D.I.O

*** Leviathan ***

Rumble….

Whoosh!

Massive dark clouds gathered in the sky. A fierce wind blew from all directions, and heavy thunder rumbled incessantly.

“What happened? What’s with this unusual atmosphere? Didn’t Arthur launch his finishing blow? It doesn’t seem like that guy is going to die anytime soon, though….”

“Damn it, it’s still not over….”

“We don’t have Arthur anymore, so now we have to deal with that monster by ourselves….”

Although the users’ collective combat power was surprisingly powerful, it was not enough to face off against a transcendent. They were only able to fight Tan on somewhat equal footing so far because Arthur was in charge of the Masters’ attacks.

The other Masters could only play assisting roles in the battle; they couldn’t take the lead in assaulting Tan. Now that their side’s main force had bowed out, if Tan outputted the same attacks as before, they’d surely be defeated.

“Argh… Arthur! Ah!”

Tan grabbed Ascalon’s handle and let out a pained groan. Tan wasn’t neutralized or in a moribund state. As the Beast of the Apocalypse, his monstrous HP was too vast for him to simply fade away and die after suffering an attack from a mere human.

Yet, even so, he couldn’t remove Ascalon from his chest.

/“Until the day you die, that sword will never fall out. Ascalon has anchored to your soul, so even if you survive this battle, the wounds and pain you suffer now will be with you forever.”/

Crack. Crackle.

Tan’s body was crumbling. As Ascalon stood embedded in his heart, it took root with the assistance of the dragon’s enormous reservoir of magic power. Furthermore, his soul felt a sense of crisis and began to shed its human form, which Tan had been using as a shell.

“Argh!”

Tan screamed, and at that moment…

He exploded.

“What… what’s going on?!”

“Everyone, back away!”

When Tan blew up, bits and pieces of his human body shot all over the area. To be precise, the unfolding scene was a phenomenon closer to an expansion than an explosion. Surprised by the sight of Tan’s humanoid body instantly turning dark blue and seemingly covering the entire world, the Masters screamed and scattered everywhere, but the spreading dark blue qi energy moved quicker.

Crack!

Crack!

As if it were a hungry ghost, the qi energy chewed and swallowed the Masters who came into contact with it. Among the Masters, some were able to evade by retreating to a safe distance, but others were too slow as the qi energy absorbed them.

Rumble!

“Try stopping it! Do any spells work?”

“It’s not responding to any of our spells! I don’t think it’s natural or magic related!”

When she saw the Masters screaming as the unavoidable dark blue qi energy wave approached, Cruze threw her sniper rifle to the ground and stood. Her aura-powered sniper rifle dispersed into particles and disappeared, which freed up some of her memory. However, Cruze needed much more memory, so she utilized her hidden card.

“Operate Divine Weapon! Crown of Nihility.”

After her murmur, a brilliantly shining white crown appeared atop Cruze’s head. The Crown of Nihility, her Divine Weapon, allowed her to instantly amplify her memory. And with that increased memory, Cruze materialized a new weapon.

“Operate Earth Breaker! Come out and smash everything! Smash everything, Earth Breaker!”

Earth Breaker, a strategic weapon belonging to the 4th Stage of Civilization, could control the forces of attraction and repulsion and manipulate spatial vectors. Earth Breaker wasn’t originally intended to be used as a personal weapon; it normally only appeared on a few Terra-Class giant warships. However, at the moment, Cruze reproduced it in the form of a [sword].

Earth Breaker manipulated spatial vectors and the direction and size of a designated force. In other words, Earth Breaker defied the laws of physics and the conservation of energy.

Theoretically, if the given input energy were infinite, Earth Breaker’s output would also be infinite. What was even more frightening was that Earth Breaker could control directional force while maintaining a free range of movement. Due to these characteristics, Earth Breaker was mainly used for terraforming or destroying entire planets, hence its name.

Whoosh!

