“Yeah, looks like I couldn’t die this time, either.” The deep gouge on his red shoulder emitted steam as it quickly closed. He would recover most of his blood in a time. His Lazarus powers had returned. “How…?! Your Ouroboros powers aren’t back, are they…?” Iroha’s eyes were wide. Avaritia’s blessing for him hadn’t returned. As his dragon medium, she knew that well. Yet Yahiro smiled boldly in silence. He didn’t think they could understand if he explained. And didn’t find it necessary. What mattered was that he was able to fight again. He had the power of the Dragon Slayer again. “We’ll talk later. First, we gotta save the world.” He picked the unsheathed sword up from the ground and looked at the giant crimson dragon. Then he whispered to himself: “It’s time for revenge.” 6 Minus two hundred degrees Celsius—frigid liquid nitrogen rained down on the dragon’s scarlet body. Acedia’s power under Zen’s control froze the water in its body instantly, and the expansion burst its cells. No creature could endure this, not even a materialized dragon. Yet the scarlet Ouroboros stood unfazed in the liquid nitrogen rain. It was too big for Zen’s power to keep up, and its healing power was faster than the destruction of its cells. Even so, the rain annoyed it. The materialized world dragon turned to Zen intermittently to attack, like swatting a fly. Its scorching rays melted the asphalt and vaporized the buildings. The searing gust seared Zen’s flesh, and the fiery smoke robbed him of his sight. “This is absurd…” Zen burned with desperation as he dodged the Ouroboros’s attacks, bolting back and forth through vapor explosions. He was getting its attention, and the others received less damage in return, but that was all he could do. He couldn’t hope to deal any significant damage, much less take it down. The only one who could be defeated was himself, and that possibility grew more likely by the second. One thing in particular was more anxiety-inducing than anything: the Ouroboros was still growing. The crimson dragon was already over double the size it had been when it emerged. The number of horns on its head and wings on its back had grown as well. And the fuel for its growth was the environment itself. The surrounding space was corrupted like blocky artifacts in a video game as the dragon devoured it. The buildings, trees, asphalt roads, and traffic signs turned into vivid, colorful noise as they became part of the Ouroboros. One could say it was the natural conclusion. This world itself was but an illusion created by the Ouroboros—it had been part of the world dragon from the very beginning. Zen was going up against the world itself. He had no hope of victory. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to give up…!” Zen ground his teeth and jumped off an ice block and up to the sky. His power could not defeat the Ouroboros—but the same didn’t go for the fallen angel controlling it. At the very least, the world dragon’s invasion into Heaven could be stopped if Ellie was defeated. They could buy time to deal with the Ouroboros if only he took her down. Zen hid in the mist of his powers and the smoke of the dragon to approach her. But Ellie saw through his trick. “—?!” As he exited the mist, his sight was blocked by the Ouroboros’s giant tail. Ellie knew the exact time he would strike and made the dragon swing back. “Gu…oh…!” Zen immediately tried to dodge with a vapor blast, but the Ouroboros was too gigantic for him to evade the attack entirely. The countless protrusions on its tail caught him and slammed him into the nearest building’s wall. He broke too many bones and burst too many organs to count. The injuries were too grave even for the Lazarus’s power to heal immediately. And while he was defenseless, the dragon opened its giant maw, preparing to vaporize him with a heat ray. “Tsk…!” Could the Lazarus revive from being destroyed down to the last cell? There was no precedent for it, and he didn’t want to be the first to test it. But he was immobilized and unable to block the Ouroboros’s breath. “Sumi…ka…!” The smile of the woman he loved crossed his mind. A thunder accompanied the scorching ray as it blocked his sight and engulfed him—but the instant before he was burned, the ray was flicked away, as though it had hit an invisible wall. The flaming reflux struck the world dragon, the same fire it had shot blowing it away. “What…?” Zen shook his head slightly, unable to comprehend what had happened. An invisible wall that could reflect even the Ouroboros’s flames—he knew about such power. But its user was gone. The contradiction shocked him. “Superbia’s Chibiki-no-Iwa…?!” Zen’s arms finally regenerated, and he pushed the rubble away to stand up. A silhouette watched him from above the broken wall. A young man holding a Japanese sword. His jacket was torn apart at the shoulder, but the skin peeking from it was unharmed. “Kept you