The colossal golden giant was still rapidly expanding and growing taller. With every passing second, its mass increased at a terrifying, naked-eye visible speed. In mere moments, the eight-hundred-meter-tall golden colossus had surged past the one-thousand-meter mark!
It wasn't until it reached an awe-inspiring height of roughly twelve hundred meters—towering significantly higher than Tiamat's apocalyptic Dragon Form—that its explosive growth finally, slowly ground to a halt.
At the feet of the colossal golden giant, the sprawling city of Uruk—save for Gilgamesh, Siduri, and the assembled Servants—was entirely empty.
Every single citizen, without exception, had willingly merged into the body of the golden giant.
"What an incredibly bizarre Divinity... It distinctly feels like an Indigenous God of Mesopotamia, yet its fundamental essence is entirely different from any of 'us'..."
This was entirely natural. Although the golden giant had manifested upon the earth possessing the absolute Authority and structural mass of a Divine Spirit, its core was fundamentally anchored by Takumi's [Heart of Fire]. It was an unprecedented [Miracle] born from utilizing the flames of [Connection] to perfectly unify and synthesize the willpower, prayers, and absolute resolve of every single citizen of Uruk Takumi had ever encountered!
The individual strength of a hundred thousand ordinary humans might be utterly meaningless in the face of a Beast like Tiamat. But the absolute, unified power of those same hundred thousand souls, perfectly synchronized and elevated by the [Heart of Fire], was more than enough to conceptually reject the Gods themselves!
This was the true, absolute miraculous power of Takumi's fully awakened [Heart of Fire]—just as he, a warrior who always fought alone, had always firmly believed: There is absolute power in numbers.
Riding atop her Boat of Heaven, Maanna, Ishtar flew in slow circles around the golden giant's lower leg. Tilting her head back to stare up at the colossal entity whose head was literally obscured by the clouds, she couldn't help but swallow hard:
"Gulp... But judging purely by sheer conceptual weight... this guy is undeniably stronger than the Chief Gods of most pantheons, isn't he?"
At the very least, using herself—admittedly a somewhat water-downed Chief God due to her pseudo-Servant status—as the baseline metric, her conceptual weight couldn't even begin to compare to this colossal entity. In fact, just hovering near it, she could feel a faint, yet undeniable sense of... suppression?
"Hahahahahaha! Have you truly not comprehended it yet?! The Divine Spirit standing before you is not the traditional brand of deity you are so intimately familiar with! This is the [God of Humanity], forged entirely by the absolute will of nearly a hundred thousand citizens of Uruk! This is a God belonging exclusively to Mankind!"
As the King of Uruk, possessing a deeper, more profound understanding of the entity before him than anyone else present, Gilgamesh was already laughing uproariously, completely abandoning any regal restraint.
He stared up at the majestic, towering giant, his crimson eyes overflowing with absolute, unadulterated excitement and immense pride.
"Under my absolute rule, Uruk has officially raised the curtain on humanity's definitive separation from the Gods! Furthermore, this entire nation operates under the fundamental principle of 'The King Grants Divine Authority.' Based on these absolute concepts, the [God of Humanity] will inherently exert a conceptual suppression and severe restriction upon any indigenous deity of this era! —Tell me, useless Goddess, surely you can feel your own power being actively suppressed right now, can't you?!"
As he spoke, Gilgamesh shot Ishtar an incredibly smug, mocking look.
"Damn it! I have absolutely no idea what you're acting so smug about! This barely even has anything to do with you—!"
Having his mockery shoved directly in her face, an anime-vein bulged violently on Ishtar's forehead. She cracked her knuckles menacingly, genuinely wishing she could fly down there and punch that smug grin right off Gilgamesh's face.
"Heh."
Gilgamesh merely chuckled dismissively. He was entirely too ecstatic to bother bickering with Ishtar right now.
"To think that humanity was capable of blossoming with such unimaginable, absolute brilliance... I truly do love humans the most~!"
