I charged farther back into the field, nearing the center of it and getting the Angel-Eater even slightly farther away from Raddermark!
Instead of bringing up the stone paving of Raddermark, Pandora’s charge created a gigantic cloud of dirt, and finally, the view behind Pandora showed no sign of Raddermark at all.
“Gah-haah!”
Right then, right as I sputtered while my magic was nearly running dry, I gathered up the remaining strength I had to wallop the Angel-Eater right in the face with Pandora’s left hand.
There was force behind it, but I’d aimed too close, and it hadn’t done any damage. It just made her stagger only slightly.
So…
“M-Myfilaaa.”
…when I asked her for help at the last moment before my Linebolt was about to cut out, I had Pandora turn around. His two long, reaching tails boomed—the tips had probably easily broken the sound barrier.
They kept going, whipping around to strike the Angel-Eater right in the side to send her flying away.
I wasn’t even able to check the direction she’d gone in. That moment, my vision started fading to black, and I was right on the verge of losing consciousness.
“Bwuh—Ah!”
Myfila’s special tonic had just barely worked in time. I was woken by my own hacking as I sputtered out the lump of air that seemed to have settled deep in the back of my lungs.
“It’s not over yet.” With the needles and test tube still sticking out of my neck, I reinvoked the Linebolt. First, I stood Pandora up after he’d almost fallen to his knees.
I was perspiring from every pore of my body—both sweat and snot dripped off me.
The tonic was actual dragon’s blood—basically a lethal poison. Even with Myfila’s efforts, it still had an effect on my body. Though I’d replenished my magic, I felt like throwing up on the spot.
“Haah, haah, haah—” I panted raggedly as I eyed the image on the skull wall and couldn’t find the Angel-Eater in the first-person view.
Where was she?
The moment I thought that, I heard Cyril in my ear. “Feil, look up!”
When I raised Pandora’s head on reflex, I saw her feet fill the first-person.
She drop-kicked us, practically trampling us in the process.
It didn’t matter then how much heavier Pandora was or how firm Pandora’s neck and muscles were.
“Ahh?!”
“Give me a sec!”
The inside of Pandora’s skull was chaos.
As I was on all fours, an arm in Pandora’s brain, and Myfila was trying to pull the test tube out of my neck, we were suddenly sent flying.
Had Myfila not instantly summoned a gigantic rotting corpse to act as a cushion for us, we probably would have bounced off Pandora’s hard skull and been goners.
It was some sort of midsize whale carcass. I couldn’t even guess why Myfila had this thing as a summon in the first place. Then again, we’d been saved when we fell into the organs that spilled out of its belly. I didn’t have even a moment to breathe out in relief, though.
“Tsk!”
As I got up in the fibrous goop and unidentifiable flesh that fell down on me, I scrambled on my arms and legs back to my original position, where I could control Pandora. I thrust an arm deep into his brain.
“You’re not goin’ anywheeeere!!”
That moment, Pandora’s right hand broke the speed of sound as it shot into the sky.
He leaped up slightly, grabbing the right ankle of the Angel-Eater right after she’d kicked Pandora in the face. His overpowering grip crushed her ankle as he landed back down.
Then keeping the momentum going, he threw the Angel-Eater on her back atop the giant field.
The ground crumbled.
The shock wave and heat it brought up was like a meteor striking the ground as the sudden large-scale explosion created a crater in the middle of the field. The terrain had peeled up in layers dozens of mejals thick. Under that, the tough bedrock had cracked deeply, spreading extensively.
Right as Pandora was sinking down after tripping on the broken terrain, everything except the first-person perspective and the ones from afar cut off.
“Are you okay, Cyril?!”
“Don’t worry about me!! Keep fighting, Feil!!”
The shock wave must have devastated Pandora’s surroundings. The sound of wind buffeting him covered up Cyril’s voice in the Voice Link and made him hard to make out.
“Feil!” Myfila was yelling at me.
The Angel-Eater, who had been buried under the bedrock and was pinned down by Pandora, had raised her open right hand at him. Before I could react, five pure-white beams of destruction were let loose from her fingertips.
The beams shot directly at Pandora’s chest.
…But that hadn’t affected Pandora’s exoskeleton in the slightest. The beams, which were probably thousands of times more magically potent than the bombardment we’d suffered at the floating cemetery, had no effect on Pandora.
I had Pandora ram his gigantic left fist into the Angel-Eater’s face from above, and the already broken bedrock gave way to let the Angel-Eater sink even deeper into the ground. The blow was accompanied by a small earthquake.
“Dammit! The ground’s too weak!”
It was a clean hit, but it hadn’t done the damage I’d intended. The cracked bedrock had ended up cushioning the Angel-Eater.
I had Pandora grab hold of the Angel-Eater’s neck, then force it to stay in place as I made his other hand pummel her in the mug.
That single blow was enough to crush her face in devastatingly.