waiting, huh, Sagara?” “Narusawa?! You recovered your Lazarus powers? But why do you have Superbia’s…?” “Who knows. I sure don’t. I never understood her.” The boy who had nearly died upon losing his powers scratched his head with a smile on his face, relaxed as though all the weight on his shoulders had been lifted. “But I don’t care why, so long as I can take that thing down.” He glared at the Ouroboros in the middle of the block. The crimson dragon kept devouring its surroundings and growing. Yahiro reached his right hand toward it and clenched his fist as though clasping something. “Open, Ploutonion!” Immediately, the ground at the Ouroboros’s feet was enshrouded in pitch black. The still-water-like entrance to the seemingly bottomless pit. The dragon’s giant body sank into the deep, deep nether. On the other side of the hole to the Afterlife lay the battlefield for the decisive match against the world dragon. 7 A giant hole opened without warning at the scarlet dragon’s feet. The Ouroboros fell into the hollow as though pushed by an invisible force. The fallen angel in a nun’s vestment observed in astonishment from the air between buildings. “The Ploutonion… How can Superbia’s power be here…?!” The entrance to the underworld whence the Moujuu emerged and destroyed Japan: this was Sui Narusawa’s power, and should not be in use now that she had perished. “No… I see, Yahiro was a double Lazarus… He had Superbia’s blessing as well… Of course. Ha-ha,” Ellie muttered to herself, seriously impressed. Yahiro had Iroha Mamana’s blessing, but at the same time, the earth dragon medium, Sui Narusawa, had given him the Lazarus grace. Naturally, he had the right to use Superbia’s power. Put simply: now that Shigure Shindou had stolen Avaritia’s blessing, Yahiro had awoken to Superbia’s power. This turn of events was unexpected, but he was never a regular Lazarus to begin with. One or two more irregularities were nothing to worry about. “The result will be the same. My Lazarus Eater is yourself—there is no way you can defeat it. You’re only making things harder for both of us.” Ellie giggled to herself. The Lazarus’s power was too brittle to stand against the Ouroboros devouring the world. Acedia’s Zen Sagara had proven so himself. Yahiro’s new power could not prove to be an obstacle to her revenge. That said, it was inconvenient for her to be separated from the Ouroboros. Should she follow it into the Ploutonion? A silver glow crossed the edges of her vision as the thought took her attention away for a moment. “Elimieeel!” The glow came from an underworld sentry’s wings. Suria Almiron’s talons slashed toward Ellie’s head from a blind spot. “Hey, Suria.” Ellie looked up at her, eyes wide with surprise. They had equal flying capabilities, both being underworld sentries. Ellie was unable to dodge at this point. Suria had been counting on that, but something unexpected prevented it. “What?! A nameless…angel…?” A monster like a bird of prey, glowing in the colors of the rainbow, blocked the attack. All of her familiars were supposed to have been lost in the fight against the Lazarus. Suria’s claws pierced the nameless angel, and it vanished with a screech. The jig was up. More nameless angels appeared from the gaps between the buildings and surrounded Suria. Ellie had not fallen for her trick. Suria had fallen for Ellie’s. “Of course. They told you to go after me while they took the Ouroboros away. It’s such a foolishly simple plan. Not what I’d expect from you. So they’re ordering you around now?” Ellie smiled. Suria frowned with desperation and ire, but Ellie’s smile was strong, overwhelming—victorious. “Not that the plan itself was bad, though. But like I told you, you’re too predictable. The humans can’t fly, so it’s obvious that you would come after me. You had no choice but to go after me, since you cannot stop the Ouroboros.” “Elimiel…!” Suria struggled desperately to fly closer. They weren’t even ten meters apart. But the six nameless angels Ellie had saved blocked her path. As much as Suria tried, she was outnumbered. Right as she took down the third angel, another’s claws got her wings. There could be no fight, then. The angels ganged up on her as she was immobilized. Suria protected herself fiercely, but her whole body was in tatters soon enough. Ellie transformed her hand into claws and drew in to deal the killing blow. A show of mercy for her former brethren. “Good-bye, Suria. May your soul rest in peace in the underworld.” Ellie raised her right hand with shameless words of prayer. Suddenly, a glow appeared on the rooftop of a faraway building. “—?!” A bullet pierced through one of the nameless angels and struck Ellie’s shoulder. Her divinely protected body shed blood. It was a shot from a sniper rifle. With unbelievable accuracy and power. “What… An artificial Relict bullet?! But who…?!” Ellie looked in the direction of the shot, her face twisted in