Not long after Ariel was finally persuaded, just as everyone was wondering whether they should head underground, they all suddenly noticed something...
During that brief conversation, the previously open night sky had somehow become packed with strange sea urchin-like machines. At a glance, there were well over a hundred of them.
At the center of the formation floated a massive pyramid, hanging silently in midair.
At the same time, the ground changed as well. Nearly a thousand Gloria emerged all at once like a steel tide surging out of the earth.
"Is that Potimas's ultimate weapon?", Sophia couldn't help exclaiming, unease showing in her eyes.
"This is ridiculous. There are still this many...", Shiro sighed at the bizarre situation, only hoping this really was everything he had left.
"I'm counting on you," Ariel retreated behind Ash with an innocent smile, "Let me see that form you talked about before. Show me the power of a man~"
"I don't really think it's necessary, but if that's what you want."
Ash hesitated briefly before quietly muttering something. Then his figure flashed, and he disappeared from where he stood together with Shiro.
In the blink of an eye, the two of them appeared above the pyramid. At the same time, Ash's body rapidly grew larger, and a pair of demonic horns appeared on his head.
A torrent of magic surged out like a dark violet storm, sweeping across the sky and the entire elf village.
The dark sky was dyed another color.
The moon hanging high overhead, along with the star-filled sky itself, seemed to crack apart.
Black lightning worthy of the end of the world rampaged across the heavens like a storm heralding the apocalypse.
Merely touching it was enough to shatter and distort the surrounding space.
The anti-magic barriers surrounding the sea urchins were as fragile as paper before those dark "lightning bolts," whose weight seemed almost real. The barriers were clearly pushed beyond their limits.
They were pierced instantly.
The sea urchins didn't even get the chance to explode before they were mercilessly swallowed by the shattered sky, disappearing without a trace as though they had never existed.
Around the strange pyramid, a barrier operating at maximum power continued to dissolve the invading black lightning little by little, even as it penetrated inside.
Realizing this couldn't continue, the corners of the pyramid began shining with dazzling light.
Then...
BANG!
A gigantic beam of light dozens of meters thick shot forward with terrifying force.
"How boring."
Ash simply raised one hand calmly, holding his palm toward the incoming beam.
At that instant, the space before him seemed to collapse into a bottomless abyss, twisting violently as a dark gravitational singularity formed.
Before the beam could even reach Ash, it was caught by the immense gravity, twisted out of shape, and dragged into the singularity, where it vanished completely.
The entire process was so smooth it didn't even create the slightest ripple, as though the beam had been destined to disappear there.
The attacks fired by the surrounding sea urchins met the same fate.
No matter what direction they came from, they were all swallowed.
The pyramid also seemed to realize its attacks were useless and immediately attempted a spatial jump.
Its massive body trembled slightly...
And then failed to move at all.
Only then did it realize the surrounding space had already been sealed.
"My turn."
Seeing that it wanted to escape, Ash's eyes sharpened.
With Shiro continuously supplying him with magic, he had no reason to hold back, and poured even more power into the spell.
The black hole-like singularity before him drifted forward, expanding further as more magic flowed into it.
Despite the considerable distance between them, its overwhelming gravity continuously dragged the sea urchins, the Gloria, and even the pyramid toward it as they desperately tried to escape.
The anti-magic barriers they expanded together in an attempt to suppress every magical phenomenon nearby couldn't even protect themselves.
The barriers themselves were swallowed.
The artificial intelligence controlling the hundred-plus sea urchins, the nearly thousand Gloria, and the pyramid all made the same decision almost simultaneously.
Fire everything.
For a moment, led by the enormous beams of light, countless energy shells poured toward Ash from every direction, dense enough to nearly fill the entire sky.
Yet no matter where they came from, the instant they approached him, every attack was swallowed by the gravitational singularity, disappearing into the darkness beyond the eye's perception without causing even the slightest disturbance.
Even the Gloria themselves lost control, rapidly being pulled off the ground and dragged toward the singularity in the sky.
The sea urchins struggled just the same.
The harder they tried to flee, the more uncontrollably they were drawn in, like boats caught in a whirlpool at the center of a river.
The absurd gravitational force, which should have been capable of ripping away enough of the continent's crust to cover an entire nation, had instead been compressed into an extremely small area.
Its strength had been concentrated to an unbelievable degree, as though every bit of force had been gathered into a single point solely to destroy these mechanical creations.
Finally, something around the fully shielded pyramid seemed to reach its limit and collapse.
The pyramid itself began weathering away under the pull of gravity, slowly breaking apart piece by piece.
———
He simply crushed the enemy through overwhelming power.
The battle ended so easily that victory looked almost effortless.
Still, Ash couldn't help feeling a little disappointed.
"So in the end, all they did was increase their attack and defense again. I thought they'd have something more interesting."
"Yeah... That was surprisingly easy."