It was like I’d smashed a fist into a delicate clay masterpiece—but even then, the Angel-Eater kept functioning as though nothing had happened. She transformed her arms into swords and aimed for Pandora’s joints.
Her left sword headed for the base of Pandora’s right arm, but the point couldn’t drive its way in, and the whole blade crumpled.
Her right sword tried to lop off a piece of Pandora’s inner elbow but anticlimactically bounced off. She brandished the sword again, striking the blade at him another time, but it couldn’t cut through. Instead, the other blade also broke.
“You think that blunt sword’s gonna cut it?!!”
Even if the Angel-Eater could shape-shift into whatever she wanted, there was no point if she couldn’t get through his armor.
So I showed an opening without having to worry about any counterattacks. I brought Pandora’s fist as far back as I could.
When I drew back the fist like I was drawing the string of a bow and brought it down, the moment it touched the Angel-Eater’s face, her solidified silver form turned back to its original liquid state.
Her entire head splattered to the ground behind her. Not even a fragment remained.
She was now a headless buck naked angel.
I didn’t assume that I’d won, but I wanted to believe we were out ahead.
I drew Pandora’s fist back for a follow-up.
Then right at that moment, I shouted, “You little?! You’re still—!!”
The Angel-Eater had suddenly brought her knees up and kicked Pandora in the stomach. I clung to his brains. Suddenly, I was floating. The Angel-Eater’s kick had sent Pandora’s giant body into the air.
“Myfila! Hold on ta somethin’!” I yelled as I focused all my attention on feeling the same sensations as my summon. I was basically working on instinct as I made Pandora regain his posture, getting his left and right legs to land, then his right hand, his left, and the two tails on the ground in order.
Pandora had been kicked clear out of the crater and back onto the field, but the shock of his landing combined with his massive weight was too much for the ground to hold. As soon as we touched it, it started to crumble… Eventually, even while standing, Pandora had been buried to his knees into the earth.
“Haah. Haah. Haah. Haah. Hah—” I panted as my magic ran out again. Myfila, who’d gathered what was happening, told me anxiously, “This next one might be your limit…” Then she administered the second vial of the tonic.
The effects were immediate.
“Hurk—”
While still on all fours, I hacked up all the contents of my stomach on the spot.
“Gah! Guh! Hurk…”
Finally, I was throwing up stomach acid directly onto Pandora’s brain. I wiped my mouth off with my robes.
“Just got dizzy from controllin’ Pandora. Don’t worry about me.”
When I glanced over, Myfila’s whole face was ash white as she stared at me.
“Feil, do you see this?” Suddenly, Cyril was talking to us again. “The Angel-Eater’s getting up. She’s transforming again.”
“’Course she would. A lackluster kick like that wouldn’t get through Pandora’s armor. She’s gonna come at us with whatever she’s got to attack with now.”
The broken-off views all came back online.
The different views Cyril was delivering through his flying summons showed something strange. The inside of the crater had filled with a surge of pure-white flames.
From inside the tall and large inferno, I could see the wavering shape of a curvy woman.
After almost all her attacks had been blocked by Pandora’s exoskeleton and her head had been crushed, she was rebuilding her form. She was likely transforming her shape to dedicate everything into her offensive capabilities.
“Seriously…I’m already goin’ all out as it is…”
The same moment I got Pandora out of the crumbling ground, a woman’s willowy fingertips emerged from the wall of flames.
Then…
…with the same grace as someone opening up the curtain of a dressing room, it appeared…
“……Sasha…”
I hadn’t been the one to murmur that—that had been Cyril, who’d been watching the scene with his own eyes outside Pandora.
I could only tsk lightly.
A silver Sasha Shidoh Zultania had appeared. The Angel-Eater’s new wingless form was a nightmare that could only be put into those words. Her incomparable beauty, that long platinum hair, amethyst eyes, and her captivating nude form that could have been mistaken for a goddess’s had all been reproduced and looked exactly like the Sasha I knew.
The only perceivable differences were probably the halo floating above her head, the silver skin, and the giant rose in bloom at her chest—and also the three-hundred-mejal height she towered at.
…………
On the giant field that had been trampled to smithereens by the two legends, the legendary beast Pandora and the silver beauty faced each other.
At first, neither held a weapon, but the Angel-Eater wordlessly raised her arms, and the flames behind her went on the move. They engulfed her hands, absorbing into her and forming a pair of slender swords.
To be frank, it didn’t matter how much magic they were imbued with or how sharp they seemed, because these weapons went beyond that.
Myfila, who’d been keeping me from total exhaustion, seemed to have noticed, too.
“Careful, Feil. I think those swords must—”
“Yeah, yeah. She’s reproduced the ability of the god who could cut through anything… I know that they’ll probably be able to cut through Pandora.”
But that didn’t change anything.
Even if the Angel-Eater of Silver could use a god’s abilities, that didn’t change the fact that Pandora was the legendary god-killer.
“In that case, right here and right now, we’re gonna have to kill another god,” I bluffed and had Pandora advance.