Chapter 190 - Stature (1)

ROOOOAR!!!!

A thunderous roar shook the entire Root, setting the air trembling. Summoned deep beneath the World Tree, Basiliora opened his jaws wide and roared as though announcing his descent to all creation.

The Ashes cowered before his overwhelming presence. They had charged at the elves, but now froze, crushed beneath the presence of the god manifested before them.

"!"

Left speechless by this turn of events, the elves could only gape.

CRRRUNCH!

Basiliora surged into motion and began fighting the tens of thousands of Ashes.

No—this was no fight.

It was nothing more than a one-sided massacre.

Merely by moving forward, Basiliora crushed hundreds of Ashes beneath his enormous body. They vanished into the true ash they should have returned to in the beginning. Those he savagely chewed up and spat out scattered in every direction, taking the lives of other Ashes.

It was, quite literally, a one-sided slaughter. The elves recoiled in shock at his overwhelming might.

'How in the world...? It should be impossible to use mana here!'

Blood rushed to Rim's head, questions tearing through her mind until it felt ready to overload.

"Rim."

"!"

The voice that abruptly reached her was still composed and calm. Dense mana rose from the bracelet on the marquis's right arm, yet he showed not the slightest strain despite commanding that impossible god.

"Are you all right?"

"Y-yes, my lord."

She answered deferentially without realizing it. The marquis tilted his head for a moment, then spoke.

"Is that Gree—no, that Ash Scatterer you mentioned farther in?"

"P-probably."

Then he asked another question.

"How long can you hold out?"

"... What?"

"I'm asking how long you can hold out among the Ashes."

"We could manage five minutes, somehow—"

Rim glanced anxiously around as she answered.

"That's enough."

Alon turned without hesitation.

"Basiliora."

He jumped down and landed on Basiliora's back.

'Thank goodness it worked as expected.'

Alon had ventured beneath the Root despite being told he could not use mana because he knew artifacts—particularly Salvation of the Wanderer—could be used even where there was no mana.

'Psychedelia had areas where you couldn't use mana, after all. But more importantly—'

As he recalled his experiences in the game, Alon was privately bewildered.

'... Didn't they say you couldn't use mana?'

Quite apart from having escaped the crisis with an artifact, Alon could use his mana.

"... Hmm."

He briefly wondered at how readily his mana obeyed his will, then turned to inspect his surroundings.

'There are still so many. Have their numbers even decreased?'

Basiliora had been sweeping away the Ashes gathered at the bottom of the Root ever since his manifestation. Yet there were still vast numbers of them. If anything, there seemed to be more than at the start.

Even so, Alon headed deeper without hesitation to kill the Ash Scatterer rather than flee. He knew the characteristics of these Ashes—or rather, these creations of Greed.

Alon lowered his gaze. Unlike before, when they had shed white ash, the creatures now charging at him emitted red soot like the dead. They were unmistakably the creations of Greed he knew.

'Why on earth are these things here?'

As their name implied, creations of Greed were monsters that appeared when the Sin of Greed fully awakened.

In other words, according to everything Alon knew, creations of Greed should not be appearing here. Their presence was tantamount to saying that the Sin of Greed had awakened.

Before he could sort out his tangled thoughts, an indescribably bizarre noise assaulted his eardrums.

SCREEEEECH!!!

He raised his head and saw it: the enormous insect filling his vision, the Ash Scatterer—or, by the name he knew, the Greed Mother.

"Ugh—"

Alon involuntarily squinted.

Perhaps recognizing the threat as soon as Basiliora approached, the Greed Mother revealed its enormous body from among the Ashes. Its appearance was so horrifying that even Alon's impassive face twisted.

Its back rose to a sharp peak, as though it carried an enormous volcano, and Ashes were constantly spawned from the opening there. Magma also poured ceaselessly from its face, like an active volcano.

Finally, seeing the enormous pincers that looked capable of seizing even Basiliora, Alon was certain.

'It is a Greed Mother, just as I thought.'

Basiliora immediately lunged to finish off the Greed Mother.

GRR!?

But before he could bite into it, he recoiled, bending his body backward.

FWOOSH!

Magma had begun flowing from all over its body. Worse still, the Ashes that Basiliora had been crushing so brutally moments before went berserk the instant the Greed Mother was attacked, and began clambering up his body.

'So even Basiliora's body can't withstand it.'

But Alon did not panic. He knew not only the weaknesses of the creations of Greed, but also exactly how to deal with the Greed Mother.

The only problem was...

'Mana.'

Killing the Greed Mother was simple. If he used the Ice Hand Seals he had researched with Penia, it would scatter into a handful of snowflakes. The Greed Mother was extraordinarily vulnerable to water.

