"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"
In the green great cavern, lit by red light, the muffled thuds of impact and the roar of explosions kept sounding without pause, chaining one after another.
"Don't hold back! Hold back and you die right along with them!!"
Asfi and the rest of the Hermes Familia were still tangled up with the members of Evilus, throwing Burst Oil one after another to force them back while she shouted herself hoarse. But faced with Evilus members who charged in and blew themselves up, the whole Hermes Familia fought timidly, not daring to close the distance at all, so that they stayed pinned down the whole time, looking driven to a dead end.
The gaudy multicolored Violas, meanwhile, split. Some tore into Hermes Familia without telling friend from foe, marking every Evilus member in their path as a target too, pouncing and biting wildly. Others, under the man in white's command, went after Leo, either ramming with their heads or swinging their tentacles down in a frenzy, kicking up bursts of explosive noise and flying dust.
Leo dodged nimbly, and every time his toes touched the ground he pushed off it to spring backward, leaping away a distance and evading the attacks of every Viola that came at him.
"Is dodging all you can do?!"
The man in white, cutting a wretched figure, jumped onto the head of a Viola, stamped down on it with both feet, and launched himself into the air, hurtling toward Leo and slamming a heavy fist down at him.
The ground took the fist and burst apart with a roar, kicking up dust and noise again. Leo, who had flickered past the blow, was completely unmoved by the man in white's taunt, and as he leapt backward he raised a hand and cast his Magic.
Meteor Dance!
This Meteor Dance had been charged. In other words, it was a strike Leo had reinforced with extra Mind.
The air shuddered with a hum, and a brilliant magic circle spread open before Leo. The next second, a giant meteor far larger than Leo was tall shot out like a pillar of light, blasting toward the man in white.
The man in white's pupils shrank hard, shaken by the enormous meteor that nearly blotted out his entire field of vision, and the Violas fell into an indescribable frenzy as they sensed a magic power more overwhelming than anything before.
"Quick! Protect me!"
The man in white overrode the Violas' instincts, forcing them under his control and making them shield the front of his body.
The giant meteor came blasting in and instantly punched through Viola after Viola with unstoppable force, wiping them all out, then, without losing momentum, crashed down onto the man in white as his face went slack with horror, swallowing him along with the ground for a dozen-odd meters in every direction.
A terrifying explosion erupted across that stretch of ground, fierce starbursts flaring there, throwing out shockwaves as they destroyed everything in their path.
"Aaaaaaaaaah!"
The man in white's scream rang out from within, telling everyone the state he was in.
Only then did Leo still his endlessly leaping body, facing the shockwave the explosion threw up as he looked ahead, his expression calm as ever.
"Is it handled over there?"
Asfi and the others of course couldn't miss the commotion on this side. Watching the man in white take Leo's oversized Magic head-on, they couldn't help letting hope show on their faces, every one of them. From the bottom of their hearts they hoped that the ringleader behind this whole incident had already been dealt with by Leo, one step ahead. That way, with Leo's help, they could quickly clean up these remnants of Evilus and end all of it for good.
But unfortunately...
"You think it's over just like that...?!"
The man in white's voice, laced with pain, echoed through the space.
"It won't end like this!"
Shouting that, the man in white emerged from the center of the explosion. Every scrap of his white robe had burned away, exposing a body covered in wounds. No, that body couldn't even be called wounded anymore, it was nothing but a ruined husk, a blur of torn flesh and blood, with bone faintly visible in some places.
The white bone mask on his face had broken too, revealing a head of dull white hair. And his face, charred as it was, had long since lost any recognizable features.
But the ruined body he now bared to the air showed some hair-raising traits. His legs, for one, had turned the same yellow-green as a Viola's outer skin. And in the center of the chest of his flayed-open torso, a dazzling, many-colored crystal sat embedded.
"This body... this body bestowed upon me by 'Her'... will never be destroyed by damage this minor!"
The man in white... or rather, the white-haired man roared.
Look closely and the wounds on his body were actually giving off a faint wisp of smoke, like steam, residue particles formed from magic power drifting all over him, and then they closed rapidly, flesh slowly regrowing. Without casting any healing Magic, without using any potion with a healing effect, the white-haired man displayed self-regeneration that defied all reason, mending his wounds before everyone's eyes.
"Wh-what is that...?!"
