Earth-Shattering
Enough to tear the sky asunder and set the earth itself trembling.
These magibeast army pieces of shit, why the hell won't they end? How long are they gonna keep coming?
These fuckers just keep coming. I kill them and kill them and they fucking keep keep keep keep!!!!! Keep fucking coming!!!!!
They don't even drop anything when you kill them, so why won't it end? Is this even meant to be clearable? Did I do something wrong?
I grind my ass off killing them and the bastards just suddenly turn into particles and vanish. No loot left behind!!!
I spent my own money and resources and manpower to kill them!!!!!!! And I get NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!
What the hell am I supposed to do? Please fucking tell me already, I've already ruined twelve runs on these sons of bitches, I'm so pissed I could die, ahh
I fucking gathered only the top-tier firepower heroes into a strike force and sent them and it was a complete goddamn disaster
The fortress got wiped because all the firepower left and the strike force couldn't even shave 3% off the Abyss's HP
You sons of bitches, this run was actually feeling really good too, ahh
The Abyss of the Army. When you tried to clear it in the game, it was a truly goddamn nightmare of a Great Rift.
All it did was pour out a magibeast army, but the real problem was that the pour never, ever stopped. An endless tide of magibeasts that left not a single scrap of loot even when you killed them. Of course, if you laid traps and dug moats you could hold them off—but that was only for surviving. Clearing it was a completely different story.
The way to clear the Abyss of the Army was simple: destroy the Great Rift itself. It looked incredibly simple, and in a way it was—but actually breaking the Great Rift was anything but. A Great Rift was a catastrophe created for the sole purpose of ending the world. That meant you needed destructive power capable of flipping the world itself if you wanted to shatter one. Literally earth-shattering destructive power.
"Yeah. With earth-shattering destructive power, you can break the Abyss of the Army."
And right now, I had a means of producing exactly that kind of power.
Kuoohhh—!
The rocket engines had just ignited, seconds from launch—a short-range ballistic missile, a thoroughly spirited little tool.
Shwaaaaaaak—!
From the dimensional gate that opened above the Termin mansion, a short-range ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead streaked toward its target.
"So from this moment on, your name is Earth-Shattering! Go, Earth-Shattering—live up to your name!"
The nuclear-armed short-range ballistic missile Earth-Shattering belched scarlet flame and left a trail of white smoke as it shrank to a speck and vanished. From Termin Territory it flew toward the Abyss of the Army a hundred and fifty kilometers away at Mach 6. Two thousand forty meters per second. Earth-Shattering was six times faster than sound—fast enough to end everything before the magibeast army currently racing this way could ever reach Termin Territory.
"Tsk. Still, it's a shame I won't get to see the explosion. I finally fire a nuke and I don't even get the mushroom cloud."
I was clicking my tongue in mild regret, watching the contrail Earth-Shattering had left behind, when a blue window popped up right in front of my face.
Missile launched! Would you like to watch the broadcast?
"Broadcast? Wait, does that mean I can watch the nuke go off?"
A convenience feature exclusive to Red Button Mode, just for you! You can watch everything from the missile's point of view all the way through the explosion footage!
"Whoa, you've got a feature like that? Service is insane. I want to watch! Play it right now!"
Command confirmed. Beginning broadcast!
The blue window expanded until it was about the size of a computer monitor. Through the screen I could see that Earth-Shattering had already closed to the point where the Abyss of the Army was visible.
Shwaaaaaaak—!
Because Earth-Shattering was six times faster than sound, the only noise coming from the monitor was the warhead ripping through the wall of air as it flew.
Impact in 10 seconds. Beginning countdown. 9 seconds. 8 seconds. 7 seconds. 6 seconds. 5 seconds.
On the monitor, the Abyss of the Army—which had been nothing more than a distant speck—swelled in size with terrifying speed.
4 seconds. 3 seconds. 2 seconds.
