Mission:025 Power

Mission:02-5 Power

The next second, Nero was sent flying by Echidna's slap.

She snapped a tree in half as she crashed into it, landing flat on her back. Every bone in her body screamed with pain, yet she couldn't stop herself from laughing.

"So... that's what this is?"

Echidna came after her and looked in puzzlement at Nero, who was lying on the ground grinning like an idiot. "Have you gone mad?"

"You wouldn't understand."

Nero merely answered, "You've already lost."

That only confirmed Echidna's guess even more. It returned to its previous snake-headed form, hissed out a laugh, and swallowed Nero in one bite.

Once it turned this strange human into a seed, the newly born child wouldn't be so talkative.

Echidna hated disobedient children, and hated disobedient, talkative ones even more.

Nero's eyes once again sank into darkness.

And that mysterious figure became clear once more.

What appeared before Nero was a man with slicked-back silver hair, dressed in a blue coat. With his back to Nero, he asked coldly in a magnetic voice, "Did you hear it?"

Nero laughed. The sharp corners of her eyes drooped slightly, her jelly-soft lips trembling as they curved into a smile that seemed both mocking and relieved.

"What the hell," she said.

Nero had seen this person before, in last night's unconscious haze. Back then, he had also said all sorts of incomprehensible things just like now, and when Nero woke up, she had written it all off as CG from a game she had played in her previous life.

"...Did you hear it?"

The man pressed on relentlessly. He did not turn around. His coat stirred though there was no wind, revealing the long blade in his left hand.

Yamato.

In the dark world, Nero lifted her foot and walked toward the man.

As for the ghost of this bastard Old Man, connected to her only by blood, Nero had nothing to say.

Ni Lu from her previous life had liked him very much, but that did not stop Nero from starting to hate this power-obsessed bastard once he actually became her Old Man.

So Nero said nothing.

"Did you—"

"Enough!"

A nameless fire ignited in Nero's heart. She leaped up in the darkness and delivered a flying kick to the man's head, cutting off everything he was about to say. "If you've died once already, then just behave yourself and play your revival match! What the hell are you acting all mystical for?!"

After landing, Nero reached toward the Old Man lying on the ground and grabbed the Yamato in his hand. "Hurry up and drop your Gold Coins!"

"Did you hear..."

Not only did the man not let go, he continued repeating his previous line. Sensing his resistance, Nero suppressed the fire at the Bottom of her Heart, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.

"Fine. Isn't this what you want to hear?" she said. "Then listen up—"

"—I need more power!"

That voice rang out in illusion and reality at the same time. In an instant, a vast surge of demonic power erupted inside Echidna's mouth. The snake-bodied demoness let out a piercing scream and retreated sharply, spitting out the prey she had already swallowed.

Nero flipped once in midair and landed. The boundless demonic power pouring from her instantly evaporated the slime clinging to her body. She raised a hand, clenched her fist, and sighed. "Having power sure is nice."

Injured by Nero's counterattack, Echidna demanded in a shrill voice, "What are you?!"

"Me?" Nero smiled and vanished from where she stood.

"A human, of course."

The next second, her fist slammed into Echidna's abdomen, smashing the towering demon back with cries of pain and forcing it to retreat again and again. Nero was still speaking. "Isn't that what you said?"

That was right—a human who could clash head-on with a demon in the flesh and barely get hurt. Nero flexed her wrist joints and threw Echidna a friendly smile.

Unfortunately, Echidna did not appreciate it. After shrieking "Monster," it turned and ran toward the stone monument behind it. That was a small Gate of the Demon World made by Agnus, connected to the Demon World. As Echidna approached, a grass-green rift slowly opened on the surface of the stone monument, and beyond it was the space of the Demon World.

"Leaving already? The ball isn't—"

Watching the demon try to flee, Nero narrowed her eyes and pressed a hand to her chest. Countless motes of faint light surged from the seam in her chest, turning into a section of Sword Hilt in Nero's hand.

"—over yet!"

The long blade was drawn from Nero's chest. In that instant, several streaks of Sword Light appeared at the center of the stone monument amid the distortion of light, then vanished silently in the blink of an eye, taking the spatial rift on the monument with them. Echidna froze in place.

After a brief silence, several cracks spread outward with the Sword Light as their core. Along with firecracker-like cracking sounds, the entire Gate of the Demon World shattered layer by layer and collapsed in an instant.

As if petrified, Echidna slowly turned back and saw Nero still standing where she had been, now with a head of silver hair and bloodlight flickering in her pupils. She held the blade in one hand and bent her knees in a bow.

It was still the same Skirt-Lifting Bow as before, but to Echidna, this once-great Demon Lord, it now held an entirely different meaning.

It was silent mockery.

It let out an ear-piercing shriek, calling the demons of the entire forest, making them come save their mother.

It was going to make a last desperate stand.

After letting out that shriek, Echidna's body split into four just like its head, moving like an octopus. It approached Nero, continuously creating one seed after another beneath itself, each nurturing a demon.

These seeds were not yet mature, but Echidna forcefully awakened them. And so the weak little demons were compelled to break from their shells the moment they hit the ground, swarming toward Nero in droves.

"Ha ha~"

Facing the oncoming horde of demons, Nero turned with a pretty laugh and swept the long blade in her hand in a full circle. She sang out, "Monsters in the Blood Ditch!"

Surging magic flowed along the blade and turned into a cutting edge that rushed forward, condensing together with a transparent human silhouette three meters in front of Nero.

The next second, the demons collided with that edge of magic and were instantly severed, black smoke spraying from their wounds.

Echidna had also arrived before Nero. She raised her long, slender serpent-leg, passed over the Light Blade, and moved to crush that ethereal figure. Nero gathered her strength and leaped, coming face-to-face with Echidna's humanoid upper body high above.

Smiling, she chanted the tragedy unfolding before her: "This Pitiful and Foolish Rage!"

Nero brought her blade chopping down, and one of Echidna's serpent-legs was instantly torn halfway open from the root. Another transparent phantom remained before Echidna, as though mocking her powerlessness.

Smoke-like demon blood poured from Echidna's wound. The Demon Lord screamed in pain, forced to retract back into her original serpent form, collapsing to the ground.

After landing, Nero flicked the long blade in her hand, the blade tip pointing straight at the fallen Echidna.

"The viper's tail is about to split, while the sinner instead presses her legs together."

Nero sang the line once more, swung her blade, and closed in.

The bright blade-light split into four, crisscrossing as it carved itself into Echidna's body.