"Pfft!"
Two bursts of Heavenly Fire, each far beyond the level of the world's ordinary powerhouses yet still short of the world's strongest, exploded in a remote corner of Itogami Island. The instant the scorching flames struck the ground, they erupted skyward.
Two petite figures were blasted out of the explosion. Ophis and Lilith, the two little lolis, hit the ground and rolled several times before finally stopping. Covered in soot and charred black all over, they puffed out clouds of black smoke, got to their feet, and brushed the dust from their clothes.
The Purifying Flames covered the entire world. Even Great Red, drifting through the Dimensional Gap and second only to the world's strongest, had been targeted. Naturally, Ophis and Lilith, who had been accompanying Asia on a shopping trip around Itogami Island, were also caught by the indiscriminate Heavenly Fire. Fortunately, as tough and resilient dragons, the two of them emerged from the sudden attack looking rather miserable but without suffering any serious injuries.
"Ophis-chan, Lilith-chan, are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you need healing?"
Asia rushed out from the corner where she had been hiding and looked worriedly at Ophis and Lilith, whose bodies were streaked with blood. Even as she spoke, green light glowed from her hands as she began healing their injuries.
"I'm fine. Where's Cid?"
"Where's Father?"
The two exchanged a silent glance before giving Asia a reassuring answer. Then Ophis and Lilith looked around. Unable to sense Cid anywhere, their expressions darkened unhappily as they asked where he was.
"Huh? Cid-san? I... I don't know. Cid-san said he was going to pick something up and left. For some reason, I can't contact him now. I don't know if something happened to him."
Asia shook her head, glancing at the sky that was still blanketed in dark clouds, then at the two colossal figures visible in the distance even from a hundred li away.
Their shopping trip had been going perfectly well until halfway through, when Cid said a package had arrived and told her to take their things home first. Then he disappeared and never came back. Now, something this terrifying had suddenly happened out of nowhere, and she was genuinely starting to panic.
"Ophis, do you think... Aaaah! Ophis-chan, what are you doing?!"
Asia had only just started asking Ophis a question when Ophis grabbed her and took off, flying around in every direction. Asia was so startled that she immediately screamed in midair.
"Find Cid. Avoid the fire attacks. Or leave this world."
Ophis stated her objectives succinctly while scanning Itogami Island below. When she failed to find the person she was looking for, she turned toward the sea, intending to leave the island and search elsewhere.
At her full speed, she could search for Cid while circling the entire world in only a few minutes.
"Huh? Leave this world?! Why?!"
Asia paid no attention to the first part of Ophis's answer. Her attention immediately locked onto the far more shocking second half.
"Because this world is about to be destroyed."
The simple answer sent Asia into a string of startled cries.
That was only natural. Until now, Asia had assumed all the strange phenomena in the sky were some kind of natural disaster limited to this stretch of ocean. What normal person would suddenly assume that the entire world was about to be destroyed? That was far too absurd to occur to anyone.
She was just about to ask Ophis what exactly was happening when Ophis suddenly stopped.
It wasn't because they had found Cid.
A dragon was blocking their way.
"Daughter, why are you stopping me?"
Ophis stared at the little girl in front of her who looked exactly like herself, puzzled by the daughter she had left behind only seconds earlier.
"Give Asia to me. Father told me to take care of Asia."
"No. Cid entrusted Asia to me. I can't give her to Daughter."
Ophis refused flatly and tried to go around Lilith and head overseas, only for Lilith to block her again.
Ophis was beginning to get annoyed.
"Give Asia to Lilith."
Lilith grabbed one side of Asia and tried to pull her away, but Ophis was still holding the other side, leaving Asia stuck between them.
Lilith turned toward Ophis.
The gazes of the two little girls met, sparks practically crackling between them. Just as it seemed they were about to start fighting, Asia's alarmed cry made them both stop.
"Watch out!"
Ten thousand meters above them, a golden light buried deep within the dark clouds yet somehow still clearly visible swept across the sky, mysteriously converging into something resembling a circular clock.
Unlike an ordinary clock, however, which had hour, minute, and second hands along with twelve major divisions and sixty smaller ones, this clock had only forty divisions and a single hand.
The clock-like disk was enormous.
Yet compared to the golden light hidden deep within the black clouds and spanning the entire world, even that enormous clock seemed insignificant.
