"You've got to be kidding me!!!!!!!!!" (cue the Kiritsugu face)
A twisted expression of madness and despair spread across his face as he threw his head back and howled his lungs out.
Then a wet, muffled burst of flesh exploded out.
From beneath that "Truck-kun boulder," a hideous black claw stabbed up, and a black flash swept across like a scythe. The last few remaining Evilus members were slammed into the ground before they could even scream.
Ground into a puddle of meat in the literal sense.
"?"
The leader's empty eyes drifted upward. With a rumbling tremor, the stone pressing down on the magic circle was flung away and shattered by some enormous force. And then a huge black shadow climbed out inch by inch from the center of that blood-red, supposedly destroyed evil ritual circle, until it fully revealed its suffocating true form.
"D-did it work?"
The underling who had survived by luck beside him stared in terror, mouth hanging open, and forced out a few stammered words.
"B-but the ritual circle... wasn't it already smashed to pieces?!"
Another man's voice shook beyond control, thick with incomprehensible fear.
"What... what on earth is going on here?!"
The leader threw back his hood. Confusion crossed his face first, then something thoughtful, and finally, as if waking up, he whipped his head around toward one corner of the circle. In an inconspicuous spot, a crystal vial had been smashed to powder by falling rock.
The blood-red liquid inside, giving off its distinctive scent, was flowing out in a steady trickle and seeping, dead on target, into the grooves of the circle.
Seeing that, the leader's pupils contracted.
"So that's it!"
"God blood got mixed into the ritual!"
"No... by the ritual's steps, the god blood is supposed to be added at the very last step before the summoning completes, after the Beast Taming Orb is set in."
At that thought, his face went white as paper, and sweat the size of beans burst out on his forehead.
"Th-the taming step wasn't finished... then, then doesn't that mean..."
Which meant that this newborn Greatest Evil was not under Evilus's control at all.
"That's not how the plan was supposed to goooooo!"
Heavy, slow footsteps beat against the ground like a funeral bell. The Greatest Evil swung its hideous long tail, covered in bone spurs, and with a grinding of neck bones that set the teeth on edge, turned that huge dragon's head toward them.
A pair of dragon eyes locked onto the few survivors here. That was not a predator's gaze. It was a natural disaster looking down at ants, an absolute terror branded straight into the most primitive part of the soul.
"No, I can't die yet..."
"I haven't gotten my payment yet... I haven't gotten to enjoy any of it..."
"I have to live!"
The leader's eyes bulged as if they would split. Every scrap of reason and dignity was crushed by the will to survive, and he turned without hesitation and fled into the darkness at the fastest speed of his life.
The rest could only watch as that vast shadow rose and spread again. The hideous claw, covered in black scales and barbs, blotted out the light and swallowed every small hope they had. Under that shadow, their faces held their final frames: blank as lost travelers, features twisted out of shape by fear, eyes calm with a kind of release, and, frozen deepest of all, resentment and unfulfilled longing.
"Nooooo!"
The claw came down like a mountain. There was no resistance, no process, only one dull, cruel burst. Several bodies, together with their unfinished screams and unpaid ambitions, became an unrecognizable dark red smear on the ground.
The Greatest Evil raised its claw, thick slime dripping from between the talons. It lifted its head, the muscles and scales of its neck tightening in layers like volcanic rock, and then it roared.
The roar was no longer sound but a physical shockwave, carrying the stink of blood and sulfur, tearing the air apart, punching through floor after floor, shaking the entire space.
The next moment its blood-red dragon eyes snapped upward, the gaze driving straight up like a spear of blood. The look seemed to pass through the thick stone and structures, ignoring every barrier, locked on that distant, unreachable sky.
Its talons pressed down, grinding the fallen rock to dust. The black dragon began to move, its body heavy and resolute, heading straight for the floor's passage with clear purpose.
Its footfalls came faster and faster until it broke into a run.
Before long it had smashed through the murky white walls of the 37th floor, the White Palace. It charged straight ahead without detour, taking the most savage and shortest line toward its goal.
The empty, deathly still White Palace echoed for a long time that day with a dragon's roar and the wailing of collapsing structures.
Faintly, the room at the very center of the floor seemed to answer with a deathly echo of its own.
...
...
Floor 36, Sand Land.
The sandstorm and the Mirage Sand Dragon's snarls wove together, mixed with the shouts of Adventurers and the screams of countless monsters, rising and falling, tearing at the sky.
"Hah! Drop dead!"
Laurier pulled her cloak tight and sprinted across the dunes. As she moved she drew and nocked, green hurricane winds coiling around the arrowhead, and at the sharp snap of the bowstring they became streaks of killing light.
Hurricane Arrow carved sharp arcs through the air, pouring down like a squall, mowing down monsters in swaths.
Still, there were always tough Lv.4 individuals that could take the arrow rain head-on and come snarling in close, bearing down on her hard.
"Laurier, fall back!"
"Rise!"
Aura stopped short and turned, bending her knees and swinging her staff.
Countless thick, vicious roots burst up out of the sand like starving demon vines, coiling around the monsters and crushing tight, then greedily draining their Magic and stamina.
The monsters' howls rose and broke off.
...
...
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