In that second, Thera registered shock in the demon’s eyes, an inability to understand just what it had experienced that left it unable to grasp that it should even be feeling pain at first before it screamed and reached back, pulling the offending object out and crushing it in its hand.

“Hey, not cool,” She heard Ben call out. “That was a good quality knife too. The enchantments on it were intense. Well, not like I need to tell you that though, right?”

Just before it turned away from her, she was able to see the unbridled rage on its face before she was left looking at its back, letting her see the deep gouge that had been left. An ugly thing, almost rotten and burnt at the same time from the same weapon Ben had once dug into the body of a demigod. Causing so much damage in the seconds it took to be removed gave her a whole new appreciation for how his fight with Ather must have gone in the past, but there was a far greater problem now.

When it came to fights, Ben was the tools he made, but she didn’t think he had much on him at that moment. There was the knife he always carried that was now destroyed, along with his gun and a few bullets to go with it, but that was it. They had both expected her to be able to handle anything that immediately came up but what they had found already felt above their worst expectations.

He’d thrown the knife and guided it with his magic so he at least had a little distance but it was something that was closed in an instant, the demon before him before he could move and pulled its fist back to strike.

She expected him to die then and there, sacrificing himself so she could heal her wounds, but to the shock of both her and the invader in front of him, he actually dodged.

It was a sloppy thing, lacking both skill and finesse, but that didn’t matter as long as he avoided the hit, along with the next one, and the one that came after too. Each attempted strike was dodged in a way that looked more like wild flailing, his body destroying itself in every attempt it made to get away as it finally clicked how he was pulling it off.

Ben had once complained to her about his thought speed skill. It was handy for so much, but at a certain point, his body just couldn’t keep up with the speed he could think. Trying to make it had left him in need of a serious round of healing and he'd never given it a go again, at least not when thinking at his maximum potential, but that had to be what he was doing now. Each narrow miss came with a grunt of pain even without the strike connecting but each time it got closer as Ben reached the limits of his body.

She didn’t know how long he could keep it up and it drove her to work on her internal injuries all of the faster, pushing her magic to its limits while knowing his life was on the line until something strange happened. The demon stopped.

“You,” It spoke again, its rage turning its voice cold. “I’m not sure how you’ve been doing that, but it won’t work any longer.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” He sighed back before giving it a cocky grin. “Still though, gotta be pretty embarrassing for someone with low soul magic to only notice their mana’s being stolen right when they’re about to bottom out, don’t you think?”

She hadn’t thought it could get any angrier but Ben’s taunts seemed to have done the trick as she picked up the context of what they were saying. Ben had been stealing the monster’s mana, locking away its magic until it was able to regenerate enough to use again, meaning if she was going to attack, it had to be now.

Thera forced herself to her feet, feeling most of her wounds were healed enough that she was no longer in a life-threatening state and held forth her staff, her focus being split to keep her from falling but enough of it going to her spell for it to count as she brought forth spears of earth and launched them, only for them to be kicked away under the monster’s still impressive strength.

The demon looked at her for only a moment before turning, keeping its eyes on Ben. It hadn’t decided if he was the more dangerous one or not, but it was sure that it wanted him dead. A decision Thera had no intention of tolerating.

Since it still seemed to have plenty of strength, she went back to her last failed attack while its magic was still sealed, forcing weakness into the demon's body through the two avenues she had and seeing an immediate effect this time compared to last. Each strike it tried to throw was slower. Still faster than anything she could do when it came to physical combat but enough to give them just a bit of room as Ben’s body slowly gave out under the building strain.

He kept ducking and weaving, by all accounts doing better than anyone had the right to expect of him with all of the real damage he’d received being self-inflicted, but it was clear it was building up. His moves were becoming even more awkward than before and she could see bruises forming around his neck, the only part of him that was exposed enough to tell but a clear sign the rest of him was going to be looking the same, breaking under the force of a mind so far beyond the body that held it.

She wanted to get her hands on him to heal him and kept trying different attacks to end things but each time they either missed or were blocked. Even trying to petrify it only led to seeing it expertly manipulate what little mana it still had to counteract the effect. She didn’t know how to weaken it further but it was still functioning too well despite the massive loss of power on so many fronts, it was destroying both chunks of earth and constructs of mana before they could do any severe damage. They were in a waiting game that it looked like it would win.

She didn’t know what had led him to it, maybe he was feeling desperate, but in a sudden move Ben threw himself to the side, trying to get around it to attack only for one of its blows to strike with enough force to throw him through the air, launching him past her and revealing just what he’d intended.

Getting hit had been intentional. As he flew past her for the briefest of seconds he connected, merging a part of his mind into hers to speed up her thoughts enough that he could think five words at her.

Mana examination and earth magic.

She didn’t know what she was expected to do with that first, the thought being too short and sudden but at least began using her mana examination on it and felt something click. Perhaps just enough of his intent had gotten through with that brief meeting of the minds or maybe she’d just grown used to the way he thought, but she knew how he was saying to end the fight and as horrific as it might have seemed she wasn’t going to disagree, she just needed it to get closer.

It seemed like a reasonable expectation to have of it, they were its targets, but as it looked at them, Ben broken and bleeding on the ground and Thera standing but still not in peak condition, it gave that same savage smile it had before as it looked away, focusing in the last of their little group. Verbum.

Ben had done the bare minimum to keep the unconscious man safe, laying him under the cart for whatever protection that would provide but not enough to stop the determined demon who just wanted to get back at them. It wanted to take a kill for itself and Thera couldn’t meaningfully stop it.

