"With this kalpa-fire as my pyre, I extinguish the remaining stars and walk alone to the world-saving end."
Watching the center of the dueling field—where Caelus, his lava cape flapping and roaring, wielding the world-saving greatsword, cut freely through the light and shadow woven from sky-filling thunder, flames, and explosions—and his Super Granzort.
"Aaaah——!"
Stelle's pretty face was filled with undisguised envy, and she let out a burst of ambiguous, excited murmurs:
"That looks so awesome! I really want to charge in and play too! It looks super fun!!"
"..."
Little Duck's expression was wooden. She'd originally figured she'd get to show off the splendor of the Metal Gear Little Duck on the dueling field.
But first came Haxxor Bunny, then Silver Wolf, and then the divine battle between Caelus and Giovanni—she didn't even have the heart to snark anymore.
"Hey! Stupid Stelle!"
With a precise grapple and chokehold, March 7th's arm clamped around Stelle's neck like iron pincers, firmly pinning in place the body that was itching to move, ready at any moment to pull out a coin and charge into the battlefield.
"Are you even sane?!"
She spoke each word slowly, every one carrying a deep sense of helplessness.
"Never mind that they're still in the middle of a match—you going in to help would be a violation... Wait, what the hell! Why is the match still going on?!"
March 7th belatedly caught on, her eyes going wide.
It sounded absurd—Aether activation had occurred, Aether Spirits had turned from virtual to real, this kind of cognition-shattering absurdity—and yet the organizers hadn't immediately halted the match?
"What are they even doing?"
March 7th took out her phone and looked. The IPC seemed to be wildly hyping this as an unprecedented miracle hotspot!
The interastral livestream cameras were locked tight onto this beyond-imagination battle scene, various data analyses and 'expert interpretations' scrolling by, gifts and bullet comments in the livestream rooms flooding in until the servers nearly crashed!
The popularity of the Aether Front·Interastral Showdown Gala had reached an unprecedented peak!
Traffic, attention, ad revenue... all pouring into the IPC's pockets.
"If you go charge in and cause more trouble—"
Keeping her chokehold, March 7th tilted her head to indicate Topaz above them—already drenched in sweat, cold sweat pouring, her face pale, yet gripping the topaz gemstone tightly:
"Topaz is about to cry!"
Though the IPC was a devil that devoured people whole without spitting out the bones, in this situation it definitely wouldn't let the live audience come to harm and create a PR problem.
And so, the heavy burden could only fall on the shoulders of the executives present~
Topaz squeezed out her Path energy, applying shields with all her might.
"Mmh... fine~"
Stelle glanced at Topaz, whose expression was on the verge of looking like Bronya's in bed the night before, then felt the undeniable force of March 7th's arm, and finally, reluctantly, gave up the tempting thought of joining the battle.
She blinked her big eyes, like a small animal resigned to its fate, simply relaxed her body, and rubbed her cheek against the warm, fragrant, springy side of March 7th's breast, letting out a satisfied hum.
"... (▼ヘ▼＃) Knock it off already!"
March 7th raised her hand and knocked Stelle's little head.
On the dueling field.
Slifer the Sky Dragon gathered its lightning once more, the golden thunder writhing and counterattacking like a dying giant python, trying to bite at the pursuing lava divine dragon and the Granzort.
Obelisk the Tormentor, bound tightly by countless divine dragon roots and Ambrosial Arbor clones, burst out with brute force, letting out a roar that shattered mountains and rivers, its sinewy arms madly tearing at the root system covering its body.
The searing pain of Eye-Q being blown apart provoked the Five King's most primal ferocity—its mouth fired an Ultrasonic Beam, its eyes fired Destruction Rays, and its lower body fired Super C.O.V.'s destruction blasts, all madly pouring onto the Glitter Form Tiga right before it.
However.
"Giovanni, answer me: why do birds fly?"
On the Express, Old Yang heard the voice come through the livestream, pushed up the black-framed glasses on the bridge of his nose, his throat feeling somewhat dry.
"Why indeed?"
Giovanni cooperatively struck a puzzled, questioning pose.
"Because when the genesis stars fell upon Belobog, the birds of the old era, to escape their preordained destruction, had to fly into the heavens."
"Ascending Dragon, Certain Victory——"
Caelus commanded the Sky-Covering Divine Dragon, and the Magical Sword raised high in the Super Granzort's hand burst forth with radiance seen only when a star dies.
"Cleave in two, Magical Sword!"
A torrent of light-flame that pierced heaven and earth incinerated the Sky Dragon's dying storm of thunder and gale, cleaving straight down from the Sky Dragon's head.
An utterly smooth incision, radiating scorching flames, instantly ran through the Sky Dragon's incomparably massive divine body.