'Wahaha! Did you see that? You saw it, right, Potimas?.This is our combination attack! Your trump card isn't scary at all! Together, we're unbeatable!'
Grabbing Ash's horns while lying on his back, Shiro wore an elegant smile on the outside.
Inside, she was so smug she was one step away from howling.
But she had barely enjoyed watching the mechanical army vanish into the twisted singularity.
When the singularity gradually disappeared and space returned to normal, the earth suddenly split open with violent tremors.
A massive fissure opened in the ground.
It was so deep it seemed to lead straight into hell. Looking down, the underground hundreds of meters below was clearly visible.
Deep beneath the surface lay the enormous underground base that had been crushed by the asteroid earlier.
From the center of that base... a gigantic sphere flew out.
At the same time, a simple humanoid block of metal suddenly burst from underground like a ghost and rushed toward Ariel and the others.
It looked completely ordinary, even weak.
In reality, however, its performance was astonishing.
Its speed in particular was incredible, enough to rival even Ariel under the System's enhancement.
The strength of its barrier exceeded imagination.
It even surpassed the pyramid's, temporarily suppressing the System's enhancements on Ariel. She was now clearly slower than it and immediately found herself on the defensive.
It was obvious that this enemy was different.
Unlike the previous machines, it wasn't relying on brute-force increases in attack and defense.
Potimas really had kept something in reserve.
But neither Ash nor Shiro found that reassuring.
"What kind of joke is this?"
'Even someone as kind and forgiving as me is about to get mad now, you bastard! What is this thing? Just how many hidden cards do you have?'
Shiro's smug smile froze instantly.
She couldn't even imagine what other nonsense might still appear.
Ash, however, remained perfectly calm.
At a glance, he recognized the life-sized humanoid with spherical joints and drill-shaped arms as Potimas's true ultimate weapon.
Ariel alone would probably have a hard time defeating it.
Of course, she still had a way.
She could use the hidden trump card among the Seven Virtues skills, Humility.
But activating that skill would dramatically shorten her lifespan again.
It was essentially burning away her soul.
By sacrificing her soul, she could temporarily obtain power comparable to a god.
The price, however, was simply too great.
Using it once drastically reduced her remaining lifespan.
Using it twice... basically meant death.
Real death.
The kind with no possibility of coming back.
"A choice between two options?"
At the same time Potimas released his ultimate weapon, he also sent out a massive spacecraft that was obviously meant as an escape vessel rather than a combat unit.
Ash hesitated for only a moment.
Then he chose, both.
Without the slightest hesitation, he dropped toward the ground while reaching out toward the escaping ship, changing the direction of gravity around it with a pulling motion.
The spacecraft, which had been racing toward the sky in an attempt to escape the atmosphere, instantly seemed to be seized by an invisible giant hand.
Its upward momentum stopped immediately.
Its engines continued spewing flames from the rear.
It didn't matter.
Faced with gravity that ignored all reason, it was forcibly dragged straight back toward the ground.
———
The earth let out a deep rumble.
The spacecraft fleeing toward the heavens was dragged down like a giant beast caught by invisible ropes and slammed toward the ground.
Before landing, Ash teleported Shiro behind Sophia.
Then, while still falling, he drew the Holy Sword.
Wrapped in blazing flames like a meteor, he crashed toward the earth.
Gloria Omega had just blasted apart Ariel's head, only for her to punch its head apart in return after it had torn a massive hole through her abdomen.
It immediately sensed the threat of the incoming meteor.
Without hesitation, it abandoned Ariel, turned, and swung its drill arm at Ash.
BANG!
Amid a shower of sparks, the incredibly massive rotating drill collided with Ash's descending Holy Sword.
The drill's rotation managed to deflect the slash slightly.
Then...
BOOM!
The Holy Sword split the earth apart.
At the same time, it cleanly severed Omega's left arm together with its drill.
The head that Ariel had completely smashed moments ago now flowed like liquid metal, gathering together before instantly reforming.
But the severed arm...
No matter what it tried, it simply would not reconnect.
Some invisible force blocked it completely, as though its own body rejected the missing limb.
"Oh? A hero saving the beauty?", Ariel covered the heavily bleeding wound in her stomach while forcing out a smile despite the pain.
"You came at just the right time. And... that entrance from the sky was pretty cool."
"Yeah, yeah. So? Isn't this usually the part where you fall in love at first sight?"
"At this point, do we really need to say something like that?", Ariel shot him an annoyed look.
"Then let's save it for later."
Ash nodded slightly before looking toward the spacecraft.
"Potimas's real body should be inside that ship. Hurry after him. And grab something to eat on the way so you can recover... Oh, and don't kill him outright. I still need his knowledge."
"Don't worry. I'll leave this to you~"
Ariel answered while taking deep breaths and sprinting toward the spacecraft, which was still struggling against gravity with its engines firing continuously.