Quetzalcoatl clasped her hands tightly together in sheer, overwhelming excitement. Staring at the unfolding miracle and feeling the majestic, entirely unique divine aura radiating from the giant, her eyes were filled with absolute joy.
Honestly, if the [God of Humanity: Uruk] wasn't conceptually incompatible with her specific brand of Divinity, she genuinely would have flown right into it to join the fun!
"Wait a minute! If something this ridiculously overpowered just showed up, doesn't that mean we're completely robbed of our chance to shine, meow~?!"
Possessing a thought process entirely alien to normal logic, Jaguar Man's eyes suddenly went wide. Acting as if she had just vividly hallucinated her tragic demotion to a completely irrelevant background character, the furry ears atop her head drooped pitifully.
"...Weren't you strictly enforcing your 'silent, unfathomable master' persona?"
Ana, who had quietly regrouped with the others, remained silent for a moment before ruthlessly pointing out the inconsistency.
"Hehe, acting like an unfathomable master is entirely too exhausting~! I think taking a more relaxed approach suits me way better!"
Jaguar Man scratched her head and offered a goofy, entirely unabashed grin.
Fundamentally, Jaguar Man was a Divine Spirit categorized as an Evil God. Yet, that inherent malice was completely incapable of masking this overwhelming, comedic aura. One could only imagine how terrifyingly strong the personality of the human vessel she possessed truly was.
***
"AAAAAHHHH—!"
While the [God of Humanity: Uruk] had been reaching its absolute structural limits, Takumi had been rapidly familiarizing himself with the controls of his new "Divine Mecha." During this brief window, Tiamat—who had been violently hurled backward and smashed into the earth, creating a massive, spider-webbed crater—finally recovered her bearings. Staring up at the towering golden colossus whose head pierced the clouds, she let out a furious, deafening roar.
Standing firmly upon the earth she was conceptually bound to, the [Sea of Life]—which had been temporarily severed when she took flight—resumed its violent, aggressive expansion. The pitch-black sea of mud surged upward, forming a colossal tsunami hundreds of meters tall. Carrying a kinetic momentum infinitely more terrifying than a natural tidal wave, it violently crashed forward, intending to completely swallow the city of Uruk.
Simultaneously, within the aggressively churning black mud, a seemingly infinite horde of Lahmu was rapidly spawning. This time, almost every single one of them had evolved into the grotesque, highly specialized "mini-amalgamation" variant! Emitting their eerie, spine-chilling giggles, they rocketed into the sky. Within seconds, a suffocating, black cloud comprised entirely of hyper-lethal Lahmu formed once again.
However, to the thousand-meter-tall [God of Humanity: Uruk], this apocalyptic, world-ending tsunami was roughly equivalent to a knee-high river.
But while the golden colossus could effortlessly ignore the giant wave, the city of Uruk nestled at its feet—and the Northern Wall sheltering the remaining human survivors directly behind it—could not.
Therefore, having grasped the fundamental operational mechanics of [Uruk], Takumi didn't hesitate for a single microsecond. He immediately initiated the giant's first movement.
HOOOO—!!
The golden colossus raised its massive, mountain-sized fist high into the air and violently smashed it directly down onto the ground before it.
BOOM! VMMMM—!!!
Accompanied by an earth-shattering boom that threatened to rupture the eardrums of everyone present, a brilliant, liquid-like golden radiance violently erupted from the exact epicenter of [Uruk]'s impact. The golden light rippled outward in every direction with blinding speed.
[Divine Realm Conversion]!
In an instant, the entirety of Uruk was fundamentally converted into the golden giant's absolute Divine Realm, completely enveloped in a layer of gentle, impenetrable golden radiance.
Since the giant itself was a conceptual deity forged entirely from the unified souls of the Uruk citizens, converting the very city those citizens called home into its absolute Divine Realm was as effortless as breathing.
The apocalyptic, world-ending black tsunami, carrying the momentum of a falling sky, crashed violently against the golden-hued city. Just as the corrosive mud came within a dozen meters of the walls, the city—now operating as an absolute "Divine Realm"—flared with an even more blinding, aggressive golden light.
