Chapter 177
Chapter 177
Benetnash replied to the Fire Ouroboros’s creepy and intense confession with a kick.
She kicked one side of the ouroboros’s head, which was literally as big as a mountain, then circled around to the other side before kicking it again upwards.
Considering how enormous the ouroboros’s body was, not even Benetnash was able to send it flying away with a single hit in a flashy manner. The best she could do was make it go flying in a great arch.
Nevertheless, damage was definitely being dealt to it, and Benetnash relentlessly continued to corner the Fire Ouroboros.
With Benetnash’s overwhelming power and speed, the difference in size could no longer be considered a handicap.
If anything, it would be hard for the Fire Ouroboros to hit her due to how small she was.
Of course, the Fire Ouroboros did not just allow her to punch it without any resistance.
It was able to retaliate against Benetnash’s speed, quickly moving its long body to enclose her in the space within.
“This is…”
As if it was trying to make its own body into a spherical ball, it enclosed Benetnash within that space with nowhere to escape.
If the enemy was too fast, then the solution to that was simple. All it had to do was trap them into a certain area.
Needless to say, if one took into account how ridiculously large the Fire Ouroboros was, the volume of space which it was able to enclose was quite out of the norm.
Using the planet Earth as a reference, the amount of space that it had enclosed could easily fit the entire country of Japan within it.
However, the volume that it enclosed was not really the issue in all of this. There was meaning to the very fact that something or someone was enclosed within it.
The default surface temperature of the Fire Ouroboros was tens of thousands degrees Celsius, but that temperature could be raised at will by the Fire Ouroboros.
Long story short, it was a prison of flame that was impossible to escape from.
Thanks to Benetnash’s regenerative abilities, she would not be burnt to death right away, but the rate at which she was taking damage was still greater than how fast she could heal it off.
The Fire Ouroboros must have been planning to push her to death’s door before capturing her.
Faced with this extreme heat, even Benetnash started slipping out of consciousness as she began sweating profusely.
“Humph. Were you planning to bake me to death or something? Don’t look down on me!”
Benetnash soared through the sky then punched the Fire Ouroboros’s body, relying purely on her strength.
The inability to escape applied to both sides. Considering the posture that it was in, the Fire Ouroboros would not be able to avoid Benetnash’s attacks.
Indiscriminate light-speed attacks bore onto the Fire Ouroboros from the inside, causing the Fire Ouroboros to bleed out from its mouth upon each impact.
Nevertheless, the one at a disadvantage was still Benetnash. Forced to constantly suffer the extreme heat, her stamina was quickly being eaten up. Furthermore, due to the circumstances, she was unable to display her full power the way she wanted to.
It would be too much to say that she had no chance of winning, but it would not be wrong to say that things were looking unfavourable for her in this contest of endurance.
If there was one thing that both sides had overlooked, it would be that this battle was not a one-on-one fight.
“Fire—!”
Hundreds of missiles were fired and guided onto the Fire Ouroboros, all of which exploded one after another.
Each explosion could turn an area with a radius of dozens of kilometres into scorched earth. It was a high-powered attack which exterminated any living things within that range.
Each of the missiles, some of which were erroneously guided and missed their target, gave birth to mushroom clouds while the enormous golem Blutgang, which had executed the attack, body-slammed right into the Fire Ouroboros at its maximum speed.
What was supposed to have been a capital city transformed itself into a steel giant with a height of 1100 metres right after the body-slam, and clenched its fist tightly.
Then, literally with an iron fist, it started punching the Fire Ouroboros and tried to help Benetnash escape from the outside.
That was not all. From Blutgang’s golem docking bay, three mass-produced Libra models and the Gatekeeper came flying out and proceeded to fire everything that they had at the ouroboros.
「Small fries! You dare get in my way of romance!?」
The Fire Ouroboros opened its mouth and fired flames at Blutgang.
This flamethrower attack had a temperature of two million degrees Celsius and rivalled the heat of the stellar corona around the Sun.
The temperature of the flame would have melted any metallic substance on the surface of the planet. However, before it could hit Blutgang, it split into two.
“You can’t call a one-sided and unreciprocated love a romance!”
After displaying the feat of splitting the Fire Ouroboros’s flames, Alioth followed up by slicing off its scales.
In his hands was Lifthrasir, a long sword and a short sword which acted as one weapon.[2]
Then, as if it was a chain attack, a gigantic arm big enough to grip the Fire Ouroboros sprouted out of the magma and uppercut its chin.