A huge repulsive wave collided against the rushing dark blue qi energy. Although she had been using Earth Breaker as a kind of vector cannon, Cruze instinctively knew that she couldn’t completely block the power radiating from Tan’s body.

Cruze’s judgment proved correct. Her repulsive wave charged forth with terrifying momentum and somewhat changed the dark blue qi energy’s direction. The sight of the weakened and receding dark blue qi energy wave was truly majestic, but Cruze soon turned pale.

“Damn it! If I could have deployed Earth Breaker for 12 seconds, I could have entirely neutralized the qi energy attack!”

Cruze had even activated her Master Skill, Repeated Phantasm, but even so, Earth Breaker only operated for four seconds. If she only used it as a vector cannon, she could’ve extended this to 20 seconds, but this method’s power output wouldn’t have been enough to weaken Tan’s attack. However, the moment she reached her materialization time limit, another being jumped into the fray.

“Earthquake, Part Two.”

The command was uttered with a whisper, but to Cruze, the words sounded like roaring thunder. Cruze suddenly realized that Arc hadn’t used a single drop of magic power yet and had been spell chanting the whole time. Throughout her long-winded spell chant, Arc had accumulated an immense amount of magic power. In this manner, Arc could output an unimaginably mammoth amount of magic power all at once.

However…

“You idiot! Stop! No matter how powerful the Blackyak Sect’s battle spell chant is, it can’t stop that attack!”

There was a limit to the power a single Master possessed. Though some Masters had realized their superpowers incredibly quickly and reached high levels, they did not have enough time.

If users were given ten years, 100 years, or even more, then they could’ve possibly produced a collective attack that could neutralize Tan’s. However, as of right now, the Irregulars were the only ones who overcame the absolute wall of time and achieved power output beyond what should’ve been possible in this short period.

Due to this, after shouting a warning, Cruze focused on summoning Earth Breaker once more. Without any more memory support skills, Cruze was concerned that her Divine Weapon would only operate for one more second and that she’d have to face a permanent stat loss. Yet, with Arthur now out of the picture, Cruze judged that she was the only one left who could contend against Tan.

However, before she could resummon Earth Breaker, Arc cast her magic spell.

“Wailing Wall.”

Crack.

As her black armored fist struck the ground, which had been flattened like a mirror from Tan’s sweeping qi energy wave, the floor rose with tremendous force.

“What? Huh? What is this?”

Cruze and the other Masters were left speechless after witnessing the inconceivably colossal output of magic power that burst out in an instant. The ground shook fiercely. Like a wavy potato chip, ridges started to form on the earth’s surface. It was as if the entire Earth’s crust had been compressed and split apart.

Boom!

With a single blow, the surrounding terrain, extending for tens of kilometers to the left and right, was lifted, effectively blocking the dark blue qi energy wave from advancing. This phenomenon was possible because Arc's magic power reinforced the earth itself.

Whoosh!

As the retreating Masters saw a wall of earth, which could easily bury several cities, suddenly appear between them and Tan, they collapsed in surprise.

“What? What happened?”

“Is everyone okay?”

When they came to their senses, the earthen wall had already moved to where the film crew was recording the battle. As they checked their HP and status, the Masters saw the qi energy gathering and increasing in size on the other side of the wall. Tan’s figure could no longer be seen.

“Arc… who the hell is she?”

Even in the midst of everything happening, Cruze looked towards Arc. Although she had exerted an almost miraculous output of magic power, Arc seemed relatively calm and relaxed.

“Cruze, just now… that attack….”

“Yeah.”

Cruze answered while barely maintaining control over her wildly undulating aura power.

“It was an Ultimate Magic Spell….”

Cruze was taken aback and thoroughly confused… there was no prior context to justify such growth, especially from a user Cruze had little to no impression towards. If Merlin had deployed such a spell, she would have understood, but Arc, someone Cruze thought was just moderately accomplished at best, had unleashed such a powerful ultimate magic….

However, the situation on the battlefield was so urgent that Cruze couldn’t afford to watch Arc in amazement for long.

Thud!