With a deafening crash, the apocalyptic tide of black mud reacted exactly as if it had slammed into an indestructible, kinetic-reflecting fortress wall. The golden light violently shattered the wave and forcefully repelled the mud backward.
It didn't even have the chance to split and flow around the city like water hitting a rock; the black sea was completely, forcefully violently stonewalled and pushed back!
However, the hyper-agile Lahmu managed to frantically push through the initial shockwave of golden light and were preparing to dive-bomb directly into the city...
"HRAAAAAGH—!!!"
The colossal golden giant abruptly let out a deafening, heaven-rending battle cry. The soundwave, heavily saturated with raw, aggressive golden kinetic energy, detonated violently outward like a bomb. Exactly like dropping a concentrated bead of dish soap into a pan of grease, the golden shockwave rapidly expanded in every direction.
The sheer, apocalyptic kinetic force contained within the roar was so absolute that it instantly shredded the suffocating storm clouds Tiamat had brought with her, finally revealing the setting sun sinking toward the horizon.
As for the millions of Lahmu currently airborne? Caught directly in the path of the terrifying soundwave, it was as if they had all simultaneously suffered an unimaginably brutal, full-body concussion. Every single one of them instantly went completely silent and plummeted lifelessly toward the earth.
They had literally been vibrated to death by a single shout!
"Hiss! To think that highly evolved variants of Lahmu could be instantly annihilated by nothing more than a single roar..."
Watching this utterly absurd display of power, Ushiwakamaru couldn't help but suck in a sharp breath of cold air.
[This is far from over!]
Having rapidly comprehended the deeper, more profound Authorities of the [God of Humanity: Uruk], Takumi seamlessly activated the next skill in his arsenal.
CLANG!THUD—THUD-THUD—!
The rhythmic tempo of the bell and drum abruptly shifted. Suddenly, an ancient, sweeping, deeply soulful chorus of singing began to weave through the instrumental resonance, growing increasingly clear and profound. This was the absolute, unified voice of Uruk; it was the lingering, subconscious song etched into the very earth by the generations of humans who had lived and died upon it!
Skill Altered:
[Chorus of the Dawn and Dusk Bells (A)]-> [[Temporary] The Mesopotamian Variation (EX)]!—(The user of this continuously active buffing skill retains all original properties of the base skill.)
The majestic resonance of the instruments and the sweeping chorus intertwined perfectly. The golden, divine aura began to rapidly dye the very sky itself. Breathtaking, ethereal motes of golden light drifted freely through the air. Ultimately, using the exact midpoint between the golden colossus and Tiamat as the absolute dividing line, the battlefield was split in two: on the side of the golden giant lay a gentle, brilliantly radiant golden world, while Tiamat's side remained an apocalyptic, thunderstorm-ridden wasteland.
"Aaaaaahhhhh—!"
With every passing second, the majestic Divine Aura radiating from the golden colossus grew exponentially stronger. Sensing this rapidly escalating, lethal threat, and realizing her [Sea of Life] had been completely neutralized, Tiamat's Star Eyes flared violently. After a brief second of intense accumulation, she unleashed a devastating, dark-red magical beam—this one significantly larger and vastly more terrifying than any she had fired previously, roughly half the size of her own torso—aimed directly at the golden giant.
Sensing the apocalyptic heat radiating from the incoming beam, the golden giant made absolutely no attempt to dodge. It simply raised its left arm horizontally across its chest, slightly pulling its right arm back.
The very next second, the world-ending beam—possessing enough raw destructive force to instantly vaporize both Uruk and the Northern Wall behind it directly off the map—slammed into the giant.
However...
VMMMM—HSSSS!
When this apocalyptic attack collided with the colossal arm—which resembled a pillar holding up the heavens—it reacted exactly like snow thrown into a raging furnace, or a high-pressure water hose firing at an indestructible bunker. The beam was flawlessly, absolutely stonewalled against the surface of the arm, with only a few tiny, fragmented streams of energy managing to slip past and harmlessly splash against the giant's torso.