agony. Nearly one kilometer away was a small Asian woman. Ellie’s supernatural eyesight let her recognize the bangs dyed blue. “Rosetta Berith…!” The sniper fired again before Ellie could collect herself. The nameless angels surrounding Suria were shot and evaporated one after the other. Normal weaponry could not harm them, but these were artificial Relict bullets. They could kill even underworld sentries. “But you can’t snipe me if I’m out of your sight…!” Ellie used the last angel as a shield to fly into the shadows of a building, and then pain shook her whole body. Thin, almost invisible wires were laid out across the buildings like spiderwebs. “You thought you’d be safe up here because we can’t fly?” “Giulietta Berith?!” Giuli stood in midair, on the wires. Only then did Ellie realize her chest was pierced, by the katana Giuli had stabbed her with as she flew by. It was an old Japanese sword, like an antique taken from a museum. But dazzling dragon aura oozed from its blade. “This can’t be… Nothing indicated that you were Relict Deservers…” Ellie groaned, looking at the Relict Regalia in Giuli’s hands. “You lost for one reason, fallen angel: You underestimated humanity’s malice.” Giuli smiled with pity at the sentry caught in the wires. A wry smile escaped her in response to Giuli’s spite. “Unbelievable… Suria was the bait all along… Looks like I can’t beat humans in deception, after all.” A clump of blood came out of her mouth. Her silver wings lost their glow and burned away. “Do your best… I think that you, with all your war and sin, will be able to take revenge on those pieces of shit up in Heaven one day… That’ll be all… I wanted…” Ellie clasped her hands to her chest and closed her eyes forever. “Maybe one day,” Giuli whispered lowly, as if in prayer. 8 Pitch-black darkness like still water covered the ground. The Ploutonion. The entrance to the pits of the nether realm that Yahiro had opened and sealed the crimson dragon in. Iroha stood at the edge of the hole, peering into it. “Hold up! Iroha, are you seriously gonna go in there?!” Sumika grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back, her face twisted in desperation, as she thought Iroha would jump the moment she let go. “That’s the Ploutonion! Remember?! Even if Yahiro opened this one, you…” “Iroha, I don’t think you should, either,” Ayaho added shyly, her voice sounding like she had given up; she knew no one could change her sister’s mind. “I know. But I gotta go! I feel like I gotta go!” “How are you even gonna get all the way down?” “Uhh… I…” Iroha pursed her lips as she looked down into the bottomless pit. The walls of the Ploutonion were not perfectly vertical. Rocks protruded from the sides to use as footholds. She could jump from rock to rock to descend, the same way Yahiro and Zen had. However, she lacked the Lazarus’s superhuman physical capabilities. Iroha and Sumika were dragon mediums, but their bodies were identical to normal people’s. Iroha bit her lip like a sulky child and groaned. A diesel engine rumbled and brakes screeched behind her. A dark-green machine stopped right next to the Ploutonion: Galerie Berith’s wheeled armored vehicle. “Geez, we’re fighting flashy monsters one moment, then dragons the next. Give a guy a break!” A blond white man emerged from the rear hatch. Iroha raised her head at the nostalgic sound of his voice. “Josh!” “Long time no see, Iroha. Good to see you’re doing fine.” “What’re you doing here?! Weren’t you in Mexico?!” “The kid just wouldn’t stop insisting that she had to take the little guy to you.” Josh turned around and lazily pointed his chin ahead. A small girl around ten years old slipped down from the vehicle. “Runa?!” Runa Senou stood without expression. She only blinked at the sound of her name. In her arms she carried a white furry Moujuu. 9 The dragon’s gigantic body lit the darkness in fiery red. The Ouroboros grew by eating its surroundings, yet its power was not flowing now. It writhed in pain from hunger. The Ploutonion was the entrance to the Afterlife—an anomalous space that nulled the dragon’s power to eat the world. “I get it. The Ploutonion can stop its growth,” Zen said. “Exactly. And there’s no need to worry about damaging the city here,” Yahiro replied while sliding down the wall of the Ploutonion. The Ouroboros was about thirty meters long now. More than twice the size it had been when it appeared. Its presence was intimidating even from afar. But at the very least, it wouldn’t grow any bigger. The Ouroboros could no longer obtain the power it needed to leave this world and invade Heaven. Now they only had to disassemble this dragon and pull Shigure Shindou out of it to put an end to this. The question was: How? “So what now? We could be fighting forever here if it can heal like a Lazarus,” Yahiro said. “Yeah. If anything, we’d be at a disadvantage then,” Zen agreed, then gave him a look of