"Uoooooooh!!!!"
With a roar that was impossible to tell was a cheer or a scream, Zald charged forward.
The key figure in this battle was not the giant, nor the empress, nor Arphia, but Zald.
Zald, who had devoured a fragment of the Black Dragon—no, the Dungeon's spirit—and achieved extreme enhancement. Everyone judged that only Zald, wielding such overwhelming power at the cost of his own body's collapse, could fight that thing.
"Keep the heals coming! Don't let it break off!"
"Dump every buff and enchant on that guy!"
Countless spells poured into a single man. Each time his body began to collapse, regeneration and buffs were layered on top of him, and his already overburdened flesh crumbled even faster.
Even as he felt the sensation of being crushed alive, Zald did not hesitate and charged straight at what had once been the Black Dragon.
He swung the greatsword layered with dozens of enchantments. It was a slash with no technique, no logic—just raw force. It was the best attack Zald, whose reason had been numbed by surging power and pain, could muster.
But the power contained in that strike was the strongest of any attack unleashed on this battlefield.
Snap—
"...Huh?"
That was why Zald was the one most shocked.
With one hand. The spirit simply raised one hand and caught Zald's greatsword.
That alone brought Zald's attack to a futile end. The moment he was stunned by the unmoving blade, the spirit seemed to tighten its grip, and the greatsword began to crack apart.
Crash! The dozens of enchantments shattered one after another without pause. In less than a second, all the enchantments had been broken. In that instant, the spirit not only destroyed every enchantment but even succeeded in shattering the greatsword itself, and then reached out to crush Zald as well.
"[Ataraxia]!"
Arphia cut in and knocked that hand aside.
She tried to.
"...What?!"
Arphia, having concentrated all her defenses into one hand as before, tried to bat the spirit's hand away.
But the spirit's hand merely trembled for a moment and did not budge. Instead, it was Arphia who was thrown back.
[Nil Cantor], the glove that amplified the effect of Arphia's magic, was torn to shreds the moment it came into contact with the spirit.
No, torn apart was not the right word. This was...
'Corrosion...'
It was similar to the monster that had devoured a god she had fought in the past. Arphia realized one thing at the same time she was shocked.
That thing was similar to that monster. Its rank might be slightly lower, but in terms of raw power alone, it stood even higher than that monster.
'Did it devour spirits?'
Cannibalism among its own kind. Perhaps that monster had also committed what monsters were thought to consider a taboo. Arphia imagined it.
Monsters grew stronger the more monsters they consumed. And that thing was both monster and spirit.
Spirits were fragments of gods. And black monsters were the gods' assassins.
Perhaps the reason the Black Dragon had been so strong was because it had devoured every spirit that descended to the Lower World in ancient times. That was what Arphia thought.
That monster which devoured a god and this thing were very similar. Even if it was only a fragment, after devouring dozens of spirits, wasn't it already close to a god?
Even as she sensed death approaching, she could not suppress her shudder. She felt more keenly just how reckless their challenge had been.
"What are you spacing out for!"
Just as the air rippled, Arphia and the giant were transferred to a spot a little farther from the spirit.
It was the empress's spatial transfer. She had used magic to save Zald and Arphia, who had been on the verge of instant annihilation.
"Cough!"
The cost was by no means light.
Black-red blood spilled from the empress's mouth as she failed to endure the recoil for even a moment.
Just moving this many people caused that reaction... Was that monster even controlling the space around it?
"Get a grip... It's coming!"
Even after creating some distance, the spirit continued its attack as if nothing had happened. With a casual sweep of its hand, a tide of darkness surged toward the group.
This was no longer within the realm of an attack.
That thing was itself a calamity.
A dreadful disaster that would sweep away everything.
"Spatial transfer... too slow!"
"GROOOOOOOH!!"
If they did not devote everything to evasion, they would die. Everyone understood that instinctively.
Among them, the first to react was the giant.
The judgment born of a beast's instincts produced a result that was just as beastlike.
Fully transformed once more, the giant charged straight at the darkness. A moment later, the other three realized what he intended and followed after him, rushing toward the tide.