"His legs... they're exactly like those Violas!"
"That crystal in his chest... could it be...?!"
"A magic stone!"
Seeing this, Asfi and the others were utterly stunned.
"A Creature..."
Only Leo watched it coldly, using once more the name he himself had coined.
"Ha... hahahaha!!"
The white-haired man, as if done hiding, as if laying his true self bare, spread his arms wide and called out with wild abandon.
"That's right! I'm a Creature! A being that unites the power of human and monster!"
The power of human and monster, that is, human intellect and a monster's body, joined together, was what they called a Creature. Whether it was the white-haired man or Revis, both looked human but were wholly aberrant beneath the surface, monsters that merely wore a human shape. That was why the two of them had bodies as tough as a monster's, along with this self-healing that defied reason.
"How can something like this even exist...!"
Cold sweat ran down Asfi's forehead. Even she, a master magic-item maker, had never once heard that there was such a thing in this world as a being that united the power of human and monster.
A Creature?
Not only had she never heard of such a being, she had never even imagined one. If the magic stone weren't still exposed in his chest, Asfi would never believe such an absurd thing could be born. But all of it was real.
"Surprised? Shaken? Go ahead and be surprised, be shaken!"
The white-haired man declared loudly.
"This whole incredible thing came about because of 'Her'!"
"Only 'She' can bring about a miracle like this!"
"It was 'She' who gave me new life, so I too must offer everything to 'Her'..."
...
The white-haired man's urge to pour it all out seemed to have peaked, and as if venting his emotions he pointed at the jeweled fetus on the quartz pillar.
"'She' needs to gestate her own avatar, so we prepare this seedbed for 'Her'! 'She' says she wants to see the sky, so we prepare soldiers for 'Her,' to lift off that eyesore of a lid and let 'Her' walk up out of the dim underground! 'Her' wish is our everything, the mission we'll finish even if it kills us!"
The white-haired man was fully lost in his own world now, going on and on regardless of Leo and the others' confusion or how they felt.
"You eyesore lower lifeforms couldn't possibly understand how we feel."
Only with difficulty did the white-haired man calm down and look back at the group.
"All you'll ever do, just as this Dungeon is sealed, is seal 'Her' away too in this lightless underground, where she can never see the sun outside!"
That was why he meant to wipe out Leo and the others. For no other reason than to eliminate the ones who would obstruct him in the future, and the ones blocking him now.
"Stay here, all of you!"
The white-haired man raised his head and shouted toward the quartz pillar.
"Your turn! Giant Flower!"
At the white-haired man's call, on the huge quartz radiating red light, an immense shape stirred.
In a rumbling tremor, of the three Giant Flowers that had been clinging quietly to the huge quartz, one of them began to move. It slowly lifted its enormous bloom, turning the garish, eye-searing petals toward the people below, its body, fused with the great pillar and the green walls, slowly starting to peel away, so that a clear sound of splitting rock and earth rang out. The multicolored flower gave off a powerful stench of rot, and every time the giant body shifted, it sent a shudder ringing through the quartz pillar and the air.
Meteor Dance!
Leo didn't hesitate, spreading a magic circle at once and firing off another giant meteor, sweeping it toward the Giant Flower and making the Giant Flower react to his magic power. The next second, a tentacle bigger than an ordinary Viola's whole body tore through the air and lashed down at the incoming meteor.
A searing starlight burst apart in midair over the great cavern, the giant meteor blown to pieces on the spot by the giant tentacle, scattering into a sky full of stardust. Then the Giant Flower leapt down from the quartz pillar and slammed to the ground.
Its staggering bulk struck the ground, and a terrible impact erupted, shaking the entire great cavern.
"Waaaaaaaaah...!"
The Hermes Familia, still locked in their struggle with Evilus, were flung to the ground by the tremor, and even Asfi's footing wavered, nearly dropping her to her knees. The shockwave, mixed with dust, swept out and filled the whole great cavern. The ground was cracked and caved in from the impact, the green flesh over it splitting and scattering.
The Giant Flower stood proudly deep within the rising smoke and haze, slowly crawling out.
"Destroy them!"
At the white-haired man's command, the mountain-range-like serpent stirred. Before long, it charged. The destructive charge came rolling forward with billowing dust, bearing down on Leo and the others, terrifying and suffocating.
[Read 60+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]