The golden giant didn't retreat a single inch, nor did it show the slightest hint of strain or fatigue while actively blocking the world-ending bombardment.
Meanwhile, standing behind and beneath the giant, Gilgamesh and the rest of the group stared in absolute wonder at their own bodies, which were currently glowing with a brilliant golden aura.
They, too, were actively connected to Takumi's Heart of Fire. Although they hadn't physically merged into the [God of Humanity: Uruk], they were still receiving an unimaginably massive, absolute buff to all their parameters.
"Ho? To think it could even achieve something like this?"
Gilgamesh flexed his hands, profoundly fascinated by the explosive, god-like power currently surging through his veins—a power so immense he could likely utilize it to manifest minor miracles of his own.
"Ever since I forcibly transitioned my class to Caster, it has been quite a long time since I felt raw physical power like this!"
The corners of Gilgamesh's mouth curled up into a ferocious grin. He clenched his supercharged fist tightly, then casually waved his hand, instantly summoning his signature clay tablet armament.
"Perfect! Let us show Tiamat the absolute, unbridled fury of this King! Furthermore, let her witness the combined, apocalyptic firepower of all three hundred and forty-five Dingirs stationed across Uruk firing simultaneously!"
Hearing this, Merlin—who was currently busy testing the limits of his newly supercharged magical parameters—paused for a second and couldn't help but ask:
"Wait a minute. I thought you explicitly stated you built exactly three hundred and sixty Dingirs?"
"...Are you completely blind, or just incredibly stupid?! Fifteen of them were just pulverized when Tiamat crashed through the front gate!"
Merlin blinked, realizing his mistake, and glanced toward the utterly ruined remains of the city's main entrance.
Oh. He's right!
Despite the brief comedic interruption, under Gilgamesh's absolute, hyper-efficient coordination, every single undamaged Dingir across the city walls locked onto the entirely stationary target of Tiamat and unleashed an absolute hellstorm of artillery fire.
Countless blindingly bright, golden artillery shells streaked across the sky like a localized meteor shower, relentlessly slamming into the already disadvantaged Second Beast. With his parameters massively boosted by the [Mesopotamian Variation], Gilgamesh didn't even need to strain himself; he could effortlessly, casually command the simultaneous firing of every single Dingir!
While this localized artillery bombardment was occurring, Takumi had already initiated the next phase of his absolute strategy.
Just stand here and hold the line? Wait an entire day and a half for Ereshkigal to finish shifting the Underworld's coordinates beneath Uruk?
—There is absolutely no need for that!
Utilizing the absolute, omniscient perspective of the [God of Humanity], Takumi's gaze effortlessly pierced through the earth. He saw Miss Ereshkigal, currently located deep beneath Uruk, looking incredibly flustered but still diligently swinging her "pickaxe" to expand the Underworld.
But more importantly, he also clearly saw the original, un-shifted location of the Underworld, situated directly beneath the city of Kutha! (As the Patron Goddess of Kutha, Ereshkigal's Underworld was permanently anchored beneath that specific city.)
[Eresh! Drop what you're doing and return to the Underworld beneath Kutha immediately to prepare!]
Hearing the sudden command, Ereshkigal—who was currently drenched in sweat and frantically swinging her pickaxe—froze completely. Her brain was already spinning from the endless series of apocalyptic events, and she instinctively questioned the order:
[Why?! 'Mother' is fixated entirely on Uruk! She isn't going to suddenly turn around and attack Kutha, it's completely empty!]
[Ah. Of course she isn't going to walk to Kutha. That's exactly why I'm going to throw her there!]
"EH——?!!!"
Σ(っ °Д °;)っ
Once again, Ereshkigal let out a profoundly horrified, entirely disbelieving shriek.
[I don't have time to explain the physics of it right now! Just get back to Kutha immediately! Once she arrives, the rest is entirely up to you!]
Dropping that utterly terrifying bombshell, Takumi abruptly "hung up" the connection.
He then shifted his full attention back to Tiamat, who was still stubbornly maintaining her massive, continuous beam attack.
