The Rabbit and the Lion
The Colossus charged straight at me.
Fast?! He was so massive it made no sense—how could a body that size move like that? But this was no time to wonder about it!
"Ghk...!"
I threw my legs into motion and dodged backward. But the Colossus treated my desperate scramble as beneath even mockery, snatching me out of the air with one enormous hand and slamming me straight into the ground.
"Kuhak?!"
Thud— thud— my body bounced across the earth like a ball, the ground booming beneath me.
But the pain was nothing so light.
I can't... breathe...!
A single instant of attack had stolen the air from my lungs. In this state—!
"Ghk...?"
I braced at once for the next blow, but the Colossus didn't press the chase any further.
What was this? Was he wary of my counterattack...? No, that didn't feel right either.
"Ghk... What are you thinking?"
"Consideration. You must be rattled, being thrown in like that."
A flicker of anger rose at the Colossus's words.
Not because he'd attacked me out of nowhere and then said something like that—no, that wasn't it.
If I had to put this feeling into words... well. It might come off a little arrogant, but if I had to name it...
How dare you look down on me?!
That was the only way to describe it.
He's strong.
My opponent was in no way weaker than I was. No matter how I looked at it, this was someone I couldn't promise myself victory against, even fighting at full power.
A wall so immense it brought to mind my bout with Ottar long ago. And yet what I felt now wasn't despairing bravado—it was a competitive fire, blazing up out of control.
This man had dismissed me. Something I had always accepted as a matter of course—and right now, I couldn't accept it at all.
"There's a better look on your face now."
Hah. Watching the Colossus smile that same condescending smile, I made up my mind.
I was going to plant one, dead center, in that composed face of his.
After all, in a fight like this, the rule is simple: no matter how many times you get knocked around, the first one to bleed loses.
From here on, I would aim for his face and nothing else.
Clutching my one and only hand into a fist, I charged straight at the Colossus.
"Hmm...? Is Maxim not here today?"
"Right? The captain missing his seat—now that's a rare sight."
At that very moment, in the Zeus Familia home. Having already confirmed the presence of that troublemaker Cranel, Zeus had been enjoying a peaceful breakfast when he noticed something off about the usual scene and raised the topic.
Maxim. Zeus's finest child, the one who commanded every member of the Familia—no, the strongest being in all of Orario.
With his stately appearance and the weight of character to match, the whole Familia relied upon and stood in awe of their captain. His absence left everyone with questions.
Maxim always ate breakfast. Unless he had gone on an expedition into the Dungeon, he was always the first to arrive at the dining hall, no matter what else was happening.
There was no particular reason for it. If pressed, you'd have to say it was simply his nature.
The same actions, at the same time, every day. That was, in a sense, Maxim's routine.
Today, that routine had broken. As the members slowly realized what was happening, unease rippled through the hall.
"What, is the captain sleeping in? Must be nice."
"Like that could ever happen. He's not Cranel."
"H-hey..."
"Did he go into the Dungeon alone? He did seem to be up to something lately."
"Keeping it a secret on purpose? He'd know showing up like this would get everyone talking."
All sorts of speculation flew back and forth, but not a word of it carried any real worry for Maxim.
It wasn't that they disliked him, or that they didn't care.
If anything, this was faith. The unshakable conviction that nothing in this world could bring harm to Maxim.
The name of the Colossus. The name of the strongest. Those names carried that much weight—and were that much solid.
"Old man, you know anything?"
"Hmm... nope, nothing..."
Zeus had no real lead either. And yet, somehow, his words trailed off vaguely, as if he couldn't quite commit to them.
Right, nothing was nagging at him. Nothing at all.
And yet...
Something feels... really off about this?
A feeling of mounting, maddening dread was creeping over him. What was this?
This is... a worse instinct than the time I was juggling eight women behind Hera's back and got exposed—chased by all nine of them, Hera included...?
Feeling a strangely specific premonition in the oddest of places, Zeus broke into a cold sweat.
The members noticed something strange about him—but the question would never get its answer.
KA-BOOOM—
Because a tremor born far in the distance reached all the way to Orario.
The strong of the city felt it. The Zeus and Hera Familias felt it.
By instinct, by intuition—everyone, without exception, understood it naturally.
The collision of two colossal powers.
A warped stretch of time that could not be called an instant or an eternity. An absurd shockwave shook Orario to its core.
And then—
KRA-BOOOM-!!!
"Wha—?!"
"Wh-what the hell?!"
Something came flying in and blew out one side of the building, and everyone scrambled in shock even as they snapped into combat stances.
Everyone gathered here belonged to the strongest Familia in Orario. Not a single fool among them would freeze up and fail to move just because something unexpected had happened.
"Eh? Ehh...?!"
