Can It Even be called War? V

Unaware of the approaching powerhouse and devil army, Jack happily went about her deadly and perverse business, being a bit drunk on the fun but always still vigilant, professionalist hammered into her by Scathach who Jack was now quite scared of.

Sirzechs, Ajuka and Grayfia were just about ready to make their move while Morgan Artoria and Jeanne were fully expecting it and waiting for the to start.

As for Asako, she was using her vast array of skills to neatly and competently complete her duties at a fast yet efficient pace, being the only one not about to be embroiled in a huge battle.

The first to get started was Jack and Falbium and the only reason was that she was pretty much everywhere so any random city he teleported to had several Jacks waiting for him.

Falbium correctly evaluated that the force causing chaos was not very capable in destructive force and so unlike the trio facing off against Morgan, he did not feel the need to make solid preparation and evaluation, specially since time was of the essence.

Additionally, he was known for his absolute defense so only beings with extremely high attack power could hurt him, tactics, speed, toughness, those might allow an enemy to outmaneuver him, outrun him, or last longer against him but he would never be defeated so he felt comfortable with charging into the fray.

In truth, considering Jack's increase in strength due to the binding and training, if she could fulfill all of her noble phantasm's conditions, she would most like be able to penetrate his defences. Unfortunately, as Falbium was a man, Jack was limited to at most two.

She had obviously been told about her possible opponents and though she could be quite immature, Jack was very cunning in the way she picked her fights.

As soon as one of her bodies noticed Falbium coming, the signature orange aura that appeared when his Absolute Defense demonic power intensified in preparation for battle covering his entire body, Jack knew exactly what to do.

First, she would use The Mist to her advantage, it blocked sensory abilities and magic so her enemies would not be able to search her out and as various innocents were also covered by the mist, her opponent could not launch attacks with large areas of effect because while they were the most effective method to fight her, they would result in unacceptable friendly fire.

And so, Falbium was forced to dive into the mystical mist where Jack did her best to avoid him entirely.

He gathered some people under his protection quite quickly but he could not get them to safety because while netiring the mist was easy, leaving was proving to be a far greater challenge.

Falbium could move around as he pleased, he could even teleport but due to the enhanced misdirection effects of the noble phantasm, he always ended up somewhere else inside the haze.

'I can't keep going like this . . .' He thought to himself before coming up with a genius idea.

He used his demonic power to create two spherical barriers one a shell empowered by his Absolute defense and the other, a slightly larger barrier with detection abilities.

He then expanded them both including any devil he sensed with the later in things the barrier would not push away while sweeping everything else, mist included.

Jack was surprised but she had no effective way to counter this and so, a large safe area with no mist was created and without the mist's interference, he could teleport the people to safety.

Finding a working method, Falbium began rescuing people and blinding speed by repeating the method over and over and had his men not enter the mist but surround it and prevent its spread with magical barriers of their own.

Fortunately for Jack, the rank and file, even so called elite troops , could do nothing to stop her so she just broke through their barriers when they were in her way and kept moving.

Due to Falbium's actions however, she could no longer play around and began quickly and efficiently eliminating her assigned targets, focusing on areas close to the Satan so that he could not get to them in time and save their lives.

In the end, due to Jack's increased activity and Falbium expanding his barriers extremely quickly, he actually managed to find several of her bodies which were shapeshifted to look like random people through one of Jack's skills.

However, knowing that Falbium's Absolute Defense could absorb attacks to empower its user, Jack did not counter attack at all and so ended up getting most bodies that the Satan found killed.

With an almost unlimited supply of magical energy however, she could just keep making more bodies so it was not really a bother. Unless all of the bodies were killed, Jack would always be fine because all of the bodies were her. The last one alive would always be the real Jack.

Still, with no one being able to truly harm their opponent, Jack and Falbium's battle was basically just a competition to see who would get to Jack's targets first, resulting in their salvation or their death.

Unfortunately for the devils, this was basically the only front where they could be considered to be putting up a good fight.

Asako was able to use stealth and misdirection to move around and complete her assignments with no meaningful resistance.

And Morgan Artoria and Jeanne . . . Their battle had started shortly after Jack's started but . . . There was just no way they would be remotely close to the losing hand there . . .

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.