Cut Marks (4)
Cut Marks (4)
“Ha-ha-ha-ha! How utterly magnificent!”
“You idiot! Is this really the time to laugh?!”
Even as lightning bolts raged all around them, Jason laughed without a trace of tension.
Gemini recoiled in alarm and pulled back. But the lightning pursued him faster than he could retreat.
“Damn it all...!”
Was this what the descent of Zeus felt like? It felt as if a scene from myth had been re-enacted in reality.
What bore down on him was, quite literally, lightning. Lightning shaped into human form. Its entire body was wreathed in white bolts, its exact silhouette impossible to distinguish.
Simply looking at it head-on felt like his eyes were burning away.
What the hell kind of starlight...
Overwhelming.
That was the only word for it.
Even Gemini, who had always maintained a sneering attitude, had to dial it back in the face of such colossal power.
The lightning, like divine chastisement, arrived.
“Heh-heh, good!”
Lightning swung lightning. By its shape—an axe.
“I’ll gladly offer up a neck or two!”
Gemini shouted at the sky. Not that he lifted his head. His head was lifted for him.
Before he could finish speaking, his neck was severed and sailed through the air. The words he hadn’t finished spilled from the throat separated from his body.
The head that had been gazing at the sky was suddenly staring at the ground.
Snick.
The sound came afterward.
Every action he took had a tail. The lightning and the sound. A long, distant train of light like a shooting star’s tail, and the intense, mechanical thunderclap left behind where that light had passed.
The executioner who had beheaded the two monsters moved on, seeking out the next one.
KA-KA-KA-KRACK!
Leaving a thunderclap behind him that could rip eardrums apart.
“Bracing, isn’t it!”
Jason laughed, his excitement clearly mounting. He raised his voice to its utmost so it wouldn’t be buried by the thunder.
KRA-KOOM! KRA-KOOM! KA-KA-KRACK!
Lightning struck again and again. The lightning-wreathed axe swung through the darkness. Light flickered rapidly in forms like white roots, and with each flicker, shattered fragments flew through the air.
“He must be quite angry. I understand completely. I was in the wrong. And so... whoa! Now... whoo! Pray, ease your... wa-ho! Wrath! There’s no end to it!”
The composure in Jason’s voice was starting to fade as well. The hands rowing the Belt’s oars grew increasingly frantic.
For any being, the power to create Misdirection. The axe’s slashes and the lightning lost their paths and struck empty ground.
But any ability has its limits. For Jason, whose starlight reserves were roughly equivalent to three ordinary stars, he couldn’t sustain the ability for long.
For a monster, the number of stars could be likened to brute strength, and the brightness of that starlight to stamina. How much force can be exerted at once, and how long that force can be maintained. It all depended on the stars they possessed.
With many stars, one could unleash great power at once, but if the brightness of each individual star was weak, sustaining that power became difficult. Conversely, if each star burned brightly, sustaining the power was easy, but without many stars, great power couldn’t be exerted in a single burst.
The same principle applied to the use of abilities.
In Jason’s case, both the number of his stars and their brightness were on the weaker side. There was a limit to how many targets he could lead astray at once, and sustaining the effect was also a struggle.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This is romance! I feel as though I’ve become a navigator voyaging a storm-tossed sea!”
Even so, Jason hadn’t lost his fervor.
“Comrade, if you’re enraged, how about trying a smile for a change?”
Jason’s words were ignored. He swung with savage violence, and he repeated the act mechanically. The picture of a machine simply carrying out its task, devoid of any emotion.
“Hmm... he’s well and truly furious, it seems. Won’t even speak. Ah, that’s right, comrade.”
With one hand, he furiously stirred the Belt’s oars; the other, he raised and pointed a finger behind him.
“Behind you. Careful.”
WHOOOOSH! A massive sky-blue wing gaped open like a maw and engulfed him.
“To sever a neck without the slightest hesitation!! So you did think of me as a mere beast! Livestock that suffers no harm from a beheading!!”
The owner of the wing was connected to the decapitated corpse. From the scar of the severed neck, new life was born. Just as Pegasus was born from Medusa’s neck, a new Pegasus was now born from Pegasus’s neck.
Its appearance could never be called beautiful. A horse’s head with wings attached directly to it. Worse, that horse’s head was enraged, its veins grotesquely outlined. In contrast to the veins writhing like worms, its wings possessed a beautiful grain. Its size, too, was considerable. The head was as large as a house, and the wings were comparable to most trees. Two pairs of wings sprouting from a furious horse’s head. Jason’s jaw dropped at this grotesque and surreal sight.
“Uh... ooh...”
The moment his body was seized, he unleashed lightning in every direction without the slightest delay. Pegasus rapidly spread its wings and retreated.
The air vibrated around Pegasus’s wings. It honed the air like a whetstone, and soon the wind was sharpened to a blade’s edge.
“That immorality of judging others by their outward appearance!!! I cannot forgive it!!!”
Soon, the sharpened wind-blades rushed at him. A sound like ceaseless whipping resounded endlessly. Dust clouds bloomed from wherever the wind touched.
Unfazed, he leaped high into the sky.
Pegasus’s abilities: Resurrection, Wind Manipulation, Free Flight. All facts he already knew from the original story. There was no need to be surprised, since he already possessed the information that Pegasus resurrects anew after its neck is cut. He also knew that this resurrected body possessed power incomparable to the previous one. Especially the threat posed by the wind-blades and its charge, wrapping wind around its body. He knew it all.
