(H: Sorry for this, I had some circ.u.mstances yesterday… I guess that this still counts as seven chapters in the same number of days @[email protected])
"Holy knight Felia? Weren't you on the expeditionary party to Alfred continent? How are you here?!" Archbishop Nicholas realized Bella's ident.i.ty after studying her for a while.
"You've got the wrong person gramps, I'm the pirate queen Bella; not some holy knight Felia."
Bella did not hold any good feelings for this archbishop, he was the one who sent Felia on her ill-fated voyage to Alfred continent. According to Felia's memories this archbishop only obtained his position through his family's influence; his power was nowhere near the level of archbishop Stanley, who had worked his way up the ranks.
"Sounds like you've been mesmerized by the devil, you are bu one person; you dare proclaim yourself a king?" Nicholas was about to laugh at Bella's foolishness when he saw Bella gesture with her hand. From her s.h.i.+p flew several ropes attached to a hook at the end; these hooks found their place around the rails, and several figures clothed in black climbed aboard. These were naturally the undead that had been summoned by Angel; after they boarded the s.h.i.+p the undead immediately rushed towards the human soldiers. The undead did not attack the demons as they did not give off the same 'smell' as the humans, and they had not received any orders apart from that of attacking the humans.
"You traitor! You've sold your soul to the devil! I will end you in place of the Church of Light!" The holy knight Isaac started a 'Knight Charge' towards Bella, who returned the favor by raising her s.h.i.+eld and starting a charge of her own.
The force given off by the two holy knights colliding mid-charge sent the surrounding soldiers flying, both human and demon alike. Isaac got pushed back several steps and was recuperating, Bella immediately started a second charge to drive home her advantage; Isaac was caught off guard and sent flying back several meters.
"How was that possible? You were able to continuously charge twice!" Isaac looked at Bella after he pushed himself off the ground; her face was unwavering. Isaac remembered that she had came from Bernard's s.h.i.+p, she may have already defeated another holy knight.
"Why is it that all you holy knights have the same attack pattern?" Bella was surprised to see Isaac adopting the exact same defensive pose that Bernard had previously. It seemed to her that the profession of holy knight didn't have very many unique abilities. What she didn't know was that most knights require a mount to unleash their full potential and abilities; unless they were a dragon knight, they would be fighting at a large disadvantage without a mount.
Currently it was a chaotic fight on the wars.h.i.+p between Bella's undead pirates, the human a.s.saulters, and the demon defenders. The undead had the absolute advantage in this chaos as they didn't have to be afraid of any friendly fire, they swung their weapons wildly, aiming at whoever was closest to them.
Bella straight up ignored Isaac and approached archbishop Nicholas. Isaac was preparing to head to the aid of the archbishop when a flaming barrel landed at his feet; sending him flying into the water.
Of course this wasn't be able to kill him directly, in fact he was almost unscathed; after all, a holy knight's defences are nothing to scoff at. (H: unless you're Bella lol) It was just that he would take some time to swim back to the s.h.i.+p, it was their fault that they wore such heavy armor out at sea. The two knights should be graceful to their G.o.d if they don't drown.
Bella had decided to eliminate the two holy knights...o...b..ard from the start, but she knew that she would have quite a bit of difficulty; she had only managed to kill Bernard after she caught him off guard, she knew that she wouldn't be so lucky this time. Her goal was the archbishop.
"Holy knight Felia, put down your weapon and I can promise that nothing will happen to you once we return. Otherwise you will never be able to escape from the judgement of the Church…"
"Shut it! Don't be so arrogant if you don't have any cash. If you keep talking I'll throw you to the fishes."
Bella didn't bother to waste time talking nonsense and stopped Nicholas' preaching. Bella secretly felt pretty nice when she looked at his conflicted face. Neither Bella nor Felia liked this guy; in Felia's past life, this archbishop used to trick female believers to engage in intercourse with him by proclaiming that they can be saved if they offer their bodies to G.o.d, even Felia had almost fallen for it before she had realised.
"Are you crazy… What do you think you're doing?"
Nicholas started to panic when he saw Bella walked towards the sealed girl, he had to maintain the sealing array and what unable to attack; he could only watch as Bella got closer to the girl and pray that the two holy knights that had fallen into the sea could make it back in time to stop her.
The girl who was sealed by the golden hexagram had been roused by the loud sound of the two knights clas.h.i.+ng earlier and had been watching Bella the whole time. Her eyes s.h.i.+fted from wary to surprised to shocked as Bella walked towards her; because this holy knight did not have any ill-intent towards her and was also studying her closely.
The girl's height was around that of Bella's, just that her chest was possibl one whole size above. Even though her body was well covered by a suit of black armor, it was evident that she had quite the explosive body. Bella got closer too look at her face, wanting to see how a demon princess looked like first hand.
She had learned from the soldiers on the other s.h.i.+ps that the humans had encircled one of the four demon empire's princesses; Alf Dolores, 3rd princess of the Alfred Empire. Originally she didn't want to get too deeply involved in the human-demon conflict, and only wanted to grab a s.h.i.+p and hurry out of there; but there was basically no food on that s.h.i.+p so she had raided all the s.h.i.+ps in her way, all the way to the center of the encirclement.
None of the s.h.i.+ps that she had defeated on the way had much food so Bella decided to try her luck at the biggest s.h.i.+p on both sides; It was the s.h.i.+p of a demon princess after all, there should be something worth looting this time. It wasn't actually a surprise that she didn't manage to find any food on those s.h.i.+ps, as the human reserve fleet was still several nautical miles off and carried all the supplies of the expeditionary fleet.
