Blue Rose and Red Queen

If Erza's strength was comparable to that of an elite B-class mage, then Qliphoth was among the most troublesome opponents in B-class.

And Sonia, who possessed Cain's demonic power, had reached the threshold of A-class after absorbing Qliphoth's power.

That was even though Sonia still couldn't fully control the two demonic powers.

If Sonia could truly master that power, she would undoubtedly advance to A-class.

She would become a first-rate mage whom the vast majority of people in this world could only look up to!

Of course, if someone who had only just entered A-class dared to challenge Yuri, they clearly had no idea who was out of whose league.

Besides, Sonia wasn't even A-class yet.

"Impossible... How could this happen...?" Sonia said in disbelief, clutching her severed arm.

"I told you, you can't beat me," Yuri said calmly, as if stating a fact.

"No! I don't believe it!!!" Sonia roared, her arm regenerating in an instant.

Then six thorny roots resembling spider legs sprouted from her back and shot toward Yuri all at once.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Brilliant flashes of fire erupted one after another as six bullets fired in rapid succession from the double-barreled revolver in Yuri's hand, each striking the mouthparts of a thorny root with perfect precision.

It was needle against spearpoint, bandit against thug.

The razor-sharp mouthparts, which had previously pierced through everything, shattered one after another when they collided with the bullets from the revolver.

"Ten points." Yuri blew gently, dispersing the gunsmoke rising from the muzzle.

"That gun!" Watching from nearby, Erza saw what had happened and was immediately reminded of some less-than-pleasant memories.

Even now, she didn't understand why Yuri had shattered her armor, which was tough enough to withstand magical attacks, with a single shot.

They were clearly ordinary bullets, without a trace of magic power... Surely the craftsman in Magnolia hadn't cut corners?

"Oh, that?" Griffon suddenly spoke up to explain. "That gun's called Blue Rose. Yuri made it himself as his personal sidearm. Those flashy cheap knockoffs out there can't compare."

In fact, the gun was the signature weapon of Nero, one of the protagonists of the Devil May Cry series.

As a handgun designed to fight demons, its design was quite insane.

Its large-caliber revolver design and two vertically stacked barrels made it far more powerful than other handguns.

A single pull of the trigger fired two bullets with completely different functions, one after the other, almost simultaneously.

The first was an armor-shattering round that could inflict damage over a wide area of an enemy's body. Its destructive power alone wasn't great, but it was exceptionally effective at breaking armor. That was why Erza's armor had been shattered so easily.

The other was a piercing round, an extremely powerful bullet capable of delivering a fatal blow after the armor-shattering round broke through the enemy's defenses. It could also be understood as a critical hit.

One broke armor, the other dealt a critical hit. Combining two buffs in one, this was the anti-demon weapon—Blue Rose.

However, for all its advantages, the gun's recoil and accuracy placed extremely demanding requirements on its user's strength and skill. That was also why its design was called insane.

Without rigorous training, it was simply impossible to be like Yuri and land every bullet precisely on a needlepoint moving at high speed.

"Got any other tricks?"

Yuri swung the cylinder open with one hand, letting the spent casings slide out. Then he flicked his coat, sending fresh bullets flying out of it, and spun Blue Rose in his hand, loading all six rounds in an instant.

Sonia stared blankly at everything before her. She had expected Yuri to be strong, but she had never imagined he would be this strong.

Merely standing in place, he had neutralized every one of her attacks.

"No, this is impossible! Cain's power combined with Qliphoth's is perfect. There's no way I can lose."

Unable to accept reality, Sonia grew even more deranged. Looking at Yuri across from her, with his black coat and silver-white hair, she felt as though she had returned to seven years ago and once again seen the culprit who had killed her mother...

"!!!"

Sonia's eyes instantly turned scarlet, an ominous bloody light shining within them.

If Sonia's eyes had once seemed like brilliant, enchanting rubies, now they were pools of blood that sent chills through anyone who saw them.

They brought nothing but disaster...

The powers of the Blood Demon Tree and the Blood Devil, highly compatible with each other, constantly collided and merged within Sonia, causing her magic power to swell and rise while consuming the humanity caught between them.

Now she was about to lose even the last of her reason. She roared at Yuri, whom she had mistaken for someone else, "Bastard! Mongrel!! Scum!!! I'll kill you no matter what!!!!!"

Faced with the girl acting like a madwoman, the man she had mistaken for someone else remained quite calm.

He looked at Sonia, whose body was gradually being covered in dark red roots as she was about to undergo demonic transformation, and sneered. "Just as I thought. Cain really did duel Qliphoth to obtain his magic power, but by a strange twist of fate, he ended up freeing the ancestors of Caro Town... I knew it. How could a demon possibly save humans?"

With that, Yuri reached out with his sleeveless left arm and drew the greatsword from his back.

Uh...

Apparently, he had shown off a little too much just now. This was one of his favorite coats, and now that it was missing a sleeve, it looked rather odd.

Forget it. He would deal with the trouble in front of him first.

"That's the greatsword?!" Compared to Blue Rose, the greatsword in Yuri's hand had left an even deeper impression on Erza.

After all, no matter how she looked at it, it was a two-handed sword, yet Yuri wielded it as freely as a one-handed sword. He had also used it to easily defeat her Heaven's Wheel Armor.

"Red Queen, huh? That's no good thing. I'd advise you not to set your sights on it," Griffon chimed in to warn her.

"Why?" Although Erza had no designs on the Red Queen in Yuri's hand, she was still curious about what Griffon meant.

She was, after all, a mage who relied on armor and weapons to fight, and she would need to add to her equipment in the future. Since Red Queen was Yuri's personal sword, perhaps she could use it as a reference.

"That sword wasn't designed for mages to begin with. A little girl with skinny arms and legs like yours would just get flung away by it."

"The sword would fling a person away? Are you sure you didn't get that backward...?" Erza said, at a loss for words.

"Look for yourself and you'll see." Griffon raised a wing and pointed at Yuri, who was not far away, signaling Erza to look.

"Vroom—"

As Yuri slowly turned the red grip on the sword's hilt, the sound of a Harley racing across the open wilderness seemed to thunder past their ears once more, instantly setting the whole scene ablaze.