suspicion. “But don’t tell me you didn’t have a plan.” “Oh… No, I do. We can’t defeat the Ouroboros—if he’s the real Ouroboros.” “What?!” Zen scowled. Then they jumped away from each other. A scorching ray seared the place where they had been standing. The Ouroboros had attacked. “Narusawa!” Zen managed to escape the fire by accelerating with a vapor blast. Yahiro could do the same with an explosion from Avaritia’s power, but he lacked her blessing at the moment. He had no way to escape the attack—so worried Zen, until he spotted Yahiro up high in the sky. Yahiro stood midair and thrust his right hand toward the Ouroboros, launching a cannonball of high-pressure air. The invisible bullet pushed through the heat and struck the crimson dragon’s body. The thirty-meter giant staggered. “What was that Regalia?! Ira’s power?!” Zen asked as he ran up to Yahiro’s landing spot. Douji Yamase used the wind dragon’s power in the past, and now Yahiro did something similar. Even though he didn’t have the blessing of Ira’s medium. “I told you. We can’t defeat him. Not just with our powers.” Yahiro’s lips curved into a bold grin as a new Regalia kicked in. The ground at the Ouroboros’s feet turned a poisonous purple color—miasma. It immediately tried to run away, but metallic crystal blades shot up to nail him to the ground. “Luxuria’s marshification and Vanagloria’s crystallization…!” Zen gasped. He finally realized. It was not Yahiro himself who was using the various dragons’ Regalia. He merely borrowed their bodies. It was the residual essence of the former mediums in this world attacking the Ouroboros. The wills of the world itself. “Lazarus Eater… Shigure Shindou, I still can’t believe that you are a part of me, but I feel for you…” Tristitia’s power, lightning strike, rained on the crimson dragon and gouged its body. Yahiro sighed, looking up at the gigantic creature with pity. “The underworld sentries were wrong. They were close, but no cigar. Iroha’s blessing… Avaritia’s power is only part of what constitutes the world dragon. Although neither of us truly realized that.” “What do you mean?” Zen furrowed his brow. “The Ouroboros is only an administrator, temporarily in charge of all the dragons’ powers,” Yahiro replied nonchalantly. Once, the Berith twins had said that the dragons were the world itself. The eight dragons symbolized the Eight Trigrams—the eight elements that constituted the world. The Ouroboros, as the creator of the new world, must rule over all eight of them. “All the dragons’ powers…? Even my Acedia’s?” “Hey, aren’t you right here, helping us out?” “…I see. So all eight dragons recognized you and Iroha Mamana,” Zen said, trying to make sense of it. There was no need to steal the entirety of the eight dragons’ powers. They only had to be recognized as worthy of borrowing them. As agents of the dragons’ wills. That was the Ouroboros. “Yeah, but Shigure’s different. He can’t become the Ouroboros just by taking Avaritia’s blessing from me.” “Shigure Shindou stole only the fire dragon’s power… That’s not the world dragon—that’s a manifestation of Avaritia.” Zen nodded in understanding. In fact, draconized Shigure Shindou could only use flames—Avaritia’s power. He wasn’t refusing to use the Ouroboros’s power. He couldn’t use them. “Knowing that, how do we defeat him? Even this fake Ouroboros is a formidable enough foe,” Zen replied while dodging the crimson dragon’s desperate flames. The dragon had to be worn out from Yahiro’s attacks, but it was far from being lethally injured. It kept going strong even as its scales and wings grew tattered. “Honestly, I hadn’t considered that.” Yahiro looked away. “What?!” Zen’s jaw dropped. Behind them, a giant beast landed thunderously. From the walls of the Ploutonion jumped down a ten-meter-long, pure-white Moujuu. Three girls rode on its back. The face of one of them was paralyzed in fear, the other one was expressionless, and the third, at the front, wore a victorious grin. “Heh-heh-heh. Looks like you’re hopeless without me, Yahiro. As I expected.” “Iroha?! Nuemaru…?!” “You, too, Sumika…?” Yahiro raised his eyebrows, and Zen clutched his head as Iroha jumped off the Moujuu’s back. Sumika held on to Runa for dear life. “Do not fear anymore! Your hero is here!” Iroha declared as she ran up to Yahiro. “What’re you gonna do, Hero?” “Heh. Curious, huh? You’re just dying to hear what your goddess of victory has cooked up, huh?” “…Get on with it already…” Yahiro groaned at her usual incomprehensible confidence. He could not deny that her positivity had saved him multiple times before, though. “Sumika, what are you doing?!” Zen reproached her. “I didn’t want to be left out… And, like, what if I could never see you again?” Sumika mumbled. Zen frowned awkwardly before wrapping his arm around her. “Then don’t leave my side for a second!” “Roger that!” The crimson dragon’s flames rained on them. Zen blocked