Alf Dolores had long violet hair that came down to her waist, coupled with her irises of the same color; she was quite the charmer. Bella lost herself in Dolores' beauty, and only returned to her senses after the princess looked away unnaturally.
"Excuse me, are you princess Alf Dolores? Can you work with me a bit here, I'm a pirate and I want you to tell me where you carry all the goods on this s.h.i.+p!"
Dolores froze after hearing Bella's demands. Since when did human pirates originate as holy knights? Had the world changed to the point that holy knights had to earn a living by pirating?
(H: she's not serious about her question, she's tsukkomi-ing)
As she saw Alf Dolores struggle to hold in her laughter, Bella was a little helpless; after all, she couldn't yell at her and demand to know where the goods were, she might declare that she would rather die before telling a pirate. If that happened Bella would have wasted her entire day, it she had known that being a pirate required so much work Bella would have never wanted to become one.
"Princess Alf Dolores, can you be a bit more serious about this? I'm a fierce pirate, if you don't tell me where you keep the s.h.i.+p's money I'll…"
"Mister Pirate what if I don't have any money?"
"No money? Why didn't you say so earlier? Goodbye!"
"Eh? Pirate sister, don't leave! I can give you anything else!"
"I'm not a pervert, what else can you give me?"
Bella gulped when she looked at the princess' explosive body; sadly she was a girl and couldn't do anything to her even she had wanted to.
"If you help me… I'll stay by your side until my father ransoms me."
Actually Alf Dolores had ran away from home to escape from an arranged marriage, her father had disliked her as she was not of pure demon descent and had arranged for her to be married to the crown prince of the Metzfield Empire, Meyers Delrich, in order to obtain some political benefit.
This crown prince was a renowned playboy in the four demon empires, Dolores naturally did not want to marry him, so she ran away from home.
"No, I have morals too; I don't take people ,only money. I'm a pirate not a human trafficker!"
"Mister Pirate, if you help me I can promise you anything!" Dolores was panicking, afraid that Bella might actually leave.
"Oh well, I'll take some losses this time…" Bella wasn't cold hearted enough to leave Dolores after she saw that tears were forming in her eyes, she decided to lend her a hand.
"Felia! This is your last chance, get away from the demon, don't get tempted by the devil!" It was Nicholas' turn to panic as he that saw Bella was actually going to help Dolores; this demon princess' power was at least on par with that of the dragon knight Shawn, if her seal was removed her first target would be himself.
"I'm not more than a mere pirate, things like holy knights are none of my concern, get out of my sight if you don;t want to die." Bella walked up to Dolores' side and studied the flas.h.i.+ng golden cross in front of her chest; this was probably key to whatever was sealing her power, it was a question of how she wore it at a necklace in the first place.
"Are you mad woman? This demon sealing cross was personally blessed by the pope, Croft VI, it is not something that a holy knight whose soul has been lost can so casually desecrate…" Nicholas almost laughed when he saw Bella reach towards the cross attached to the necklace, but his words were cut short.
Bella easily pulled the cross of the necklace on Dolores' neck, turned around and crushed the cross into powder.
"Oi, mister archbishop! I think your cross is a fake; it seems that the church is rather short on funds if their giving their archbishops such useless equipment."
"You remember this!" Nicholas flew back to his wars.h.i.+p when he saw Bella easily destroy the demon sealing cross that he had been so confident in, once Dolores recovered her power she definitely wouldn't let him return to the church alive.
"Why did you let him go? This human doesn't look like one to be able to put down his grudges, aren't you scared he will trouble you after he gets back?" Dolores easily broke through the sealing array on the ground, if it wasn't for or the demon sealing cross she would have been able to break through it long ago.
"Why would I let him go? That guy doesn't even realise that his s.h.i.+p had already been taken." Bella pounced on Dolores and pushed her to the ground while saying this, just as Dolores was to question why, a large explosion rang throughout the sea. The s.h.i.+p that Nicholas had just boarded had been broken into two pieces by the force of the explosion, one piece had already sunk and the other was inside an inferno.
Nicholas had stored quite a bit of strong alcohol on his s.h.i.+p, Bella had already let Mia and Angel board his s.h.i.+p to turn the alcohol into the explosive compound before she boarded the demon's s.h.i.+p. They had been waiting for Nicholas to return to his death; the archbishop never suspected that his s.h.i.+p would be tampered with and was killed on the spot by the explosion.
Dolores looked at the sunken s.h.i.+ps in the distance, then looked around her: The remainder of the human fleet that had surrounded them were now fleeing, many of their number were now either enveloped in fire or sinking. The one who had done all of this, Bella, was standing right besides her observing her accomplishments. At this point Dolores felt as if she wasn't the demon here.
"Pirate sister, how did you do it?""It's a secret of the trade! Take care, I'm gonna make myself scarce here…"
"Can I ask something of you please?"
"What is it?"
"Take me with you!"
After quite a while, the dragon knight Shawn finally made it back to see the remains of the fleet; the demons' s.h.i.+p had long left. This naval battle later became the spark that lit the fuse for the eighth Human-Demon war; the humans lost four holy knights including Felia and the two that were thrown overboard and an archbishop along with several thousand capable seamen.
On the demons' side they had lost the 3rd princess of the Alfred Empire, Alf Dolores whose location was currently unknown. According to the surviving demons who had managed to flee before Bella arrived, the Church of Light's archbishop had already boarded their s.h.i.+p; it was probable that the princess had already met her unfortunate demise.
Although some of the human sailors claimed that they also saw a female holy knight, when the Church sent Archbishop Stanley to investigate, they all simultaneously changed their claims and nothing ever came of it.

(H: Finally finished with the prelude, expect V1C1 sometime Tuesday!)