The Old Fox Meets Her End
KWAAANG!
Thunder and lightning crashed down from the heavens at my every gesture.
Each casual movement carried meaning behind it. My kicks split the earth open, and my swings tore the very air to shreds.
"Wh-what in the world!"
The fox, who had been eating every one of those attacks head-on, spat out a voice thick with panic.
She probably never imagined it. That a mere human could inflict this kind of damage on her.
Then again, was I even human at this point?
"You damn whelp!"
Furious, the fox wove a hand seal and hurled something at me.
Curses far beyond anything Iris could have produced—each and every one of them packed enough killing power to slay an A-rank hero on the slightest graze.
It just wasn't much of a problem for me.
FWOOOOSH!
"Wh-what the—!"
I gave a light puff of breath, a ferocious storm swirled into being, and the curses caught in it vanished as if they had never existed at all.
The staff.
My right hand was gripping a staff.
"Pour down!"
I swung it with everything I had, and black storm clouds began gathering in the sky above the fox.
KWAAAAAH!!!
At the same moment, a torrential downpour came hammering down, dense and unrelenting.
There was one difference between this rain and ordinary rain.
"G-gyaaaah!"
It fell hard enough to punch straight through everything it touched.
KWAAANG!
I sprinted toward the writhing fox and drove a kick into her gut.
"Kukek!"
She went flying into the distance and slammed into the ground moments later.
"Y-you little bastard...!"
The fallen fox barely managed to weave another seal, and a horde of beasts made of pure mana came charging at me.
S-ranks sure are a joke.
Every last one of them was a monster that would take an S-rank hero working flat out just to bring down.
"Turn."
But the moment I crossed my arms, every one of them had its upper body wrench a full 360 degrees, snapping clean off.
I twisted a little harder, and soon enough their top and bottom halves separated entirely, and they died.
"What... what even are you?!"
Swish, swish.
The fox, her clothes hanging in tatters, crawled across the ground and screamed.
Bare skin showed through the torn fabric, but I felt absolutely nothing.
"For a mere fox to dare take human form—how presumptuous."
KRAK!
"Kyaaahhhh!"
I brought the staff I was holding down on one of the fox's nine tails.
The tail caught fire, burned completely, and vanished.
Come to think of it, there was an old saying about that.
A cat has nine lives.
She wasn't a cat, she was a fox, but nine tails were nine tails all the same.
"N-no! Not my tail—!"
"Got nine lives too, do you?"
"Wh-what?"
KRAK-KOOM!
Grinning down at her, I smashed another tail flat.
Sure enough, it burned away to nothing.
"S-stop this! My, my tails—!"
"Too loud."
RRIP!
This time I just grabbed one and tore it off with my bare hand.
"KYAAAAAAAHH!"
Half-dead with terror, the fox crawled across the ground in a desperate bid to escape.
But with her body that battered, she couldn't even manage what a turtle could.
Step.
"Kiyaaaak..."
I planted my foot on the escaping fox's backside and pinned her in place.
The bushy tail attached to it felt surprisingly ticklish against my sole.
"I'm curious what happens if I rip off every last one of your tails."
"N-no! You must not! Please!"
Push, push.
With fear written all over her, the fox stretched out her arms and shoved at me weakly.
Those feeble little pushes had no chance in hell of moving me.
RRRRIP!
"AAAAAAHHH!"
I tore out every single tail in one motion.
"N-no..."
Shhh...
Her body began to glow.
What? Why was she suddenly lighting up?
Is she ascending to heaven or something?
"I—I refuse to fade away like this!"
Ah, so it's a dissolution.
Thrash, thrash.
The fox, all her tails ripped away and her body crumbling apart, began flailing in desperation.
"No! I refuse! I crawled my way up from a lowly beast to become a god—I will not accept it ending like this!!"
"Iris would say the same."
I spoke to the screaming fox.
"Iris never wanted her hero life to end that way either."
"..."
The old fox looked up at me with a face full to bursting with despair.
She said nothing, but her eyes burned with pure, unfiltered hatred for me.
"What are you looking at."
CRUNCH!
I stomped her face into the ground, and at the same moment the fox dissolved completely, vanishing into thin air.
Outer God Nyarlathotep instructs you to absorb the light with your staff.
Right then, a message arrived from Nyarlathotep.
Absorb the light with the staff? How, exactly?
Like this?
I extended the staff toward the light at a reasonable angle and put some force into it.
Shhhh...
The light that had been scattering into the empty air was slowly drawn into the staff, like water down a drain.
