Looking at my friends waiting in the distance, I confirmed they were all set to go. Benimaru was so good at setting things up that way. Now we could launch our wave attacks at Milim with minimum of waste.
I saw Soei, too, standing still in midair—or hovering, I guess. He always looked so weirdly seductive when standing in place. That wasn’t going to help him in battle, but I guess he wasn’t trying to do that, which made it hard to stop.
Anyway, he was flanked by Leon and Zarario. They appeared in good spirits, so I guess Ciel was right—they really were helping out. Though I suppose this wasn’t Zarario turning traitor so much as Feldway just being too much of a prick to work for? Which I certainly didn’t mind if he was on our side now. We’d just have to see how things shook out afterward…but I’d let Soei worry about that.
(Okay, Benimaru, final check. Everything looking good?)
(Absolutely perfect. Sir Leon and Sir Zarario are now under my command. There is no need for any anxiety.)
I was glad he sounded so confident. This fight, after all, was going to last a single instant. We were approaching at a few dozen times the speed of sound, so if we messed up the first move, it was game over. Milim could undoubtedly break out Drago-Nova faster than the blink of an eye. All she had to do was hit the brakes, come to a stop, get in position, and fire.
It must have seemed like a long time to everyone watching, but the whole thing would be over and done with in around three seconds. It’d be impossible to hit Milim in mid-flight, so we could only aim for that one moment when she stopped. At that instant, we’d launch a slate of repeated attacks to lure Milim over—then, while she was distracted, I’d activate Azathoth, God of the Void, and undo the Regalia Dominion Feldway placed on her.
Leon and Zarario would be supporting me with a barrage of all-out attacks, which I think improved our chances. Once the Magus unleashed their waves of magic, Benimaru, Soei, Leon, and Zarario would each launch their most powerful offensive spells. That’d be enough to make even Milim stop for a bit and defend herself.
That was the outline of the plan. And the moment was nearly there. Milim was stopped, about to aim an attack on the sacred tree.
The Magus began their assault. A massive beam cannon radiated out from them in a single, unwavering movement, like a beautifully staged performance. I would’ve been longingly watching them it if weren’t for my job.
Upon closer observation, I could see the beam was a high-output heat ray akin to Nuclear Cannon. So they had mech weapons that fired nuclear magic that rapidly? Ellie’d been sitting on some neat stuff over there, huh? We were gonna have a lot to talk about.
As expected, though, it didn’t work on Milim. Benimaru’s precise command focused the rays from the Magus on a single point in the air. The focal temperature must have been millions of degrees, which sounded rough, but Milim just didn’t care. In fact, she was totally ignoring it, not even trying to defend herself.
That looked like a pretty flashy strike, too. Was there much point to it, in the end?
It distracted Milim enough to buy us a small sliver of time.
Oh. All right. It was almost pointless, but it did its job after all, huh?
…Whoa, hey, Milim’s sticking her arms out ahead of her. I’m not really sure she was distracted at all. At this rate, I doubted anything we could throw at Milim would work on her. All I could really count on was the magic from Benimaru and the gang.
The first to go up was Soei.
“Thousand Shadow Death.”
His shadow stretched out, forming a thousand arms that bound Milim down…but despite all the energy he was pouring into his ultimate gift Tsukuyomi, it didn’t stop her for a moment. Insta-Kill and its ilk sure weren’t gonna work on her, no.
We had expected this from the start, but it fizzled, with Milim’s attention not diverted in the least—but that wasn’t about to faze Soei. In fact, he was going right up to her, attempting to pin her in place.
Don’t worry. That is a Separate Body of Soei’s.
Oh, that sort of thing? That’s coming in pretty handy, I see.
Soei couldn’t stop Milim from moving, but he did obstruct her for a little bit. Then a blast of ultimate destructive light danced around them, completely covering Soei.
“Be rendered into dust. Hundred Breaker!”
This was Leon’s special finisher. Each point of light coming from his hands, large enough to envelop a grown person, was a single bolt of Disintegration he could freely move in the air. I couldn’t think of a stronger move, really, and it quickly turned Soei’s Separate Body into a fine powder.
