Back when Raddermark had first been founded, the people who’d gathered had probably been fully dedicated to the future expansion of the town. They must have wholeheartedly wished for their descendants’ peace and welfare.
They probably never expected it to be the stage of some revenge match dredged up from the days of myths and legends.
“Pandora’s eyes are fully set up.”
I heard Cyril in my ear. We were using Voice Link to let us talk from afar. At that moment, Cyril was outside Pandora, directing his large avian summons through the sky.
“Don’t worry about what’s under your feet. You can rampage as much as you want, Feil.”
There were a bunch of images projected onto the wall of Pandora’s skull. I had a view from Pandora’s perspective, one from the side, and even a long-range view. I also had one pointing down at him from directly above, a view from directly behind him like it was in third person, and exhaustive views of him from the sides and from behind.
I was focused on the first-person perspective, staring straight at the bare-naked angel.
“Thanks, Angel-Eater. You gave me enough time to stand up.”
I laughed ominously like a beast myself.
Then suddenly…
“Cyril!! Wh-what is this?!” I heard Lulua Folicker on the communications line.
…it seemed like all the summoners who’d been sent into confusion over Pandora suddenly showing up had started gathering around Cyril, who was still outside.
“Did Feil Fonaf summon him?! That—that can’t be true…?! This wasn’t the trick up your sleeve, was it?! This is more like a secret weapon—you summoned the strongest and oldest god-killer!!”
It sounded like there was a commotion going on outside, but I didn’t have the time to listen to all that right now.
“Feil, let me know if you don’t have enough magic. I’ll inject the tonic right away.”
“Yeah, try your best not to kill me.”
Even while Pandora was just standing, I was on all fours and continuously feeding electricity through the arm I had in Pandora’s brain as my Linebolt consumed my magical reserves.
Next to me, Myfila was on her knees and eyeing the Angel-Eater. She murmured, “She’s pretty…but there’s something about her that gets on my nerves…”
I just let out a curt laugh in agreement.
“Also seems in real poor taste for her to look so much like Sasha.”
After absorbing the six-winged archangel, the Angel-Eater of Silver had been made whole again.
Though she was smaller than Pandora, she was still a weapon that had been made by the Supreme God, and she had a dignity and grandeur to her that fit her name as an Executioner. Even though she wasn’t clothed, she wasn’t just beautiful—her silver skin was unblemished, but there were odd plantlike symbols carved all over her skin that gave the Angel-Eater’s beauty a strangely conspicuous sense that something was off.
And I could also see the two silver wings behind her that looked like a whole bunch of outstretched swords of different sizes.
But the wings weren’t connected to her back. Instead, they seemed to float nearby through some supernatural power, like they could be used as weapons at any time.
And her face was like a peaceful Sleeping Beauty’s.
Only her long, undulating hair still retained hints of her earlier indeterminate form.
She was clearly divine… She wasn’t the kind of opponent humanity or summoners could have won against. Even the Shidoh royal family’s summoner corps likely would have been powerless against her fully recovered form.
“But the princess asked us to fight,” Myfila was suddenly saying.
“That’s right,” I replied, not fearful of the enemy in front of me in the slightest.
“Sasha Shidoh Zultania herself risked her life to make sure we’d be in a position to do this. That’s enough for me to put my own life on the line.”
“Do you think fate linked you two?”
“…Maybe. Dunno.”
So sometimes, even a genius like Myfila would talk about things like fate. At the same time, a ton of miracles had to have occurred for this fight against the Angel-Eater and Pandora to have been made so conveniently possible, so I could fully understand why she wanted to call it that.
I didn’t think we’d taken the best road here, but the truth was still this. In this situation now, where the Angel-Eater of Silver of the Six Executioners of Metal had been revived, humanity and this world, where so many lived, had been given a path to survival.
