By Zephyria The streamlined head, cutting through the dust, flashed with fierce light as it charged into the sky. Faced with the grotesque demonic form rushing straight at him, Meterion immediately altered the structure of the Magic Circle he was deploying.
The Magic Circle briefly glowed with a deep green light, then created a small vortex in the space remaining between them and the creature. The vortex rapidly rotated, drawing in the vast amount of dust scattered around into a single point.
The coalescing gas intertwined, gradually increasing in density and volume. Soon, the cloud-like gas formed two enormous hands in the sky, their maws open towards the core.
The overwhelmingly large, gray hands hardened like crude plaster statues. As the soaring creature came within range, the outstretched hands instantly seized it. The monster, trailing long streams of yellow smoke, was swallowed into the hands in the blink of an eye.
‘Did it work?’
Meterion, manipulating the giant hands from near the Magic Circle, watched the gaps in the closing grip of the hands, which were tightening like a Venus flytrap. He put strength into his clasped hands, pressing the palms together more forcefully. The core’s frantic movements were gradually subsiding, crushed by the constant pressure.
As the gaps closed, the creature’s struggles noticeably diminished. He hoped that he could smoothly crush it to death by tightening its windpipe, but the power of an ancient demon a thousand years old was not something to be taken lightly.
He briefly turned his eyes to the commanders to send a signal. As if human tricks were laughable, the core, with its claws sharpened, instantly pried open the slightly opened gap. As if tearing through flesh, its claws were driven in with a thud, forcefully widening the tightly closed grip.
The blood-red maw revealed within unleashed an explosive, piercing scream.
KYAAAAAAK!
The sharp Ultrasound mixed in the scream finely fragmented the thin layer of air that had been maintaining the form of the dust. The pressure that had been crushing the creature faltered for a moment, and the monster, seizing the opportunity, tore apart the grip and successfully escaped. The liberated creature once again leaped towards the sky in an instant.
The menacing creature gave no time to think. The wide-open maw instantly pierced through the deep green Magic Circle, then bit down on the caster beyond it. As his subordinates watched, Meterion’s lower body was brutally torn away.
“Commander—!”
Someone’s cry, filled with shock, echoed coldly. But at the same time, Meterion’s body, which had been separated into upper and lower halves and was gushing blood, turned into an opaque mist, even down to the last drop of blood, and drifted leisurely into the air.
The core, which had landed on the wall, snapped at the air when the lump of flesh caught between its teeth suddenly became intangible and disappeared. Then, sensing something was wrong, it began to scan the surrounding air currents, even using the eyeballs it had failed to regenerate.
The rolling eyeballs sequentially watched the holes in the wall. Finally, they fixed on a point in the air where the dust was re-coalescing.
At that moment, five Magic Power spheres fired from within the fog shot straight toward the Queen’s eyeballs at high speed. Though flesh had regrown, perhaps because it had already suffered a major blow, it didn’t respond to the attack and immediately crawled upward.
In that instant, Meterion, who had revealed himself from within the smoke screen, now gripped his sword and aimed for its flank. But unlike a moment ago when it had lunged as if to devour him, the Queen merely howled, not even bothering to engage him, despite clearly seeing him.
Meterion, pushed back by the fierce air pressure from its actions as it passed by as if he were nothing more than a gnat, wore a momentarily dumbfounded expression. However, the familiar Magic Power aura that followed allowed him to guess the reason.
Kwaaaang―!
The commanders of the 3rd Battalion, who had emerged from the murky dust, simultaneously unleashed their attacks on the core. As numerous concentrated Magic Power projectiles flew, aiming specifically for the area near its tail, the core leaped upward, increasing its speed like a horse struck with a whip. Meterion, too, adjusted his grip on his sword and followed, joining the fray.
However, a shadow suddenly appeared and blocked his path. It was the company commander of the 3rd Battalion.
“Battalion Commander, are you alright?”
The company commander anxiously asked, examining his superior from head to toe. Meterion simply nodded lightly and waved his hand as if to say, ‘Get out of the way.’ The thing that had been torn off by its teeth wasn’t the real body but a fake made of dust and smoke.
But despite his superior’s reaction, the company commander still blocked the way and continued,
“It would be best to leave the rest to those above.”
“…What do you mean?”
“Look over there.”
