For me, dealing with the knights was far from being a difficult challenge. I had already thoroughly weakened them to begin with, and blades were very inefficient against me. Is my brother unaware that I am made of steel? My physical description should have spread a fair bit with my past stunts, so how come they didn’t bring maces or hammers? Or even more mages for that matter?

  Knights of that calibre were probably the worst pick to hunt me down. They weren’t weak, but they were rather mundane… Average even overall, since my evolution, my strength was enough to shrug off attacks from them and strike hard enough to bend their armour.

  Not to mention that my brother should know that our parents had insisted on trying to make me into a warrior following my failures at the finer magical crafts. I had not been put aside because I didn’t have the means to become a knight or the likes, the instructors gave up on me because I was ‘too violent’. What was a joke, isn’t it a knight’s job to slaughter whatever or whoever their lord points at?

  Most knights follow no code of chivalry whatsoever. They just serve to intimidate serfs into doing their jobs using the threat of violence, and guess what, violence is my forte! When I broke my sparring partner’s arm and beat his face black and blue, I should have been praised and rewarded! What even is the purpose of self-control in a fight? I’ll stop hitting when my enemy isn’t moving anymore.

  That's not a lack of impulse control, that’s just logic!

  …All that to say, I was familiar with the typical fighting styles of knights, and those guys were very much typical. With my superior strength, toughness, and proper usage of ‘Embodiment Of Negativity’, dealing with the wounded knights was a breeze.

  These sacks of fresh meat and tempered steel would serve a better purpose as my nourishment than whatever meaningless life they had been leading. Only one was left able to fight. The rest were either dead or as good as dead. That last knight was no issue, however. He might seem a bit stronger and quick-witted than the rest, but he couldn’t do anything against my adorable assistants, so I was free to deal with Maarkus.

  Maarkus… That’s quite a throwback. A boy with a bright future as a cleric due to his natural aptitude with holy energy, and one of my brother’s only real friends, but well… It was pretty obvious that Maarkus, when he came to visit, was mostly here to try and see me rather than my brother.

  What was the saying again? Brethren before maidens? I think nowadays the more common variation uses farming equipment for some reason, but indeed, the holy man had been smitten by me as far as I can remember. That guy had been trying-And failing–To court me from the very moment he met me.

  Of course, that never went anywhere. That guy was thin like a phasmid and weaker than a malnourished little girl. Even when using holy energy to boost his strength, he was never able to beat me at arm wrestling. Hell, I had to hold back so as not to snap my brother’s only friend in half…

  Though, admittedly, twenty years had passed, and it seemed like energy manipulation was a good deal, he still looked like a twenty-year-old. Truthfully, he wasn’t bad looking, but what was the point of having a good face if you couldn’t beat me in a fight? Why would I settle for a lesser weakling that a strong gust of wind could probably fold like laundry?

  Why was it that I had been cursed with only attracting the pathetic wimps who wanted a woman to walk all over them? If I want to step on a man, it’s to crush his skull under my foot, not for anything else.

  Just looking at him makes me mad…

  I would like to make him cough up why my brother had sent him and some knights here, but I could already tell that he wasn’t going to give me the answers I desired. Weak and fragile, but annoyingly stubborn.

  I reached into one of my pockets, being that I was garbed like a mad forest witch with goat horns on my head, I was wrapped in several layers of fabric, and I even had multiple satchels wrapped around my body.

  Having been experimenting with my powers, I had come up with a few more tricks compared to before… Though it wasn’t anything extraordinary, in fact, I would qualify my current set of tricks as rather weak.

  On the side of creating spectral subordinates, I had discovered that it really required a lot of time and resources to figure anything out. The best I had managed were the ghosts that I had placed on many cabins throughout the forest.

  As I had discovered, to create spirits capable of interacting with the physical world, the easiest solution was to torture them using anger, wrath, and whatever other similar emotions. However, using too much or using an emotion too strong would make them incapable of following orders, as they would be unreasonably angry at all times.

  So in the end, I ended up with ghosts who could only shut or open doors. Beyond that, they were useless… Of course, I could still use them, but compared to my cute assistants, they just looked like stains.

  As for the side of curses… Things were going a little better. I was still experimenting, using whatever knowledge I remembered, but I had only figured out two good usages for my ability to cast curses.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  One was what I had used on several chiefs and elders of the villages to demonstrate that my cursing abilities did exist, rendering injuries basically incapable of healing on their own, but the physical contact to cast it was far too long to be used in actual combat.

  The second usage was a bit more useful, however.

  Out of my pocket, I pulled out a fistful of ash gathered from my daily fire bath, and without hesitation, I flung it toward the cleric. He reflexively tensed up. I felt the startle, the acute fear that coursed through him and flew toward me in that instant.