More strangely still, there was clearly only one clock, yet everyone in the world could see its complete form simply by looking upward.
Even the blind were no exception.
Using the conventional view of a clock face, with the mark at the very top treated as zero, the lone hand was currently pointing at what should have been "1."
Then the hand moved down by one division.
It reached "2."
A shadow abruptly swallowed the petite figures of Ophis and Lilith in midair.
The already faint light disappeared into darkness in an instant, but in that final moment before it vanished, Asia managed to see what had blocked it.
Gigantic waves, each already exceeding the entire surface area of Itogami Island, rose from every direction and surged toward the island.
All light disappeared at once.
It was as though a massive lid had been placed over Itogami Island, plunging the entire world into darkness.
At the same time, the waters of the Sea of Blood, which had already accumulated more than enough power, seemed to have been released by the flip of a switch. Colossal waves roared toward the territories of the major factions, all of which had already activated their protective barriers.
The sky-covering tsunami swept across the entire world with ease, shattering the enormous barriers before finally receding.
But no one cheered.
If each division of the clock in the sky represented one wave, then the first two attacks had already crippled more than 99.99 percent of the world's fighting strength.
How were they supposed to survive the remaining thirty-eight?
Within the Dimensional Gap, Great Red looked as though it had just burst out from beneath the water. Blood from the Sea of Blood streamed through the countless tiny gaps between the dense scales covering its majestic draconic body, dripping from the Dimensional Gap into the real world.
Great Red beat its enormous wings violently and flew deeper into the Dimensional Gap.
Yet compared to where it had been when the Heavenly Fire first struck, Great Red was now even closer to the real world.
In biblical mythology, God saw the darkness of the world and decided to destroy it with a Great Flood, but first commanded Noah to build Noah's Ark. After the flood ravaged the earth for forty days, Noah carried the surviving seeds of Human life and pairs of male and female animals aboard the Ark into the new world left behind after the apocalyptic flood, where life could begin anew.
Now the Great Flood had arrived.
But Noah's Ark was nowhere to be seen.
Noah, the man who should have built it, had never been born along the course this world was supposed to follow.
One after another, Gods and demons who had once stood at the very pinnacle of the world, possessing enough power to overturn heaven and earth, were reduced to the same helpless state as ordinary mortals before this force that followed the natural laws of the world to reset it.
All they could do was struggle as the flood swallowed them.
Itogami Island was surrounded from every direction by the floodwaters surging across the Sea of Blood, moments away from disappearing beneath the waves.
Then two unimaginably vast surges of Magical Power erupted.
They tore through the surrounding blood-red waves and soared straight into the heavens.
"ROAR!!!"
Along with those two enormous surges of Magical Power came equally earth-shaking dragon roars.
The sound reverberated across heaven and earth. Even the Angel and Devil locked in their distant standoff seemed to have their attention drawn toward it, briefly glancing over.
At the edge of the now-deserted Sea of Blood, Ophis and Lilith poked their heads out of a messy mound of sand.
The two looked at each other, then turned toward Asia, who was struggling her way free from another pile nearby and gulping down fresh air.
"Ophis-chan, Lilith, why aren't you getting up? Are you hurt?!"
Asia climbed out of the huge pit and saw that both little girls remained buried in the sand with only their heads sticking out.
Thinking they had been injured while resisting the waves, she hurried over and pulled them free.
But after dragging them out and seeing the same unhappy expressions on their faces, Asia was just about to use her healing power when she realized neither of them was injured at all.
Their Lolita outfits had simply been soaked by the blood-red waves, and water was steadily dripping down their smooth, delicate skin.
"We can't escape anymore."
"We've been locked on."
There was no saving them now.
The rules governing the world's destruction had already identified them as part of the world itself. They would be forced to undergo the world's reset along with everything else, becoming part of the resources and foundation of the new world left behind after the apocalyptic flood.
In other words, they would turn into oil.
Well, it was only natural.
In mythology, the cunning ancient serpent deceived Adam and Eve into eating the fruit in the Garden of Eden, which led to them being driven from Eden.
God therefore cursed the ancient serpent, and that curse extended to every dragon and serpent in the world.