But Milim didn’t move. From the moment she got in position to fire Drago-Nova, an invisible barrier manifested around her. It shone with the gleam of stellar particles, perfectly blocking any spiritual particle-based attack. I’m sure it outclassed Absolute Defense, part of Uriel’s tool set. Leon’s finishers were so powerful even I’d have a hard time with them, but this one faded away without much apparent effect.
But the attack wasn’t over yet. Even before we knew the results of Leon’s strike, Zarario was making his move.
“Insanity Hush.”
Zarario, the very picture of fortitude against all odds, had accepted Benimaru’s orders without any back talk…and if he agreed to this, he wasn’t about to make a mistake. Enemy or not, he seemed to think it was a soldier’s duty to obey his commander—making him a pretty trustworthy guy, actually, even though he wasn’t on our side.
Zarario was performing this technique just when Soei launched his attack. I had no way of knowing this, but apparently he had never shown it in public before, not even against Leon and Soei. His sword, tough enough to slice an alionium exoskeleton in two, could instantly kill with a single swipe—and he was pointing all his murderous intent at Milim. No wonder he had an EP of over twenty million. The pressure from this sword was denser than Soei and Leon’s attacks combined—an almost too simple strike, delivered at distressingly high speed.
But although it made Milim’s barrier shine with dazzling light, that was all it did. Truly unbelievable. Every one of them had power nobody could afford to underestimate…and it meant nothing to Milim.
The simultaneous attack from all three of them seemed to have failed, but there was still one second of time left before Milim activated Drago-Nova. To Benimaru, that was more than enough. A bold smile was on his face, as if to demonstrate just how belligerent he could be.
“Now for the real show!”
He didn’t say it out loud, but Soei, Leon, and Zarario all went on the move in response. It was just as we’d planned from the beginning.
The Guren sword in Benimaru’s hand glowed a stunning shade of red—a fearsome crimson light that could burn away all matter—and that light intermingled with Benimaru’s own dark aura.
“Prominence Acceleration…!!”
It glowed like a black sun—this jet-black darkness with red flames dancing around it. This black and crimson sunlight, backed by vicious, stormy violence, took the shape of an Eastern-style dragon. It swirled in the air, swooping down to engulf Milim like it had a will of its own.
Even Milim had no choice but to react. Why? Because Benimaru’s Prominence Acceleration boasted an instantaneous energy that ranked up to the tens of millions.
………
……
…
Power was calculated based on the relationship between the output and total amount of energy. An attack could contain a large amount of energy, but if the output was low, the results would be pretty weak. By the same token, large output and low energy wouldn’t give you much power, either.
In Benimaru’s case, output was never a problem. His total amount of energy wasn’t paltry at all, but it still wasn’t enough to take on Milim. So how could Benimaru unleash such an overpowered move?
…I lent him the power of my master.
Huh? I didn’t feel anything like that at all. Are you acting on your own again, Ciel? I mean, if it helps everyone out, then great, but I wish you could’ve explained that to me first…
It was still in the experimental stages, so I thought I would report back after it was successful.
Hmm…a perfectionist as always, huh? I know it was just a quick little experiment for Ciel, but it meant a whole lot more to me. But I could whine about that later. For now, I wanted an explanation of what happened.
As Ciel stated, my ultimate skill Azathoth, God of the Void, contained something called Void Collapse that was a kind of inexhaustible energy flow. It was hard to work with, though, so Ciel was working on ways to take advantage of it. As part of this, it had approached some of my cabinet and conducted some negotiation. I asked it why it couldn’t just conduct the experiment itself, and it said:
I would never put my master in danger.
Okay.
I thought it’d be safer if we did this kind of thing in the labyrinth, but Ciel wouldn’t tolerate that, either. It was being way too overprotective, but I guess I should appreciate how much it cared for my safety? Ah well.
