2
Katalisk.
In the vast bright red swamp, the sound of gunfire roared like the wind.
“…Tsk. This is such a chore!” Mei shouted, shouldering her large warship gun.
All the casings scattered at her feet were empty. In front of her and the thousand bullet casings was the giant, full of holes.
Her bullets had gone straight through the eidos of the sun.
“… .”
It began to move.
Simultaneously, its tail regenerated, and its torn arms reattached themselves to its body as though nothing had happened to it.
“How many more times do we gotta shoot this thing up until it dies?!”
Roar!
The eidos of the sun used its serpentine tail like a spring to launch itself into the sky.
“Huh?! Get away!” Kissing readied herself and stabbed the eidos with hundreds of thorns. But the bloodred giant didn’t relent. Even as it was struck by thorns, it regenerated as though nothing had happened.
“What?!” As Kissing yelled, Iska stepped in.
“Get back!”
“Hylesmihas—Sun’s Seam.”
The eidos’s right arm was now enveloped in flames.
The surge of fire burst away and left in its place a gleaming crimson mace.
“Guh?!” Iska immediately stopped and leaped to the side.
The mace passed by him with such force that it grazed his hair and flattened it as it went by. Had he not protected himself, he would have been obliterated.
……I can’t get near it.
……I knew it. It only wants my astral sword!
The monster was ignoring Mei’s gun and Kissing’s thorns.
“I have a theory. I believe the parts of the eidos that have been cut with your astral sword are not able to regenerate,” Kissing said as she retreated. She replenished the thorns over her head as she went. “I will attempt to erase it again. Though it may regenerate, this will stop it from moving temporarily. At that moment, use the astral sword to—”
“That’s not happening.”
Just then, they heard footsteps moving so quickly that it sounded like artillery fire. Wearing the Ruined King Hurricane on her back, Mei gestured at the gigantic eidos with her chin.
“Haven’t you noticed, girlie?”
“What?”
“It’s getting harder to wear down. Your thorns and my gun aren’t cutting it.”
“Oh!” Kissing exclaimed as she opened her glowing eyes wide. She realized that Mei was right. When she looked up at the eidos of the sun, she bit her lip, seeming vexed. “It’s building resistance…”
“The more it regenerates, the harder its body gets. That’s why I said it was a chore.” Mei scratched the back of her head. “As long as any part of it remains, it’ll regenerate… I messed up. If I’d just used the Hurricane from the start, we would be done with this by now. And because I was stingy with my bullets earlier, I don’t have enough left. Also, Isk, is it just me, or is this thing after you specifically?”
“I think you’re right.”
“Why’s that? Because of your sword?”
“I think so.”
“Well, that’s more trouble. Then, Isk, we’ll have you… Tsk!” Mei readied herself in the middle of her sentence.
The eidos had raised its crimson mace. It was too far away. No matter how long the weapon was, it would have only been met with air if the eidos had brought it down at that range. No one was near it.
That was why Mei was even on guard. The eidos hadn’t lifted its mace to crush its enemies—it had done so for an entirely different reason.
“Hssk!”
The creature struck the mace against the earth itself.
Planetary Gash: Unsullied Scene from Flame.
The mace broke into pieces and released a suffocating heat wave, along with tens of thousands of sparks.
Was it trying to spread the flames?
As Iska and Mei adopted fighting stances, they watched the fountain of sparks fill the air and form a cubic wall of fire around them.
It was like the eidos was trying to catch them.
……A fire barrier?!
……So we can’t escape? No, it must be trying to make sure it gets the astral sword.
“Hot! That’s gotta be thousands of degrees!”
After trying to approach the wall of flames, Mei quickly retracted her hand.
It was hot enough to render anything it touched to ash. And the walls were on all sides of them, including above their heads.
“The ceiling is coming down.”
“What?!” Iska looked up reflexively to confirm what Kissing had said.
The flames covered the sky above.
Though it was difficult to tell because the sparks were sputtering everywhere, it did feel as though the layer above them was steadily coming closer.
“And the four walls, too. They’re slowly moving in.” Mei took a step back from the walls around them.
The flames’ advance was slow—only a fraction of a millimeter per second—but they were most definitely drawing nearer. As the cage grew smaller, the temperature climbed.
……It wasn’t just trying to surround us.
……This barrier is enough to kill us all on its own!
They only had until the flames reached them.
That meant there was no time.
Having been caught in a trap, all three of them simultaneously realized their predicament and went on the move.
“Astral power expansion.” Kissing pointed at the eidos. The thousands of thorns swiveling through the air multiplied into tens of thousands of thorns. “Turn into stars.”
The thorns all rained down like meteorites.
Though they erased the outer layer of the eidos, the giant itself didn’t budge.
Zoosh…
The unmoving eidos just shifted its gaze. It was following Iska, who had tried to get behind it.
“Guh?!”
Suddenly, he stopped. He’d been trying to get closer to it, but his attempt had been foiled. The monster wasn’t paying any attention to the thorns or the bullets anymore. It was only looking at the astral swords.
