🌐 Language / 言語
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🇯🇵 [日本語版]
“It seems Amnez has played her part perfectly,”
Gilzenth murmured, her smile serene and chillingly satisfied.
Beside her, Saloza stood paralyzed. Words died in her throat. The sight before them was too grotesque, too magnificent to be real.
Above the subterranean sanctum of Galtira, a titan floated within the endless sea of clouds. Elzenag. Its massive frame, draped in obsidian scales, felt as if the night itself had taken a physical, jagged form. Though it bore the lithe grace of a dragon, every line of its body hummed with a perverted, malevolent distortion.
From its bared maw, gouts of hellfire leaked into the freezing air. With every breath, the crimson light beneath its scales pulsed—a rhythmic throb of primordial rage made manifest. It was an avatar of a dark god, radiating an aura of such sheer dread that the very sky seemed to recoil. Its burning eyes locked onto Gilzenth and her companion, sensing the divine pulse within them.
Elzenag arched its back, drawing in a breath that felt like it was swallowing the wind.
“Let’s see what you’re made of,”
Gilzenth whispered.
Four silver, gun-type Blitz units deployed around her, humming with lethal intent. Saloza, shaking off her stupor, raised her long-range sniper Blitz and began a wide, circling maneuver to flank the calamity.
The divine energy coiled within Elzenag’s core condensed into a single point of blinding heat. A fraction of a second later, a thermal lance erupted from its mouth—a beam of incandescent fury strong enough to core a hole from the earth’s surface to the deepest abyss.
Gilzenth vaulted over the searing light, her movements a blur of predatory grace. She unleashed a volley of shells, each one guided by her Divine Pulse, slamming into the dragon’s chest.
Explosions rocked the sky. Gunpowder smoke choked the air as Saloza’s sniper rounds found their marks in rapid succession. Yet, Elzenag didn’t even flinch. It merely turned its head with a slow, agonizing deliberate motion, its gaze fixed on Gilzenth as if watching an annoying insect.
“Heh… you exceed my every expectation. Perfect,”
Gilzenth laughed, dodging a tail strike that sheared the air like a guillotine. “With your power, I can finally bring this fractured world to heel. No more contradictions. No more conflict. Only a single, unshakeable ideal for humanity to follow.”
She soared over the beast and glided down toward Saloza.
“Saloza. Is it time?”
“Of course, Lady Gilzenth,”
Saloza replied, her voice trembling. In her hand, she clutched the Abyssal Effigy. Once the short incantation was whispered into that idol, the Vessel-Binding Ritual would be complete.
The moment of their final parting had arrived.
Elzenag’s shadow loomed over them, its molten breath singeing the edges of their capes.
“Even when you merge with Elzenag, we will be as one. Together, we shall craft the perfect world,”
Gilzenth promised.
“I am… happy. Truly,”
Saloza sobbed, tears carving tracks beneath her Vision-Seal.
“Lady Gilzenth… for the last time… please. Hold me.”
Under the cold, indifferent sky, the two Holy Maidens embraced. A final, desperate verification of each other’s existence.
But as Gilzenth began to pull away—―
A dry, hollow crack echoed through the heavens.
A sniper Blitz, hovering unmanned in the distance, fired. A single shot tore through both women as they remained locked in their embrace.
“Salo… za…?”
Gilzenth’s mind struggled to process the betrayal, the pain, the sudden lack of air. She tried to break free, but Saloza held her with a strength born of terminal desperation, pinning her arms with a surge of psychokinetic force.
Above them, Elzenag’s razor-sharp claws descended like falling stars, intent on rending them asunder. Saloza whispered a final, broken phrase.
The Abyssal Effigy detonated in a blinding flare of pure white.
The light expanded, hungry and absolute, swallowing the two maidens and the draconic calamity whole. For a heartbeat, it felt as if a second sun had been born in the sky.
Then, as the beams of light faded into the clouds, the silence returned.
The only thing remaining in the empty sky was the dragon, curled into a ball and drifting in a deep, unnatural slumber.
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