And when only two seconds remained until impact, the Abyss of the Army finally revealed a size worthy of the name Great Rift. A crack large enough to casually swallow our entire Termin Territory had torn open in midair. At least a kilometer across—a catastrophe so vast you couldn't even imagine standing against it.
"Whoa, look at the size of that thing. Seeing it in reality is just... yeah, that doesn't make any sense."
The Abyss of the Army, realized in the flesh, was so monstrously huge it almost felt majestic.
1 second.
But my awe at the sight of the Abyss of the Army lasted only a heartbeat.
Missile impact confirmed.
Because the short-range ballistic missile Earth-Shattering had just struck the Abyss of the Army.
Missile impact confirmed. Relocating viewpoint for live explosion coverage.
With the blue window's notification, the viewpoint on the monitor shifted. Roughly ten kilometers up and out from the Abyss of the Army—the perfect seat for watching the blast.
-!!!!!
The instant a pure white speck dropped toward the Abyss of the Army, the world transformed in the blink of an eye. A sun was born where the Great Rift had been.
A fireball forged by a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 500 kilotons of TNT. The fireball swelled in an instant and swallowed the Great Rift whole. The vacuum created by its birth sucked the surrounding air in with violent force, devouring the earth's crust and clouds of dust from the ground. Soil and rock rising from below merged with the fireball into a mass of black-red flame. Following the laws of physics, that black-red flame shot upward at tremendous speed. The pillar of fire climbed until it reached an altitude free of atmospheric interference, then expanded in every direction in a perfect hemispherical bloom.
And that was how it was born—the proof that the god of destruction had arrived. The mushroom cloud.
KWAAAAAAAAAANG-!!!!
The moment the mushroom cloud formed, a roar that seemed ready to overturn the entire world rolled outward. Humanity's strongest weapon, the one that tears the sky and sets the earth trembling.
Kieeeeeeeek-!!!!
Even the Abyss of the Army could only scream its death cry and collapse before a hydrogen bomb that had come ready for a fight. Earth-Shattering had lived up to its name with flying colors.
"It even made a Great Rift scream. Nukes really are no joke."
Even a veteran of Crack Kingdom like me had never heard a Great Rift's death cry before, and I was still marveling at the novelty when another blue notification window appeared before my eyes.
Abyss of the Army defeated. You have achieved an impossible feat. Distributing rewards to the player.
"Whoa, rewards!"
It had been a pure one-click freeload, but rewards still never failed to make a man's heart race. I immediately reached out and tapped the blue notification window to check what I'd gotten.
"······Huh?"
Head maid Rina, who had been curled up on the central staircase of the Termin mansion with both ears covered and eyes squeezed shut, suddenly felt that something was wrong. The ground tremor caused by the advancing magibeasts—something she had been able to feel through her entire body even with her eyes and ears blocked—had cut off all at once, as if someone had snipped a string.
"What······?"
With the magibeast army already at the very doorstep of Termin Territory, Rina could not imagine any reason the tremors would simply stop. Why would an army of magibeasts that had annihilated even the Great Rift subjugation force organized under royal decree suddenly halt its advance right in front of Termin Territory?
To find out, Rina carefully lifted her head, rose to her feet, and looked toward the window. The mansion of House Termin stood on the highest ground in the entire territory; through the window she could see past the walls.
"·····Uh, uhhh? Uhhhhhhhhh?!!!"
The moment Rina looked beyond the walls through the window, she forgot every scrap of the dignity a maid was supposed to maintain. Her mouth fell open and she could only stare in pure shock. The entire magibeast army that had reached the foot of the walls was lying dead, like puppets whose strings had been cut.
"Th-th-this, this is, what on earth is······."
She was still covering her mouth with both hands, reeling from the impossible sight her own eyes had confirmed, when a familiar voice spoke from right behind her.
"Well? I told you I'd wipe them all out, didn't I?"
Rina spun around on pure reflex. What she found waiting for her was Offen Termin, wearing an extremely self-satisfied expression.