...Except one.
"All positions. Guard formation. It's fast enough to slip past our eyes. Half of you focus on protecting Lord Zeus."
"""Yes, sir!!!"""
At Vice-Captain Zard's command, the members moved with drilled precision. Formations set, they waited for whatever had come flying in.
"""......"""
But even as time passed, there was no reaction from it.
Had it fled? Just as that thought crossed their minds, a wet, twitching sound of something wriggling drifted out from within the smoke.
The wind blew. The smoke cleared. And the object was revealed.
"Huh?"
Zeus went bug-eyed at the thing that had appeared (?).
"UOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
"GUAAAAAAAHHH!!!!"
The roars of rabbit and lion tangled together.
As the rabbit fought desperately against what looked like a one-sided slaughter, the lion's roar grew rougher.
Is that all you've got? This is the extent of you?
At the lion's sneering, dismissive attitude, the rabbit bared its teeth and threw itself forward to sever the predator's throat.
The rabbit was, without question, weaker than the lion. But it was no chick, either.
Having weathered countless adventures and reached its completed form, the rabbit did not wilt even in a duel with the lion—it carved away at the beast's flesh, striking again and again to bring it down.
Wisdom that had once been immature had grown into flesh and muscle.
A body that had once been frail had grown vast in power.
Covering what its body lacked with honed technique and cunning, the rabbit laid bare its own trajectories without reservation, holding nothing back.
In strength, the lion ruled. In speed, the lion ruled.
Yet even under those crushing conditions, the rabbit chose only to press ever forward.
I will not bend. So if you think you can break me—go ahead and try.
Delighting in the rabbit's defiance, the lion roared in joy, gaping its maw wide to snap the rabbit in two.
"HAAAH!!"
"GRRUH!!"
Fist met fist.
A boulder of a fist against a fern-frond of a fist, far too delicate to stand against it. And yet, however slight the gap in their strength, the two fists ground against each other in perfect deadlock, carrying the contest onward.
But stalemates last only an instant. In the end, the difference in power was small—but it was unmistakable.
And still, the rabbit bored in.
"UWAAAAAAH!"
"GRUH...?!"
A blitz of point-blank combat that wrung every drop of advantage from the difference in their builds. Unlike the lion, whose body stretched nearly three meters, the rabbit—comparatively petite—thrived at this range.
The rabbit's kick slammed dead into the lion's abdomen! The lion's torso bent slightly and gave ground backward.
But perhaps the blow hadn't been all that meaningful. The lion was only briefly rattled—then his ferocity burned hotter than ever as he threw himself back into the struggle.
Their bodies crossed and clashed again and again. Where the rabbit spent its single arm and both legs without a shred of restraint, the lion fought with nothing but his own body and two fists as weapons.
Strike, kick, shove, grapple. Hammer and be hammered, hammer and be hammered—no retreat, no defense, nothing but an endless single-minded charge. The clearing had long since been torn upside down by the shockwaves of their collision; all that remained standing was one absurdly massive pillar.
But the two of them paid it no mind, trading blows without pause. The stray thoughts had long since vanished from their minds, leaving only the single-minded resolve to break the opponent before them.
Every time their attacks collided, the terrain itself was shaved away, bit by bit. How many clashes had it been? The first to perish was neither the rabbit nor the lion—but the earth beneath them.
"?!"
"Hm."
Weight and elasticity met in a kick and a fist of brutish, unyielding force. The instant they collided, the stage transformed along the battlefield where the ground had gloriously died—
The rabbit above. The lion below. But even in freefall, the struggle did not stop.
⟨ FIREBOLT ⟩
Flame-lightning poured out. Thirty-three bolts.
Just as in his contest with the witch, he held nothing back—an indiscriminate barrage, fired without restraint.
A barrage of flame-lightning. No—a wall of flame-lightning came surging toward the Colossus.
"Hmph."
But with a single swing—just one small grunt of effort, one fist thrown through the empty air—the flame-lightning crumbled away, scattered as easily as if it had never existed at all.
Thirty-two bolts had been sacrificed so that a single one might survive. Even alone, that last bolt burned its own body out, trying to fulfill the meaning of its existence—
"Lukewarm."
Snap— caught in the Colossus's careless grip, crushed before it could even struggle, it perished gloriously with one pitiful final word.
The rabbit's bombardment had been reduced to seafoam.
But it had not been a meaningless act.
Bzzt—
"!"
If nothing else, it had stolen the lion's gaze for a single, fleeting instant.
⟨ FIREBOLT ⟩
Flame-lightning, loosed once more.
Three full seconds of charging. A bolt of power on an entirely different plane from the last came hurtling toward the lion.
This time, had he failed to stop it? The lion was sent flying, blasted away alongside the bolt.