BOOM!
That sky-blotting dragon body, like ignited paper, split and collapsed with a roar along that scorching sword-mark.
"First Break: Crouching Dragon Emerges from the Mountain!"
The Ryujinmaru, returned to its normal state, became the voice announcer.
Caelus sheathed his sword with a dashing flourish, his true body leaving the cockpit, standing towering atop the Ambrosial Arbor, and clapped his hands together in imitation of the First Grand Guardian.
"Wood Style—True Several Thousand Hands."
The Ambrosial Arbor manifested the form of Phantylia, with nearly a thousand densely packed fists behind her, each fist a full quarter the size of the Tormentor's body, raining down on the Tormentor like a downpour.
Caelus clapped his hands again.
The Six Paths Phantylia's true body and all its clones simultaneously swayed the Ten-Tails, and seven terrifying golden orbs of energy—Tailed Beast Balls—instantly formed before them.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Seven destructive beams tore across the sky, like seven falling calamity stars, tracing trajectories of total annihilation, slamming into the blue figure that had been bombarded into a great pit by the thousand hands.
"Double Combo: Fame in a Single Battle!"
The Tormentor's indestructible divine body disintegrated into streaming light particles and scattered.
"Do you believe in the light?"
Caelus's voice seemed to resound in every spectator's ears.
Tiga's chest timer burst with radiance; he crossed his arms before his chest to charge, then swiftly pulled them apart to either side as gorgeous, dazzling golden light particles gathered in.
"Glitter Form—Zeperion Beam!"
The beam precisely pierced through the Five King's body; the afterimages of Golza, Melba, Reicubas, Super C.O.V., and Gan Q writhed in agony across its surface, and in the next instant, radiance erupted from within it, bursting outward.
BOOM!!
"Triple Combo: The World Astonished."
Where the Five King had stood remained a huge, deep pit with lava flowing along its edges.
The entire dueling field fell into a suffocating silence, like the aftermath of a survived catastrophe, with only the aftershocks of annihilated energy silently recounting the earth-shattering scene that had just unfolded.
Amid this silence, a clear and rhythmic applause firmly rang out.
"Clap, clap, clap..."
Giovanni clapped forcefully, and on his face there was not the slightest disappointment or dejection—instead it brimmed with smiles and joy.
Elation!
"Splendid! Truly magnificent! What an exhilarating, beyond-imagination duel!—I, Giovanni Giorgio, concede defeat!"
Giovanni bowed slightly, performing a standard duelist's salute, his posture elegant and candid.
The applause and words, like a stone tossed into a calm lake, broke the deathly stillness.
The spectators began to come around.
"Battle-Through-the-Heavens Caelus won!"
"It's—it's over?! The nightmare... is over!"
Some spectators just sat there dumbly, their eyes hollow as they stared at the wreckage below—the dueling field looking as if it had been plowed over by an interastral fleet—their minds blank, unconsciously murmuring:
"Was that... was that really an Aether Spirit battle?"
The bullet comments on the interastral livestream turned entirely into a tsunami of information.
[Fam, who even gets it! I saw with my own eyes a Giant of Light beat the crap out of a stitched-together freak!] [That Six Paths Ambrosial Arbor sis—stop sucking up the Tormentor! Please, suck me instead!] [Caelus-baby! Mama loves you!] [Yukiko! Wait for me! I'm heading to Jarilo-VI right now!]
Uh, Yukiko was an ice-and-snow humanoid creature; he'd long been wanting to let his little brother have a taste of some ice cream!
That bullet comment reminded Caelus.
"When does it change back?"
Sensing that Aha might have a tendency to log off, Caelus hurried to ask.
"Hahaha, Mr. Caelus jests; this matter has nothing to do with me."
Giovanni stroked his chin and said:
"I'll make a bold guess: with the current number of Aether Spirits on the planet naturally consuming Aether, it might take about half a day to a full day."
"Only that little time? You're being way too stingy, aren't you?"
Caelus said disdainfully.
"Whatever, it's all free anyway."
Caelus turned and left the dueling field to go find Rand-Duck.
To remind her to immediately go play the one-day-limited Phantom Beast Pal and efficiently expand Belobog.
As for the dueling field...
"If this Aether concentration could be maintained permanently, quite a few folks from Punklorde would definitely migrate over."
Haxxor Bunny blew a bubble of gum, her little hand summoning a holographic screen, using Aether Editing on reality.
The spectators were still immersed in the earth-shattering, magical match—some cheering and leaping, some still lingering in fear, some busy posting shocked little essays on the Interastral Peace Network.
Just then, a slightly trembling, forcibly composed voice cautiously rang out through the venue-wide PA system:
"Ahem... ahem ahem! Everyone... everyone in the Galaxy, dear audience! Is everyone... uh... is everyone all right?"
