"One Thought, Gods and Demons!"
"—Touch of Abundance."
In an instant, emerald-green life force erupted within the cramped barrier.
Before the stunned eyes of the elven princess, her body—already on the verge of collapse—began to recover at terrifying speed, as if time itself were reversing. The luminous wall protecting them started to mend, and not only that—it grew stronger and stronger.
Riveria could feel it.
Life pouring into her.
The fulfillment of something her body had long yearned for.
The ascent of life itself.
It felt unbelievably good.
Her stamina and mind were fully restored. Her understanding of magic had risen to a new height, as if her whole field of vision had suddenly been lifted. At this moment, she felt better than she ever had before.
At the same time, she heard the heartbeat of the boy before her—steady, powerful, without the slightest hesitation.
"Riveria!"
"Ha—AAAHHHH!!"
In that moment, she had only one thought left.
She would stake everything on it.
She would block this calamity.
The marching sea of flames swept across everything.
"Ghh… uuugh!?"
When the fiery storm at last began to subside, the surroundings had become a land of ash. The monsters, their magic stones, even the dense forest behind them—everything had vanished, leaving behind a charred wasteland. The floor itself had become another world, with the female aberration standing at its center like a boundary between ruin and what remained.
And yet one thing endured.
The wall of light.
The barrier spell maintained jointly by Riveria and Xien—pushed far beyond what should have been possible at their level—had preserved every one of their comrades, along with the ground beneath their feet.
Everyone wore expressions of lingering terror. No one could be blamed for it; that inferno had been horrifying beyond words. Even seasoned adventurers had felt their souls flee in fright.
But when they saw the two upright figures standing before them, some of that fear faded.
The enemy, however, had no intention of granting them a moment to breathe.
Seeing that Xien's side had survived, the creature, half puzzled and half enraged, immediately began preparing another attack.
A jet-black magic circle spread beneath it, utterly different from the crimson one before. This time it was wreathed in black magical light.
Without even the slightest delay after casting its previous spell, the monster began chanting again.
That sight made Riveria and the others freeze.
There was no room left for doubt—everything Xien had said was true.
That calamity from moments ago… it really could be cast again at high speed.
"Come, come, come, shell of the earth, treasure-light of black iron, hammer of falling stars, by the contract of opening, I command you—turn, burn the heavens, shatter the land, bridge sky and earth, become the descending axe from heaven, calamity of destruction—"
The chant was shorter this time, reduced to a long chant rather than a super-long one.
But that only meant the bombardment would arrive even faster.
Every heart was drowning in despair.
Even Riveria, despite regaining the power to cast, could do nothing. Unlike that monster, she could not chain spells without any delay.
"With the name granted to me as proxy, I command: gnome, incarnation of earth, queen—nay, king—of the land—"
The female aberration continued to sing her spell with the fluid, impossibly rapid cadence permitted by the gods themselves.
Yet there was still one person who had not fallen into despair.
Or rather—this situation was still not enough to make him despair.
Feeling the numbness in his hands, Xien's heart trembled violently.
Not from fear.
From exhilaration.
This was fine.
The enemy was a bit different from what he had imagined. Its attacks were not impossible to handle. Its speed was not beyond all reaction. With his full state unleashed, the spear in his hands could injure it.
That was enough.
Then… he could dance.
"Not happening!"
"Emerald vortex, this is the pulse of the earth's veins—"
"Azure gale, reverse and coil! Let a thousand forests bloom in fury! Spine of the mountains, heed my rhythm! Final movement of all things—life everlasting!"
Hardwood Restraint—Modified!
"All Creation—Court of Nature!"
Standing at the very front of the team, Xien brought his hands together, eyes blazing with resolve, drawing out his power to the utmost with the techniques he had learned from his master.
The same long chant—but this time with a near-vast torrent of Abundance flowing through it, magnified further by his unique skills.
What answered him was the world itself.
Obeying the summoner's will, countless thick green growths burst forth in rage and crashed toward the unnatural being.
They wrapped.
They pierced.
They tore.