Even now, with his emotions stripped away by Ursa Major’s power, he hadn’t forgotten those facts.
He adjusted his grip on the axe’s haft and gathered lightning at its blade. It was now more accurate to describe it not as an axe but as a single massive mass of energy.
“To ascend to the sky of your own accord is foolish! That place is my domain!”
Pegasus altered the angle of its head and prepared its charge. Wind gathered at its head, sharp as a spear.
BOOM! It launched itself like a cannonball, flying straight at him. A speed and force so intense that it seemed his body would be torn to shreds the instant they touched.
But it was meaningless if it didn’t touch.
Unflustered, he met Pegasus’s eyes and then swung his axe. There was no special technique. He simply moved the blade indifferently and without emotion, like a professional executioner.
That alone was sufficient.
He briefly turned his gaze to survey the ground below. As expected, what should have been dead was still moving.
“Dodge!”
He shouted at the top of his lungs, but it was already too late. He didn’t even need to look. The axe-blade struck precisely where it was meant to strike, scattering lightning everywhere.
CRUNCH! KA-KA-KRACK!
Again, the sound lagged behind. An intense thunderclap roared, threatening to tear the sky apart, and both monsters plummeted simultaneously.
“God damnit! That’s why I told you to dodge! You morons! Why are there so many morons in this world?!”
Gemini raged and sprinted toward the spot where the two had fallen. The corpse whose neck had just been severed still existed behind him.
Replication of the flesh. This was Gemini’s ability. Using this power, Gemini replicated bodies in advance and swapped them out whenever one became useless.
“GYAAAHH!! My eyes!!! My eyes!!!”
Pegasus flew about the sky, shrieking. Half of its face had melted away. Its right eye was hideously split open, and the wings around it were burned, their feathers scattered wretchedly.
“Heh-heh-heh, yes. That’s more like it. Now there’s a point to fighting.”
Gemini gave a small, hollow laugh.
The one who had fallen alongside Pegasus was utterly unscathed. He was calmly staring at Pegasus without any sign of surprise. When Gemini swung a fist, he dodged with just a slight tilt of his head.
“Listen up, you blockheads! This bastard’s weakness is simple!”
The sound his fists made was considerably menacing. Bare-handed blows that could easily cave in a monster’s armor. Most weapons would become mere toys before these fists. Despite a physique as slight as a boy’s, he fought primarily with his bare hands. His body, wreathed in starlight, drew lines freely in the world, and in their wake, a thick scent of slaughter lingered.
“Time! It’s time! He’s no different from that imbecile Virgo!”
Fists poured down like a meteor shower. WHAM! WHAM! KA-BOOM! Even colliding with empty air produced vibrations like hammering stone. He swiftly and precisely tore through the lightning before his eyes.
“Heh-heh, the idiot’s wasting starlight as we speak. If we just stall, he’ll burn himself out. This is our win!”
Gemini grinned darkly. The body he was using now possessed more stars than his other bodies. Even if he replicated flesh, he couldn’t replicate a soul, so he needed to embed stars into a body to control it. For that reason, the usual Gemini wasn’t at full power. Those were just bodies for casual operation. But now it was different. He possessed stars with a vastly different output than those he’d used until now.
“Look at him, cloaked in lightning he’s not even using! His power’s immense, but the wastefulness is excessive. Ah, could it have been for show? That, too, would be idiotic in its own way.”
Gemini was certain.
About three more minutes, and we’ll have the upper hand.
The more he threw punches, the more he felt it. The lightning was gradually weakening. It was obviously because he’d been so wasteful from the very moment he assumed that form. Pegasus had gotten itself injured by charging in like a moron, but it was still combat-effective. Gemini himself, meanwhile, was completely free of injury. And thanks to Jason generously buying them so much time, the man’s starlight was now markedly weaker compared to when they first faced it. Just a little more now. A little more, and this light would be exhausted.
And in a single moment, an opening appeared.
“Heh-heh-heh, all that tremendous power, wasted. You have to handle it efficiently. Starlight, use it... like this.”
The starlight wreathing Gemini’s fists became more refined. As if calculating firepower and trajectory before launching a missile, he sent the perfect amount of power to the perfect location.
Then, a single punch gained the power of replication and became two, then three. One straight punch instantly possessed three separate trajectories.
“Precisely.”
It didn’t end with one. The same cascading meteor-shower of fists from before. Every single one of these punches gained the power of replication, splitting into dozens of trajectories.
The Rain of Myriad Star Strikes.
There was no gap to dodge. The remaining options were to block or to simply take it. Both were fatal to him right now. If he expelled starlight to block, he’d have to waste even more. If he took the hits, the shock would be considerable. He might very well die from it.
But the threat didn’t end with Gemini alone.
“The vile monster shall be punished!!!”
At some point, Pegasus had moved behind him and was beginning its charge once more. A pincer attack with front and rear completely sealed. Now he would be crushed.
His lightning-quick movements were certainly menacing, but they were of no use now. It was already too late to begin evading. No matter which way he moved, a body part would surely be blown off.
In that moment, victory was all but secured for their side.
Gemini wore a bloody smile. He was a being destined to be discarded someday anyway. A creation of his own, but he felt no regret whatsoever about disposing of him.
Next time, maybe I’ll listen to what that amnesiac has to say.
Just before the meteor-like baptism of fists and Pegasus’s wind-spear charge reached him—
He swung his axe.