Trouble Comes in Waves
"I smell blood."
As though waking from a long sleep, my mind—left adrift by two years of torture—began slowly to return.
The tentacles that had been suckling at my breast milk were nowhere to be seen. Every tentacle in my field of vision lay limp and collapsed against the floor.
"I smell people outside. They are drawing closer."
Through the fog still clouding my head, I tried to work out why the Colossus had stopped milking me—and what it was saying.
People? Drawing closer?
Why on earth would anyone be coming to this collapsed cavern?
"No…. Don't…. come…."
The Colossus had visibly withered. A few more weeks—no, mere days—and it would cease to exist.
All I needed was a little more time. So why, of all moments, were people approaching now?
"At last, I shall drink blood. This is my resurrection."
A voice laced with faint rapture echoed through the entire cavern.
Shortly after, the Colossus reached into a shadowed corner and lifted out a dust-caked sphere.
"Acrab. Aldebaran. Acrux. Awake. I wish to taste blood."
At the Colossus's summons, the three Guardian Stars, sunk until now in deep slumber, opened their eyes and rose.
But they too had starved and grown frail during their confinement, staggering upright like newborn calves barely able to stand.
"Guardian Stars. Flesh and blood are walking into my maw of their own accord. Offer up a feast long overdue."
With those words, the Colossus wrung out a handful of crimson mist and scattered it over the Guardian Stars.
At once, a strange light kindled in the eyes of the three who had been stumbling mere moments before.
"Go. Slaughter them all."
Without a word of answer, the three Guardian Stars snatched up their weapons and rushed out of the cavern like people possessed.
I had to stop them. Whatever the reason, whoever those people were, none of it mattered.
If the Colossus fed on blood and flesh and regained its strength, the Red Cult would rise again.
Countless people would be massacred, and victims doomed to the same wretched fate as mine would multiply beyond number.
"You want... to drink blood?"
"Kwahahahaha! Yes. Merely imagining it is sweet. At last, my hunger will end."
"You think the Guardian Stars will bring blood back for you?"
"...What nonsense is this."
The Colossus bared its sharp fangs and shoved its half-collapsed face toward me.
"They, too, hungered for blood. If they hunt people, they will devour their fill themselves before ever offering any to you."
"They exist because of me. They obey me absolutely—they are my Guardian Stars."
"I was a Guardian Star too, you know. And I betrayed you."
In that instant, the Colossus's telekinesis bore down upon my body.
Enduring the pain of being crushed alive, I desperately forced out my fading voice.
"Even if that weren't true! If the ones coming from outside—ghk—kill your Guardian Stars, what happens then?"
"Silence!!"
A voice seething with fury reverberated through the whole cavern.
Had this been the old days, its sheer killing intent alone would have knocked me senseless, but now that the Colossus had lost its power, it was merely a bit loud.
"If things stay like this... you'll never get to drink—blood!"
Whoosh—!!
"Kep! Kugh...?!"
A single tentacle shot forward, seized my throat, and hoisted me up.
But it lacked the strength to lift me entirely, managing only to drag my fallen body halfway off the ground.
"Every drop of blood in this world belongs to me. However far it flows, all blood is destined to course back to me."
"Are you sure? Everyone knows this place is—khk—the Red Cult's headquarters. The moment corpses appear... won't they burn them away with Holy Fire?"
For the first time, the Colossus fell silent, unable to retort.
Its eyes had begun to tremble with fear.
It knew, of course. It knew that if its starvation dragged on, its very existence would be snuffed out.
"I... will someday return to the heavens... Damn it all!"
So a god had come to understand a mortal's emotions—the terror of death.
"If the Guardian Stars who went outside die—if they burn beneath Holy Fire—you'll only thirst all the more."
"Silence! No! I would never—"
"Why not just slip inside my body and move it yourself? Sink your teeth into a human throat and drink that hot, sweet blood firsthand. You can do that much, can't you?"
"KRAAAAAAAH!!"
The Colossus let out a scream overflowing with more desperate longing than it had shown at any moment before.
For two years, just as I had suffered, so too had the Colossus starved.
A being whose divine authority had rotted away, yet who could not relinquish a god's arrogance.
It was like a flimsy, rotting wooden pillar—one small push, and it would collapse under its own weight.
"Oh, right. A half-baked god sealed underground by your own supreme lord can't even dominate one mortal mind, can it?"
"You—! How dare a mortal speak of me that way! Fine! I shall drink with my own mouth, then! I will tear out the throat of the Saintess you love so dearly, and grant you despair!!"
The Colossus's soul abandoned its flesh and burst outward.
The body, already fading away, crumbled to nothing, and in its place a mist-like form laced with crimson electricity filled the cavern ceiling.
"Give it to me. Your body."
Then the crimson shape swirled like a vortex and burrowed into me.
A god, however decayed. It crushed my soul beneath it, carving into me everything the Colossus possessed.
Craving for blood. Violence. Hunger for flesh.
"I knew this would happen."
But that was all the Colossus had left.
The cult leader's reckless ritual had severed most of its body, and for two years it hadn't received even a single proper offering.
It was no god worshipped by the multitudes—only a stray wraith, sealed away in a deep cavern, stripped of its power.
"What... Why won't your mind break?"
"For ten years already—because of you! I lost everything!"
A shriek of pure malice rang through the cavern.
Only for a heartbeat, but I felt the Colossus's presence within my soul dim ever so slightly.
"So I was milked dry by you for two years! Do you really think I'd lose my mind over this now?!"
My soul and the soul of the Red Colossus collided head-on.