It was blatantly obvious that Tiamat, operating entirely on primal instinct, was putting her absolute all into this attack. However, it was truly unfortunate for her: an attack of this caliber was fundamentally insufficient to breach the absolute defense of the [God of Humanity: Uruk].
Ishtar's previous assessment of the giant possessing the conceptual weight of a "Top-Tier Chief God" was a massive, fundamental underestimation of the true, raw combat capability of the [God of Humanity] piloted by Takumi.
It was true; the [God of Humanity: Uruk] did not possess any flashy, highly conceptual abilities, nor did it hold the myriad Authorities typical of Divine Spirits.
But what it lacked in conceptual versatility, it made up for in pure, unadulterated STATS!
Its base parameters were absolutely, incomprehensibly unrivaled!
Even in its standard, resting state, its passive physical defense was significantly higher than the absolute maximum output of Takumi's Noble Phantasm shield. Its raw physical strength completely eclipsed Takumi—who was fundamentally still restricted by a human vessel—by several astronomical magnitudes. Combined with its newly ignited Divine Core and its colossal, mountain-sized physique, categorizing it as a Supreme Deity was entirely accurate.
And building upon that unimaginably massive foundation—it possessed access to every single one of Takumi's personal combat skills!
In other words, the giant could flawlessly execute Takumi's ultra-high-speed state and the space-compressing [Earth Shrink] technique! At worst, due to its colossal mass, it would only be fractionally slower than Takumi performing it in his human form.
All preparations were completely finalized.
The very next second, the golden colossus leaned forward. Pushing directly against the apocalyptic "current" of Tiamat's continuous beam attack, it strode confidently out of its Divine Realm and charged directly toward the stationary, target-dummy Tiamat.
Wherever the giant stepped, the golden radiance violently expanded outward from the point of impact.
Under the absolute Authority of [Divine Realm Conversion], wherever it stood, that space became its absolute Divine Domain!
WHOOSH!!
The giant's colossal frame violently displaced the air, generating hurricane-force winds that howled deafeningly. Its glowing left hand effortlessly blocked, tore apart, and completely dispersed the apocalyptic, super-heated beam. The dark-red beam rapidly shortened as the giant closed the distance. In barely two seconds, the golden colossus had once again closed into absolute point-blank range with Tiamat.
Trapped within the giant's expanding Divine Realm, Tiamat's parameters were immediately, forcefully suppressed.
Without a microsecond of hesitation, the giant violently threw its empty right fist.
BAM——!!!
A mountain-shattering, apocalyptic uppercut slammed brutally into the underside of Tiamat's massive jaw.
The terrifying kinetic force generated a series of violent, expanding golden shockwaves. The sheer, brain-rattling concussive force traveling straight up her skull violently forced Tiamat's jaw shut, instantly cutting off the beam attack. Her crimson and blue Star Eyes completely lost focus, her offensive output violently interrupted.
The dark-red, apocalyptic heat instantly dissipated.
—And now, it is time for our absolutely uncontested DPS phase!
The golden colossus clenched both of its massive fists tightly, its blazing eyes dead-locked onto the heavily concussed, entirely defenseless Tiamat. And then—
[Nine Lives: Roman Style]!
When utilized by Takumi in his human form, this technique manifested as a relatively subdued, rapid-fire flurry of light slashes. But now, executed by the colossal golden giant, it was an apocalyptic, world-ending barrage!
In an instant, a completely untrackable, blindingly fast flurry of punches—each one hitting with the kinetic force of a falling comet—rained down upon Tiamat's colossal body.
The earth completely shattered beneath them. The surrounding oxygen was instantly violently displaced, creating a localized vacuum. It looked as if the very fabric of the world was being violently torn apart.
Under this endless, suffocating "Comet Barrage," the indestructible, divine scales covering Tiamat's body were systematically pulverized. Her mountain-sized frame was continuously driven backward by the sheer, unending kinetic force, battered completely helplessly like a discarded ragdoll by the golden giant!