The King's Baptism
Impressive.
Flying backward from the rabbit's strike, the lion thought this to himself.
Anyone who knew the lion would have been astonished. And then, no doubt, they would have envied the one who earned it—for the lion's praise came only when the lion truly acknowledged an opponent.
And at the same time, he would pity them. Because once the lion acknowledged you, the true baptism had only just begun.
KWAAANG—!
The Sacred Flame, charging like an enraged bull, erupted in a magnificent explosion together with the Colossus.
And yet Vesta's expression remained as keenly honed as ever.
He's not someone who falls to something like this.
Three seconds' worth of charged power. It had certainly been amplified, but could it so much as scratch him? Forget cutting off his breath—it was doubtful it had even opened a wound.
Still, the momentum had swung to his side. He would press the attack—now!
He took a single step forward, drove power into his outstretched foreleg, and hurled himself at the Colossus still wreathed in the smoke, every ounce of his strength behind the blow.
His opponent stepped back.
"Kgh...?!"
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
His heart began hammering at a terrifying rate.
Cold sweat would not stop, and every pore across his body contracted. His instincts—the sensor that had always, always sensed danger and kept him alive—were screaming.
If you want to live, run. Now.
An overwhelming, crushing pressure. The air itself grown impossibly heavy. His body, his instincts, his reason—all spoke with one voice, shouting of an overwhelming gulf between species.
"Hm."
The smoke cleared, and from within it emerged the Colossus—
He had taken the attack head-on, and not a single scratch marked him. No—none of that mattered anymore.
That is...
The sight of a colossal wall (Boers) that had once stood planted before him. An overwhelming force that had crushed the tiny door of hope he'd barely managed to pry open.
Maxim had beastified.
A crimson mane and massive fangs. Sharp claws and hide thick as armor—the "thing" gazed down at the rabbit.
Its name, accompanied by an overwhelming, oppressive presence, was master of the savanna, king of beasts.
"Lion Beastman (Nemea)...!"
A name already lost to history—a lineage said to have died out before the Age of the Gods. At the descent of this king, the rabbit's instincts, his very soul, shuddered with dread.
A gulf between species that no effort could ever bridge. Fear felt not at the level of the individual but of the species entire, and his whole body trembled.
It had always been so. Whenever he beastified, every living thing—human and monster alike—was paralyzed with terror.
Even the gods were no exception. Even the mighty Zeus himself had been struck speechless at the sight of him.
The lion was proud. But he was also, at the same time, lonely.
Is there truly no one who can stand against me?
Even looking at the rabbit before him, the lion was indifferent. The creature trembling before him was, quite frankly, a pitiful sight.
As I expected...
The rabbit's struggle had exceeded his expectations. But this was the end. No one alive could withstand what he had become; it was obvious the rabbit would surrender without even managing to fight, just as all the others had.
And so it would end here, after all.
"...Ugh."
He heard the rabbit's scream—a scream without sound, strangled by fear.
So terrified you cannot even cry out?
Maxim regarded the rabbit with cold detachment, as one watches another man's affairs—and yet.
"Uuu..."
...Did that thought displease him somehow? Or had this simply always been a fear meant to be overcome?
"UWAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
"What...?"
The rabbit who had been crumbling apart had, at some point, found his stance again, and now burned his fighting spirit once more into those crimson eyes as he charged at the lion.
The rabbit's unleashed foreleg—a strike that was, even by the lion's standards, not a bad one at all.
The problem was only that his opponent was the worst possible one.
A punch of merely "not bad" caliber did not so much as register against the lion's body.
And yet—it reached him.
As if the difference between species, the overwhelming gulf, all of it meant nothing at all, the rabbit shoved his fangs right up before the lion's face.
Had fear driven him out of his mind?
...No.
Look at those eyes. Look at that burning fighting spirit. Look at that wild, blazing hunger for victory.
Those were not the eyes of a defeated man cowering in terror.
Those eyes—
He's trying to defeat me.
Eyes fixed on nothing but victory.
Eyes the lion had never once seen—and had always, secretly, longed to see.
...Good. Very good.
A small flame flickered to life within Maxim's merciless heart—as if the rabbit's Sacred Flame before him had leapt across and caught.
I came here intending to bestow a lesson... and instead, I find myself receiving one.
The moment he felt this searing hunger for the first time, his body began, absurdly, to heat up in answer.
Heh heh.
For the first time, the lion smiled.
For the first time, the lion bared his fangs.
In that case...
Taking without returning was not to his taste. Whatever he received, he repaid a hundredfold, a thousandfold—be it a kindness or a grudge, even if it was a challenge.
If that is your wish—
Then I will crush you flat, right here.
Unheard, yet unmistakably resounding—a roar from the king newly awakened from his slumber. And with it, the second battle between rabbit and lion began.
"Kgh?!"
The overwhelming presence bore down on his entire body.
The peculiar pressure that the Lion Beastman carried pressed upon him like a great weight, making his body impossibly heavy.
Breathing was difficult. His whole body shook. That thing is a monster. You can't win. Run—
Yes—that thing was just like that time—
The lion's form before his eyes shattered. The lion dissolved, and became a monster with two horns.
The shape of a monster like a jet-black bull, wielding a double-bladed axe.
An overwhelming gulf. An overwhelming terror.
The image of the rival who had always loomed over him rose unbidden. The bitter taste of defeat surged up once more.
The monster's form crumbled, and next he saw the figure of a warrior bearing a sword.
The colossal wall that had once barred his path. The very symbol of despair.
It felt as though the warrior's bronze-indifferent eyes were fixed on him, and the vertigo of that time welled up anew.
The warrior's form crumbled, and next a jet-black dragon stood in its place.
Calamity. Despair. The end of all things. The final existence that no quantity of epithets could ever suffice to describe.
The apocalypse that could not be stopped sneered down at him. The nightmare he could never erase swelled larger and larger before his eyes.
The dragon's form crumbled. By the time he blinked, the figure before him had returned to being a lion.
Vesta gazed at it calmly with his single eye.
As if to carve this newly encountered wall into his memory. As if to swear he would never forget this rival who had left his mark upon his soul.
And then, having seared the lion's form into his eyes, the rabbit raised his fangs.
As he had always done. As he would always do.
Even now, without fail, the rabbit charged headlong into despair.
"UWAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
The rabbit's single strike. His burning body, as though it too were Sacred Flame itself, set his flesh, his soul, his fighting spirit ablaze—a blow carrying power beyond anything his own strength alone could produce.
Just as the lion had done, the rabbit, too, burned his very soul.
The bullfighting instinct that still lingered within the extinguished Sacred Flame ignited.
The rabbit's strike struck true against the lion.
THOOM—! With a heavy, crushing impact, the shockwave blasted everything around it away, and the lion's body bent—slightly.
No—the lion had not moved at all. It was merely that the ground beneath him had caved in, making it look that way.
The lion still stood proudly in place, magnificent and unbowed.
But then, a single thread of light slipped into those leonine eyes—
FLASH—
With the illusion of something glinting, he found his body already embedded halfway through the cliff face of the mountain on the opposite side of the valley.