"Don't even think about it!"
Seeing Ariel rush toward the ship, Omega panicked.
Ignoring its arm that still hadn't regenerated, it leaped into the air to stop her.
Ash was even faster.
Especially in his complete form.
Even without support from a barrier, his own strength alone let him flash forward and block Omega's path.
"You bastard!"
Potimas's furious roar came from inside Omega.
"What the hell are you? Why are you with that child? And why won't my Omega regenerate?"
"I don't mind telling you. Besides its ability to cut, the Holy Sword also prevents regeneration."
"But this isn't regeneration! It's reconstruction! Then why—"
"That's the overbearing part of the Holy Sword."
Ash held the escaping spacecraft in place with one hand while casually holding the Holy Sword in the other as he explained.
"It took me quite a while to overcome it myself. During that process, no matter how you tried to heal it, even if you carved away all the surrounding flesh or attached an entirely new limb, it was pointless. It won't allow you to bypass it by any means. The only exception is if the wielder grants permission."
He even added helpfully, "Oh, and if something is completely cut off, then the 'loop' is considered complete. At that point, it's conceptually severed. There's absolutely no way to restore it. That concept applies equally to living and non-living things."
His calm attitude made it seem as though everything was under control.
Meanwhile, Omega's remaining drill arm spun faster and faster in agitation.
It had no interest in listening.
"Forget it! I don't care! Just... get out of my way!"
Clearly affected by panic and fear, Omega's movements became increasingly chaotic.
The careful precision it had displayed while fighting Ariel was completely gone.
It now resembled a headless fly, blindly attacking without any order.
Ash could clearly hear Potimas's voice growing more distorted with fear.
"So when your clones died, you didn't care at all. You could even keep acting superior... But in the end, just like Ariel said, you really are terrified of dying."
Holding the Holy Sword with one hand, Ash calmly blocked Omega's frantic attacks one after another, letting the spinning drill scrape across the blade and throw off showers of brilliant sparks.
Omega remained unbelievably fast.
But as Ariel advanced deeper into the spacecraft, it grew more and more impatient.
The more impatient it became...
The easier it was to deal with.
In the end, it lost even the last trace of threat.
Ash completely suppressed it with a single hand, preventing it from advancing even one more step.
From the outside, all anyone could see were two blindingly fast figures flashing back and forth, accompanied by countless sparks dancing through the air.
But inside Omega... Potimas was becoming increasingly frantic.
Eventually, it stopped attacking altogether.
It simply stood there in a daze, as though all its strength had left it.
It even shut off its anti-magic barrier itself.
Before Ash even had the chance to dismantle it, Omega surrendered outright.
He paused for a moment, then immediately understood why.
Returning to his normal form, he dragged the completely unresisting Omega toward the spacecraft, which had also stopped struggling.
Inside, the spacecraft was a complete mess.
The mechanical guards that had once protected it had all been effortlessly slaughtered by Ariel.
Broken parts and spilled oil covered the floor, filling the air with a sharp metallic smell.
Even more shocking, a large number of Potimas clones lay scattered across the floor in pools of blood.
None of them moved.
Their once-normal faces had all been twisted beyond recognition by overwhelming terror and anxiety.
Finally, in the center of the spacecraft, Ash saw a transparent cylinder.
Inside lay an elderly elf.
His body was emaciated, his face covered in deep wrinkles, making him look incredibly old and frail.
Countless tubes of varying sizes were connected to his body, carrying unknown fluids that seemed to be keeping him alive.
The special gel filling the cylinder held him completely in place, leaving him unable to move.
Clearly, this was Potimas's real body.
Though his real body couldn't move at all, the loudspeaker beside the cylinder continuously broadcast desperate pleas.
"I surrender! Omega is yours! Everything is yours! The elves in the underground base are yours too! Please spare my life! I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I have to live forever! I don't want to die!"
His voice was choked with sobs, repeating the same words again and again, laying bare his overwhelming obsession with survival.
"This guy really is terrified of dying."
Ash looked from Potimas's aged body to the loudspeaker that continued begging, unable to stop himself from shaking his head.
"He spent all these years committing every kind of evil because he feared death. He wanted immortality, to escape the limits of lifespan... Even after mostly solving the problem of his body, his soul had already reached its limit. Even now, he still couldn't become a god."
"He deserves it."
With a mocking smile, Ariel looked at the man inside the cylinder.
The moment he was truly threatened, he surrendered without hesitation and begged for mercy.
It was almost laughable.
Even his efforts to protect the reincarnators had only been because he hoped they might hold the secret to extending his own lifespan.
He had studied them desperately, searching for something special.
Unfortunately... he never found anything.
Even so, he refused to give up.
He struggled until the very end.
And in the end...
He still couldn't escape death.
This was where all that struggle had led him.
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