They strangled, skewered, and shredded.
But the effect was limited.
The thorn-covered plants carved wound after wound into the aberration's body, yet those injuries healed almost in the blink of an eye. The pulling force was strong enough, yes—but the enemy's tentacles were tearing back just as furiously. For a moment, the two sides were locked in a dead heat.
Most of the attack had been neutralized.
Under these circumstances, there was no way to stop a monster that could chant and fight at the same time.
Wrapped in black magical light, the fairy-like monster sang:
"Meteor Shower."
The magic circle's glow shot skyward, and the ceiling of the cavern was filled with darkness and light alike—the darkness of immense material mass, and the light of the sinister flames surrounding it.
Xien's mind spun furiously.
In this situation, the optimal move was—
He suddenly turned and stretched a hand toward the people behind him.
A colossal concentration of magical power gathered at a single point.
And then the black meteor swarm appeared.
"Uwaaaaaaahhh!?"
Riveria stared in utter disbelief at the figure before them—smiling at them—and in the next second he was swallowed up by the rain of falling stars.
Exploding rock and destructive shockwaves filled the area with the screams of the group.
The entire region was once again dominated by relentless, blinding flashes.
And yet, in the final moments before their lives would have been snuffed out, countless plants surged up around them—layer after layer after layer—encasing them in protection.
The meteorites, burning with dark purple-black magical flames, came crashing down.
Against them, the plants—fed by an endless stream of life—kept growing.
Even under an assault that could have wiped out any expedition party, they held, protecting everyone within.
"You bastard… damn bastard…!"
Inside the protection of the burned, half-destroyed vegetation, everyone was injured and desperate.
Ring-shaped craters had formed all around them. The adventurers, confronted with what looked like the aftermath of a natural disaster, stood trembling as they forced themselves upright under the gaze of the towering female monstrosity.
And yet despair did not recede.
On the contrary, what none of them could have imagined was this—
that all of this had only been the prelude.
Looking down upon the wreckage below, the female aberration narrowed her vacant golden eyes and spread her supple arms wide.
From the monstrous lower body, two huge buds bloomed open.
That phenomenon drew every gaze at once.
"…She's… absorbing…"
"Magic power…"
The dark, shimmering particles drifting through the chamber, and the red sparks left by previous spells, were all drawn toward the vast, brilliantly colored flowers that had blossomed on the creature.
Riveria stared blankly at the sight.
The female aberration was reclaiming the magic she had just spent.
Watching the magical reserves depleted by those devastating bombardments rapidly refill, the expressions of Celty and the others twisted in despair. Even the shattered emerald fragments of Riveria's barrier spell—those particles of magical essence—were being mercilessly devoured by the female form.
And so they were forced to face an unbearable truth.
Once her reserves were full again, she would unleash that wide-area annihilation magic once more.
To anyone else, the dreamlike image of a spirit-like being drawing in beautiful lights might have seemed fantastical.
To Iska and the others, it looked only like a reaper calmly raising its scythe.
"…Is this… the end?"
Riveria pressed one hand against her broken arm, deathly resignation filling her eyes.
Mudze dropped to one knee. The others followed in kind.
They still had not spoken the words of surrender aloud, and some sliver of will yet kept them standing—but their fighting spirit had been reduced to a candle in the wind. Celty's eyes brimmed with tears as she bit hard on her lip. The members of Loki Familia and the others lowered their heads, unable to raise them.
Xien was nowhere to be seen.
Even after pushing themselves to the absolute limit, they hadn't even managed to flee the enemy's attack range.
True despair battered at the crumbling walls of their hearts, wave after wave.
Having more or less finished dealing with the monsters on their side, Alise and the others prepared to regroup and reinforce the other fronts.
Then suddenly, the elf nearby clutched at her chest, pain flashing across her face.
"Ryu?"
"Oi, stupid elf?"
Kaguya and Alise reacted at once, thinking she had been injured.
But Ryu gave no explanation. It was as if she had sensed something terrible. Confusion and pain crossed her face.
