The tremendous mana signal had interrupted Zelos and Ado’s attempt to execute the goddesses.
Of course it had. This mana was so far beyond anything they’d felt before.
And whatever that mana belonged to was coming right at them at incredible speed.
Zelos, Ado, and the three goddesses were so overwhelmed that they’d frozen in place.
“H-Hey, Zelos... Please tell me I’m wrong here, but is this—”
“You’re not wrong. It looks like we didn’t manage to finish off the givleon. That said, its mana signal doesn’t feel like a givlord’s. Plus, we can sense its mana from here...”
“Crap. This is not good...”
Even Zelos couldn’t think of a monster he’d encountered with this much mana, but he knew the sheer amount of mana coming at them meant the thing was a powerful aberration on par with the Dark God.
“I’d guess it’s as powerful as the Dark God. Well, isn’t this a problem?” Zelos said. “I can’t see us beating that thing by ourselves.”
“H-Hang on! Did you seriously just compare that thing to the Dark God?!” Flaress shouted. “Since when did this world have anything that crazy?!”
“Don’t ask me,” Zelos bit back. “All the hero summonings created pockets of unusually high mana concentrations. It was only a matter of time before some monster wandered through one and absorbed all that concentrated mana. And that monster just so happened to be a great givleon, I guess.”
“What would summoning heroes have to do with mana concentration?” Aquilata said. “You do know the world’s level of mana is constant, don’t you? What you’re saying makes no sense.”
“Oh? You’re technically gods, but you have no idea? You see, each time you collect the mana for the summoning rituals, it redistributes a small amount of mana from farther regions to the areas near the sigil, gradually increasing the concentration. The Far-Flung Green Depths alone should’ve made it obvious that something wasn’t right, hmm? Or were you completely unaware that the world was about fifteen hundred years away from total ruin?”
The three goddesses floated in silence.
At that moment, it became clear just how careless they’d been.
They turned away from Zelos, diverting their gazes to evade his cold glare and their own failures.
A monster on par with the Dark God had been one thing, but now they’d learned that the world was on the brink of ruin. All they could do was float in shocked silence.
After all, they were the cause behind it all.
Finally, Windia opened her mouth to say just two words: “It’s coming.”
The ominous glow of the red dot in the sky thundered closer and closer until, finally, it came into detail. At 170 centimeters tall, it was small for a demon lord, but a weirdly thick shell covered its entire body. Two wings beat furiously on its back. Its eyes, meanwhile, shone with a crimson light, visible through the creature’s lumpy yet sturdy head armor—the only thin part of its full-body carapace.
Its two long antennae made it just barely clear that this thing was cockroach-related, but this was clearly no normal insect.
“Wait... Isn’t that just Sanagiman?!” Ado said.
“I do see the resemblance, but Sanagiman’s based on pupae,” Zelos said. “Cockroaches grow by molting, so they don’t even go through that stage, do they?”
“From how it looks, I feel like it’s just gotta have a second form...”
“Mm-hmm. I could see that. Something like Inazuman...”
Whatever this thing was, they agreed it resembled the hero of a certain 1970s tokusatsu show.
It glared at Zelos and Ado, then suddenly gathered an enormous amount of mana and began to focus it.
“Shu, shu, shu, shu, shu...”
“It talked?!” Zelos and Ado shouted. “What is this, a cockroach alien?!”
They couldn’t understand what it was saying, but it was clearly intelligent.
The mysterious creature crossed its arms over its chest, collected mana in its arms, and then—
“SHUWATCH!”
PEWWWWWWWWW!
—it shot out a mysterious beam of light.
Zelos and Ado dodged it, but Flaress wasn’t so lucky. She took a direct hit.
“Owowowowowowow!”
“Damn, that’s pretty...” Ado said.
“It’s a nice attack, isn’t it?” Zelos agreed. “Something about it just gets me so excited. Feels like I’m a kid again.”
“You’re so mean!” Flaress said. “Why didn’t you try to help me?!”
“Why should we have to help you?” the two reincarnators scoffed. “We want you dead.”
“These men are awful...” Aquilata said.
Now it was the goddesses’ turn to glare at Zelos and Ado.
The men felt zero obligation to help the goddesses. After all, the goddesses had come to eliminate them. Pair that with the men’s grudges against the Four Gods, and they saw no reason whatsoever to team up with them. They’d rather try to get the mystery creature to help them annihilate the goddesses. They were enemies, plain and simple, and the Sages felt no sympathy for the goddesses, who still insisted on emphasizing their supposed superiority.
Zelos and Ado felt a fresh wave of motivation to settle this as soon as possible, so they promptly resumed their barrage against the goddesses.
“Lightning Shooter.”
“Dark Lightning Concerto.”
“H-Hey! How dare you?!” Flaress cried.
“That was...close...” Windia said, having gotten out of the way just in time.
“We’ve been enemies from the start, haven’t we?” Ado said. “Why should we put up a common front with you?”
“Exactly,” Zelos agreed. “Or what—did you seriously think we’d team up just because one more enemy appeared? An ally who’d stab us in the back at the drop of a hat is the last thing I want. Heh heh heh...”
“Tch! Not one bit of common sense, either of you...” Aquilata muttered.
She had, indeed, been planning to foist this mysterious creature off onto Zelos and Ado, then flee while they were busy. Having gotten by on arrogance alone for so many years, the goddesses had actually believed that all humans would eagerly follow their commands. They hadn’t considered even once that they might be wrong.
But Zelos and Ado had never seriously considered teaming up, so Aquilata’s whole plan fell apart like tissue paper the instant they attacked.
“SHUWA!”