S41 Final Battle 17
Final Battle ⑰
That was too close!
On defeating Kuro, the very moment when I returned it seemed that the Demon King was about to be killed. It would have been bad if I’d been even a tenth of a second later. Seriously bad! It was so bad that my heart feels like it’s about to burst out of my chest. Sigh… let’s… yeah… take a moment to relax.
Okay, assess the situation.
Behind me is the Demon King. She’s safe. Yep.
In front of me is a draconian. He’s shaped like a person, but has dragon-like traits in his appearance. I’m sure that there were guys like this in the 9th Army that Kuro led. This guy is the one guilty of trying to kill the Demon King just now.
Additionally. Some distance away there’s Yamada-kun and his party plus four dragons, huh. It’s them VS the Puppet Taratekts eh. It seems that while the dragons were busy fighting with the Puppet Taratekts, the other Taratekt type monsters rushed down on Yamada-kun and co. The Puppet Taratekts are being pushed back, but it’s not enough that they’ll collapse soon. Also, they’re some distance away so I’ll ignore them for now.
Conclusion. For now it’s totally okay to kill the draconian in front of me. Don’t tell me that it’s too simplistic to kill whichever enemy looks to be the closest. It’s generally a good idea to blow away the enemies close to you on a battlefield! As if you can be picky about your enemies on a battlefield you cretin! Blow them away as soon as you spot them! Search and destroy! It’s search and destroy!
I’m strangely hyper? Well, that’s because I piled up a load of frustration during my little rendezvous with Mr Kuro here! Battles between gods put a terrible strain on your nerves, you know. There’s tussles over territory and tussles over energy usage. Even when you attack, you gotta calculate how much you’ll reduce your enemy’s energy by. Even when defending, you have to calculate by how much the enemy’s attack will reduce your own energy, then recalculate how much energy you’ll expend in defence while recovering from your injuries. It basically means that you have to do continuous split-second calculations in the middle of a punchup, okay? I’m both mentally worn out and physically worn out. If you went with all-out flashy attacks, then despite being on the attack you’d be expending more energy than the other side, putting yourself at a disadvantage overall you see. It’s like, you’re playing speed chess with a wait time of zero, yet, you still have to calculate a thousand moves ahead else you’ll lose. While punching each other too.
Man that was hard. I had to go with the persistent belief that “the moment you make a mistake it’s over” the whole time after all. Incidentally, despite not making a real mistake I still ended up like this, you know? My whole body is a wreck. One of my eyes was crushed. Incidentally, it’s impossible to repair it. I guess that’s what makes him a proper god huh, as it seems he had some technique to block my body from being restored, and I was wounded while he made full use of it. It’s not like I absolutely cannot heal though, more like it’ll consume a lot of energy to forcibly heal it, so healing is on hold until the battle is over.
However, since I’ve beaten the biggest obstacle in Kuro, the rest is done and dusted. Now then, let’s whack this draconian for starters eh.
「Shiro-chan.」
But, just when I was about to go the Demon King called out to me from behind. I turn my head around while being on guard against the draconian. The Demon King was gazing at me with a complicated expression. Relief, delight, but also grief? ….Ah, for Kuro huh. From the Demon King’s perspective, Kuro is someone that she’s known for a long, long time after all, so once he was defeated she had complex feelings about it despite him being hostile huh.
「That’s, alive.」 「Eh? Oh… is that so?」
Therefore, I decided I should report that Kuro is alive for now. He looks dead for sure, but he’s genuinely alive despite all that. I guess you could say that since gods are semi independent of their physical body, destroying their flesh is not necessarily enough for them to die. Both that body and his original body are basically done for at any rate. Currently he has taken too much damage and is also exhausted. It’s doubtful whether his body can be revived so he certainly looks dead, but he’s genuinely alive. Well, since I made sure that he won’t be able to revive any time soon, it should be quite some time before he’ll be able to move again though.
「i SeE. THeN i cAN fIGht WIthOuT wORry.」
That’s hard to make out!? It’s really hard to make out what this guy is saying due to his peculiar voice, but this draconian actually thinks he’ll be able to fight me?
「HeRE i COme.」
The draconian approaches me. Hmm? His speed isn’t particularly high. This is going to be simple enough to avoid… WAIT!
There’s a nasty feeling coming from the draconian’s fist. I instinctively realise that I mustn’t take that blow. This feeling is… a Heresy Attack!
The Heresy Attack skill has the effect of directly damaging the soul. It’s even effective against gods, or rather, it’s basically a skill that exists to be used to take on gods. I did try my best to replicate this Heresy Attack, but it was so difficult that I abandoned the idea. You can see D’s nasty side in the fact that she incorporated such a challenging skill into the System! Who the heck was she plotting against to receive such an attack huh! There should have only ever been one god in this world you know! It’s that Kuro guy who’s lying there with eyes like a dead fish!
I avoid the draconian’s attack. I mustn’t take that Heresy Attack. While it’s possible to heal the physical body instantly, it’s not possible to heal damage to the soul quickly. Whoa man. Just when I thought this was done and dusted it turns out I still had to deal with this joker in the pack huh.
Translation notes:
“Search and destroy” – yep, this is a Hellsing reference.
Regarding Reise’s speech style, this is a somewhat liberal interpretation as the original Japanese uses non-standard character sets to indicate that his pronunciation is strange. Try to imagine that Reise doesn’t have a human head or tongue or throat and so sounds rather reptilian/alien.