Rowan's rally echoed with his mana across the ears of all his soldiers, and like a living organism, they responded at once.
Fwhoosh.
Fwhooshhh.
Whoooooshhh.
Swords and sabers were brandished while spears were held at the ready. As always, the Pride Army followed their commander no matter the circumstances.
Narkals stood before them, and he had called for them. They instantly understood the assignment. There was no need for questions or confusion. All of it could come later.
Right now, they had a duty to attend to.
"Morikawa, you will follow Ashen and fight those extraordinary presences. I will lead the army and make way for you." Rowan addressed his second-in-command.
"Understood."
"Then… Let's move."
"Right." Ashen summoned a steed of his own and nodded.
With him as the spearhead, they advanced.
"CHARGE!"
Following right behind him was humanity's greatest army, with Rowan at the helm.
◉
The first collision sounded like the end of the world.
"GHRRAAAH!"
"KRRRRAAAAGH!"
"RRAAA—GH!"
"GHHHRRNNNGH!"
Ashen's spear found a Great Demon's throat and tore through it in a single motion, but three more were already replacing the one that fell. Beside him, Morikawa cut down another with a thrift of motion that looked almost bored, if boredom could kill.
Death cries sounded everywhere, but he forced himself to focus on his objective: the Outer Gods hidden behind the monster army.
They did not make it easy for him. Even with Rowan paving the way, the demons eventually managed to fell his mount.
Ashen simply jumped off and continued on foot.
And somehow, that only made him more deadly.
The way he moved was different from before he had gotten stranded in this land. Every movement transcended mere economy and began becoming the driving force for the next.
His mana caught the kinetic force generated by each step, dodge, and turn, carrying it forward instead of letting it disperse with every movement. One motion flowed into the next, allowing him to change direction and strike without ever truly coming to a halt.
His movements began to resemble those of a dancer, each step naturally leading into the next without breaking the rhythm.
Bit by bit, the air around him started getting agitated, wildly thrashing with each new movement. His strikes now carried nearly twice the force for only half the effort, as the momentum of his previous movements was continuously fed into the next.
This was how he had managed to survive until now.
But what astonished him was that Morikawa, despite his outwardly lazy strikes, was mimicking his technique with ease on the other side.
'What a monster…'
Ashen wasn't able to keep watch on his companion because his new Domain's detection had collided with the first Godly presence trying to hide itself behind the thralls.
'False Mercy.'
Ashen instantly identified it from the mana signature alone.
The other party seemed to have noticed that its camouflage had failed as well, so it stood still while the Narkals dispersed from the combined assault of the two humans.
Ashen first saw an old man, more than half of his body twisted into a grotesque female smile, staring directly at him.
And the next moment, he was assaulted by foreign memories.
Those memories did not stay foreign for long, at least from Ashen's perspective. As he advanced forward, he was forced to temporarily forget why he was fighting.
In his new memories, he had no family.
Every encounter throughout his life had ended in either deception or betrayal. He had no lovers; he had no friends. His life was one that held no worth in saving, nor any reason to strive for.
An insidious whisper reverberated in the back of his mind.
'Why are you trying so hard? Why are you suffering for? To go back to that hellish life?'
'Isn't it enough to end it all now? Just relax for a moment…'
'And the suffering shall end.'
Ashen found himself agreeing with the voice.
He wanted to do exactly that.
He was just too tired from all of it.
…but
His body wouldn't stop. A will inside him was forcing him to keep going.
He jumped over a stray Narkal and attacked the old man with a spear thrust that traveled far beyond the weapon's range in a white line.
False Mercy kept his smile and let the spear pierce his heart. Then, his two hands moved to Ashen's spear and arm, locking them in place.
Before Ashen could guess the God's next movement, the ground exploded beneath them, and a jagged mouth of flesh and teeth erupted from the earth in a bid to swallow them all.
SLASH—
Before the maw could close in on them, Morikawa jumped in, severing the God's fingers with inhuman precision while grabbing Ashen's shoulder in the process and hurling him forward.
Ashen let his spear flow in two wide, opposing arcs, carving an oval hole through the flesh and allowing his momentum to guide him through it.
The moment his feet caught the ground, he shot his hand backward, just in time for Morikawa to catch it and pull himself right out.
The vice commander didn't even get the chance to regain his footing.
It was now his turn to be thrown forward.
As Ashen hurled him, Morikawa instinctively slashed with his sword, right into the waiting Reshaping.
The Outer God dodged to the side, but that was when he saw a spear being hurled straight at his temple.
He tilted his head at the very last moment.
It wasn't enough.
His ear was blown away, along with half of his face.
"NO! My beauty!"
The monster's blood splashed in a circle, half of it catching Morikawa's hand, burrowing into it and twisting the flesh until it began resembling a baby's arm.
Morikawa felt the corrupted blood travel toward his shoulder and decisively cut his own arm off.