No.

There was one thing she could do, it was just a matter of how deep the effect would be. Without hesitating, she took off her brace, letting loose the full force of her charm while at the same time directing it like she would any spell, bringing the monster's eyes right back to her.

She didn’t get the maddening or near mind control-like effects that came from most people, instead getting the same thing she could expect of many of the monsters she would hunt. Their hunger, fully directed at her as it saw a meal to sink its teeth into while Thera prepared her spell, flooding the world with her mana in anticipation of it getting close enough, watching their distance shrink in a heartbeat as she did exactly what Ben had been recommending. She used her mana examination to look at the creature on a deeper level, finding the voids in its body that any living being could expect to have, and with her earth magic, she filled them.

Every empty space she could find, stomach and lungs and organs she couldn’t begin to name were filled with iron in an instant as the mana snapped into place, forming atoms and lumping together into a solid mass that couldn’t be removed with its martial skills or any magic it possessed and it knew it.

She could see the hunger in its eyes turn to panic as it struggled to breathe, its mouth and throat filled with iron that went all the way down, making it so it couldn’t even properly move its body to get at her despite only being a couple feet out of reach.

Perhaps panicking was the right choice for it. If it stayed calm it might have saved just a bit of the air already coursing through it. By giving in to its fear it let itself die just a little faster, granting it the release of what she’d just inflicted upon it.

She felt her eyes widen with all there was to take in but didn’t give herself any time to consider it. She was already running to Ben’s side, placing her hands on him to fill him with her life-saving magic as he grinned back at her.

“A pretty good idea, right?”

“Yeah, except the part where your planned means of delivery meant getting punched at me. All of your ribs are broken.”

“Good thing I know a good healer then,” He tried to laugh, only for it to quickly change to a violent wet cough. “But how are you? You took a few good hits yourself.”

“Still better than you since I don’t have a body that actively resists life magic.”

“Hey now, I’ve gotten better since I gained my demon skill.”

“Sure, but that still leaves you worse than a normal person when it comes to this sort of thing. By a lot, I might add.”

“Well, I appreciate how good of a job you do with the whole, keeping me alive thing. Also noticing your face lighting up a bit since it seems like I’m not dying so what’s the good news?”

A hand strayed to one of her cheeks, telling her she was smiling without even realizing it.

Ben was right, she knew she could treat him so she wasn’t worried about his safety anymore, instead thinking about the notifications she’d just heard.

It was all good news, every single part of it, but some managed to be better than others. Her life magic raising so soon after getting a level from the life tower, her non-affinitied magics raising, bringing her closer to her goal of awakening them all together into a powerful new skill, the fact that killing that final demon gave her enough experience to finish up her saintess job, none of that compared to the final thing. Her charm had finally hit the sixth level, the stage at which a succubus could actually control it.

It was what she’d longed for for all of her life, to no longer be bound by her curse, free to interact with the world the same way any of the other races did. To not have to worry that the slightest touch from her would warp the minds of anyone poor enough to be on the receiving end of it. She was free.

She told him as much while she worked on healing him, seeing his eyes light up with joy on her behalf as she got him back to a manageable state and heard him laugh with real happiness for her as he got up the second he could to hold her tight.

“That’s great. God, that’s so great. Nice to see something good came out of this little fight, huh?”

“I wouldn’t call this a little fight.”

“Nah, anything I walk away from with all of my limbs is officially a little fight at this point.”

“Ha, well then I guess that means you’ve only been in little fights,” She teased, feeling like she could do anything. Ben was right, as tough as all of that was, in that instance it all felt worth it to her.

“Well, since yours truly isn’t about to die anymore, what do you say we take that one back and then we can properly celebrate?” He asked, nodding to the forgotten Verbum in the distance where the cart still sat.

Right, I can’t believe he stayed knocked out for all of that. Definitely something that should probably be brought up with Killi when we get back. I guess we should take the demon's body too since I’m sure plenty of people would want to know about it and Verbum could probably investigate its history a bit with his skill, but if I’m going to be doing that then…

If she was going to be riding back soon then that meant she needed to be prepared for when their panicky client woke up, so she reached deep within herself with her will to grab hold of her charmed mana, trying to keep it in place, only to feel herself fail.

…A bit harder than I thought it would be.

She didn’t get it on the first try, but just because she was capable of it now didn’t mean it would be easy. She was sure it would be a while before she was doing it as naturally as her aunt or mother could, able to keep it contained without needing to think about it, but she didn’t need to get there immediately, she just needed to start as she tried to suppress it again, and then again after and more after that, feeling her face fall just a little more each time as any hint of success eluded her.

“Thera?”

There was concern in Ben’s voice that she couldn’t answer as she kept trying, even as she kept getting the same result with the truth hitting her like ice water.

She couldn’t do it.

Her control had always been the worst aspect of her magic by a longshot, only being meaningfully gained once her skills had awakened, but given that she’d get a little bit more to all of her magics so long as she got a level to any of them, she had never stopped to consider that it wouldn’t be enough, that even as she gained levels on levels and the sort of power that could make nations fight to have her if only she showed the interest, she was still the same as she’d always been. Just a girl who couldn’t manage the power at her fingertips for all of the ill that implied, cursed to warp the minds of anyone who came too close.

She didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry so she did neither, daring not speak for fear of whatever would come out as she silently walked to pick up her discarded brace and slid it back on before they went back to a world that would never accept her without it as one final thought came to her before she did her best to shut everything she was feeling down.

I’ll never be free.