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"I know why you came here, but I still have to tell you this. You are not strong enough to beat it."
Anos spoke calmly.
He had already judged the reason the One-Eyed Black Dragon appeared here, and he also knew exactly who had unleashed it.
Anyone willing to go this far was someone who had already decided he mattered beyond all measure.
"I'm not strong enough?"
Ais looked at Anos, then down at the sword in her hand.
She still had the Final Secret Sword Anos had taught her.
She could still fight.
"Stop that! I know exactly what you're thinking. Do you really believe its battle experience can be compared to the monsters you've faced before?"
Anos chopped her lightly on the head with the side of his hand, knocking her out of that stubborn state and into a dazed one instead.
Ais stared blankly at him, completely unable to understand why he had hit her.
"ROOOAR!!!!"
The Black Dragon had finally had enough.
Was he seriously going to stand there and ignore it?
If those two were going to act like this, then they could at least do it farther away from a lonely dragon.
Did they have any idea how offensive it was to get showered with this kind of affection in the middle of a battlefield?
The One-Eyed Black Dragon made a solemn decision.
It was going to act on behalf of every lonely creature in the world and wipe this shameless pair out.
That way, they would stop offending their eyes and polluting the world around them.
"Noisy..."
The boy in front of it said the word flatly.
The dragon understood the contempt in that tone immediately and answered with a blast of dragonfire.
Unfortunately.
"It's useless."
Anos simply lifted one hand, and the Black Dragon's breath vanished into him as though swallowed whole.
Ophis was still inside him, still feeding power into Forbidden Spell Paradise.
Let alone the One-Eyed Black Dragon. At this point, even if Anos had to take on an entire pantheon, he would still have absolute confidence in winning.
If he were not worried about going too far in front of the gods, he could have ended everything right here with the simplest energy blast and sent the dragon back to dust.
That was one of the more frightening effects of having Ophis inside his body.
Sadly, chances to talk Ophis into this kind of thing probably would not come often.
From both her actions and her words, Anos could tell one thing clearly.
She truly disliked the World Dragon's jewel.
Just as no true dragon could ever like the fallen dragon Samael, Ophis had no reason to feel affection toward something that could suppress her so completely.
Unless.
Unless she came to accept Anos completely, the way Ddraig already had.
Ddraig was nothing like he had been when he first started tagging along with Anos. By now he was almost grateful for the choice he made back then. Otherwise, he never would have witnessed one outrageous thing after another.
Ddraig's Juggernaut Drive alone had already helped Anos kill a god.
Now Ophis herself was inside him.
If they were not under the gods' watchful eyes, Anos would have seriously considered trying something like grilled dragon.
"Hm?"
Anos raised a brow.
He noticed something subtle.
A silver treasure chest had appeared above the Black Dragon's head.
Ding!
[Congratulations! Treasure chest triggered Chest rank: Silver.]
[Condition to open: The End of the One-Eyed Dragon. Kill the One-Eyed Black Dragon with your own hands.]
Seeing what was basically a free main-story reward, Anos finally nodded in satisfaction.
"Hm? What's this? Why did the way he's looking at me suddenly change?"
The One-Eyed Black Dragon felt a chill run through its body.
That man's gaze had changed.
He was looking at it like a treasure now.
Then Anos lifted a finger and lazily traced it through the air.
That only confused the dragon more.
Was that supposed to be some kind of technique?
It found out soon enough what kind of technique it was.
Streaks of fire began falling from the sky one after another.
A meteor shower.
And the place those meteors were falling toward was Orario.
More precisely, the Black Dragon itself.
The dragon roared and unleashed a blazing stream of fire toward the heavens, apparently intending to destroy the meteors midair and show off its own power.
Otherwise, it would simply dodge them.
At least, that was the plan.
The reality was less impressive.
It could do neither.
Do not erase the meteors, and do not avoid them.
Because every one of those meteors had been turned into a demonic blade by Anos.