"Xien… is in danger?"
In the next instant, without the slightest hesitation, a tremendous surge of power burst from her body.
Pursuing Wind.Tempest Rush.Breath of Wind.
Like a gale across the battlefield, she shot off at a speed far beyond the upper limit of Level 5.
At that moment, her desire to reach Xien was stronger than anything else.
"H-Hey… wait, what in the—?!"
Alise's question never finished. The pressure wave from Ryu's launch slapped her in the face.
"Xien's in danger!!!"
The voice echoed back as it faded into the distance.
The others exchanged glances—then immediately sprinted after her.
Without thinking, they activated their breathing techniques. Scarlet and gold streaked forward in pursuit.
Looking at the green figure ahead, growing farther and farther away, Kaguya clenched her teeth.
"The gap… it's growing again… damn it!"
Having just received word that things were stabilizing, Finn took the urgent letter now placed in his hands. It had come abruptly, straight from the Guild.
He opened it.
There were only a few words on the page.
Yet his expression darkened instantly.
"Gather everyone. Reinforce Babel Tower immediately. Riveria and the others are in trouble."
"Yes, Captain."
Freya stared into the crystal orb, taking in the despair on everyone's faces, and her expression turned listless.
"So this is all?"
"Then it seems I truly misjudged him."
"Of course… a true hero would never appear in this fashion. After so many millennia, the pattern should have been fixed long ago."
"Still, better than nothing. Let us call it the testing of a failed hypothesis…"
The goddess was disappointed.
As she had thought, how could a mortal soul truly change? That fleeting instant she had seen before must have been some peculiar disguise, nothing more—not true brilliance.
Since her expectation had come to nothing, it was time to clean up the situation. There were still a few children worth watching; letting them all be wiped out here would interfere with her future plans.
But—
just before she spoke, one final glance made her pause.
"Hmm?"
With a thought, she adjusted the crystal orb, drawing the image closer.
There, in the purple-black haze behind the battered adventurers, a faint green light was beginning to shine.
Amid severed limbs and shattered debris—
Xien wiped the filth from his face with his right arm and stood up.
His eyes were slowly turning blood-red as he stepped forward.
At some point he had been blasted behind Riveria and the others. His body was a wreck, his gear nearly torn to pieces. The evolved equipment was desperately repairing itself, but the skin exposed beneath was almost entirely ruined.
To keep the others alive, he had been forced to pour every scrap of his power into strengthening their protection. The price was that he himself had been left completely unguarded. That spell had struck him head-on.
If not for a body already comparable to Level 5, and if not for the seed of Abundance within him feeding him power without cease, he would have been reduced to ashes by now.
The injuries over his body began to heal rapidly.
So did his stamina.
Faced with a foe that should have been nearly unbeatable, Xien silently called upon one of his final resources.
In the next instant, a transaction was completed.
His footsteps were slow, deliberate, and unnaturally clear.
He walked past Riveria, who had finally lifted her head. Past Celty, still lost in shock. Past Iska and the others as they turned to stare.
He did not hesitate. He only continued forward.
He summoned back Candleflame, the weapon lodged at the edge of the battlefield, and reshaped it into a spear. Then he faced the sinister fairy-aberration in the distance.
He planted the spear into the ground.
"I'm going to kill that thing."
And then he said it.
He raised eyes full of hatred and fixed them upon the smiling "spirit."
Iska and the others all sucked in sharp breaths.
Turning his face slightly toward the adventurers who stared at him in disbelief, he looked at them.
Within those crimson eyes, the three tomoe spun faster and faster—until they fused into one.
A magnificent pinwheel-like pattern slowly emerged.
In an instant, an icy, eerie aura began radiating from Xien's body, mixed with the force of Abundance. Feeling that deadly, seductive presence, Riveria unconsciously held her breath. It was like the most irresistible poison—something that promised ruin, and yet still compelled one to draw nearer.
"Now this is my battlefield. Fall back. Riveria, Celty—you should have your strength back. Get to the rear. If you can, provide me with long-range support."
....
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