His voice echoed heavily through the vast space. It seemed like the sound was emanating from multiple places at once. The face on the tree trunk likely wasn’t his actual form, and destroying it would probably just make more surface from different spots.
Noah gritted her teeth, enraged by the Emperor’s words.
—Who are we...? He asks us that now?!
“Cease this foolishness, Emperor Gelmed... You fear us. You wouldn’t have sent so many pieces of your body after us if you didn’t.”
But the Emperor’s voice betrayed no signs of confusion nor bluffing. There was no emotion to his voice at all.
“...My body...? Ah, you mean earlier... I felt something touch upon an appendage of mine. So it was you.”
“You scum! You call that battle with us...a touch?!”
The tree seemed to inhale deeply.
“Again. It is all the same. Another repetition. Without so much as a glance from me, you come before me, speak of battle, and die of your own accord.”
He finally expressed some kind of emotion — exasperation. Weariness.
“You weren’t even...aware we were here?”
“You did not...bring the Girl of the Vessel, did you...? Then whoever you are... I have no need of you...”
And as if to finish the conversation one-sidedly, without so much as waiting for Noah’s response, the Emperor’s old, wrinkled face disappeared. The tree trunk returned to being nothing more than an unrefined pillar. His presence was gone.
And then they heard tentacles creeping in from every direction. The Emperor didn’t display any enmity or haughtiness. He didn’t order them to remove or eliminate the intruders. He treated them with complete and utter apathy, as if to say they would die on their own either way.
Emperor Gelmed remained entirely indifferent to anything that wasn’t the Girl of the Vessel. No intruder could harm him, so he didn’t even regard them as anything he had to deal with.
Emperor Gelmed was transcendent. He wasn’t simply strong — he was on a wholly different order of magnitude, and unremarkable beings like the Palace Knights couldn’t even so much as interact with him. To him, they were like insects. Blades of grass. Pebbles on the roadside. He could trample them underfoot and not so much as notice.
Noah was speechless. The difference in strength was more than she’d ever imagined, and it left her at a complete loss for words. They had lost precious comrades to someone who didn’t so much as acknowledge them as his opponents, something that had lashed at them in a way that didn’t even occur to it as a proper attack.
Noah had seen countless absurdities since coming to this world, but this one beat them all.
The first to step forward was Alan. His reckless charge left him grievously wounded, but Maximum healed him in time. His bones, internal organs, and crushed eye were all back to normal.
“Yeah, I get it... If we’re less than gnats to you... I guess we’ll just need to punch your face in and make you realize who you’re supposed to fear here!”
“Alan?!” Noah looked at him, shocked.
“Noah, cast all the spells you can at him!” he said, holding his sword aloft.
He was about to unleash a powerful skill, which made Noah regain her fighting spirit. It wasn’t her first time facing people who’d looked down on her, and they had all lived to regret it.
“That’s right... I’ll use you guys to defeat the Emperor! Show him hell! 《Apocalypse Abyss》!”
A magic circle formed around the great tree. Before Cross Reverie had had its balance changed, this was a difficult spell to cast, but by the time Noah played it, it didn’t take much windup time. It was a highly potent spell that used each of the four elements. Within the magic circle, the ground cracked, whirlwinds brewed, frost billowed, and magma erupted forth.
“Go to hell, Emperor Gelmed!”
†
Maximum thrust his broadsword into the ground.
“《Death Curse》!”
He had multiple titles, but his original class was dark knight. His healing wasn’t at all like the miracles the clergymen employed — all he was doing was transferring life force to others. Each time he healed someone, a summon stone in his inventory shattered.
The Death Curse, however, was a spell unique to the dark knight class. It was a malediction that inflicted a status ailment on the opponent that prevented them from healing. It had a limited-time effect, but it couldn’t be resisted.
The dark knight class was a debuffer. Its build included a number of spells that were exceedingly effective when fighting powerful single targets, such as spells that reduced speed or prevented the use of spells and physical skills.
Noah’s magic peeled away the rock-like bark of the great tree. The tentacles around them crumbled to dust along with all that was being stripped from the tree, incapable of recovering thanks to the Death Curse’s effects. Their efforts were proving effective.
Having finished charging up his attack, Alan swung down his longsword.
“《Solar Blade》!”
The light element slash tore through the massive tree. Cracks ran through the tower-like trunk, and it too began crumbling away. However, although it looked like it was over, massive amounts of magical energy spilled out of the remains of the tree.
Noah heard a hoarse voice echo in her mind.
“...It is too soon to crack the egg’s shell open... If I am not allowed to incubate within the Girl of the Vessel, I shall overflow throughout this world...”
There was a hollow inside the crumbling tree, with...something sitting inside it: a pure-white Magimatic Sol. It seemed to be the source of the massive magical energy being emitted, which produced a physical pressure that threatened to blow them away. It was like standing in the middle of a typhoon.
Aira, who stood next to Noah, opened her eyes in shock.
“I-Is that...?!”
“You know what that is?!” Noah asked her.
“The original Magimatic construct...said to have been lost in an ancient war. It’s said to be the source of all Magimatic technology. The otherworld gatekeeper... The Ivory Magimatic Garment, Cross Reverie! The cornerstone of the Gelmed Empire, and the holy garb of God!”
“Cross Reverie?!” Noah repeated the words, stunned.
“Yes, Cross Reverie...” Aira nodded. “Lady Noah, you’ve heard of it...?”
The MMORPG Cross Reverie never explained the reason behind its name. But in this other world, it was the name of some armor used by God? Was it related to the game somehow? Noah shook her head. She didn’t have time to ponder that now.
“What it’s called doesn’t matter! Tell us how to destroy that thing! Does it have a weakness?!”
“I...I didn’t even know the Magimatic Garment existed until now...”
“Ugh, you’re useless!” Noah clicked her tongue in frustration.
Aira took a step back, hanging her head.
—Gods and Demon Lords don’t just show themselves to people, dammit! Noah muttered to herself bitterly. This is absurd! This is why I hate fantasy game worlds!
Apocalypse Abyss had a limitation on how many times it could be used. The next time she’d be able to cast it would be tomorrow. She’d have to use something else.
Noah raised her left hand, deciding on another spell.
“Alan, get back! It doesn’t matter what armor the Emperor has on; this should send it to the void between worlds — 《Gravity Abyss》!”
Like Apocalypse Abyss, this was a spell that had a long windup time in older versions of the game, but when Noah learned it, she was capable of firing it off without needing to wait. It was a powerful dark element spell that dealt massive damage to one target. She fired a dark arrow toward Cross Reverie.
—You just had to make a scene when you showed up, so don’t you dare dodge it!
She’d heard Diablo used this spell to destroy a Magimatic Sol, so it should have been effective. After all, the Magimatic Sols were likely based on the Magimatic Garment and operated similarly to it. Just like them, it was three times the size of a person and covered in armor plates. The biggest difference was that the Magimatic Garment had three sets of white, swan-like wings on its back.