The host's face was pale, his tie askew, his hair disheveled; he forced out a smile uglier than crying.
"We have just jointly witnessed a... um... a peak duel worthy of being recorded in history, one that may even rewrite the very definition of an 'Aether Spirit battle'!"
"Let us once again offer our warmest applause to the two trainers who brought us this incomparable feast for both eyes and spirit—Battle-Through-the-Heavens Caelus and JOJO!"
Scattered applause rose; most of the audience still hadn't fully recovered from the shock of moments ago.
The host wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, his speech noticeably speeding up:
"As you can all see... uh... our main venue may need... just a little... technical maintenance time..."
Neon pixel dots swept across, and the pockmarked dueling field was restored to its original state.
The host: "...?"
What was going on?
When did the tech department get a god-tier expert like this?
Was he still not fully awake?
After a brief moment of bewilderment, with the boss's near-roaring words coming through his earpiece, the host immediately changed his tune:
"It has now been fully repaired."
"Heh, let's just see whether you dare stiff me on my service fee~"
Normally, Silver Wolf couldn't do something to this degree, but now that Jarilo-VI's Aether, data, and reality were all influenced by Path energy, many things had become extremely convenient for a hacker.
No fear of the IPC refusing to pay—she could just go take it herself.
As for why Silver Wolf would proactively help the IPC clean up its mess.
First, because Caelus had just said hello to her a moment ago.
Second, it would be a shame for the Interastral Showdown Gala to end just like that.
Third...
"The spectacle never ends! Peak duels, one after another!"
The host swept his arm, and two names appeared on the repaired, battered big screen.
"Dear audience! Please don't go away! The next fated duel is about to ignite—right now—on this battlefield that just witnessed a myth!"
"Let us welcome two legendary contestants who, to this day, have never once tasted defeat: Haxxor Bunny! Wolf King!"
With the host's nearly voice-cracking announcement, the whole audience was as if yanked abruptly out of that previous nightmare, that myth.
But the Aether Spirit duel just now had left everyone's scalps tingling—tingling in every sense of the word!
Compared to the battle just now, these two's Aether Spirits didn't really seem like much?
The dueling field's lights refocused; two figures slowly stepped in from the shadows of the passage, halting dozens of meters apart, their gazes colliding in the air, sparking invisible electric flashes.
The clamor of the entire dueling field eerily quieted at this moment; everyone could sense the delicate atmosphere.
Why did these two seem to have a grudge?
"Hey! There's still time to surrender."
Haxxor Bunny spoke first.
"Surrender? Are you dreaming?"
Silver Wolf sneered.
"Then let Seele see how a cute little bunny devours a wolf!"
"You worthless little fry, running your mouth—big words for such a small fry!"
"Cut the nonsense."
"We'll settle it in action! When you lose, don't go crying to Seele!"
"I'll return those exact words to you!"
The two went tit-for-tat, striking almost simultaneously.
On Miss Haxxor Bunny's side was her Haxxor Bunny Armed Legion (enhanced version).
The Rabbit Hunters upgraded from submachine guns to living war fortresses; forty-to-fifty-meter giant armed rodent bunnies, Hunters, the self-detonating legion of Hopping Bunnies, and so on.
The ace was the Broken Sun Bunny 19C.
On Silver Wolf's side were enhanced versions of Prometheus in its various forms.
In the squad channel:
"Little Yuan—Full-Area Detection!"
A mechanical wolf of relatively normal size, all silver-white, covered in streamlined armor, flew out.
"Demon King—Suppressing Fire!"
A burly, heavily armored mechanical wolf, clad in pitch-black heavy armor, shouldering multi-barreled rotary particle cannons, its fangs flickering with arcs of energy.
When Silver Wolf's friend squad threw heavy punches at a romantic rival, they naturally had to back her up!
The ace was an azure wolf covered in liquid-metal armor flowing with the radiance of stardust—Howl of the Azure Star.
Haxxor Bunny led her bunny legion in a standoff against Silver Wolf's wolf pack.
The two's gazes clashed across the air again, their fighting spirit and data streams violently colliding, their brows rising simultaneously.
Then, Aether Spirits appeared in the match once more.
Humanoid, and looking exactly like Haxxor Bunny and Silver Wolf.
"Dear audience!"
The host slammed the table and rose, raising his microphone and screaming:
"The contestants have entered the field!!??"
Although Caelus had gone onto the field earlier, at the end of the day he had still been inside an Aether Spirit, controlling and directing it.
But now, someone had uploaded themselves as data as a player, then summoned themselves right back out!
In all these years, it was the first time a contestant had ever stepped onto the field to fight in person!
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