Of course, it hadn’t been easy. Absorbing an opponent’s magic in the middle of combat and then recreating it took an immense amount of skill. But luckily, Oscar Orcus was the greatest synergist who had ever lived, so of course he’d managed it. His umbrella’s mana-absorbing ability had allowed him to siphon some of the disintegration beam that had been hitting it, and his glasses had let him analyze all of the information stored in that mana, then recreate it with his gauntlet. And as a result, his gauntlet was now capable of using disintegration magic.
“You have stolen the divine power granted to us by our lord.”
“You mad?” Oscar asked, sinking into the wall behind him. He transmuted a hole exactly his size and shape, and then transmuted the wall back into place after moving through it.
“You won’t escape me!”
“I think I will, actually.”
As he said that, Oscar vanished completely into the wall. The apostle fired a disintegration beam at it, but—
“It’s not disintegrating?!”
Just as she shouted that, the room began to rumble. She then heard a high-pitched screeching noise coming from all sides.
The walls suddenly all transformed into rotating blades. Even the floor and ceiling did, forcing the apostle to hover in the air. The stairs leading to the next floor were all blades as well. Then, the entire room was bathed in a golden glow and it started to shrink.
The apostle tried to blow open a hole in one of the walls with disintegration magic, but it failed to do anything again.
“You coated the entire room with disintegration magic?”
She realized her disintegration magic was being offset by disintegration magic, so instead, she pulled out her claymores and tried to cut through the walls. Unfortunately, the rotating blades rebuffed her swords, and even if her slashes could have broken through, Oscar would have just repaired them with transmutation.
This was his ultimate domain creation skill, Toy Box.
“You and your master love games, right? Well, how about a death game? Let’s see if you can get out of this.”
“Oscar Orcus!”
It was only now that the apostle realized that this had all been part of Oscar’s plan. Her scream was filled with such rage that it was hard to believe the apostles were normally emotionless. That scream was the last sound she ever made too, since the box quickly closed in around her.
Oscar didn’t even bother personally confirming the apostle’s demise. His glasses told him all he needed to know, and he really didn’t want to see such a gory sight.
Oscar turned on his heel and started running deeper into the cathedral. Now that he had the strongest weapon in hand, it was time to destroy the source of all their troubles.
Meanwhile, the battle in the skies was heating up.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
“God, you’re like a cockroach! Just die already!”
Miledi had lost all of her shawls, over half of her spheres, and was covered in numerous shallow wounds. On the other hand, Meiru’s Aerial Sea had finally been destroyed for good and she was getting stabbed over and over again.
“Dance! Dance to please Lord Ehit!” Lucifer shouted in ecstasy. He figured this battle was as good as won.
Hundreds of lightning bolts rained down on Meiru and Miledi, the wind grew so strong it was difficult to even draw breath, and hail pelted them from all sides like a storm of bullets. Both of them were constantly bathed in sunset-orange light, and it was only a matter of time before Meiru ran out of mana, which she needed to keep healing them.
One of the apostles was poised to launch a perfect ambush from behind one of the tornadoes, but right when she was about to charge at them, something happened.
“Huh?!”
She turned to look down at the Holy Cathedral in shock, as did the other two apostles.
“I-Is something wrong?” Lucifer asked in confusion, thinking the apostle was looking at him.
Darrion and the others stopped their attack as well, worried about the sudden shift in the apostles’ behavior.
“He took our magic.”
“Oscar Orcus!”
Miledi and Meiru grinned upon hearing that, and a second later, the silver light that had covered the cathedral vanished.
“What?!” Lucifer shouted, shaken.
Darrion and the others looked down at their own bodies, frowning as they experimentally clenched and unclenched their fingers.
“Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, see how the tables have turned! Hey, old man, how does it feel knowing you just got owned?! You were totally winning a second ago, but now you’re about to get smacked down, you clown!” Miledi shouted, grinning.
“You’re really in high spirits, Miledi-chan! I almost never see you act this annoying!” Meiru said as she clapped her hands together, smiling just as widely as Miledi.
Both Divine Crusade and Sanctified Purge had been dispelled.
“Don’t get cocky. This simply puts us on an even playing field,” Darrion said in a calm voice, seemingly unfazed. His job remained the same. He would fight, and die if necessary, for Ehit. The other Paladins were similarly calm.
“True. This is precisely the battle that Lord Ehit wishes to witness! Let us see if you’re worthy of being his chosen pawns!” Lucifer proclaimed as he spread his arms wide and once again started raining thunder down on Miledi. Darrion, his Paladins, and the remaining apostles all charged her as well.
However, right before they reached her, Miledi used her Dark Key to teleport to the Dark Gate Meiru had. Oscar teleported to it as well a second later.
“Meiru, can you still do this?”
“You bet. Leave it all to me.”
Oscar blocked the apostles’ disintegration beams with his own, while Miledi used her remaining spheres to stymie Darrion and his knights. Meiru, on the other hand, simply closed her eyes and concentrated while her comrades bought her time.
“Domain Creation - Stagnation!” she shouted a few seconds later, opening her eyes. A sphere of orange light then spread out from her, stopping Darrion and the three apostles in their tracks. Or rather, slowing them down so much that it looked like they’d stopped. In truth, they were still moving at a normal person’s walking speed, but considering the superhuman velocities everyone had been fighting at before, they may as well have been at a snail’s pace.
Stagnation was a spell that slowed down the flow of time for anyone Meiru chose within a fifty-meter radius.
Darrion narrowed his eyes and activated his Golden Rule. By changing the magic he was copying from Miledi’s to Meiru’s, he would be able to break out of this spell. Unfortunately, he was a second too late. Oscar now had gauntlets on both hands, and he fired disintegration beams out of both at Darrion. Darrion barely had time to bring his shield up to block, but even the vaunted Sacred Shield couldn’t stop disintegration magic, the strongest magic that Ehit had granted to only his perfect creations.
Darrion groaned in pain as his shield, and his entire left arm, turned to dust. However, the split-second his shield had bought him still had value. The remaining three apostles closed in on the group from left, right, and below.
“Meiru, it’s the one below us,” Oscar said, analyzing the three apostles with his glasses. Meanwhile, Miledi fired off high-level magic to either side to keep the remaining two apostles at bay while also defending against Lucifer’s thunderbolts.
Meiru stretched out her snake sword, coiling it around the apostle below.
“This won’t stop me,” the apostle said mechanically.
“Revival Reversal.”
“Ngh!”
The apostle’s left arm suddenly vanished, her armor was mostly torn off, and half of her body was covered in painful burns.
“It’s nice to meet you, Hearst-san. Goodbye.”
Indeed, this apostle was the same one who’d eaten a meteor back in the desert so long ago. Meiru had brought her old wounds back with Revival Reversal. As Hearst momentarily froze from the pain, a huge amount of dirt started falling toward her.
“Tetragrammaton.”
Meiru then used restoration magic to restore the dirt to its original form—a massive boulder made of sealstone. Oscar had deliberately broken this boulder so that Meiru could use it like this later and trap someone inside.