Boom! The giant threw himself into the dark tsunami with a reckless body tackle. The hide everyone had thought would never be pierced was shaved away in an instant, bones broke, and his form collapsed—but in exchange, he succeeded in punching a small hole through the darkness.
The other three, arriving in time at the hole created by that brute-force method, managed to get past the dark tide safely.
A dramatic escape. But with that single attack, the giant was already in a near-death state. Breaking through in the same way again was no longer possible.
If that same attack came again, that would be the end of them.
"Let's prepare magic again."
If there was no method, they would make one.
Just as before, they would simply smash in an overwhelmingly high-powered attack. A simple and certain method.
At Arphia's declaration, Zald charged the spirit once more. Even as his consciousness blurred moment by moment, he clearly remembered what he had to do.
'I'll kill it.'
Break everything in front of him. That was his only role.
Believing that if he never broke and never retreated, he would surely open a path to what came next, Zald seized a new greatsword and charged the Black Dragon once more.
Boom! Zald's arm burst apart. The muscles tore under force too monstrous for his body to endure, and blood sprayed out.
Even so, Zald did not stop swinging his sword. As if pushing him forward, countless healing spells seeped into Zald's body.
The sensation of using healing magic was similar to watering dry ground. The more readily the ground absorbed the water, the more clearly the effect appeared.
If Zald was the ground now, then he was like soil that had dried out completely in a drought and cracked open. A body so overworked that it could no longer absorb any water. His ruined flesh rejected healing instead of accepting it, refusing to be kept alive any longer.
They forced that resistance down with sheer volume. Forced healing that ignored the will of the person involved. No matter how much his body rejected it, the countless healing spells would not allow his flesh to die and forced Zald to keep fighting.
Swish, as if defying time, the arm that had burst apart slowly returned to its original state. Time had not been reversed. It only looked that way because they were using enormous amounts of healing magic as if it were water.
The moment his arm seemed fully restored, it burst apart again. His arm shattered with every swing, but Zald's swordplay did not stop and only grew faster.
To the point that the healers could barely keep up.
"Enchanttttttt!!!"
Zald did not care about any of that. All he cared about was killing the monster before him.
From the first attack, he had learned this much: the spirit could easily break dozens of enchantments. In other words, only by going through that simple process could they break it.
As he continued stacking enchantments and realized he could temporarily trade blows with the Black Dragon, Zald placed more weight on enchantments than healing.
Red, blue, yellow—the flames of enchantment in every color mixed together to create a dreamlike spectrum.
The flickering, vivid flames were swept away helplessly the instant they touched the darkness.
Fssshk. The speed of the enchantments could not keep up. The moment the greatsword was struck directly by the darkness and vanished, a new greatsword appeared in front of Zald.
The empress supplied Zald with weapons through magic. Since she also had to pull Zald out in emergency situations, the burden on her only grew heavier.
And not just on the empress. Everyone here was resisting hardship with desperate resolve. Even if they understood somewhere in their hearts that it was a futile resistance, they did not stop.
They were adventurers. Those who stood against hardship.
Even if death could not be resisted, they would not retreat—they would rush in and bite it.
"Uoooooooh!"
Holding a half-vanished greatsword in one hand and a new one in the other, Zald resumed his sword dance.
Though repeated battle and pain had nearly stripped him of reason, that only made his sword dance sharper than before.
A sword dance made purely of killing intent. No openings, no technique, but with a sharpness beyond compare, slashes burst forth from both hands.
But despite the savage barrage, the spirit paid it no mind, and only the parts touched by the spirit had their enchantments meaninglessly shaved away.
The dreamlike flames contained in the greatsword began to lose their momentum little by little.
With a crack, the greatswords vanished again at the spirit's gesture. This time, only the hilts remained, so Zald did not hesitate—he threw them away and swung his fists.
A desperate struggle to buy even a little more time.
But.
"Kuh... huh..."
Sharp pain stabbed through his brain, and Zald realized his body had become unevenly light.
