After the Construction Overlord evaded Mehira's first shot, she quickly jumped over to the next building to take aim once again, trying to remember who Castello was.

Castello had lost his war against Zilla in an attempt to gain dominance over the construction industry. Though they both ultimately lost to the nature of construction being a near universal trait. But Castello lost harder, cast all the way back down with nothing but a few loyal sycophants to his name. He began to rebuild, and although it was hard for him to restart from the bottom, he was now a respectable minor Overlord. Far from his peak, but he has publicly made his peace with the loss.

Given Castello's presence here, Mehira didn't think that he was as ambitionless as he wanted everyone else to believe.

As Mehira didn't want to fall as he did, she had no qualms over shooting the golem sinner with an angelic sniper rifle.

The fortunate thing about angelic weapons is that they were capable of essentially bypassing any defenses. Additionally, they were guaranteed to make lasting scars that would hurt forever.

Of course, the most important thing is that it makes death permanent.

Yet, Castello easily dodged the two angelic bullets, once again saying, "I'm not as slow as everyone believes me to be, you know. I'm an Overlord too. I can react to your aim."

Given that Mehira has only a limited amount of bullets, she had to make a judgment on whether she would brawl someone likely stronger than her to save a few bullets that could be used on Hammer.

As Castello jumped to her location, she made her choice by placing her sniper rifle on her back.

Dodging his punch, Mehira summoned smoke out of her finger tips, sending them in a wave straight towards Castello.

Castello believed that it was meant to be inhaled, so he instinctively held his breath. But the attack was meant to be a slash.

As the smoke landed on his chest, making a small wound in his stone body, Mehira conjured small flames within her hands.

There were two types of flames in Hell. The natural kind and the demonic kind. One was completely safe to stand in, the other wasn't.

Ignoring the pain of the flame in her hands, she threw them straight at Castello, who was only just now recovering from the surprise of her magic.

Recognizing danger when he sees it, Castello managed to dodge one flame, but got hit by the other.

Then, he shouted, "That's not enough! Duval!"

Ignoring the growing flame on his body, Castello ran straight towards Mehira, fist first.

This was the exact reason why Mehira despised fighting sinners. Their immortality makes them too uncaring of their own bodies.

Using another spell, Mehira enlarged her wings to fly away from the flaming madmen, who simply punched the air.

At that same moment, a large fish sinner carrying a backpack jumped up on the same roof Castello was on, dousing him in water from his mouth.

Likely the Duval that Castello called for.

As Castello glared at Mehira, Duval placed the backpack on the roof, opening it to reveal… Rocks.

Initially, Mehira thought that Castello, being a golem, could use some sort of earth manipulation to throw those stones into the air at her.

Instead, Castello simply grabbed a handful of those rocks and threw them at her the manual way.

Her wings were too large to avoid those attacks, but Mehira was able to conjure a barrier that stopped the initial barrage of stone.

However, Castello threw hard, and her barrier eventually shattered.

Retreating immediately, Mehira flew straight down into an alleyway, shortening her wingspan again.

Castello gave chase, jumping down into the same alleyway, shouting at her, "So it is true! All you demons are cowards, huh?!"

Mehira snarled, turning around to collapse several of the things in the alleyway on him, "You treat your immortality too lightly!"

As an entire air conditioning unit fell on Castello in the narrow alleyway, he simply picked it off of him as he threw the entire thing at Mehira.

Ducking under it, Mehira blew a vast amount of smoke from her mouth at him, this one intending to end up in his mouth.

Before the smoke hit him, Castello shouted out, "Duval!"

Mehira saw the shadow growing underneath her as she realized that the fish sinner was still above her.

Using mass increasing magic, she grew her arms out and held her arms above her head.

The weight of Duval ended up nearly crushing her despite the increase in her strength, causing cracks to be formed in the ground beneath her.

Castello, meanwhile, wobbled out of the smoke, the magic within doing its job, but not well enough.

"That's… Sleeping magic?" Castello got out, coughing up some of the smoke, "That's… Not… Enough!"

As Castello rushed towards her, Mehira attempted to throw Duval at the golem sinner, but Duval grabbed onto her wrists, preventing her from doing so.

As a result, Mehira was punched directly into the face, sending her flying back into the street.

Duval landed next to Castello, who was beginning to feel better from the smoke enough to speak, "Tch, you are an Overlord close to my level. That would've killed any other demon. Don't you understand that being an Overlord is a sinner's business? You have no right to be in our ring."

Those words struck deeply at Mehira's sense of pride.

Was this not the Pride Ring? They say that every ring embodies its nature, and that each of the denizens would follow suit.

Mehira was from the Lust Ring, but she was not someone who embodied lust. She was not greed, envy, or wrath.

She wanted to be prideful.

That was what her teacher wanted her to be.

She would not fail her memory like this.

"The Pride Ring…" Mehira breathed out as she slowly got up, reciting something said to her long ago, "...Are for those who want to be something more than what they were born as…"

Castello scoffed as Duval handed him a pistol, clearly not willing to get close to the witch, "No, the Pride Ring is a prison where the strongest thrive and the weak obey. What fool taught you?"

Mehira glared at Castello as her size began increasing, her attire changing to be more feral, and her power unchained itself.

"She was not a fool!" Mehira shouted out as Castello's bullets found its way into her large body, showing no reaction.

Slamming her hand down, spikes emerged from the ground, impaling Duval but barely missing Castello, who rolled out of the way in time.

Ensuring Duval wouldn't get up again in the fight, Mehira balled her fists, which forced the spikes impaling the fish sinner to expand into him, causing him to be split up into multiple parts.

"An Overlord transformation? Tch, I would counter with my own, but I can't do it anymore," Castello said, making a decision, "Looks like it's a loss on my end, what a damn shame."

As Castello began to run, Mehira responded by using her magic to throw the bits and pieces of Duval at him, hoping to get him to trip up. At the same time, she sent more smoke at him from her fingers.

The flesh didn't do anything to Castello as she would've liked, but her smoke attacks did cut off his arm.

It would regenerate, but it would hurt.

That was enough for Mehira.

Transforming back into her regular form, she stumbled due to the bullet wounds that Castello inflicted upon her in her transformation. But she would live.

Looking around her surroundings, she immediately saw a few opportunists lingering around, ready to try and strike Mehira down.

If any of them were strong, she wouldn't be able to fight them. So she increased the span of her wings once more and flew up to the roof of a building.

There, she saw Plaze in trouble against Hammer, being held in her hands.

Mehira had no issue pulling the angelic sniper rifle off her back, taking the shot.

AN:

Mm, see, Mehira & Carmilla are both the types who don't want to take a lot of hits. Carmilla because she's all about that agility. Mehira because she will fucking die in real life if she takes too much damage.

So, it's a real annoyance to have to write those fights first.

Luckily, Plaze sucks ass at fighting, but can take a lot of hits. I hope that writing that brawl is fun.

[Gah, time is moving both too fast and too slow.]