ten thousand managed to escape."