Anyway, Ciel had devised and built a system to secretly supply the energy from Void Collapse, piping it over to those connected to me via a soul corridor. It was truly Ciel in its element, I suppose. It was an application of “supply and demand,” as it was explained to me, but I’m sure it was the kind of thing only Ciel, who had already done stuff like combine Azathoth and Shub-Niggurath, could do.
This whole setup wasn’t complete yet, apparently, but that “Void Supply” was the secret behind that instantaneous surge in Benimaru’s power.
………
……
…
Prominence Acceleration surrounded Milim, chomping at her. She stopped, looking clearly annoyed as she swatted at it.
“Demonwire Bind.”
Soei’s mystical threat caught her.
“Hundred Prison,” said Leon.
A Disintegration-powered cage instantly completed itself. The invisible barrier around Milim twinkled like the brightest of stars, but she still hadn’t activated Drago-Nova. We just bought ourselves enough time.
Zarario, by the way, didn’t have any kind of “capturing” techniques like this, so he was just releasing his aura to exert more pressure on her. It was effective enough, I suppose, but I kinda wished he had something for a situation like this—not that I was gonna tell him.
Everything was looking pretty ideal. I was ready to go, and I wanted to be sure this went right so everyone else’s hard work didn’t go to waste.
It’s up to you, Dr. Ciel!
Leave it to me.
It didn’t really feel right to me to rely wholly on my skill when it mattered the most, but since Ciel and I were pretty much one and the same, this was me trying my very hardest. With this perfect argument running through my mind, I prepared myself and waited for the results.
…Reset.
It worked with almost no fanfare. Ciel understood the power behind Michael, Lord of Justice, how it was able to duplicate and cancel out all other effects. With that, Feldway’s Regalia Dominion lost all effectiveness on Milim.
The whole operation was a brilliant success. And while I wanted to congratulate everyone on a job well done, Milim was still out of control.
We had undone the order in her mind to destroy Thalion’s sacred tree, but we still had some tricky work to do. If we kept duking it out there, the shock waves alone would cause massive damage to Thalion. We needed a new location, fast.
The Republic of Ur-Gracia was nearby, and Leon’s domain was across the sea as well. The Western Nations spread out in the opposite direction, so for a route that’d keep damage to a minimum, our best bet was to guide Milim over the sea and toward the Barren Lands. It’d affect things in Daggrull’s domain, but it was a tad too late to worry about that.
I didn’t want to kill any of the locals, though, so we’d need to evacuate everyone beforehand. This was where Soei came in.
(Soei, I’m gonna try to guide Milim to the Barren Lands, but I wanna make sure none of Daggrull’s subjects are hurt. Can you do that?)
I gave him the basic outline. He responded with just the answer I hoped for.
(I am on the job. I left a Separate Body behind for just such a purpose, so I can begin moving immediately.)
A consummate professional, that man. Seriously. He never made a single error. When I planned things, I never thought about what might happen in the future, but with him, I could count on that. Once again, he showed me just how capable a guy he was, so I left all that work to him.
That was all a big relief, but then something terrible happened. Time stopped on me.
Who the hell didn’t get the message? I don’t need this right now!!
I couldn’t help but shout that in my mind. Like, if Milim stopped, too, then great, but she was still moving around, of course. Plus, with time stopped, all the world’s defenses were at zero, which suddenly made her extremely dangerous. She was tough enough as it stood, but at that point, even touching her was out of the question.
Fighting would be a terrible idea, so I had to get her over to the Deadly Desert. We did a great job distracting her before she started firing off attacks like crazy, but as it stood, Soei couldn’t evacuate the locals in the desert before I took her over there. Hardly anywhere in this world was totally uninhabited—and either way, it wouldn’t be very nice of me to go destroying whole ecosystems.
“Over here, Milim!” I shouted to get her attention, and then I started moving. This was an extremely unpleasant turn of events, but I was in a midair dogfight with Milim in this suspended world. If I hadn’t figured out how to deal with stopped time, it would’ve been all over at this point. I was glad about that, but still, it was tough to fight Milim like this. I could feel my strength being drained, but Milim’s was seemingly infinite; it was still rising. A first-grade math education was all you needed to know who would run out first.