The arm he had thrust out had vanished. The moment it touched the darkness, Zald's hand was devoured.
"Zald!"
The empress shouted and tried to rescue him, but her magic did not activate.
Pulling something out was harder than pushing it in. Feeding in a greatsword was easy, but pulling Zald out demanded an even greater price.
A price the empress could not bear.
"Kuh...!"
'What kind of space is this...'
It was solid. It felt as if space itself had hardness.
The space completely under the spirit's control was blocking the empress's interference itself.
"Ghk!!"
Even while coughing up blood, she succeeded in pulling Zald out, but even that made the empress feel as if all her strength had vanished.
Blood spilled out in a rush, but she could no longer even make a sound.
At that moment, the empress and Zald were forced out of the battlefield, and at just the right time, Arphia's final attack was completed as well.
"[Xenos Angelus]!"
Arphia's strongest magic, used by scraping together the very bottom of her remaining mind. With even greater compression than before, the magic concentrated all its firepower into a single point and raced toward the spirit.
Everyone knew that this was their last hope, and they prayed desperately.
That the silver bombardment would crush the monster and bring them victory.
-■■■■■■■■
With a bizarre cry that seemed to ring directly inside their heads, the spirit casually swept its hand.
That alone caused the tide from before to erupt once more.
It was the very incarnation of absurdity. The tide born from that indifferent fingertip swelled in an instant, then opened its maw and rushed forward to swallow the silver radiance.
The silver bombardment and the dark tide collided.
For a moment it seemed as if they were locked in a standoff, but the exchange ended once again with Arphia's victory. The tide was scattered by the bombardment, and though the magic had lost some of its momentum, it still charged toward the spirit like an enraged bull.
Everyone took that sight into their eyes.
The moment hope bloomed in everyone's hearts.
"Wha..."
The spirit swept its hand once more.
At the same time, a tide far larger than before appeared.
It happened in an instant. An attack they had thought could not possibly be fired in rapid succession had appeared in a form even stronger than before.
"You bastard...!"
A rough curse spilled from Arphia's mouth. Even Arphia, who usually valued propriety, was furious enough to find it hard to hold back.
-Kik■■kikik■■■
The cry that seemed to pierce directly into the mind now carried unmistakable contempt.
Even the face of that flickering thing somehow seemed to be mocking Arphia.
"That thing...!"
It had deliberately held back its power. To torment them.
To give them a greater despair the moment they thought they had passed beyond despair.
Boom! The tide and the magic clashed once more. Compared to the darkness that had grown even fiercer than before, Arphia's magic had already lost some of its momentum.
After a brief stalemate, Arphia's magic shattered into pieces. The tide that had swallowed the silver radiance poured down on Arphia as it was.
The scene was much like the moment they had faced the Black Dragon. The difference was that Arphia was the one being overwhelmed, and that Arphia was already at her limit, unable to move even a finger.
For Arphia to be swept away by that tide meant Arphia would die. And that meant the subjugation force's, humanity's, defeat.
With the sensation that time had stopped, Arphia stared at what was approaching her.
'This is...'
She could not dodge it.
She had scraped the bottom of her mind and body to get this far.
She could not move even a finger. And even if she could, her opponent was a tide.
A tide was called a tide because it swept everything away. That darkness would surely not be satisfied with sweeping away Arphia alone—it would sweep away the subjugation force and even Orario.
Her little sister, too.
"Grrk..."
Arphia trembled with rage, but there was nothing she could do.
She could only stare at the approaching tide without looking away, as if to say that even if she died, she would not be broken.
The tide coming toward her was like the abyss itself. A depth so profound that if she entered that darkness, she might become part of it.
The abyss swallowed Arphia together with the subjugation force without mercy, as if a monster had opened its maw to devour its prey.
Whoooosh— The soundless calamity swept through the subjugation force.
Not a single one was left behind. Thoroughly.
Everyone was helplessly devoured by that darkness.
"[Keraunos Astrafe]"
Flash.
A bolt of lightning fell from the sky, cleaving the darkness as it struck down.