“HAHA! This feels nostalgic, doesn’t it!?”
Mizar, who was standing in an imposing manner on top of Blutgang, laughed in a high-strung manner whilst using that transmuted arm to hold the Fire Ouroboros down.
Then, the guardian deity Levia jumped off and tried to body slam into the Fire Ouroboros.[3]
“Psycho Compression!”
“Apsaras!”
Merak aimed his hands towards the Fire Ouroboros and stopped its movement for a moment whilst Megrez materialised a white swan and slammed it into its body.
But this was not the end of the attack from the Seven Heroes.
Dubhe jumped off from the top of Levia’s head and punched the Fire Ouroboros with all his might.
When he did, the shockwave turned into the face of a bear and assaulted the ouroboros’s face.
This was followed by an onslaught of arrows numerous enough to cover the whole sky showering onto the Fire Ouroboros.
The shower of arrow attacks, which had been fired by Phecda, were all aimed and concentrated on one fixed point. All of the arrows rushed towards that point and punctured a small hole through the Fire Ouroboros’s body.
Whilst the hole might have been minuscule in size for the ouroboros in question, it was still more than large enough for a person to pass through it.
After successfully escaping from the inferno, Benetnash took flight, leaving the stratosphere.
She then condensed mana into her hand.
Indeed, the mana on Midgard had been exhausted. Due to that foolish goat’s actions, there wasn’t any left.
But Benetnash had learnt of the truth behind this world before the battle. This whole universe itself was a creation of the Goddess’s arcane magic. She knew of the fact that this whole world had been materialised using mana.
As such, the amount of mana that she could gather… was nothing short of infinite.
“[The Maiden Who Fires The Silver Arrow]!”
The silver arrow that she shot impaled the Fire Ouroboros’s body and then exploded.
Subsequently, the Fire Ouroboros’s body was shredded from the inside.
*
Amongst a sea of stars, two monsters were swimming freely.
One of them was black and the other was white.
The two ouroboroses, who ruled over light and darkness respectively, entangled and bit down on each other. They were perfectly even in terms of both the offence and defence in this battle.
The rays fired from each of their mouths disappeared far into the distance before turning into a supermassive explosion. Each swing of their tails swept away countless comets nearby.
The two of them interweaved with each other as they swam close to where the planet Saturn was. At the same time, they were relentlessly blasting attacks which could destroy even stars at one another.
「Moon Ouroboros… what a foolish man you are. To think that you would betray a deity and become our enemy.」
「You might be right, Sun Ouroboros. But I have no regret.」
「I am called the Heavenly Ouroboros. Feel free to get used to calling me that.」
From the white ouroboros, a destructive ray was fired. Similarly, Orm also fired a dark destructive ray from his mouth. They collided with one another and cancelled each other out.
After a moment of equilibrium, the black and the white light exploded. The explosion was bright enough to where it could even be seen from Midgard.
The resulting shockwave cascaded out from the spot and erased approximately twenty per cent of Saturn’s ring.
But the two individuals who made that happen were still perfectly fine and were staring down each other as if to see what the opponent’s next move was going to be.
「Well, whatever. Whether you feel regret or not actually doesn’t matter to me. Honestly, I couldn’t care less. There’s only one thing that’s important. It’s that you betrayed us and are present right in front of me… that’s the sole important consideration at play here.」
「So you find it that hard to forgive me.」
Orm muttered quietly, as if he was whispering to himself.
In response, the Sun Ouroboros sneered from the bottom of his heart.
「Kukukukuku… No, you’re wrong. In fact, it’s the opposite, Moon Ouroboros.」
「The opposite, you say?」
「That’s right. Thank you for betraying us. Thank you for appearing in front of me as an enemy. For a long time, I’ve been thinking… that the world is too small and too boring. But I don’t mind that particular fact. I can bear with it. But what I couldn’t bear was that even though you, Moon Ouroboros… even though someone strong like you was right nearby, I wasn’t allowed to fight with you!」
After saying that, the Heavenly Ouroboros started emitting light from his body.[4]
That light then turned into laser-like beams which came out from everywhere around its body, attacking everything in its surroundings indiscriminately.
However, Orm charged right through the barrage of attacks and crashed into the Heavenly Ouroboros.