In the Bible, the concepts of dragons and serpents were essentially interchangeable, so it was only natural that Ophis, Lilith, and Great Red would receive special attention.
After all, dragons represented original sin.
Granted, the attack was currently being carried out by the Old Testament myths, which had been destroyed by a group of extraterrestrial visitors before they even had the chance to fully develop.
But there was no point worrying about which came first, the chicken or the egg.
It was enough to know that the connection existed.
"Huh?"
Hearing the two mutter in such gloomy voices, Asia froze for a moment.
She remembered what Ophis had said earlier, then looked at the two colossal beings locked in a standoff high above before turning back toward Ophis.
"Ophis-chan, when you said the world was being destroyed... Is everything happening around us because of those two things in the sky?"
Ophis followed Asia's gaze toward the Angel and Devil above, then nodded silently.
"Then, Ophis-chan, Lilith-chan, let's go find Cid-san together."
Perhaps because Asia had mentioned Cid, both Ophis and Lilith immediately looked up at her, their eyes filled with confusion.
Neither of them understood what finding Cid now was supposed to accomplish.
"Yeah. We'll find Cid-san, and then the four of us can figure something out together. We'll find a way to defeat those two bad guys."
Asia spoke with determination.
As far as she was concerned, Cid was the only person who might be able to solve a crisis like this.
Wasn't he supposed to be among the world's five strongest?
With Ophis and Lilith included, that gave their side three of them.
Surely three of the world's strongest could somehow defeat those two terrifying creatures that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
"No, no, no..."
But faced with Asia's suggestion, which she believed was perfectly reasonable, Ophis and Lilith immediately shook their heads like rattles.
Then, with expressions and voices far more serious than anything that suited their usual demeanor, they declared with absolute conviction,
"We'll lose!"
"We'll die!"
Ophis and Lilith each delivered half of the answer, stating exactly what would happen if they fought those two creatures in the sky.
The creature covered in pure white feathers was practically specialized to the extreme in anti-dragon attacks.
Its advantage against dragons might not be as overwhelming as Samael's, but the threat it posed to them was unquestionably even more terrifying than Samael.
And that wasn't even accounting for its home-field advantage.
Otherwise, the two of them would never have been so certain.
They genuinely could not see the slightest chance of victory.
"Huh?!"
Asia froze, stunned by the absolute certainty in their voices.
...
In the open lot where the hotel had once stood, Giada saw the two pillars of Magical Power burst through the Sea of Blood.
The calm composure she had displayed earlier was completely gone.
Her terrifying Beast Vassal had Laugus pinned firmly against the ground while green flames relentlessly burned his body, forcing screams of agony from his throat.
"Hurry up and tell me how to stop those two things, or destroy them!"
Giada practically roared the words.
After being bombarded by the Heavenly Fire, she no longer possessed the effortless composure with which she had dominated everyone earlier. Large patches of her skin had been charred black.
Yet even in the face of the Third Primogenitor's fury, and despite his face being drenched in sweat from the pain, Laugus still managed to squeeze out a strained smile.
"Third Primogenitor-sama, you must be joking. If I knew how to stop a world that had already entered its reboot phase, you'd be the one pinned to the ground and burning right now. Let me give you some advice, Your Majesty. Just run."
His words sounded sincere, yet somehow even more like mockery.
Already desperate enough to try anything, Giada intensified the flames burning Laugus.
She wanted to die.
But she hadn't gone insane enough to drag the entire world down with her.
After burning Laugus to ashes, Giada was about to turn away and search for some way to stop what was happening when she noticed Epsilon.
Epsilon was sitting on a huge slab of concrete with her two little followers, staring sadly toward the Angel and Devil.
"Given up?"
"No."
"Then why are you sitting there looking like you're waiting to die? Hurry up and think of something!"
"It doesn't matter. My Master will step in. It's just..."
Epsilon gazed calmly at the two colossal beings locked in a standoff high above, her expression perfectly still.
She knew very well what kind of magnificent existence was currently on this island.
Causing this much trouble was practically asking to die faster.
She was simply grieving over something else.
"The mission failed. I disappointed my Master."
At that thought, Epsilon wanted to cry.
She had finally gotten a chance to prove herself in front of her Master. The opportunity had practically been placed right in her hands, yet somehow she had still managed to fail.
Just how terrible was her luck?
***
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