At Meterion’s question, the company commander pointed in the direction the core was crawling, indicating something.
Meterion narrowed his eyes and scanned the area, assessing the situation. He saw Light Balls flickering irregularly within the narrow crevices between the pillars that hadn’t yet collapsed.
“It’s Vice Commander Hastings.”
No sooner had the company commander finished speaking than the vice commander of the 9th Battalion, who had been waiting above, stepped out from the narrow entrance. Appearing last as if she were the main character, Meterion frowned and muttered in a displeased tone.
“You’re far too late.”
She was the one who had asked him to buy her some time while she busily moved around to gather the commanders, then disappeared. She was in charge of a rather important part of the operation, yet she was only now belatedly showing herself.
Meterion shook his head, feeling a similar emotion to what Hugo must have felt when looking at him earlier. However, he soon changed direction and immediately moved downward to carry out the rest of the operation.
The company commander, who had nodded briefly at the gesture to follow, also headed straight down after Meterion. The figures of the two swiftly moving men disappeared into the dust in an instant.
Meanwhile, the Queen’s forelimbs, which had been ascending endlessly, gripped the upper reaches of the fortress, which it had never touched before.
Just as the distance between the spot where the Light Balls flickered and it was less than 20 meters, the Queen, which had been climbing relentlessly, suddenly stopped abruptly in an ambiguous spot. Then, it stretched its neck out long and looked down at the area near its hind legs.
From above, the act looked as if it had noticed something and was hesitating, so Charlotte, who had been watching it and waiting for the moment, reached her arm down sooner than expected. Then, from her fingertips, heightened Magic Power deployed about twenty small Magic Circles, densely surrounding the core at regular intervals as if to encircle it.
Soon, her low voice cast a spell.
“Spider Web.”
At that moment, transparent threads generated from the Magic Circles shot out in straight lines and began to wrap around the core.
As strange things flew and stuck all over its body, the Queen reflexively raised and swung its claws, seemingly flustered. However, the threads, which stretched out like sticky mucus, instead covered the sharp surfaces, causing the claws to lose their function.
Moreover, as tension arose in the interconnected transparent threads, they dug into the gaps in its hide like tough steel wires, painfully compressing its flesh. Because of that, the Queen shrieked and thrashed violently. When the attacks from the 3rd Battalion members followed, it kicked away the Boulder it had been gripping and lunged toward the opposite wall.
Charlotte, not missing the fleeting moment, shouted loudly.
“9th Battalion, activate the traps!”
As the command was given, other transparent threads were fired relentlessly from all directions. However, they were slightly different in form from the threads Charlotte had created earlier.
Not only were they thicker and longer, but they also had metal arrowheads attached to the tips, minimizing air resistance.
The tips of the projectiles cutting through the air seemed to be aiming for the core at first glance, but instead, they grazed the core and continued onward, firmly embedding themselves in the opposite Boulder. The members of the 9th Battalion, who had been waiting, maintained the tension at the ends of the fixed threads, pulling them taut so they wouldn’t sag.
When the barrage of mysterious attacks had swept through once more, a vast, sticky, giant spider web filled the wide open space above. And in the very center of it, at the intersection of all the threads, the core was caught like a meager prey, unable to move.
Kyaaaaaak―
The transparent threads wrapped around its body each time it struggled, more cruelly digging into the gaps in its hide. It once again raised its head and roared toward the sky, but even the ensuing whirlwind couldn’t inflict much damage on the web, which had a dispersed center of gravity.
As it seemed to have succeeded in binding it for a moment, Charlotte looked down at the lower area filled with murky floating debris and shouted loudly once more.
“Core restrained, prepare to attack!”
The swirling dirt and dust that had been billowing in all directions split apart to the sides like the parting of the Red Sea. Beyond the faintly glowing, deep green Magic Circle in the gap, the fog cleared all the way down, opening up the view. Thanks to that, the destructive aura that was slowly rising and the murderous intent seething toward it were also felt intact.
Similarly, the Queen’s eyeballs, sensing the air currents, rolled downward to assess the situation. Soon, the red pupils, having discovered something, contracted as much as possible as if they were about to disappear.
Two lights were glowing in the thickly lurking darkness.
The Queen’s neck instinctively hardened at the intense aura, which was on a different level than anything before.