Aquilata and Windia had immediately retreated, while Zelos and Ado had deployed a magic barrier to deflect the shrapnel. Now, they were all frantically running from the shock wave that followed.
A cloud of dust engulfed the area, obscuring their vision and making the plain resemble the target of a bombing raid.
“Jeez, that’s powerful,” Ado said. “That thing is a living weapon!”
“So Mother Nature can create things like this, can it?” Zelos mused, before: “Mm?”
After a moment, a pair of glowing crimson eyes appeared in the thick shroud of dust.
And then—
“Jet-Black Meteor Givleon!” it announced, striking a flowing pose that cut through even the dust cloud.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
An explosion rippled in the background, only adding to the drama.
“It’s talking fluently now?!” Zelos and Ado exclaimed. “And it really is a tokusatsu hero, isn’t it?!”
The creature’s new armor shone like polished obsidian. And its movements, strong yet elegant, stirred the soul.
Zelos and Ado found it so incredibly cool that they couldn’t help but fall in love. It was hard to believe this thing had ever been a cockroach.
What stood before them now was undeniably a hero of justice.
The hero stood straight, looked right at Zelos and Ado with its gleaming crimson eyes, and thrust a finger toward them.
“Damn, that’s sick...” Ado said.
“This thing was a cockroach... It was a cockroach...” Zelos muttered. “But I can’t help it—my heart just... Ngh!”
“No way. I can’t bring myself to fight this.”
“Same. I feel like I’d lose a vital part of myself if I attacked it...”
These two otaku felt a familiar passion in their hearts. Every man had idolized superheroes at some point, but that longing had become dormant as they grew into adults. Now, this thing’s appearance had rekindled those feelings.
“You evil gods who think nothing of laying waste to nature!” the creature shouted. “And you as well, humans! Now that I’m here, your wicked deeds, your destruction of this beautiful world, are over!”
“What do you mean, evil gods?!” Flaress yelled.
“Know your place, you lowly monster!” Aquilata said.
“Hesitation...” Windia murmured.
“Wait, what? It thinks we’re evil too?” Ado asked.
“Well, human history is the history of creation and destruction, after all,” Zelos said. “Depending on how you look at it, we might be the evilest creatures alive.”
What this “hero” was saying wasn’t necessarily off the mark. Over its years of development, human civilization had ravaged the natural world, felling trees, leveling mountains, and obliterating ecosystems to fuel its expansion and technological advancement. That wasn’t even mentioning humanity’s history of war, which had stained entire continents with blood. War was a different beast entirely; nature’s only law was the survival of the fittest, but people masqueraded war as righteous, when, in reality, violent ideologies had ruined so many lives. Wars driven by religion, culture, or the ambition of the state’s leaders had wrought untold suffering.
If the world had a will of its own, intelligent life would seem evil to it.
And perhaps this Jet-Black Meteor Givleon was the very embodiment of nature’s will.
“That said,” Zelos continued, “I don’t plan on sitting by while that thing punishes me as it sees fit.”
“Yeah.” Ado nodded. “We’re living creatures too, after all. We just fight for our own lives—and the prosperity of civilization does affect those lives a lot. Still, I really don’t wanna fight that thing...”
“Mm-hmm. Well, even if humanity perishes, that’s the cycle of life. Nature will reclaim the whole world after long enough. The world will always have a future if it isn’t completely destroyed.”
Life was a never-ending chain of conflict.
Even if the world itself moved to destroy civilization, living creatures had the resilience, the strength, to adapt to their environments.
And that was especially true of humans, who stood at the top of nature’s hierarchy. Humanity wouldn’t roll over and die just because some hero told it to.
“Hmm. You have a point. What are humans if not particularly evolved creatures of nature?” the Jet-Black Meteor Givleon said. “So be it. I won’t pass judgment on humanity today. Your technologies could be used in harmony with the environment. But you, you wicked gods; you are different!”
“Huh?!” Flaress exclaimed.
“Hey! You were born here, weren’t you?!” Aquilata said. “Well, we’re in charge of this world, so you have to do as we say! Annihilate those reincarnators!”
“Abuse of authority...” Windia said.
“Wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! You are the culprits who’ve summoned countless heroes, wreaking havoc on the world for your own selfish desires! And you’re nothing but stand-in gods; how laughable that you would present yourselves as omnipotent!”
This strangely evolved creature had hit the goddesses where it hurt, but something was off...
This thing really knows what it’s talking about, doesn’t it? Is this due to some sort of external interference? At the same time, it did evolve from the great givleon, so...maybe it’s more like some self-purifying feature of nature? Okay, yeah, I’ve got no clue.
This righteous hero was an enigma. For something that had evolved from a monster, it was oddly knowledgeable about the whole situation, including the Four Gods, as if it had somehow seen everything happen with its own eyes. It’d talked about that stuff, which Zelos had only discovered after painstaking research, like it had been born with the knowledge.
But Zelos’s confusion aside, a battle was beginning to unfold between the righteous hero and the organization of villains, between good and evil.
One side was a champion of justice, born from nature itself; the other a group of selfish, hedonistic goddesses continuing to lay waste to the world. They would never be able to coexist.
“I will deliver your punishment in the name of Mother Nature! Givleon Sword!”
“Oh, no you don’t!” Aquilata formed an ultradense orb of water, well over thirty tons, and hurled it at the givleon. “Take this!”
The givleon, however, used a sword growing out of its armor to cleave the orb apart with ease. Then it leveraged its momentum to dash right up to Aquilata and hit her with a roundhouse kick.
Next, it deftly spun toward the afro-haired goth-loli goddess and opened its chest armor.