Chapter 63. Lightly at First
The real thing really is something else. When I saw her through the picture, the only thing I saw was a happy girl with tanned skin. Seeing her in real life made me feel an aura of charisma just emanating off of her.
Strength, warmth, charm, holiness.
I suppose… These elements of the Hero made her quite like the saint?
The Hero observed me from afar instead of putting a blade through my heart right away. Almost as if she was trying to find out everything about me with a single gaze. Her eyes reflected my helm, then my cloak, then back to my body.
"A wise choice."
The best thing to do when encountering an unknown enemy was to scout him out first. The girl had reached the conclusion that approaching me was not the best of ideas. She should already know that most of her comrades have died. The fact that she still hasn't lost her cool just showed how much of a veteran she was.
Just how many battles did she go through?
"Still, you are quite foolish."
I knew it already. She could only be the strongest within a limited timeframe. She might've been able to slice moons in her prime, but she was almost near death at this point of her life. She only looked normal on the outside. The only reason why she was still alive was purely because of her willpower.
At this point in time, she could only exert about 0.01% of the power she had in her prime. The internal wounds she had received from the Demon King still hadn't healed and her soul itself had been damaged beyond repair.
"Ever thought of what would've happened if you didn't raise up a rebellion in the first place?"
The mushroom cloud below had risen enough to almost reach the altitude I was at. The ground below us was true hell.
Screams, despair, sadness.
There were countless people asking to be saved. More people had survived than I thought, but they shouldn't last long. They were only alive thanks to the few brave-class soldiers.
Even now, the Hero should be considering whether to fight me or to save the people below. She seemed to have made up her mind sooner or later and gripped the handle of her sword.
"Not raise a rebellion? No, such a thing would never have happened. Rebellions aren't something a single person can raise, Murderer."
Natural. It didn't even feel like she was going to attack me until she actually got into her fighting stance. She wasn't trying to affect my conscious in any way. She was causing this to happen all from her martial prowess alone.
The Hero slowed time to an extreme and swung her sword at an inhumanly fast speed. This was the [Nation-dividing Sword = Glaive du Roi]. This technique that had a massive range of a 1600km not only split the night sky in two, but also left a blue line of plasma in its path.
Kagagagaga!
A thunderous roar came with it a moment later and took care of the mushroom cloud below in an instant.
…What a surprise.
If I didn't create an illusion of myself right below me, everything would have ended with that one strike. I sighed in relief inside and moved a bit away from the path of the attack. The place I was just at before was turning slightly hazy. I could even see blue lightning try to crawl out from it.
"As I thought…"
The Hero distanced herself from me even more. It seemed that she didn't exactly expect me to dodge the strike. She seemed to want to figure out 'how' I dodged it, so that she wouldn't miss next time. This gave me around a second of time at most… My turn.
The second plan I was to go over was the Thief's.
At that time, I just put marble blocks on top of the hotel building, but–.
"What do you think would happen if something like this fell on the ground?"
The tests all turned out to be successful in the Zaiman desert. In the skies around us, hundreds of buildings appeared out of nowhere. There were multiples types of buildings that have been summoned. The windows on these buildings shattered as they fell and the buildings themselves grinded against each other during the fall, slowly merging into one object.
"Try to block this one, why don't you?"
I looked up at the buildings above us and gripped onto the Murderer.
The advanced weapon that Mirage Belt was said to have used.
It had an amazing description, but it turned out to be a simple dagger. But having such an amazing description and being such a useless item could mean two things. Either I've gotten a faulty product, or have been looking at the weapon wrong.
For example, a television set.
I've been pretty much looking into the remote and been thinking "this tiny plastic rod can show videos"? All the while the actual weapon's been hidden somewhere else.
"Activate."
There were two reasons I went into orbit using the Sky Island. The first reason was to use this weapon. Because there was a need to input the coordinates manually at this height.
<Xenoglossy confirmed. Language has been changed. Biological signs return at -11.3. Psychological karma has been registered as -10,285.8. Comparing anima patterns. 0.3% difference confirmed.>
The countless stars behind the buildings disappeared, signifying that the true body of the Murderer had appeared. That black moon was the true form of this weapon. The planet-sized weapon that evolved as it continuously collected information about the world it was on.
The moon that the Hero sliced probably was this moon as well. That's probably what caused the coordinates to shift, causing the sword to become unlinked from its body.
<Confirmed manual coordinate input. The weapon has been repaired 1%. Remote Space-time Slicing Mode activate. Check.>
Let's try testing it, shall we?
I sliced the empty air in front of me lightly with the Murderer. Almost as if I was trying to paint a picture. The planet above me recognized my motions instantly and got to action. It edited the physical laws of my surroundings and began to cut the coordinates I inputted through space-time. Almost like that time when the Warrior sliced the warship in half.
No, this was several thousand times more powerful than that. The falling buildings were cut by the planet's attacks and kept going further and further.
This attack might actually affect a nearby star given some time.
I stood between the sliced buildings as I continuously attacked the Hero. Since the actual attacks weren't coming from the sword, I was able to attack the Hero from pretty much any location.
I should probably be able to cut through anything in the world with this?
The Hero, who was already busy trying to slow down the buildings, was now stuck with the task of defending against my attacks as well. The buildings got chopped into tiny pieces as the Hero defended against my attack one by one. It was quite impressive, considering how each of these attacks had an activation time that was infinitely close to zero and were invisible as well.
This was all within my calculations though.
I activated Heart of Gold and took out the items I had prepared beforehand. There were around three thousand of them. Three thousand barrels of explosive liquid. These barrels exploded to spread their contents out and about.
It was chlorine gas.
Unlike its simple production method, the resulting gas was extremely lethal. Even having 0.003% of it in the air caused the membranes in the body to start decomposing. Having 0.1% of it would cause organisms to die through breathing problems, cyanosis, and a pulmonary edema.
Something like this should be quite difficult for the Hero to manipulate, considering how it wasn't a visible solid like the buildings.
She should be tied down to manipulating the buildings and the gases now. She could always dump it to the side, but I'll prevent her from doing that.
The core of this plan was to continuously test the Hero's limits. If one method fails, I would add more elements that would make things difficult for the Hero. It wasn't like Reality Manipulation could control everything.
Five minutes, now.
The battle would end by that time.