I steadied myself in midair as best I could and gripped my weapon.
Wasn't there a saying that crisis was opportunity? The launch had been entirely against my will, but since it had given me momentum, I'd use it to press the attack.
"Go for the eyes."
The weak point of every living thing, and at the same time the softest part.
Even a monster that massive wouldn't be any different from the others if it had eyes. If I struck there, I could hit both its attack and its vision at once. With that in mind, I drove my blade straight into Leviathan's eye.
"Ghk?!"
A heavy sensation ran through my hand, and cold sweat broke out. I'd definitely stabbed the eye with my sword, but the impact that traveled up my arm felt like I'd slammed into metal.
I couldn't hide my shock. Was a monster on Leviathan's level really this hard even in the eyes?!
Of course, that didn't mean it was unharmed.
"Kyaaaaaaah?!"
The instant it took an attack to one of its weakest points, Leviathan twisted violently and screamed.
It had worked. But it was by no means a fatal wound.
"[Astrafe]!"
Then I'd just keep piling on the attacks. I immediately fired lightning to follow up.
"-!"
But my opponent was one of the world's three great disasters. Leviathan simply shut its eyelid, and that was enough to render my attack useless.
"What the—"
Just an eyelid. My lightning scattered without even piercing a single eyelid. And in that instant of opening, the parasites opened their maws and unleashed a barrage.
As I was about to be hit dead-on by the hail of shots flying in from all directions—
"Not so fast."
My vision rippled, and before I knew it, I was standing on the ship's deck.
"This is..."
I wasn't the only one moved to the deck. I could see the others on the battlefield, along with spells, flickering in and out as they vanished and reappeared.
"Spatial transfer...?"
I'd never heard of such magic before, but... seeing it with my own eyes, I couldn't deny it.
She would intervene and rescue anyone in danger, then gather magic and unleash it at the decisive moment.
That was...
That was the Empress. True to her epithet, she was a queen who ruled the battlefield itself.
But if she had something like that, there'd been no need to throw me at all.
I shot Arphia a slight glare for no real reason.
She could have just moved me elegantly with the Empress's spatial transfer, so why use such a crude and dangerous method...
As I muttered and looked at Arphia, she noticed my gaze and turned toward me.
Our eyes met.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Even at a distance, her feelings were as transparent as her irises.
"What are you staring at?"
I immediately dropped my gaze and ran off.
I wasn't scared.
I just suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to kill Leviathan.
"You cruel monster. In the name of my goddess, I will not forgive you."
How many people had been sacrificed to that monster, alive since ancient times?
Thinking of them, anger rose in me on its own.
Let me say it again: I was not scared of Arphia's glare.
Burning with fighting spirit, I searched for a way to attack Leviathan.
Given its size, a normal method would never produce meaningful results.
"Trust the Empress's ability and go for a special attack... no, that's not it."
For a moment, the idea that flashed through my head tempted me, but I shook it off. I'd almost forgotten the absurd power of spatial transfer, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.
The greater the change in the world, the greater the price it demands. For magic on the level of spatial transfer, the burden would be just as severe.
If this turned into a prolonged battle, I'd have to reduce her burden as much as possible. In fact, not everyone could be perfectly covered, and injuries were already starting to pile up. The healers were solid, so there wasn't a problem yet, but if this kept up, deaths might not be far off.
"..."
Selection and concentration. How much could I affect the future that would be changed from here on?
How much of the remaining time should I pour into this?
"No need to think about it."
I was ready. All that remained was action.
Unfortunately, that was my specialty.
Ring— ring—
Small bells rang from two places at once. Parallel force and simultaneous force. I gathered strength in my hand while also condensing light into my feet, accelerating again.
"Aaaaaah!"
Explosion. Acceleration. The instant my light-filled foot touched Leviathan's body, I became a streak of light and raced across that enormous flesh.
With the sword condensed from light, I sliced through the parasites and its body, repeatedly using force and release to accelerate again and again.
A sharp pain ran through my body. This wasn't backlash from [Argonaut]. It was the price of rewriting history.
But it was lighter than I expected. Apparently, this situation wasn't affecting history all that much after all.
Leviathan, however, seemed to think differently. It immediately stopped all attempts to respond and began pouring attacks toward me.
Maybe it was irritated by the thing crawling all over its body. It shook itself, blasted water everywhere, and thrashed to throw me off.
"Now! Attack!"
Waaahhh—!
Leviathan's mistake was one thing. There was no one here who needed to be especially guarded against—or rather, no one who should not be guarded against.
Everyone gathered here was a veteran adventurer. There was no one who would let this chance slip away.
"Kyaaaaaaah!!!"
Monster screams filled the air. Leviathan and the parasites living on its body crumbled and vanished at tremendous speed.
We can do this...!