……It just needs to keep avoiding me.
……We have maybe two minutes until the barrier fully closes in on us. Maybe just one?
This was the worst situation he’d been up against.
If Alice were still there, she could have used her ice to cool down the walls of flame. Even Rin could have used her earth astral power to dig down and get them out of the barrier.
But it was only the three of them—Iska, whom the eidos was watching closely because of his astral sword, and Mei and Kissing, whose attacks would be useless after the eidos regenerated. On top of that, Mei was running out of bullets.
……Wait.
……We’re all out of ideas.
They had used every gambit they could think of.
No. There was one thing they hadn’t tried yet—the idea had likely occurred to each of them. But none of them had brought it up because it would have been rejected.
“Tsk… These walls are closin’ in faster.”
“Mei, there’s no time, so this needs to be brief.”
As Mei clicked her tongue, Iska pointed his sword at the eidos.
“We don’t have time left. We need to defeat it in less than thirty seconds. Otherwise, we’re toast.”
“Yeah, so—?”
“Let’s work together.”
“Hmm? Uh, I’m pretty sure I have been?”
“Not just with me.” He looked behind himself. Iska continued loudly enough for the black-haired girl to hear. “I need you and Kissing to work together. Then you’ll be able to overwhelm the eidos’s regenerative abilities.”
“What?!”
“You need enough firepower to fully annihilate it. Without me.”
“Hold on, Isk!” Mei’s jaw dropped. “This is no joke. You want me to work together with a witch? The fact I’m letting this little girlie live is the greatest compromise in history!”
“We’re not at that stage anymore.”
……If I try to fight, it’ll just avoid me.
……We need to use Mei’s and Kissing’s destructive abilities to outpace its regeneration without my swords.
He glanced to his side. The Zoa princess was right there with him.
“Iska, even if I’m following your orders, I…”
“Which is worse?” he asked.
“What?”
“Temporarily joining forces with the Imperials? Or dying without defeating Elletear? Which is worse to you?”
“…Huh!”
“You decide the rest.”
Iska left the princess and ran at the eidos. He hadn’t waited for her answer. He didn’t even have the seconds for that. If he could slice the monster just once, that would be enough. He just needed to be in range.
“Fuse—cage.”
“Wha?!”
He sensed something above and looked up. Several streams of flames were coming down from the ceiling on Iska.
The flames were in a grill pattern, so streams of fire came down and struck the ground one at a time, burning brightly as they attempted to block Iska from reaching the eidos.
“Get these out of my way!”
He slashed diagonally at the flame barricade and went through the gap that formed in the fire.
But during the time when he had been hampered momentarily, the eidos had retreated farther. And even if Iska tried to follow it, the streams of flames would come down, forming more barricades to prevent him from moving forward.
He wasn’t getting any closer.
Far behind him, he heard a girl bellow resolutely, “Release! Thorn dragon!”
He sensed something large. Kissing had summoned all her thorns to create a serpentine dragon.
“Destroy it from the roots!”
The dragon soared.
Iska crossed to the side from behind it as it decimated the flame cage and bit into the eidos.
“ !”
The monster screamed.
It was annihilated. Its energy depleted, the dragon of thorns disappeared after destroying the right side of the eidos.
“…Ah…uh… I…can’t use it for a while…” The Zoa princess collapsed. Her breathing was ragged as she knelt on the ground. “Did I…help…?”
“A ton!”
The path the dragon had taken was now cleared of flame. The eidos had collapsed on the ground, having lost half its body. They had driven it into a corner.
This was it. Iska was right about to reach the final step where he would be within range…
“Hngh!”
Just then, the eidos of the sun leaped up. Though it had lost half its body, it used what remained of its tail as a spring to leap right up to the ceiling of the flame cage.
They were out of time. The wall of the cage was right behind Kissing. She had completely expended her energy.
If Iska went after the eidos, then Kissing would be engulfed in flames. He had no choice but to stop and save her. Anticipating that, he leaped up…
“How about I teach you why I’m called the Incessant Tempest?”
Strangely enough, those words had once been directed at Kissing.
But not this time. For this moment, and this moment alone, the Incessant Tempest took aim at not Kissing but the monster ahead of her.
“Ruined King Hurricane, destroy it from the ground up.”
A storm of bullets rained down on the monster.
The thirty-sixth electronic-control autocannon released a flood of silver that went far beyond the average barrage of bullets, concentrating its fire on the giant that had attempted to flee above them.
The other half of the eidos that Kissing hadn’t destroyed was blown away.
Eventually, Mei ran out of bullets.
Only the sun mark was left.
“This is the end.”
Mei stabbed it with her military throwing knife.
Its final scream had been drowned out by the roar of bullets.
The eidos of the sun had been erased from existence.
It had taken both a barrage of thorns and bullets.
By combining their destructive abilities, Mei and Kissing had brought down a being whose regenerative powers had made it nearly immortal.
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