🌐 Language / 言語
🇺🇸 [English Edition]
🇯🇵 [日本語版]
How many levels had they descended? At last, the trio emerged into a cavernous hall, its center dominated by a solitary, weathered altar.
“Well, this place certainly isn’t winning any ‘most-welcoming’ awards,”
Faznir chirped, her senses fanning out as she stepped toward the center of the hall. No trace of Beast-Devils. Not a ripple.
“Whatever. If something crawls out, there’s enough room here for me to turn it into a pincushion,”
Zigre remarked, her hand trailing along the cold stone wall. Her heavy machine-gun Blitz units were massive—clumsy in tight corridors, but lethal in a kill-zone this wide.
Amnez scouted the far perimeter. No further stairs. No hidden passages. This was the terminus. The heart of the sanctum.
“Guess it’s time to poke the beehive,”
Faznir said, approaching the altar. Its surface was etched with the grotesque likenesses of monsters. The moment her fingers brushed the stone—
A massive, intricate magic circle ignited in the air, bathing the chamber in a violent luminescence.
“Whoa—! What the—?!”
“Faznir, fall back! Battle positions!”
Amnez barked. Sensing a shift in the very fabric of the air, she deployed her twin blade-type Blitz units in a silver blur.
A blinding flash detonated. The world turned a searing white. From the heart of the glare, a silhouette began to coalesce—a beast, yet not a beast.
“You’ve gotta be joking…”
Zigre muttered, the mechanical clatter of ammunition being chambered echoing in the hall.
“That form… a Celestial Beast?”
The stuff of legends. A creature of pure myth, whispered to be the personal hounds of Ioks or the Emissaries. A predator of gold and starlight—a thing that shouldn’t exist in the flesh.
A roar tore through the hall, vibrating in their very marrow. As the light died down, it revealed a lupine titan clad in ornate armor. Its massive body, the size of a manor house, shuddered as it locked its glowing eyes onto Amnez.
The beast coiled its muscles.
Here it comes—!
It launched. A strike like a gale-force wind. The creature’s legs acted like pressurized pistons, propelling its bulk forward with impossible velocity.
Amnez leaped, narrowingly evading the collision as she brought her blades down in a punishing arc. CLANG. Her pitch-black blades, forged from Omni-Gloom Steel, shrieked as they were deflected by the golden plate.
“Eat lead, you overgrown mutt!”
From mid-air, Zigre unleashed a relentless hail of fire. The bullets, accelerated by Faznir’s Aether pulses, tore through the creature’s fur, carving shallow gouges.
Instead of blood, a shimmering, mist-like gas leaked from the wounds.
“It’s not made of flesh and bone! It doesn’t regenerate like a Beast-Devil!”
Faznir screamed, her mind racing as she analyzed the entity’s essence.
“If it can be cut, it can be killed,”
Amnez said, her voice dropping to a lethal calm.
She lunged, driving a strike into a gap in the armor. The tip found purchase, shearing through the celestial hide. But the counter-attack was instantaneous. A massive foreclaw swung in a wide, horizontal arc. Amnez blocked with her blades, but the sheer kinetic force sent her hurtling across the hall, slamming her into the stone wall.
“Ugh…!”
As Amnez struggled to find her footing, the beast coiled again, preparing to finish the hunt.
“Not on my watch!”
Zigre dove between them, her Blitz units screaming as they poured lead into the titan’s face. The beast shook its head as if swatting away flies; the bullets pierced the hide but failed to deliver a killing blow.
It used no fire, no lightning. Just raw, overwhelming power, durability, and speed that rivaled—or perhaps surpassed—any Greater Beast-Devil.
Amnez wiped a bead of blood from her lip, her mouth curving into a faint, dark smile. Finally. A challenge worthy of her steel. The time had come to show this ‘God’ exactly what her blades were made of.
NEXT