It was big, but weaker than expected. If we kept this up, we could bring it down safely...!
"Fall back!"
The sudden retreat order came, but what lay within it was firm conviction.
Conviction that we could defeat that monster.
The monster, the Empress, and I all believed it.
"[Xenos Angelus]"
When the second bell rang out, the sound swallowed the monster and brought silence.
Gooooooon—!!!
That silence soon became a shockwave, roaring as if it would tear space apart.
In the collapsing world, they saw it: the image of the tyrant and the parasites, shattered, crushed, and erased.
A wound as a living being could never regenerate. Many felt victory at the sight of a wound even a regeneration-specialized wisp-type monster would struggle to endure.
Except for a few.
"This is...!"
The first to react was the witch who had unleashed the attack.
Her heterochromatic pupils widened to their limit as she trembled at the phenomenon she felt.
"..."
The second to realize it was the lion. Unlike the witch, he trusted only his own instincts and immediately pulled away at full speed, taking the martial artist who had been attacking alongside him with him.
The third to understand was the rabbit. Because he was the closest, he could see it most clearly.
The inside of the collapsing tyrant was empty.
And the moment he understood that—at the very instant everyone anticipated victory and let their guard down—the tyrant that had been thought dead surged up from beneath the sea and swallowed the flying ship.
"What are you idiots doing!"
If not for the Empress, that is.
With a split-second judgment, the Empress succeeded in responding in the blink of an eye. She hadn't been able to protect the ship completely, but fortunately it remained capable of flight.
Still, much of the ship had been damaged. Flight was no longer possible in this state. The ship had been reduced to nothing more than a platform that could hover in place.
Even that, in truth, had been a miracle. Despite the tyrant's ambush, not a single person had been lost.
But now, there would be no more miracles.
"W-what is that...?"
"Leviathan...?"
Everyone stared in a daze.
Leviathan, clad as if proudly displaying a brilliant blue suit of armor, had a form worthy of the name tyrant.
"No way..."
Its body was smaller than before, and in place of that body was armor.
And the empty shell it had shed like discarded clothing.
"That bastard molted?!"
-Grrruaaaaaah!!!!
The tyrant's roar rang out, mocking someone's scream.
Real despair began now.
"Are sea creatures supposed to molt?!"
"How should I know?! Quit talking and fight!"
I shouted at the absurd situation, but I wasn't the only one who felt wronged. No, who would have thought it could molt?
And what was with it getting smaller after molting? Isn't molting supposed to make you bigger?!
"It may not be molting."
"Huh?"
"From what I felt during the fight earlier, that's less molting and more like it simply took off its clothes."
At the words that this wasn't a transformation but merely the revelation of its true form, both confusion and understanding rose in me.
Come to think of it, for one of the world's three great disasters, it hadn't been all that impressive apart from its size. It had seemed strangely easy. So it had been wearing shackles all along.
Looking closely at the crushed flesh, I realized that what had looked like flesh was actually all parasites. What I'd thought was Leviathan's body was really millions upon millions of parasites clinging to its shell.
"No wonder."
I'd wondered how parasites could so easily bore through Leviathan's body, but if they'd all been working together, that made sense.
Leviathan had been a symbiotic relationship: the parasites got a soldier to crush troublesome enemies for them, while Leviathan lived protected from outside threats.
"Ghk?!"
But that symbiosis had already been broken. The tyrant was tyrant because it stood alone and lofty. Freed from the parasite shackles, Leviathan's movements were nothing short of swift.
"Aaagh!"
"Help me!"
Leviathan tore through the sea, hunting down the arrogant prey before it. As punishment for daring to set foot in its territory, it began attacking the Poseidon Familia first.
"Damn it...!"
Driven by the need to do something, I hurriedly swung my sword.
Kagagagagak!
"What the...?"
It was hard. An exoskeleton my sword couldn't even scratch.
The reason it was called a tyrant.
An invincible armor that made even the phrase iron wall feel inadequate.
I understood instinctively just how many heroes must have fallen before that armor.
"What the hell...!"
And that wasn't the tyrant's only weapon.
Too fast. Even with the sea around us, there was no way to catch up to that monster.
"Quit acting up, you worm bastard!"
Woom— the space rippled, and in an instant the Poseidon Familia vanished.
At the same time, a section of the deck rippled, and the vanished Poseidon Familia reappeared.
The Empress's spatial transfer...! If that was possible—
Hope that had not yet disappeared made my eyes shine, but expectation quickly turned to panic.
"Cough...!"
The Empress spat blood. It was the price of overusing magic and pushing her burden beyond its limit.
"No..."
At the same time, a sense of danger crawled up my spine.
I had a horrible feeling that if this went on, we might face an ending I didn't even want to imagine.
"Haa... haa..."