「That’s right, Moon Ouroboros. Make me feel pain! Make me feel that I am alive! All this time, I’ve been wanting to fight with the other ouroboroses. With someone like you. To kill, to be killed, to devour and to be devoured… ahh, I’ve dreamt countless times of how blissful it’d be if I could do things like those.」
The Heavenly Ouroboros ecstatically shouted its feelings as it proceeded to wrap its tail around Orm’s neck.
In turn, Orm also moved his own tail, wrapping it around the Heavenly Ouroboros’s neck.
The power possessed by the two of them was even. No, if one considered how Orm had managed to surpass his limit, even if temporarily, during the battle against Ruphas, it might have been more correct to assume that Orm would be superior.
However, the scales of this battle were leaning ever so slightly in the Heavenly Ouroboros’s favour.
At the end of it all, Orm was an ouroboros. The moment he decided to retaliate against the Goddess, his power became inhibited. It was simply impossible for him to fight to the best of his potential.
Thanks to having become a subordinate of Ruphas, he was barely able to continue fighting. Yet even then, the powerful rejection that he felt as a result of his primal instincts was too big of a handicap.
「Unable to feel even pain, a life of endless slumber… Being a peerless and invincible existence known as an ouroboros… Ahh, how meaningless. It’s boring, it’s pitiful… It’s as if I’m dead even while being alive. So I thank you, Moon Ouroboros, my brother. I was born for this moment. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. So this is pain, so this is bliss… ahh… So this is what it means to be alive!」
The Heavenly Ouroboros perceived the sensation of pain as bliss, and the corners of its mouth curled in joy.
Now then, let’s fight, let’s kill each other, dear brother. Let’s enjoy this great moment!
While the Heavenly Ouroboros was screaming something along those lines, something shone in the corner of its eyes. The moment it noticed that, an azure blue slash directly hit one of its eyes.
Although it would eventually heal back up, the fact that one of his eyeballs had been crushed was quite significant.
After having his rare enjoyment interrupted, the Heavenly Ouroboros stared daggers at the direction the slash came from with murderous intent.
What it saw was a white horse with wings and Terra, who was riding on it.
Needless to say, it was not an ordinary horse. It was one of the core pillars of the Argonautai summoned forth by Pollux into this world. In the past, its abilities were second only to the Twelve Heavenly Stars’ and stood side by side with those such as Phoenix and Hydrus. The horse was a magical beast: Pegasus of the [Winged Horse].[5] Its level was ordinarily the same as the Twelve Heavenly Stars at 800, but right now, with Ruphas having broken past the limits set by the Goddess, its level was 1000.
Its unique skill provided its rider with a blessing that allowed it to take them anywhere it wanted to regardless of the environment. Even if that place was space, it too was not an exception.
“Father, I’ll assist you!”
As Terra had not acquired the Esper or the Psychic class, he would ordinarily be unable to speak in space like how Ruphas or the ouroboroses could.
However, thanks to Pegasus’s ability, Terra’s voice was able to reach Orm.
Terra swung his blade and the sword slashed into the Heavenly Ouroboros.
For the Heavenly Ouroboros, it might have been no different from an insignificant scratch wound. Even then, the slight pain that he felt disrupted his concentration.
「You’re annoying!」
The Heavenly Ouroboros blasted a destructive ray from its mouth.
However, Pegasus disappeared from the spot the moment the ray was fired and then circled around to the other side.
Indeed, Pegasus was not part of the Twelve Heavenly Stars, but that did not mean that it was inferior to the members of the Twelve Heavenly Stars in every aspect.
For example, purely in terms of raw speed, the only one amongst the Twelve Stars which could keep up with him was Sagittarius.
Although it could only maintain it for just a instant, Pegasus was able to travel at near-light speed.
To accurately aim at and shoot it down was difficult even for an ouroboros.
「You’re the Moon Ouroboros’s avatar, huh… Someone like you dares to get in the way of my happiness!?」
The Heavenly Ouroboros once again rapidly shot out torrents of destructive rays.
Pegasus, too, quickly dodged them, but the Heavenly Ouroboros moved his head to chase after its movements.
When it did, the destructive rays which had been fired curved as if to follow the movement of his head and chased after Pegasus, destroying and exploding the celestial bodies in its path.
It intended to forcibly shoot Pegasus down by continuously firing rays until they landed.
Even for Pegasus, it would not be simple to avoid them indefinitely.
At the same time, Orm, who saw his own child in danger, flared up in anger and showered the Heavenly Ouroboros with a black destructive ray of his own.
For a very brief instant, the Heavenly Ouroboros’s tail loosened its grip, allowing Orm to bite down on its neck.