Thud—
Ashen landed beside him, narrowly dodging a spear of wriggling flesh.
"Are you alright?" He eyed the man, more precisely, his lost arm.
"It's nothing." Morikawa simply shrugged and adjusted his center of gravity to compensate for the missing limb.
The two of them looked at their adversaries, noticing that False Mercy had the hole in his heart and his missing digits replaced by Love, who had already recomposed into the shape of a naked woman.
They stared at each other for a lulling moment before Ashen abruptly shot a hand toward Morikawa.
The latter suddenly found both his vision and hearing vanish.
{Path Skill Activated: Sensory Lull.}
The next moment, Mandate appeared from the clouds, looking regretful.
"Now I kind of miss Fearless Hiding. That creature was an expert at camouflaging presences."
"Use your mana to navigate from now on. They have one that can transmit his powers through the five senses." Ashen didn't pay attention to the new arrival and spoke to Morikawa in a low voice.
The latter simply nodded and adjusted.
But while they were distracted by Mandate, Self-Consumption had already approached Reshaping and eaten him, before spitting him back out in a healed state.
BOOM—!
The one to break the fragile stalemate was the cannibalistic Outer God.
He was the only one among them who could take a beating and come out stronger from it, so he had no qualms about being the spearhead as long as he wasn't killed in a single move.
From the other side, Love turned her hands into flesh spears that detonated in their direction, regenerated, and continued firing, not unlike an artery pumping blood.
Both men dodged the spears quite easily despite their impaired senses.
One had long since learned to fight without relying on them, while the other was simply a monstrous genius capable of adapting to anything related to war and murder.
Just before Self-Consumption reached them, he reached out with his hand.
Love answered by spewing a ball of flesh in his direction, which changed shape into a humongous hammer the moment he caught it.
He lifted it over his head and slammed it down toward Ashen's position, trying to flatten him in one go.
But how could it possibly be so easy to get rid of this nuisance with such a slow attack?
Ashen pivoted in a wide arc and poured all of his stored momentum into a sweeping strike, catching his foe's leg with the shaft of his spear.
CRACK—
The cannibal felt himself tilting over, but he didn't mind. Ashen's committed strike had left him wide open.
The hammer moved like a feather in his hand as he swung it toward Ashen's waist, intending to force an exchange.
Then he felt a burning sensation in his neck.
Morikawa had used that exact moment to strike.
The slash bit deep, but not deep enough. The Outer God's flesh, reinforced by his vast mana, stopped the blade before it could sever the neck completely.
But then a spear swept in from behind the sword, striking squarely on its back, forcing the edge carved through the remaining flesh and bone, widening the wound and sending the giant crashing to the ground.
Self-Consumption didn't even get the chance to understand what was happening.
Morikawa's foot came down first.
BAM—
The stomp drove the sword deeper.
The neck was now hanging by a thin strip of flesh.
Then Ashen followed.
CRACK—
His stomp finished the job.
The severed head spun through the air, its bewildered expression frozen as if it still hadn't comprehended what had transpired in less than a second.
"Keep going! These things won't die that easily!"
Morikawa heeded the warning, grabbed his sword in the same motion, and drove it into the motionless body while Ashen caught the airborne head on the tip of his spear.
ZZZZTTT—
Both men unleashed their mana into the undying creature with a single objective:
Its final death.
"ARGGGHHHH!!"
Self-Consumption had mostly been trying to create openings for the others.
He hadn't expected to fail quite this spectacularly.
Thankfully, the other Outer Gods could still save him even if he had failed to create that opening.
After overcoming their shock at the sight of two blind men manhandling an Outer God in such a fashion, they rushed forward with ferocious expressions.
'Damn it!'
'Switch.'
Ashen immediately realized the opportunity had been lost.
The next moment, his face turned expressionless as the older soul took hold of the body.
"Cover me."
Instead of retreating as Ashen would have, Old Ashen did something entirely different.
VROOOOMMMM—!!!
The mana flooding into Self-Consumption's body intensified.
A reddish hue spread through it as the 『 Godkiller 』 icon flickered into existence above him for a brief moment before dissipating.
"AAAHHHGHHHHHH—!!!"
"SAVE ME!"
Four presences were already upon them.
Morikawa briefly wondered how exactly he was supposed to cover against that.
"Fuck it."
He jumped forward.
His mana-charged sword left his hand and shot toward the approaching Reshaping from the other side.
The Outer God reacted this time, having adapted to the trick through Self-Consumption's previous consumption.
But before he could evade—
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM—
The sword detonated in his face.
Without a weapon, holding back four Outer Gods wasn't an option.
Fortunately, Morikawa possessed something else besides a sword.
His body.
'Thank you for bunching up so readily for me... now burn.'
A final smirk appeared on his face.
Then he ignited every mana circuit in his body with a single intention.
'Explode.'
KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMM—!!!!