  That was how I knew that he wasn’t baiting me.

  The ash itself was cursed, and sound seemed to ignite into what looked like a hail of sparks, exploding with a small boom like fireworks–That was all, literally just a distraction as the cursed ash was ignited by the fiery curse imbued into it.

  But that was more than enough when you weren’t an idiot. I knew well that my prey had reacted exactly how I wanted him to, so there was no reason for me to hesitate for even a split second. I surged through the ashen fireworks, my maw wide open as I feinted going for a bite to the head, but instead I slammed one of my heavy feet right into Maarkus’s sternum, throwing him to the ground.

  Due to having the body of an automaton, my feet were especially heavy and stubby, somewhat similar to those of an elephant, but not nearly as rounded or pillar-like.

  Automatons, at least those I remembered personally, were clumsy things that needed to have a solid footing at all times, leading the people building them to give them feet that were especially large and heavy to ensure that they didn’t just fall over and crush a kid into red soup.

  It was to my advantage as a kick of mine was thus many times more brutal than a punch. I simply didn’t really focus on kicking all that much regularly because my fists were usually more than enough, and also, I tended to deliberately move more automaton-like to trick people into thinking that I really needed to keep both feet grounded, else I fell over.

  Fighting was an art, and to me, a big part of it was tricking your opponent.

  When I beat my sparring partner senseless all those years ago, I did so by pretending to flinch at first before twisting his arm the wrong way. It was just too easy to tell when a man was the kind to hold back against a woman… Sadly, it didn’t work for me all that much anymore.

  Good looks truly are an advantage anywhere and everywhere, heh?

  He still managed to put up a barrier? Talk about some quick casting… Or did he pre-cast that just in case?

  Despite being able to use negative energy to weave and cast curses, I was still energy illiterate. I couldn’t tell if something was casting a spell unless they were very overt about it or if there was a visual sign, so any mage that was worth something, I couldn’t tell crap about what they were up to.

  That was why I had picked up ‘Energy Resilience’ on the first occasion. I needed a lifeline against mages…

  Though it was progressing at a much slower rate than ‘Flame Resistance’ due to the lack of readily available energy-based damage and the sheer amount of things it covered.

  Several bright bullets of holy energy were thrown through the air, and those that I managed to dodge were evaded by sheer luck, the rest struck my body.

  Unfortunately, this area did not have any of my traps buried or hidden in trees. I hadn’t covered the entire forest with them. The process of ripping my own maw off and regrowing it wasn’t exactly quick… Otherwise, Maarkus could already be covered in them.

  The good thing with that trap that I had figured out was that it was hardly detectable. It was just a lump of metal. Only someone capable of sensing the life that inhabited my torn-off jaws would be able to notice them. They didn’t rely on anything other than me to activate themselves.

  I used the trails of negative emotions to pinpoint the locations of my victims whilst I was travelling through the underground tunnels, choosing to activate the trap when it seemed like they were within range.

  So one’s natural instincts weren’t very useful in countering them. Whatever intent I may be emitting that a warrior could pick up on would be coming from my whole self, not from the individual pieces of me dispersed throughout the woods.

  The knights, who relied on their instincts a lot during combat, were blindsided by my little ankle biters.

  “A–A–Aren’t you an annoying little twat?”

  His holy bullets weren’t very powerful, but I wasn’t willing to give him time to come up with a stronger spell, so I surged forward, kicking him in the side of his ribs whilst he was down, throwing the cleric into a tree.

  Another barrier…

  Running up to him again, I screamed in his face, forcing disorientation into his heart as my loud scream made his ears ring, seeking to interrupt whatever spell he may be attempting to cast.

  “Let us–us–us reenact the good–ood old times, sh–shall we?”

  I pinned him against the tree with one hand and seized his wrist with the other, twisting his arm in my vice-like grip as though trying to overpower him in arm wrestling. I played my melody as loudly as it was possible right in his face, imbuing the music box with ‘Embodiment Of Negativity’, forcefully inserting greater panic within the exorcist, making his heart beat faster, making his thoughts muddle with one another.

  He resisted strongly, but the efforts he put in clearing his mind were efforts he couldn’t put toward casting a spell strong enough to shake me off.

  Clerics were not warriors. Those were called battle-clerics. They needed an extra word because they were rare enough to deserve it… The rest? They were better suited for the backlines.

  Maarkus was but a regular cleric like many others. He gave blessings, healed people, and gave advice to the believers of the faith he served. The idea that my brother would send him after me was frankly insulting.

  “I’LL–TEAR–YOU–LIMB–FROM–LIMB”

  Mmh…? Why did his gaze flicker to the right-

  Oh.

  Something slammed right into me, the force of the shock great enough to make me let go somehow, basically forcing my fingers open from sheer strength.

  Now that’s a surprise…