To make matters worse, Arphia, our main damage dealer, was on the verge of exhaustion. Thinking about it, that was only natural. Even if Arphia had improved, that was only compared to the past. She was still far from fully healed, and even if she had been, firing off attacks like that one after another would inevitably leave her like this.
Things had definitely been going smoothly, but in an instant the tide had turned. If this kept up...
"..."
I shook my head and erased the thought that had surfaced. Not yet. Nothing was over yet. No one had died.
Didn't they say that if you give up, that's where it ends? I absolutely could not give up. Even if...
"Don't think about useless things..."
"Arphia..."
"I can still... fight..."
Despite her words, blood was running from the corner of her mouth. She was in no state to keep going, but unfortunately, I couldn't let her rest.
"How much can you still do?"
"One shot... maybe. But I can't hit something that fast. Even if it lands directly, it'll be hard to pierce that outer shell."
So even a spell of that level wouldn't be enough... It was hard to believe, but the judgment of the one who'd used it was probably the most reliable. If that was true, then we really had no hope...
"...[Argonaut]?"
If I used the Great Bell to create a hero's strike... could that bring it down?
I didn't know. It was an attack that had always answered my faith, but unfortunately, my opponent was a monster beyond all standards.
Even if my strike erased everything, its range wouldn't extend far enough to become a fatal wound.
It was simply too huge, and because of that, all ways of dealing with it were slipping away. Even after shrinking to less than half, the thing was still enormous. Besides, I couldn't even be sure I could charge something as conspicuous as the Great Bell for several minutes against that thing.
In the end, the finishing blow had to be Arphia's magic. But if Arphia's magic couldn't bring it down...
"If only that outer shell were gone... it would be possible."
"The outer shell..."
At those words, a single obsession took root in the monster's eyes.
It was the same look as someone preparing a reckless suicide charge—
"No."
"Then do you have another way?"
"Many people will die."
"Everyone was prepared for that."
"No, they weren't."
Death comes only once for everyone. They might have been prepared to risk their lives, but there was no way they had truly prepared themselves for death.
Not themselves, and not the people waiting for them.
"Don't act spoiled. This is a battlefield."
"This isn't me acting spoiled."
"...?"
That was right. This wasn't mere childishness. I had no intention of throwing a tantrum and simply denying reality.
Even if what I was thinking was stubbornness like that of a child, I had sworn to see it through.
Hadn't I sworn that I would not let anyone here die in vain?
Think. Find the best way to break through this deadlock.
Think of every adventure so far. Of the path I had walked.
"If all that matters is the outer shell, then that means it's just too hard to break through."
It was obvious, but sometimes people forget the obvious. Sometimes you go too far around the problem when the answer is simply that it's too hard to pierce.
That thing wasn't like the Destroyer, reflecting magic or protected by some other special defense. It was just absurdly hard.
"What matters is firepower."
If I could just deliver shock through that outer shell, that would be enough.
It seemed the monster had tried to solve that with a suicide tactic, but my thoughts were different.
Sure, if we sacrificed a few lives, we might be able to force a definite result.
If we were willing to go for a suicide charge, we could probably create a fatal opening in that exoskeleton.
But I had no intention of sacrificing someone's life just to take the easy road.
I wasn't going to save ten by sacrificing one.
That was an extreme way of putting it, but either all eleven lived, or all eleven died.
And since I had no intention of letting all eleven die, I had to find a way for all eleven to live.
There was still a chance. Arphia's magic should be able to open a path.
But the problem was still that exoskeleton. The raw power was enough to pierce it, but because it was area magic, that power kept dispersing.
Then amplification and compression. If I could give Arphia's magic that kind of effect...
"The Empress's magic could amplify it."
Only, the problem was that it amplified the area.
Still, if compression was possible, then the whole area could be converted into power. If it was Arphia's magic, compressing it enough to blow off its head should be possible.
Then if I could somehow narrow the area, I could bring it down in one strike.
"But how...?"
I couldn't use [Argonaut] on someone else. I might be able to provide support, but the one wielding it had to be me.
Arphia's magic was, naturally, Arphia's. That meant my [Argonaut] effect couldn't be applied to it.
"Damn it... we were so close...!"
The path was closing off.
One step. No, half a step short.
Was there nothing? Really nothing at all?
Just as I was about to despair at the blocked path forward—
A small object wrapped in white cloth rolled to a stop at my feet.
Had the ship shaken and spilled its contents? Tilting my head in confusion, I looked down and saw—
"You never know! It might be incredibly necessary! Take it!"
"...Ha ha."
I laughed before I knew it.
Everyone looked at me strangely, but I couldn't stop laughing.
"-Ah, by any chance, can no one else use this except me?"
"...No, that's not the case."
I found it. The missing half-step.
As if sensing my expectation, the Neo Bow glimmered brilliantly through the cloth.
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