Sasha Shidoh Zultania had sacrificed her own archangel in order to allow the Angel-Eater to fully revive so that the Angel Eater’s one weakness—her linchpin, which also served as her core—could be revived as well to allow Pandora to stop her.
If Sasha hadn’t seen Pandora under the moonlight the previous day; if today, Sasha hadn’t trusted us; if my partner, dead or not, weren’t the Legendary Beast of the Last Realm, Pandora…
“We never would’ve been able to punch the daylights outta the Angel-Eater.”
I grinned as I licked my lips like a starving beast.
“All right—let’s do this, Cyril, Myfila. It’s our time to shine,” I said and looked off into the distance.
Under the overcast sky was Raddermark, large and sprawling.
And two legends stood facing each other right at its center. To the north, the Angel-Eater of Silver. To the south, the Legendary Beast of the Last Realm, Pandora.
Compared with the Angel-Eater of Silver, who stood with perfect posture, the blue-black beast, Pandora, slouched a lot. He had two tails and ten whole wings on his back, at any rate. I didn’t know what he’d been like while alive, but my Pandora stood hunchbacked like this. Then finally, I fed a new electrical impulse through Pandora’s cranial nerves from my fingertips.
“Wh-what? Cyril! Pandora—Pandora’s moving!!”
“You should get far away from here, Lulua. From here on out, this place is for the legends.”
After waiting for this very moment, we were finally mobilizing.
From the long-range view, Pandora’s first step looked slow as he touched down on the terrain and brought up a cloud of whatever was on the ground, but then right after that, he rapidly accelerated.
As he kicked aside the houses and large shops under his feet like pebbles, he made a beeline for the Angel-Eater.
The Angel-Eater didn’t fail to also get a move on.
Her right arm liquefied, turning into a gigantic spear, as she drew a leg back into a fighting pose immediately and met Pandora’s charge with a strike from her weapon.
She had a much longer reach.
The silver spearhead reached Pandora’s left breast first, but the unidentified material of his exoskeleton was impenetrable. The point of the spear was crushed as easily as syrup and continued to crumple as Pandora approached. It couldn’t even hold him at bay.
While the Angel-Eater seemed dismayed by the loss of her weapon, Pandora grabbed her face with his right hand.
“Aaaaaaah!!” I yelled with gusto and increased the output in my Linebolt.
Even the giant Angel-Eater—her face still in a vice grip—was being pushed by Pandora’s charge.
She tried to brace herself to hold out, but Pandora’s seemingly limitless power rendered all her efforts moot. After all, Pandora was much larger and heavier than her.
I could hear a rumble, even from within Pandora’s skull.
Under the feet of my gigantic summon, everything was flying into the air—the houses, the carriages, even the streets themselves. All of it.
“Feil, don’t pay attention to it! Keep going!”
“I know, dammiiiit!”
I was just glad that I didn’t see any people in the mess. I held on to the one hope that the evacuation had finished fast enough and that no one was under Pandora’s feet right now.
“Don’t die!! Please, I’m begging for no one—not even one person to die!!”
As he pushed the Angel-Eater, relying on pure strength, Pandora charged through the great market. In just barely five or six seconds, we were past that, too, and stepping into the sprawling residential streets.
Even the biggest streets couldn’t accommodate Pandora at three hundred fifty mejals.
The only thing I could do was avoid the designated evacuation points, where the citizens were gathered. I destroyed the houses they’d never be able to go home to, crushed the roads where they’d made memories—but even then, I didn’t let up on the Angel-Eater. I prayed hard and fast that the evacuation was already over in the area and that no one would die.
“No backing out NOW!!”
I increased the output on my Linebolt even more, driving Pandora’s huge build further.
We were reaching the northern wall.
“Get outta the waaaay!!”
We crashed straight through the thick wall, which barely reached Pandora’s or the Angel-Eater’s knees, scattering gigantic pieces of rubble near to the field that served as the Academy matches’ stage. I sped up, not caring what was below us.