“Uh, uhm, this can’t be….”

The earthen wall had blocked the qi energy wave, but the latter continued to gather and expand. Like an endlessly inflating balloon, the qi energy grew as if it was planning to cover the whole world. The wave became taller as it pressed against the earthen wall, and soon, the qi energy overflowed.

Yet, the most concerning issue wasn’t that the dark blue qi energy was expanding.

Instead…

Crack!

That great mass of energy…

Began to take form.

“… No way….”

Most humans were unfamiliar with living things larger than themselves, but Masters were relatively unconcerned with another being’s size. An ordinary modern person would instinctively feel fear if a dog was taller than their waist, but a DIO user often battled huge [enemies], so they weren’t as sensitive to size.

The gathered Masters had even fought a dragon before, but at this moment, the ordinary people filming and these same Masters felt a similar feeling.

Rumble!

Just by raising its head, the being created a gust of wind that made it impossible for anyone in the vicinity to stand upright. The being was so enormous that it wasn’t possible for a normal human to see and make out its entire body.

“What the hell is that?!”

“This is crazy….”

The ground shook. The scale of the newly-formed being was truly enormous. Unlike when the ground shook from Arc’s spell, the current trembling was a purely physical phenomenon. In other words, it wasn’t shaking because magic power was being exerted onto the earth; the earth was essentially screaming as it couldn’t withstand the load exerted by the being’s existence.

Ordinary humans would only feel the ground shaking, but the Masters, with their developed superhuman cognitive abilities, saw how the being crushed multiple nearby cities.

The battle was taking place in the courtyard of the Magic Tower. Merlin had built this tower in the middle of the empty space left behind from leveling Cheonan City after the latter suffered considerable damage from the Legion and Grotesque’s attack. Considering this location, it was hard for the Masters to mentally process that the monster was large enough to crush surrounding cities.

[My God… how big is that thing? It’s expanded well beyond the borders of Cheonan City and has overflowed into the neighboring Onyang City… No, at this rate, it may have already entered Pyeongtaek City and Jincheon County.]

[That thing’s left leg… has reached the sea.]

[It’s tens of- no, close to a hundred kilometers tall. How can such a creature exist?]

A few Masters had boarded their flying shuttles and flew up into the air to get a better view of the monster. When they communicated its overwhelming size to those below, everyone fell silent.

Dragons were considered gigantic monsters, as they were often 100 to 300 meters tall. However, in comparison, the size of this monster was beyond anyone’s comprehension.

“Should I interpret this as a failure or an honor?” Quiet Heaven asked.

“I’d say it’s more desperation than anything else,” Ellie responded.

Unlike the bewildered humans, Quiet Heaven and Ellie, two of the three pets who knew the monster’s identity, seemed detached. In truth, it was the first time they had laid eyes on Tan’s true body as well.

“The Noblesse elder isn’t holding back. I would’ve never thought that he’d bring out his true body to an outskirt planet like this….”

“Regardless, shouldn’t the Elohim be mobilizing at this point? I don’t think a lowly commoner like me fits in this mythical battle….”

Tan’s true body was so massive that it made one wonder if humanity and its influence were smaller than a speck of dust in the wider universe.

Dark blue skin covered the monster’s entire body, and the monster was so tall that its head pierced the clouds. In truth, Tan looked utterly different from other dragons. If someone had to somehow describe Tan’s appearance, they would say he looked like a Black Draconic Tortoise; he had the head of a dragon but the body of a tortoise. However, this only described his overall shape. Tan’s body was also covered in scales and clumps of hair, a combination that looked grotesque.

Tan’s appearance made the Masters question whether they could categorize him as a dragon. Yet, Tan was known throughout the universe as one of the primeval dragons that existed from the beginning of time. He was a mythical being who destroyed countless worlds and even fought against the Messiah.

“At last, he makes his appearance… The King of the Arrogant, the Beast of the Apocalypse.”

Wukong had been still up to now when he spoke in a grave tone.

“Leviathan.”