the attack up front, with Sumika still in his arms. Frigid spears of liquid nitrogen slashed through the fire and barraged onto the dragon. It wailed in pain as the spears pierced all over its body. Zen’s Regalia grew more powerful, thanks to the dragon factor supply he was receiving from Acedia’s medium right next to him. He smiled boldly when he realized this. He finally saw a way to take the fake Ouroboros down. “Yahiro! We gotta shave down his dragon factor!” Iroha urged him. “I know…!” Yahiro activated the multiple Regalia. Lightning strikes burned the dragon’s wings, and air tore its scales. With every loss of a piece of its body, the dragon factor inside it melted away into the Afterlife’s air. The once-thirty-meter-long dragon shrunk to half that size. Its ribs showed through its skinny body, and dragon-factor-infused blood spurted from his countless injuries. The pseudo-Ouroboros opened its gigantic maw and roared at the sky. Then a violent gust enveloped its body. The dragon factor scattered in the air whirled on its way back to its body. “That tornado… That’s the Lazarus Eater’s power!” Lethargy hit Yahiro’s body as his dragon factor was drained. No matter how much they depleted their enemy, so long as it had this power, Shigure Shindou would easily recover his dragon factor. This was the true predicament of the power created by the underworld sentry to seal the Ouroboros. But suddenly, the lethargy eased. Wind kept whirling around the fake Ouroboros, but it did not reach them. It was all absorbed by the pure-white disk on top of its head. It was a hole in the middle of the air. A hollow fissure opposite to the Ploutonion. They had never seen this power before. And the one controlling it was the small girl on the back of the white Moujuu. “Runa?!” ““The space-control Regalia… Gula’s power!”” Iroha shouted in sync with Yahiro. Runa looked at them from Nuemaru’s back and nodded. Runa had never interfered in a battle before, and now she helped them. Yahiro and Iroha looked at each other. They smiled at the realization. So many different powers supported them. They couldn’t possibly lose to this pretend Ouroboros. “So, got any more tricks up your sleeve?” Yahiro asked Iroha. Iroha’s cheeks turned red, and she looked away. “Erm… Avaritia’s blessing went over to him because he had more dragon factor than you, right?” “Yeah. That’s the Lazarus Eater’s power, if I understand correctly.” “But he’s pretty depleted now, so if we can get you boosted, maybe you’ll get the blessing back.” “…I get the logic, but how? There’s no Relict Regalia we can use around here.” Yahiro cocked his head. He didn’t have the Kuyou Masakane. And he couldn’t believe a different Relict Regalia would fall into their hands so conveniently. His dragon medium was right next to him, but there was no sign of his dragon factor invigorating. Shigure still had Avaritia’s blessing. Iroha nodded firmly, her resolve unwavering. “It’s okay. Just look at me.” “Wha—?!” Iroha’s hands wrapped around Yahiro’s head, and she planted her lips on his. Yahiro’s mind went blank, and time around them came to a halt. It was an awkward kiss, like it was their first one. “S-so…? I think I sent you a whole lot…of, y’know…love…?” Iroha said, beet red, after a long kiss. Iroha tried to step back in embarrassment, but Yahiro pulled her close. “Yes. I can tell. Give me one more.” “Whoa… Yahiro?! Wait, they’re watching! Ayaho and Runa are watchi—!” Yahiro shut her up with a kiss. Despite what she’d said, she didn’t resist. All sound vanished from the world, and light filled Yahiro’s vision. Scorching flames ran through his whole body. He felt as though he was hugging the entire world. He could tell Avaritia’s blessing and the Ouroboros power had come back to him. No—it had always been with him. “Yahiro!” “Yeah…!” Flames manifested in Yahiro’s hand in the shape of a sword. His trusty katana that had been lost to the Afterlife. The Kuyou Masakane. Yahiro held it up high toward the giant crimson dragon. “The Lazarus Eater?” The dragon shot a blazing ray at him, but it broke into flames that he absorbed into his hand. He devoured the phony world dragon’s Regalia. “Ha. You’re late to the party, buddy. I’m the Ouroboros… The self-eating dragon.” He took not only the Regalia. The crimson dragon’s body itself turned into light particles that were absorbed by the whirl of flames around Yahiro. Its wounded wings, cracked scales, twisted claws and fangs—everything that comprised the Ouroboros disassembled. The only thing remaining was a misshapen monster with the body of a dragon and the wings of a nameless angel. Yahiro swung down his sword toward the pitiful Lazarus who looked identical to him. “Burn to ash… Blaze.” The flames of purification engulfed the pitch-black world. Amid the fire, the young man with Yahiro’s face smiled peacefully, as though he had finally found salvation.
Chapter 93
22 min read