The jewel set into the staff's head glowed bright in answer, radiating luminous brilliance.
After about a minute of waiting, every last mote of light had been absorbed into the staff.
"Is that it?"
Having drunk in all the light, I lowered my arm and released the transformation.
And then—
"Kkuuugh?!"
A monstrous headache came crashing down on me.
SAN Value: 23 / 175
Even with Nyarlathotep having unleashed her full power, apparently the recoil after the transformation was beyond anyone's control.
Hoo... it's fine. I'm fine.
The silver lining, probably thanks to her lending me her strength, was that it didn't hurt beyond what I could bear.
Staggering, I shuffled slowly toward Iris.
"Is it... is it over?"
"Yes, it's all wrapped up, but..."
Trailing off, I rolled my eyes and stole a glance behind me.
The largest mountain in the world, Mount Cheonmyeol.
The back side, the part no person ever set foot on, had been absolutely wrecked.
Got a little too into it and ended up doing this, huh.
The fallout from a battle between a Constellation and an avatar had exceeded anything I'd imagined.
"Let's get out of here before this becomes a pain in the ass."
"Y-yes, sir."
And so, in order not to be seen by anyone, we sprinted down and out of the mountain at the fastest pace we could manage.
"Ahem, ahem."
Watching the TV, I felt oddly like I'd just done something sneaky and awful, so I cleared my throat.
"Stop watching that strange nonsense and get back to practicing your transformation already."
Nyarlat hotep came over to me as I watched the screen, tapping my arm as she spoke.
"By the way... why did you suddenly get younger?"
She'd been a mature beauty mere hours ago, but at some point she had turned into a little kid.
"It is the recoil of the system. For roughly a day, I must recover my strength in this form."
It was an oddly unsettling feeling, listening to a child rattle off casual banmal, but I went ahead and transformed into the Black Pharaoh again anyway.
"You there. Come over here as well."
"Y-yes, ma'am."
Iris, who had been sitting in a corner of my apartment instead of going home, came over at Nyarlathotep's summons.
According to Nyarlathotep, a contractor must always attend at her patron's side, which was how Iris ended up living in my apartment too.
"Hmm..."
The transformation went through, but the omnipotence I'd felt earlier was nowhere to be found.
Outwardly the form looked about the same, but the power behind it was heaven and earth apart.
"The light gathered in that staff will remain as it is. Hand it here."
I passed the staff over to Nyarlathotep, its jewel still glowing bright.
Shhhh...
Nyarlathotep lightly stroked the jewel, and the light soon spilled out of it, beginning to drift through the air of the room.
"Wh-what is this?"
It was a bizarre sight, like thousands upon tens of thousands of fireflies swarming through the house.
Flustered, I tracked the lights with my eyes and let my confusion slip out loud.
"Go."
But Nyarlathotep paid me no mind, simply extending a finger and pointing it at me.
At the same instant, the floating motes of light began pouring into my body.
"Holy shit, that's disgusting."
But there were so many of them that it took quite a while for them all to work their way inside me.
Thanks to that, I currently looked like I had countless little circles sticking to me in dense, overlapping clumps.
It was a crawling, repulsive sight that would trip anyone's trypophobia.
Thank god I didn't actually have trypophobia—if I had, I'd have been running around screaming by now.
"Hoo..."
After about three minutes, every last mote of light had been fully absorbed into my body.
I felt like I'd just watched a surinam toad give birth, and somehow I survived.
"Huh. Nothing seems different?"
"Check your status window."
Potential: Negligible
Contracted Constellations: Nyarlathotep, Cthugha
Skills:
◈ A Story That Makes Sense(A)
◈ Avatar of Chaos(S)
◈ Inextinguishable Flame(A+)
◈ Old Fox of the Back Mountain(EX)
"?"
I stared at my stat window, question marks crawling across my face.
Stats plus five hundred? The hero widely known as having the highest stats among all current S-ranks averages around two hundred, no?
And on top of that, something strange had appeared in my skill list.
"Uh... um..."
I was so flustered I couldn't form a proper sentence.
I could fully wield a Constellation's power? For real?
In that case... didn't that mean no one alive on this planet could beat me right now?
"..."
Less than a month after signing my contract, and I had become the strongest.
Swish, swish.
"Appa."
And then I became a dad.
...?
"What the—"
Tug, tug.
I whipped around in shock to find a little girl with a fluffy fox tail tugging at my sleeve.
"...Huh?"
Seriously, what is this?