As it stood, I was doomed. The world was about to collapse, and I didn’t really want that to happen, but I didn’t even know who stopped time in the first place.
I knew I could cross Chloe off the list. It could be Guy or Velzard, but they could move in this space, too, so I didn’t see much of a motive for them. Who could have pulled this crap on me? Feldway? It’d be a good way of harassing me, yeah, but would he really do that at this point?
Now really wasn’t the time to be looking for a culprit, but if I wanted to do something about this, I preferred to know who I was dealing with.
Then…
(Rimuru, can you hear me?)
Veldora talked to me through a Thought Communication…or, to be exact, he was sharing his thought data through our soul corridor. Being in a suspended state like this made nearly all magicule-consuming skills useless, so it was difficult to communicate at all unless you had work-arounds like this one.
But Veldora hasn’t been affected by this, huh? I guess I should have expected that.
(Yeah, I’m listenin’.)
(Stop sounding so casual about this, you! Shion and Luminus are in grave danger over here! Adalmann’s team was having a tough time as it stood, but nobody here can counter Daggrull’s Time Stop, you see.)
(Hmm? So Daggrull did that?)
(That he did! Daggrull, of all people! He must’ve wanted to end this in a hurry!)
Well, there’s the culprit, then. And if he was locked in warfare with Shion and the gang, they must’ve used Spatial Transport to travel, just as I feared. They must’ve really pushed Daggrull to the edge for him to use something like this.
Stopping time mainly helped weed out the weaklings; if someone couldn’t cope with it, that was their problem. I got trapped in this once, too, but I had no idea Daggrull had access to it.
So now what…?
There were two problems here. One, if I didn’t help Shion, Luminus, and the rest, they might all be wiped out. Two—the trickier one—how was I gonna get there? Spatial Transport involved sending data particles over to perceive the other side, so you couldn’t use it while time was suspended. You could probably transport yourself to another point within visible range, but it’d be faster to just move like normal. No matter how far (or close) your destination was, you needed to use data particles to read the situation in your destination first, and if that was the case, I might as well just walk instead.
Given this situation, Daggrull would probably wipe out his opponents before I could reach Lubelius to rescue them. Whether I went there or asked Veldora to help out, the results would be the same. And if I was dealing with Milim, Veldora was about all I could turn to…
(Veldora, whether you make it in time or not, can you go and try to bail them out right now?)
(That’s what I was waiting to hear!)
I really wanted Veldora to remain our final line of defense in the labyrinth, but I couldn’t be picky. We just had to work out a transport. Could he maybe tough it out for me?
(Sir Rimuru, I have connected my thoughts to Ultima. I will send her coordinates over to Sir Veldora immediately.)
Whoa! Diablo, of all people, had just interrupted us.
No matter the distance, Spatial Transport is possible even in suspended space if you have the right coordinate data. Since Ultima is in the area, I shared in her senses and had her acquire the needed data.
Um, okay? So, like, that was possible because of our soul corridor connections?
Yes, exactly.
It sounded pretty confident, but really, traveling that far in stopped time? Seems like a cheat code to me. It’s totally impossible otherwise, right? People being connected by soul corridors in this space was such an exception to the rule, I didn’t even know what to say. Anything was possible, wasn’t it?
Not too proud to leverage that, though.
(Whenever you’re ready, Ultima!)
(Right! I’m on it, Sir Rimuru! Will these work, Sir Veldora?)
(Yes, well done! Kwah-ha-ha-ha, now it’s finally my turn!!)
Veldora’s laugh was like a breath of fresh air to me. And if Diablo and Ultima could function in suspended time, too, well, I couldn’t feel more reassured.
And then, just when I felt Veldora make the transport…the world started moving again.
I suppose Veldora did his job, just like I knew he would. Breathing a sigh of relief, I got back to my own task—guiding and distracting the crazed Milim as we flew toward the Barren Lands.
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