“Yeah.” Lufas let out a small sigh as she smacked Alovenus lightly.
Alovenus may have been this world’s creator, but her past actions had been so terrible that nobody present felt any respect for her.
“I’m sure you know that there were only five Ouroboroses, Virgo, but I thought that was a little strange. So I put the screws to her.”
“Ah... Now that you mention it, Metal and Water are missing.”
“Exactly. According to Alovenus, that’s because those are the elements governed by Dina—in other words, her avatar—but Dina’s combat ability clearly does not match the ouroboroses. When I asked her why things were balanced like this, she finally revealed that there was a huge bomb left over.”
With that, Lufas pushed Alovenus forward. It was most likely a gesture demanding that she take over the explanation.
Alovenus laughed flippantly as she rubbed her abused head.
“It’s not that big a deal. I just said that I did make an Ouroboros of Metal and an Ouroboros of Water in the past. There was a lot of trial and error going on back then, and in the end, splitting them up was too much trouble, so I just made the avatar and the ouroboroses a set.”
“A...set?”
“Yep. Well, put simply, I just made the avatar with the powers of both the Metal and Water ouroboroses. Just consider Dina to have the ability to transform into a two-headed ouroboros. Anyway, I tried making the avatar a male at first, but it didn’t work out. Because the gender was different, he ended up becoming independent of me. He was all full of himself, saying that he was the god of this world while he did as he pleased, so I disposed of him. Then, I proceeded to do things like lowering the avatar’s strength and changing their gender and establishing a life span. All that errata became the current avatar, Dina.” Alovenus paused. “She became independent anyway though.”
That was the reason there were only five ouroboroses. It wasn’t because ones for the elements of Metal and Water didn’t exist; it was because they were failed works. And the reason there was only one avatar in comparison to five ouroboroses was that the avatars always had the power of two ouroboroses.
Having had that explained to her, Virgo paled. So there’s something with the power of two ouroboroses when it was almost impossible to take on even one, and he has Dina’s powers on top of that? Lufas might not even be able to handle that, she thought.
“You didn’t actually dispose of him because you couldn’t, right? You beat him down, but he escaped at the last second. You can’t call that ‘disposing of him,’” Lufas said.
“Grk... B-But not only did I beat him up, I also took away most of the mana making up his body along with his title, so he’ll have almost no power left. In fact, I haven’t even felt his presence until just recently. He probably only recently recovered enough to be able to be active again,” said Alovenus.
“And that reason would be...”
“Well, it would be because of all the ouroboroses activating, of course. I think he was influenced by the other ouroboroses into becoming active. His presence was so weak that I hadn’t even noticed at first.”
“You’re just as bad at the small stuff as always. That’s why you get the rug pulled out from under you.”
“Grrrrr...”
Because Alovenus’s very existence was so large, she was unable to key into the smaller details. That was her weakness. It was because Lufas and Dina were so adept at planning out and taking advantage of those details that they’d won. And it turned out that this Goddess had done the same thing in the past, leaving someone alone who had the ability to defy her. There was the question of how that person had survived Lufas and Alovenus’s fight, but he’d probably just temporarily escaped using an Exgate.
“Still, he’s not someone we need to be that cautious of. He probably only has as much strength as a member of the Seven Luminaries. Less, even. We can just find him and capture him. Whether or not we get rid of him will depend on how he reacts. That’s the plan, anyway. I don’t think it’ll be necessary, but you be careful too,” Lufas warned.
“O-Okay,” Virgo replied.
Lufas walked away, dragging Alovenus along. They probably only understood that he was in the general area and couldn’t pinpoint an exact location. After all, this was the Goddess’s offshoot. He should have been as skilled at hiding as Dina. Now that Lufas and Alovenus had taken action, however, it was only a matter of time until the problem was solved. Though they might face some difficulty, there was most likely no way for their target to escape.
＊ ＊
“My word, what an awful era!”
The incorrigible sluglike small fry—originally Vlad the True Ancestor—shouted aloud when he was alone. He was in the midst of returning to Helheim, where his casket was. However, it was taking some time because he was very paranoid about avoiding everyone, twitching at every sound and hiding at the slightest prompt.
He hadn’t used to be like this. In the past, he’d walked boldly wherever he went while those around him paid attention to his mood and reactions, as they were the ones who had to hide. Vlad used to be the embodiment of fear, but what he was doing now was just like those cowardly common folk whom he used to see everywhere. That fact was what made him feel the worst.
“Are you...Virgo?”
That was when a voice called out to Vlad. With a twitch, he turned around while trembling in fear, and found a hatefully beautiful man. When the man saw Vlad, his disappointment was obvious.
“That’s no good. How could I...? I was so looking forward to her arrival, I ended up loosening the barrier. I would never have thought it would be for something as uninteresting as this.”
That got on Vlad’s nerves. Uninteresting?! You would call me, Vlad, once hailed as the True Ancestor of all vampires and who controlled all the land, uninteresting?! How rude! he thought.
However, he didn’t immediately lash out. After all, his weakness had been thoroughly beaten into him over the course of the day as he was made to accept the strangeness of this era. Instead, he decided to observe first. He needed to see if it was okay to pick a fight with the person in front of him. And the conclusion Vlad reached was, “I’ve got to be able to win against him.”
Learn your lesson already!
However, it was only natural for Vlad to think as such. The man was obviously weakened. His cheeks were sunken, and he was clearly not in the best health. Vlad could see sticklike limbs peeking from the man’s tattered clothes, and from Vlad’s point of view, the man would fall over if he was even breathed on.
I can do this! I can win! thought Vlad.
“Khha ha ha... It seems you don’t know just who I am, brat. That ignorance will cost you.”
After a moment, the man said, “How unsightly.”
“What?”
“I called you unsightly. You just thought, ‘He looks weak. I can win.’ Such a small person who can only throw their weight around against those weaker than them... What would you call them other than unsightly? Know your place, you philistine who only understands self-protection and cunning calculation. I have no use for those such as you. I am waiting for a precious guest at the moment... Disappear while I am still in a good mood.”
It was a terribly effective berating, and it dealt a critical hit leading to an overkill of Vlad’s tofu-like mental state, rendered that way after all the crushings he’d experienced over the day.