Whilst the scales of an ouroboroses might have been the hardest in the world, the fangs of another ouroboros could still penetrate them.
Unwilling to yield, the Heavenly Ouroboros similarly bit down on Orm’s neck, causing the two of them to drop down onto Saturn while devouring each other.
Although the two of them dropped onto the gas giant at the same time, Orm was one step faster in rising back up and charging at his enemy.
Body Slam – it was a very primitive method of attacking one’s enemy by literally slamming one’s body into them.
Nevertheless, when it was done using an ouroboros’s giant body and speed, its destructive force was anything but ordinary.
The two ouroboroses’ bodies flew through space like shooting stars, shattering countless rocks and asteroids in the way before ending back on Midgard and sinking into magma.
The impact further destroyed Midgard. On the other hand, the magma was no different from a warm liquid for the two of them.
They continued to fight within the confinement of the magma before both simultaneously flew out of it.
「Haa… haa…」
「Humph… looks like you’re exhausted already. Rightly so. You’re no longer backed up by the world. Backed by the world, I have access to an infinite amount of power. But you… you’re no longer limitless. Your reserve is finite. It’s not just about the SP either. The difference between our HP regeneration rate is also significant. I would have liked to fight with a bastard like you at your best, but battles are never fair. …… Looks like this fight is my win, Moon Ouroboros.」
Notwithstanding it was at their own expenses, the ouroboroses still had more than sufficient self-regenerative abilities.
But the Heavenly Ouroboros was backed up by the world on top of its own abilities.
Even the eye that had been crushed just a moment ago had already fully recovered. In contrast, the wounds on Orm’s body had yet to heal.
The reason behind this was not purely limited to his lack of the world’s backing. Orm’s body itself was refusing to engage in the battle which was happening, and thus it instinctively decreased his rate of regeneration.
While they might have both been ouroboroses, the difference between the two of them was too great.
「It was fun while it lasted, Moon Ouroboros… In gratitude and respect to you, I’ll put you to rest now.」
The Heavenly Ouroboros said those words, indicating that he was about to put an end to Orm.
But countless rays of light came flying in at that moment and hit the sides of the Heavenly Ouroboros.
Those rays had enough power to raze a city to the ground, but… they were weak. The attacks were far too weak. So weak that it was not even worth mentioning.
In what could be called an ultimate battle that involved stars getting destroyed as collateral damage, a “mere” attack which could destroy a city or two could no longer even be called an attack. It was so far out of the question that it was no longer about whether it was too weak or not… it could no longer even be considered an attack in the first place.
There was not a single scratch on the Heavenly Ouroboros. It only felt as though something weak had come into contact with its cheeks.
Using human beings as an analogy, it would have felt as though a piece of cotton had come into contact with their cheeks.
Even saying that, there would still be some form of displeasure. The Heavenly Ouroboros’s eyes moved to look at the small and weak ones which had delivered the attack.
What it saw was a great army of demons numerous enough to cover the entire sky.
“… Oh, snap, it looks like it didn’t have any effect. Technically, that was an all-out attack and the best that we could do.”
“Honestly, it’s impossible, Saturnus-sama! Let’s run away! We can’t win against something like that.”
The individual who was standing at the foremost of the army was one of the Seven Luminaries, Saturnus.
She had her arms crossed as if she was supporting her voluptuous chest and her lips were curled into a smile.
But it was not as if she had room for complacency. If anything, it was quite the opposite.
Because there was so much of a difference in the ability between the two sides, she could do nothing but smile.
“Run away, you say? Where to? I don’t see any safe places left on this planet, do you?”
“B, but…”
“Prepare yourself. At this moment, we have no way to continue living unless His Majesty wins. The only difference is whether you want to fight and be erased or be erased without fighting.”
Saturnus narrowed her eyes and then recalled the ones who had been erased first.
They were by no means great people. In fact, most of them were evildoers or the ones who had it coming due to their own actions. She did not feel that much sympathy for them. She also was not pitying them.
But even then… yes, even then, they had been alive.
They had had their own wills and were living according to their own beliefs.
That was why Saturnus smiled fearlessly.
“Let’s show our pride… to that Goddess who’s even more ill-natured than I am. If we don’t do anything here and are erased, we’ll truly be nothing more than dolls. So let’s at least go out with a bang.”
Saturnus gathered mana in her palm.
She did not think that she would deal any damage to it. She never thought that she could win from the very beginning.