The problem lay in the surrounding circumstances. The Ice Hand Seals could only exert their full power if the entire space occupied by the enemy fell within Alon's range. While it might be different from within, his mana could easily be destroyed from outside.

And this space was far too vast for his mana to control. That made the Ice Hand Seals difficult to use.

Still, that was all right. Alon had another way to kill the brood mother.

"Blackie."

["Kyu."]

Alon let out a sigh and called. Blackie, who had remained in his breast pocket until now, immediately climbed onto his shoulder.

Then, without hesitation, Alon established a mana link with Blackie and murmured quietly,

"Shadow Tree."

At once, Blackie's tail flowed down Alon's arm and leg and slipped into his shadow. Eyes rolled into view, and red eyes began appearing all over Blackie's body.

Shadows spread over Alon's body and onto Basiliora's in an instant. Watching them, Alon formed a hand seal.

CRACK!

The shadows poised to shoot outward all stopped.

CRACK! CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!!

As four shadow hands appeared behind Alon's back, the shadows began layering themselves over Basiliora in unison.

This magic had, in fact, begun with a chance discovery. Following Kailas's advice, Alon had begun casting magic while maintaining an uninterrupted link with Blackie. He discovered that his seals affected Blackie, changing its form, and began researching the phenomenon.

Thus, it was neither perfect nor complete. He had found only four seals that corresponded to Blackie, not six. But even that was enough. It was more than sufficient to defeat the Greed Mother before him.

When the first shadow hand formed its seal, the shadows originating from Blackie covered Basiliora's body. When the second formed its seal, those shadows changed shape in unison, becoming an enormous suit of iron armor.

The moment the third shadow hand formed its seal, the mana structure that had become armor shifted again, its molecular structure changing layer by layer.

Then,

"Basiliora—"

At Alon's call, Basiliora once again coiled around the Greed Mother, which was spewing magma in all directions.

The Greed Mother went into a frenzy, erupting with even more magma. But Basiliora's body, now covered in several thick layers of shadow armor, suffered only minimal damage even from the magma it scattered with all its might.

Finally, the moment the fourth shadow hand formed its seal, the black armor covering Basiliora writhed.

And then—

Shadow Seals.

Thorn Tree.

Black thorns sprouted all over the Greed Mother's body.

Horrifying black thorns.

####

SCREEEEEECH!!!!!

A bloodcurdling shriek erupted from the Ash Scatterer's maw. With it, the enormous body collapsed.

RRRUMBLE!

That alone set the entire World Tree trembling as though it would collapse, threatening their lives.

"..."

"..."

Yet the elves' gazes remained fixed on one place: where the Greed Mother's enormous body was falling.

They could not say a word. Rim's eyes were wider than anyone's; she had served as a Pagade longer than any of the other elves present.

She knew. Even if every Pagade gathered to attack it—no, even if all the Dark Leaves who had joined them here attacked—it was such a horrifying being that they could never defeat it.

And so Rim stared blankly at the gray powder scattering everywhere as that enormous body fell to the ground. At the Ashes disappearing along with it.

And at the man atop the enormous god's head, his coat billowing like a black shadow—the man who had used mana as though it were nothing, here in the Root where none but the great ones could wield it.

["He is the primordial elf."]

The queen's voice suddenly brushed her ears. Those words, calling a mere human the primordial elf, had seemed so absurd that she had never once truly believed them.

But now, in this moment...

"... Ah."

Rim let out an involuntary gasp. Like a sage who had found enlightenment at the sight of dawn, her eyes were filling with awe.

####

Meanwhile...

["Kyu!"]

"Well done. You controlled it properly this time."

["Kyu, kyu."]

Blackie eagerly rubbed its cheek against Alon's.

As he praised Blackie, Alon turned to watch the Greed Mother crumble into ash and vanish along with its countless creations. The situation was resolved, but one question remained unanswered.

'Why on earth is there a Greed Mother here?'

The Greed Mother should not have been here. Its presence meant that the Sin of Greed was imprisoned in this place.

As his thoughts grew tangled,

["There's something over there."]

Alon followed Basiliora's resonant voice with his gaze and discovered a mirror in the center of the depths where the Greed Mother had stood. It was ancient and worn, about the size of a door.

Alon climbed down from Basiliora's back and stood before the mirror.

"!"

He soon realized that someone was standing inside it.

It was not his own reflection, but on closer inspection, it bore a remarkable resemblance to him. The figure wore an extremely tattered coat. Only its face was indistinct, much like the dragonkin's—perhaps his stature was too low to see it.

["First."]

["A spell formula is defiance of heaven."]

The figure abruptly spoke those words.