A clash of objects and a clash of minds are different things. They do not grind each other down through impact—they blend, like paint mixing, slowly neutralizing each other.
What remains in the end is the will with the deeper, darker color.
"Aaahh... Uaaaaaah!! This cannot be! I'm starving! Even one last drop of blood, please, just—"
But a god that had cowered underground, living off the offerings its followers dragged to it, possessed no true will at all.
"Hungry...."
The Colossus's cries sank into sleep within my soul.
And in the mind growing quiet around it, I too, crushed beneath the accumulated weight of every wound I carried, lowered myself onto the cold floor.
When I came to, everything had changed.
The first thing I felt was a thirst for blood. Mercifully it wasn't severe, but I could tell it would turn dangerous the moment I glimpsed blood in a fight.
Calming myself and steadying my mind, I next became aware of the changes in my body.
"What... what on earth is this?"
The clothes that had appeared on me out of nowhere were one thing, but there was an alien sensation near my back and hips.
A pair of wings that had no business existing on a human body—and a small, slender tail—were trembling faintly.
"If Paula sees me like this... what am I supposed to do?"
The aftereffects of two years of torture, and the sudden transformation of both body and mind.
The moment the rage and obsession that had driven my limbs vanished, confusion and terror seized my mind.
What do I—what am I supposed to do? Why did my body change like this? And what even are these clothes? If the thirst for blood gets worse, then I'll...
Slap—!
My head had grown far too tangled, so I struck my own cheek as hard as I could to shake off the lethargy.
The stinging pain blooming across my face brought a measure of coolness back to my thoughts.
With a deep breath, I recalled what I had to do right now.
"I have to stop the Guardian Stars."
The Colossus was gone, but its Guardian Stars remained. They would still be moving under that final command.
I will show you myself suckling at the Saintess's blood. That was what it had said.
So Paula must be here. And the Guardian Stars would target her above all else.
"I have to stop them. I'll—gack!! Gack!!"
But the instant I tried to push myself up, my legs gave out.
With a wrenching lurch of my stomach, blood spilled from my mouth and splattered across the ground.
"Right. I was a Guardian Star too."
Even severed from a god, the blessing does not vanish.
But the shock of it—both physical and spiritual—was unavoidable.
Fortunately, I bore the blessing of regeneration, so my wounds would heal given nothing but time.
"The other Guardian Stars... I hope they're in even worse shape than me. Cough! Cough!"
Let's look at this as optimistically as possible.
The pain and the exhaustion weighing on me now, the Guardian Stars would be feeling them too.
Possibly worse—maybe they were wounded, maybe they were dying.
"But... if that child lost me and grew weak, if she couldn't win—"
And then I forced myself to imagine the opposite. The worst case.
What if the original story had warped? What if Paula, having witnessed my death, had gone down a different path?
[Antares! Please, help me! It hurts!]
The Paula in my imagination wept, her face contorted with agony.
Rage and urgency tangled together, and a burning heat coiled around my entire body.
"Move, damn you! Move, you wretched body!"
I nearly toppled over again, but after a desperate struggle, bracing myself against the wall, I made it to my feet.
Half-leaning against the rock face, I shuffled forward bit by bit.
As my wounded body gradually knit itself back together, speed returned to my legs, and before I knew it, I was sprinting toward the surface.
Boom—! Boom—!
"Attack! Don't give them an opening!"
"Fall back! All soldiers, retreat!"
KRA-KOOM—!
At the cacophony ringing in my ears, I quickened my pace.
Divine power wafted from beyond that corridor. Fierce and clear—an aura just like the one that child gave off.
"Paula!"
I squeezed out the last dregs of strength left in my body. Without even thinking to steady my ragged breathing, I ran onward.
Let her be disgusted when she sees what I've become. Let her resent me, curse me—I didn't care. I just wanted to see Paula.
I wanted to confirm with my own two eyes that she was safe.
"GRAAAAAAH!!"
Thud—!
"Got him! He's down!"
But what appeared before me was not the woman I had searched for so desperately.
The divine power I had sensed was not Paula's.
It flowed from a boy standing atop the trampled corpse of the halved Aldebaran.
"The Hero... Ain."
And that wasn't all.
Behind the Hero stood his mentor, the man called the Sword Saint—Albatross. And the half-elf Kali as well.
Yuka the Druid was missing, and Paula too, but they were unmistakably members of the Hero party I had seen in the original story.
"Hey! Pint-sized Hero! Over there! Some stragglers left!"
"No, I'm not—"
They turned openly murderous intent upon me.
Just as I tried to explain myself, a shuffling of footsteps sounded behind my back, and a colossal magic circle drew near.
I turned my head—and above me, beyond the shadow draped overhead, crimson blood was dripping down.
"Kwooaaaah...."
It was Acrux, hoisting the torn-apart corpse of a soldier.
Perhaps enraged by Aldebaran's death, it paid me no heed whatsoever and bellowed at the Hero party.
"Is that the one they called Acrux, the Colossus's avatar?"
"The red-haired woman must be Antares. The Saintess said she was originally friendly, but—"
"It seems she's been subjugated by the Colossus. Acrux is moving together with them, after all."
"Do we really need to look that deeply? Look at the wings on her back. Those are the wings the devils in scripture carry."
That's not it.
I have no intention of fighting you. Please, just let me see Paula.
But every word I tried to speak vanished the moment Acrux's roar came thundering through the cavern.
"KWAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"
BOOM—!!
Acrux's massive bulk hurled itself at the Hero party.
I frantically twisted my body to flee the battlefield—and in that very instant—
"O Light! Deliver judgment!"
A blinding radiance erupted from the Hero's Holy Sword and split the world apart.