The Thunder of a Thousand Bells
What in the world just happened?
The situation was so far beyond comprehension that my thoughts couldn't catch up with reality.
Where had the Colossus, who had been squaring off against me mere moments ago, disappeared to? Why was I standing here like this? What had acted upon what, and how, to bring about this state of affairs?
I didn't know. I couldn't know. I couldn't understand.
I didn't want to know. I didn't want to understand.
Something definitely flashed just now...
And then... it was already now.
It was as if the process itself had vanished — as though every step in between had been erased, leaving nothing but the result behind.
But that was impossible. There was no such thing as a result without a process in this world.
Which meant this was...
An attack moving too fast for the eye to follow?
An attack even my own eyes couldn't track?
Understanding finally caught up with reality — and the reality I'd been putting off came crashing down on me all at once.
"Ngh—?!"
A jolt. Pain surged through me, so sharp it made my brain ache. The instant that had stretched on forever was over, and without the slightest courtesy, reality tore through my body.
The pain in my arm throbbed dully. Nothing was broken, but damage I couldn't afford to ignore had piled up — all from a single blow.
An absurd speed. An absurd force.
The sheer monstrousness of it made my mind short out for a moment.
"...Hoo."
And then it started working again.
Calm down.
I steadied my trembling self. Inflating the enemy's size served no purpose whatsoever.
Now was not the time to cower and shake in fear of my opponent — it was the time to read them, and to find a way through.
And if there was no way through...
Then I carve one.
I didn't cling to a path that didn't exist. If there was none, then I would force open the blocked veins of the world itself and make a road where there was nothing.
As I always had.
As I always would.
Here and now, I would wring out everything I had to beat the opponent before me.
The attack itself isn't the problem.
I'd been stunned by the outrageous speed and power, but looking at it calmly, the injury was less severe than I'd feared.
The pain in my back, where I'd been driven through a cliff face, and my arm, which had taken what felt like a direct hit. Injuries I couldn't ignore, yes — but nothing was broken, and I hadn't lost consciousness. Clearly, without realizing it, I'd leapt backward even as I defended, blunting the impact.
Which meant my unconscious had managed to react to that insane strike.
And if my unconscious could react, then surely — surely — my conscious mind could too. That was what I chose to believe.
Even compared to Ottar, this is a different dimension entirely.
Beastified Ottar had been a nightmare of an opponent, without question. It was like fighting someone who'd gained a whole level — an existence that violated every rule — and yet...
The Colossus had cleared even that bar with room to spare. A super-speed beyond mere swiftness, and yet with power held in perfect restraint.
He threw flawless attacks with flawless stats. Every movement of that bestial warrior's body would become a blade aimed at my life, charging in like a torrent.
And this was surely just a taste. Surely I wouldn't come through the next exchange so unscathed. It would be no surprise at all if the next blow took me out of the fight entirely.
"Hah..."
Thump. Thump.
I reined in my pulse, which was quickening by the second. My heartbeat slowed — but in proportion, the pounding in my chest only grew heavier and heavier.
Alongside bravado, my instinct for battle swelled larger and larger. But this, too, was just pissing into the wind — there was no way I could keep pace with that cataclysm on guts alone.
Which meant I would simply have to find another means.
I, too, had come through more than my share of hells.
Enemies absurdly beyond my strength? I'd faced countless ones like that.
My adventure was never so cheap a thing that something like this could break it.
And so—!
"This much—!"
"—is coming, is it?"
Blazing with fighting spirit once more, I surged forward.
The cliff shattered, rock spraying everywhere, but to a rabbit and a lion, boulders were less than gravel. Crushing the rocks that blocked my way, kicking off the ground — we charged at each other again.
"Kgh...!"
Even now, it was an attack closer to super-speed than anything my eyes could follow.
All I caught was a flash of afterglow — and once again, I reacted by a hair's breadth and flowed straight into a counter.
But...
"Light."
Far too light.
Before that lion, the rabbit's teeth were pitifully feeble things.
A rabbit's strike that hadn't so much as frayed a single hair, let alone pierced the hide.
As if to pay for the blow that fizzled out, I raised that mighty arm once more.
Zrrring—
"Oh ho...?"
WHUMM!!
The Colossus's strike came with a tremendous roar of wind at its back.
But this time, it was the Colossus who had lost his quarry.
A faint chime had rung out — and then his opponent had simply erased herself from sight. The blow earlier, and now the battle with silence itself — had the rabbit, all this time, been hiding a hidden blade of her own?
Otherwise, there'd be no fun in it.
This was a struggle he had greeted with his whole heart. Ending it too easily was not what the Colossus wished for.
Now, then — what will you throw at me?
With that thought, he widened his sense for ki and searched for her. Contrary to expectation, she had no intention of letting her attacks be read so easily.
And besides... an instinct that wasn't quite an instinct told him: he must never, ever grant his opponent time.
Zrrring—
Zrrring—
Zrrring—
"This is...?"
But before long, a shade of trouble crept into the Colossus's expression.
Chimes rang out all around him — and nearly simultaneous with them, tiny detonations.
Ultra-high-speed movement, powered by a chain of accumulated force.
Movement that brought the Destroyer to mind. With a thunderclap of bursting air, the rabbit made herself into a shell of light and bore down upon the Colossus.
It was nothing less than an artificial rank-up. Without the aid of an old comrade, through a rough and unpolished sublimation, she challenged the Colossus all the same.
The drain was immense, its limits plain — but in this single instant, the rabbit once again stood on the same line as the lion.
But...
THUD—!!
"Hm."
"Tch...!"
Even a kick thrown with all that momentum behind it didn't so much as shift the Colossus's expression.
Against a strike in a different dimension from everything before it, the Colossus still stood tall and proud, displaying his majesty as if nothing had happened.
Too thick!
That hide. That muscle. Everything that made up the lion refused to give, as though it were the wall of a fortress itself.
Impregnable. Unbreakable. Every epithet in existence flashed through my head.
Durability so extreme I doubted we were even the same species. I never thought I'd feel this way again!
"Ugh?!"
As if refusing to forgive even a fleeting moment of distraction, the merciless lion's attack pressed down on the rabbit.
An attack at a speed invisible to the eye. Throwing myself backward on pure instinct alone, something grazed past right in front of me by the narrowest of margins.
It was a claw. Five claws carrying a killing intent that no sword under heaven could rival.
Claws that seemed as if they would carve out space itself — they sheared through the white strands that couldn't keep pace, and reached to take the rabbit's life.
"You have leisure to be thinking of other things?"
"Leisure? I've got plenty of it!!"
But the rabbit, too, was not one to sit still.
The rabbit had no claws — but she had a blade.
My hand shot to my waist, and I drew one of the beloved weapons I hadn't unsheathed in so long.
It was the divine dagger prepared by the kindly goddess of the hearth... no. It wasn't.
It was a spirit's sword, forged from thunder itself.
A masterpiece reforged by the one-eyed goddess and her devoted smith, hammered back to life once more.
And its name was—
"[Astrapē]!"
FLASH—!
Far from Orario, in the distant mountain range, thunder rose toward the heavens.