Flaress conjured another enormous fireball in response, but right as she was about to launch it toward the givleon, the givleon fired its own attack.
“Burn, you bug!”
“Givleon Smasher!”
The two blazing-hot attacks collided midair.
A tremendous shock wave and intense heat swept over Zelos and Ado.
“Whoaaaaargh?!”
“Ngh— Tranquility of a Frozen World!” Zelos said, warding off the shock wave and the flames.
Tranquility of a Frozen World was a modified, dual-layered defensive spell that combined a physical barrier of absolute-zero ice with a magical boundary. It was handy against dragon enemies with fire breath, but consumed so much mana that it was insanely inefficient, so it often sat unused in Zelos’s arsenal.
You never knew what might come in handy when.
“Guys, I’m begging you—can you take this somewhere else?” Ado asked.
“Looks like the Goddess of Afros over there is plummeting down to earth in a tailspin,” Zelos observed. “You know, this reminds me—back when I was in middle school, there was this one delinquent girl with super frizzy hair. She wore such thick makeup too...”
Zelos had completely turned into a spectator. The moment the Jet-Black Meteor Givleon had stopped viewing him and Ado as enemies, he’d seen no point in fighting the creature anymore. At this point, they were watching Mother Nature’s champion take on the root of all evil like it was a boxing match.
Seeing a spectacle like this unfold right before their eyes, in real time, felt incredibly hype.
“Ooh,” Zelos said. “I wonder if we’ll get to see any robots? Or secret weapons?”
“This hero’s a lone wolf, Zelos,” Ado replied. “You can’t expect that sort of thing out of it. Maybe it could have a motorbike or something, but a crazy combining robot? A huge secret weapon that breaks the laws of physics? It’d just be over the top. Besides, I feel like there’s something so manly about that thing being out here all alone, fighting with its fists.”
“Oh, that’s fair. Now that you mention it, stuff like that team-based finisher where they kick a ball at the enemy, or that weird-shaped bazooka that’s a pain to assemble because they always have to combine all their weapons together to make it—that stuff’s kinda a letdown too, don’t you think? Not to mention that one where everyone fuses their mechs together to make one huge robot as their final form... It’s just so over the top that I can’t get into it as much, you know? A lone hero, one huge robot, no special power-ups—that’s where it’s at.”
“I actually like those ones, to be honest. Oh—what’s your opinion on that three-hero team from outer space?”
“I don’t have a problem with them. The enemies in that one are all huge to begin with, so it’s fair. Oh, actually, it did have that one enemy that was just a tentacle alien...”
“Y’know, Zelos, I don’t get your standards for what makes a good hero.”
As they talked tokusatsu hero tropes, they watched the underwhelming goddesses run from the black-armored hero.
“Huh. I wonder if those stupid goddesses can make themselves huge too?” Ado asked.
“I’d want to see that,” Zelos said, “but I don’t know if they actually can. You know what? Let’s just ask. Hey! You two up there! Can you turn into giants? And would you mind doing that for us, if you can? We’d like to see how it looks!”
“As if we coul— Gwaaaaaah!” Aquilata and Flaress shouted in unison.
They’d been polite enough to actually answer Zelos’s question—and the givleon had used that moment of distraction to fire high-voltage lightning from its antennae, landing a direct hit.
Yet still, the two goddesses stubbornly survived.
Zelos and Ado clicked their tongues. “Tch! So that wasn’t enough. So close!”
If the givleon beat the goddesses badly enough, the Sages wouldn’t even have to lift a finger.
At the same time, getting thrashed had clued Flaress into the pair’s plans.
“HEY!” she shouted. “If you’re just gonna sit there and watch, at least stop distracting us to try and get us killed!”
“Windia!” Aquilata yelled. “Help us out here! Wait... Windia? Where’d she go?”
As they scanned their surroundings, they noticed that the green-haired goddess in the sailor uniform was gone, leaving their side with only two fighters now that the Goddess of Air had vanished.
“Graaaaaah! Windia ran away by herself!” Flaress cried.
“First Gailaneth, now Windia... They just don’t give a damn, do they?” Aquilata said. “We have to find a way out of here, or—”
But the righteous hero wasn’t about to let this chance slip by.
Jet-Black Meteor Givleon, the hero who wielded nature’s ancient power, soared high up into the sky, spread its wings, transformed its armor again, and began to focus the sunlight above.
“Is that... No way?!”
“Is that Grand Cross Attack?!”
The two otaku were incredibly hyped now. They watched with the sparkling eyes of excited boys.
“GIVLEOOOOOON NOVAAAAAAAAA!”
Blue gems embedded in the givleon’s chest, shoulders, and knees released radiant light that engulfed the goddesses. When the light hit the ground, it caused a huge explosion, blowing up the area all around it.
This move was powerful enough to rival Dark Judgment.
Even though Zelos and Ado were caught in the explosion, they were ecstatic.
“Woooooo! Did you see that?!” Ado shouted.
“I sure did! Jeez, a man my age shouldn’t be this giddy... But yeah! Now that’s how a hero’s meant to be!”
The explosion had flung them into the distance—but it hadn’t dampened the boyish glee rekindled in their hearts. They hadn’t been able to think anything but, DAMN, this is so cool!
Both inveterate otakus didn’t feel the slightest bit of regret.
Standing alone in the massive crater it had formed in the ground, the givleon struck a dramatic pose and shouted: “Justice prevails!”
The attack had torn up the road to the Holy Land of Metis, which would further delay the theocracy’s recovery.
As a result, a rift would begin forming between the civilians and the church, which would eventually fester into nationwide protests. Although nobody knew it at the time, those protests would rapidly lead to an insurrection.