She understood that, in all likelihood, a few seconds from now, that ouroboros would counterattack and she would be erased from this world.
Yet, even then, she could not just sit tight and wait for the world to end.
“Everyone, listen up. It’s pointless to throw any offensive skills or arcane magic at it, so let’s give up on that. We’ll switch to casting buffs and heals on His Majesty and applying debuffs on the enemy. We’ll focus purely on annoying the enemy to the best of our ability! Show him that weaklings have their own way of doing things!”
Following Saturnus’s directions, the demons all switched to supporting Orm.
Individually, they were not able to achieve much. Bluntly put, they were just small fries.
But when there were thousands to tens of thousands of them all giving it their best, it added up, providing a significant amount of support.
Although a single healing spell was unable to heal Orm to full health, when there were tens of thousands of them being cast on him, it was possible to fully heal him.
Assume that there was a debuffing skill which lowered the enemy’s defence regardless of the level difference. Even if, individually, it could only lower the ouroboros’s defence by a value of 1, when it was stacked up many, many times, it was possible to decrease it’s defence by a minimum of a few hundred.
With a difference of a few hundred, their king might be able to reverse the situation. The demons were betting on that… no, they had no option but to bet on that.
「… Even though you’re all just trash, you dare to get in my way!?」
But their opponent was the Heavenly Ouroboros. It was a monster which could exterminate the entire demon race on a whim.
It didn’t even need to use a destructive ray. If it even just looked at them and breathed, it would all be over.
But the weaklings’ desperate struggle must have touched upon a nerve.
The demons’ attacks were not even an attack. Because there was so much of a difference in power, the very concept of a battle could not even be established.
But for the Heavenly Ouroboros, the very fact that “some small fries got in the way of my happiness” was unforgivable.
The Heavenly Ouroboros opened its mouth and mercilessly charged light within it at its maximum power.
Ahh, so it was all futile in the end. We’re dead. We’re really dead. Oh well, with something like that, at least we won’t even have the time to feel pain. That’s the only silver lining in all of this.
Keeping her arms crossed, she started sweating hard, but she did not break out of her bold smile.
She refused to have a miserable death after being overcome by fear.
If she had to die regardless, she would rather do it while standing tall. She would fight until the very end and die proudly.
From the very start, she was standing here with that kind of resolve.
And the Heavenly Ouroboros fired his roar—
— unsuccessfully. Instead, the Heavenly Ouroboros was pinned down by Aigokeros, who fell down from the sky.
Subsequently, the Heavenly Ouroboros’s mouth was forcibly shut in the process and the ray of light exploded, trapped in its mouth. In the end, the Heavenly Ouroboros’s attack spectacularly backfired.
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(Author note)
Cyborg ninja: “To feel happy from being punched… that’s so weird.”
(Insert screenshot from raw)
Benetnash used Sinister Arrow Raid![6]
Midgard HP: 80 005 / 999 999
Midgard: “Nuuu————!”
The Heavenly Ouroboros used Hyper Beam!
The Moon Ouroboros used Hyper Beam!
Saturn’s HP: 6 300 002 / 6 500 000
Saturn: “All you managed to do is blow away 20% of my rings.”
The Heavenly Ouroboros and the Moon Ouroboros used Body Slam!
Midgard HP: 40 005 / 999 999
Midgard: “Even though you went all the way to that durable and sturdy Saturn, why didn’t you just fight there!? Why did you have to come back on top of me with pinpoint accuracy!?”
(Author note end)
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[1] “https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Fire_Spin_(move)”.
[2] Appeared in chapter 100. Ruphas used it in her battle against Benetnash. Footnote copy pasted from chapter 100.
Lifthrasir (リーヴスラシル) is the male human who is foretold to survive Ragnarok in Norse mythology. He is destined to repopulate the world with his female counterpart, Lif (リーヴ). The pair is Lif (“life”) and Lifthrasir (“zest for life”), but for some reasons, the author mutilates the myth by breaking up the name into Lif and Thrasir. “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%ADf_and_L%C3%ADf%C3%BErasir”. – Footnote credited to Vecna.
[3] Wait… Wouldn’t Levia just… evaporate into oblivion?
[4] The inconsistency in the use of Heavenly Ouroboros and the Sun Ouroboros… I feel like the author should stick to one in narration and interchange them during speech. I don’t see the reason to keep switching back and forth between the two in narration, or is that just me?
[5] “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(constellation)”.
[6] “https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Sinister_Arrow_Raid_(move)”.
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