Before fighting Apollo, Anos had already prepared for the possibility that the gods might someday discover him.
So he had marked countless celestial bodies in advance.
If he chose to, and if he had enough power to activate them, he could unleash his Meteor Sword Art at any moment. Countless starfall blades, each capable of sinking continents, would descend and drag this whole world toward its end.
Of course, that had been a last resort, a contingency for a full Ragnarok scenario in which he might have to stand alone against the gods.
Unless absolutely cornered, he had no intention of doing anything that insane.
The meteors descending now were the smallest of those he had marked. Once activated, they shot down toward their chosen target, the One-Eyed Black Dragon.
Boom!
The dragon tried frantically to evade, but the concentrated rain of meteors tracked its movement as if they could see every path it might take, slamming straight into its wings.
The dragon cried out in pain.
And then the pain never stopped.
Small meteors kept crashing into its body one after another, and the dragon had no way to avoid them.
It was not that it did not want to.
It was simply that every escape route had already been predicted.
"This..."
Even Ais was stunned.
So it could be done like this.
How terrifying did his precision have to be for every one of those meteors to strike the Black Dragon without causing wider destruction?
"Ais, keep this secret for me, all right?"
Anos brought a hand lightly to her lips in a silent warning.
Ais stared for a few seconds, then nodded.
She was thinking about how different her style of battle was from his.
Was the way Anos fought even the style of an adventurer at all?
Like his title, Holy Child, the way he fought felt completely beyond the normal rules of the world.
"It's like... It's like a hero."
Watching Anos beat back an evil dragon as casually as though he were eating a meal or drinking water, that word surfaced in her heart without warning.
Even now, Ais only had a vague understanding of what a hero really was.
But somehow the word came to her anyway.
Maybe it was because Anos had once explained heroism to her.
Maybe not.
What she did know was that the word hero now seemed permanently tied to him in her heart.
"Is the One-Eyed Black Dragon finally at its end?"
Ais looked at the dying dragon and asked quietly.
The goal she had lived for all this time.
Her revenge against the Black Dragon.
Was Anos really going to fulfill it this simply?
For some reason, the thought left a space inside her.
"There's still one last step."
Anos shook his head.
He raised one hand, and a concentrated beam of blazing light shot out from his palm.
The compressed blast tore through the Black Dragon's defense with ease and punched a hole through its scales.
Then Anos made another small motion with his hand, and a golden figure was pulled out from within.
It was the body of the Great Spirit, Aria.
"Mother."
The moment Ais saw her, she almost ran toward her in a blind rush.
"Ais... Don't."
Anos caught her by the shoulder at once. In her current unguarded state, charging toward the dragon could easily get her erased by a casual breath attack.
Until he received the signal that the treasure chest condition had been fulfilled, he had no intention of letting her go.
"That hurts..."
Ais winced at the sudden grip on her shoulder, but she stopped herself anyway and forced down her emotions as she stared at her mother's body.
Anos checked Aria's state and let out a low breath.
Her soul still remained.
But the body was beyond saving.
Dead.
Her soul had been trapped inside the dragon all this time, unable to escape.
Only by killing the dragon could Aria's spirit finally be freed.
"Mother... Mother..."
Ais reached out and touched her mother's body with trembling fingers. She felt only cold. No warmth remained. A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye.
Then suddenly she turned back toward Anos, her eyes full of hope and pleading.
She wanted him to say, "Your mother isn't really dead."
But Anos only gave her a helpless shake of the head.
It was the answer she did not want.
Yes, the Great Spirit Aria was dead.
But that did not mean there was no answer.
There was one.
It just was not something he could let Ais know yet.
And in situations like this, it was always more effective to let someone despair first, then offer the possibility of salvation afterward.
In that sense, Anos was a deeply terrible person.
When it came to manipulating a girl's heart, calling him a complete villain would not have been unfair at all.
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~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
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