Wives' Endeavours IV

A single swipe from one of Scathach's massive red claws crushed Penthesilea's mightiest assault yet, pounding the amazon with the ground while tearing her body tougher than steel apart and riddling it with cursed wounds.

The sheer impact from what should have been a very simple physical attack clad in magical energy and not a huge blast, was simply earth shattering.

The very earth of the Crown of Undeath: Dun Scaith was sundered, the terrain chaotically torn apart by a greater measure than the entirety of the fight before the final clash had.

Penthesilea was completely out, near death in fact as her divine power struggled to help her recover before the ominous might of the curses assailing her injured body.

As for Scathach, she could feel her new noble phantasm rapidly turning her body into a state even worse than her opponent's.

So long as she did not deactivate it, weathered the hellish pain that seemed to be increasing rapidly with no signs of stopping and the madness seeking to encroach on her mind, the Queen of Dun Scaith felt she would be "fine".

In fact, even if she gave in, perhaps it would only result in her transformation into a cruel mad beast of unrivalled power, a being even harder to kill than she was and that was saying something.

Alas, the moment she tried to deactivate her noble phantasm, Scathach knew . . . She would die.

It was hilariously ironic.

Death . . . Something she had seeked for so long . . .

Naturally, she wished for an opponent to come, and beat her her, overwhelm her might and skill and give her a warrior's death.

Taking her own life was something she never even considered but it was still funny, to think an idea born from a tale of her newly found beloved to grant her more strength would result in her death due to the simple fact that she had tried to harm in maximizing the power she could earn from the endeavour . . .

Scathach found death the moment she stopped seeking it . . . It was ironically fitting. Just like people often found themselves facing things they ran from and avoided, they likewise tended to find what they once so desperately seeked once they truly stopped desiring it.

It made her chuckle.

'Would he mourn me? Would he try to bring me back if I died." Scathach wondered, even as Penthesilea struggled to hold on to her life at her feet and her own noble phantasm continuously ravaged her body.

'Hmph! Such thoughts . . . Like a maiden in love . . . How unbecoming.' The Queen of Dun Scaith thought.

Of course, Maidens in love did not usually have such fatalistic thoughts, neither did they ponder on such profound questions under hellish torture. Alas, those heroes of Celtic mythology were always a bit "off" when it came to such matters.

It was not a matter worthy of much thought anyways, her husband had made sure none of them could be permanently killed while Domina Coronam existed, it was part of the reason for their binding and why she and Penthesilea could go at it without restraint.

Yes, bringing them back from destruction would cost resources Jun was using for his transformation so fighting to the death was not the plan but, if mistakes happened, the issue was not an unsolvable one.

Regardless, such a method was not required.

Completely undoing and sealing the noble phantasm would allow Penthesilea to recover as the curses preventing her from doing so would be dispelled. As for her death as a result . . .

Scathach was the Queen of Dun Scaith, the Queen that ruled over of of Domina Coronam's ten crowns, the Crown of Undeath, as such, her use of its unique abilities was the greatest alongside Jun himself.

The moment Curruid Coinchenn was undone, one of these abilities kicked in.

The Denial of Death. With this ability one could completely deny a fatal incident and erase that even completely from reality, making as if they had never died in the first place.

Doing so, Scathach was suddenly in pristine condition as started using her runic magic to help Penthesilea, who was now slowly recovering due to the absence of the curses plaguing her, heal faster.

Such was the first, yet definitely not the last of the so called "spars" being conducted by the the two sister wives under the guise of training.

After Penthesilea was up again, considerably humbled by her crushing defeat, the amazon queen took a break to digest what she had learned from the battle while Scathach too took a time out to add some refinement to her new power.

It was thus that their training was conducted, periods of self improvement and reflection punctuated by fierce battle that left one wonder if the two queens were mortal enemies who could not wait a moment longer to eviscerate the other with extreme prejudice.

Through such a method, they both saw growth they lacked for a while now, while a path to greater power, power to truly be worthy of standing by their husband's side, slowly became visible, they were still far off but now, now they could at least see the way forward.

And so, Scathach and Penthesilea each honed their powers, the former her new noble phantasm from which she could since near limitless potential, at least on a conceptual level, while the other focused on refining her Authority and Divine Power, intent of working her way into becoming a full fledged Goddess rather than a "mere" Divine Spirit.

But while the two warrior queens underwent this extreme training of theirs while cutting back on the time they spent helping others, their fellow queen Morgan, she too spent less time training and developing her "subjects" now being fully immersed in her endeavour to create a summoning ritual capable of bringing Artoria Avalon to her.

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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!

The link is: https://www.p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/lusoba without the extra dots of course.

You'll get to read up to FOUR week ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.

There's also my other novel Archon of DanMachi, do check it out!

I would greatly appreciate any support since this is going to be my breadwinner.