Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
The bone giant continued moving fast through the town.
Dugan’s light rays burned buildings into nothing, and his stretched face turned the once thriving townscape into vacant plots of land.
There were not even any screams coming out of the town any more.
The remaining people were mostly dead, and the survivors had already run away.
It was a different story for the shelters underground, but there were nothing but corpses left on the surface now.
“Ethics are pointless in a fight like this.”
She did not want to throw her morality away.
But she could not face Dugan otherwise.
So, Mary had grown jaws from her legs, and was eating the corpses on the ground as she moved.
“I see. You’re becoming stronger on the spot so that you don’t lose! Alright sis, keep eating!”
Ami was cheerful despite the circumstances, which was helpful, but also amplified the madness.
However, when she smiled after hearing her voice, Mary had no more worries.
From the very start, she had never hesitated anyway.
She had no time to be sentimental about each and every corpse, and devoured the people’s corpses as ‘things to increase her mana’.
17,000, 19,000, 20,000. She absorbed thousands of corpses and her Sorcery Rating continued to increase.
Hanged Man’s enhancement was affecting this, so the real number was probably over 50,000.
But there was still a difference of 30,000 between her and Dugan.
Even if she could exceed that, considering the fights against the angels so far, she would have to destroy a large part of Dugan’s body in one attack to stop that monster from regenerating.
How could she attack with such a large output of power?
Mary still did not have the answer to that.
She was thinking about that while gathering the corpses, then Dugan stopped his light ray attacks and started making strange movements.
“Sis. Why is Dugan’s face buried in the ground?”
“That’s…… What’s he doing?”
Dugan pressed his petals into the burnt ground and twisted his body around.
Then, the ground right below Mary started bulging.
She instantly guessed that Dugan’s face would come out of there.
But Dugan did not do that, and instead exploded underground.
With that much power, he had decided that it was not necessary to show his face at all.
The giant was blown away from the explosive blast.
“Uuuugh, are you okay, Ami!?”
“It’s just a bit hot. But here comes the next one!”
This time, five heads growing from the ground assaulted the two.
“Burial Gatling!”
Then, Mary transformed the legs of the giant into gatling guns and shot at the faces coming at them.
But there were too many, and they were strangely durable, so she barely stopped just two of them.
“I can’t get them all……!”
The remaining three made a detour to avoid the shots, and opened their mouths again to bite.
But then, a mana bullet coming from afar, landed on not the heads but the tentacle controlling them.
“It’s Calaria’s gun!”
“She shot from that far!? Impressive, Miss. Calaria!”
The giant rotated in the air and safely landed on the ground, and immediately started approaching Dugan while spinning its wheels.
Due to its density, Mary’s skeleton was much lighter than the gigantic Dugan.
But its height was 40 meters and weighed several dozen tons, so the wheels moving it scraped against the ground.
The giant approached while crushing the rubble on the ground.
Explosions occurred by its feet, trying to stop it, but they could not keep up. Dugan, tired of waiting, shifted to a direct attack by raising his head.
“I’m jumping, Ami!”
“Okay, let’s attack like that!”
The skeleton giant dropped its waist low and launched itself off the ground.
The giant jumped towards Dugan while extending its right leg forward.
Then, bone swords grew from the wheels spinning below the soles of its feet.
“Uaaaah!”
Dugan stretched his faces and intercepted the attack.
But, they were shot down from afar.
Even those lucky enough to survive were chopped up by the giant’s rotary saw and there was no stopping its momentum.
“Aaaaaah!”
“Goooo!”
Mary and Ami shouted at the same time.
The mighty flying kick hit right at the center of the flower, and the spinning swords carved Dugan’s face.
“Aaaaaaah!”
Dugan groaned in pain as the swords cut his shoulders and carved up his chest area.
The upper half of the monster’s body was split open from side to side.
The giant skeleton’s legs were stained by the spurt of blood, and it safely landed on the ground.
◇◇◇
Calaria, flying while being held by Cutie, vomited when she saw this.
She was tired of wielding her rifle in the air, and her right and left arms were shaking.
“……Did she beat him?”
“Not yet.”
Calaria replied instantly.
Cutie knew it from Calaria’s expression already, but……
“That’s not enough to kill him. Yeah, it was the same with Platy.”
“Yeah, he’s not going to die from that injury. But the problem is, that’s not even an injury.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“He cut himself open, to avoid Mary.”
“Huuh? That means-”
Dugan recovered and returned to his original form in front of the surprised Cutie’s eyes.
◇◇◇
Mary heard the sound of flesh wriggling around behind her, and sighed.
Then, the skeleton giant turned around and brandished its fist.
“I didn’t feel a good response, so I figured something was going on.”
“The fact that he’s mostly unhurt really hurts us, doesn’t it?”
Dugan was calmly standing there.
No, the petals were a little warped due to the flying kick, but there was not much effect.
Like usual, his disgusting faces were swaying in perfect form.
Suddenly however, his body started twitching and trembling.
Then, Dugan started having a spasm while shaking his neck left and right.
“What……?”
Mary had a bad feeling, and the giant backed off.
Dugan kept shaking and slouched, then his back started to bulge.
“Is Dugan transforming again!?”
“What do we do?”
“I’ll use my gatling guns!”
Mary transformed the giant’s arms and attacked Dugan with a hail of bones.
He used his faces to protect his body, but Calaria shot them down from the side.
The bone bullets finally reached Dugan’s unprotected body and pierced through it.
Blood and flesh splattered.
But Dugan did not care and continued his transformation.
Something from inside his body broke and grew through the skin on his back.
“Red wings……”
“Because he’s an angel?”
“Is he going to try to fly? With that form, with that size!?”
He flapped his wings and a wind strong enough to blow everything away broke out.
Ami’s light body was blown away especially easily.
She instantly clung onto a bone nearby.
Then, a human-sized arm grew from the spot and held her tight.
“Ami, are you okay!?”
“Thanks, sis! But we can’t keep going like this!”
“We have to wait for him to fly up.”
Mary squinted her eyes because of the blowing wind and looked up at the night sky.
Dugan was already flying high with his red wings, out of Mary’s reach.
His red body melted away into the night sky.
“We can’t attack him when he’s flying that high up……”
“I suppose that’s one of his aims.”
“Does he have other aims?”
“If he takes the sky, he can stop Miss. Calaria’s shooting.”
“Oh, right…… So even if we manage to get close to him, we can’t stop his exploding heads.”
Then, when Dugan was so high up that he could not be seen from the ground, he turned towards the ground and extended his hands.
A light converged on his fingertips.
From Mary’s point of view, it looked like the twinkling of a shooting star.
“Here it comes!”
“What do we do, sis!?”
“We’ll focus on evasion this time, can you increase our speed?”
“I can! Wheel of Fortune, full rotatioooon!”
Krrrrrt, the wheels made a shrill noise and the giant suddenly took off.
Mary and Ami’s bodies were shaking around inside the giant, and a light came down from the sky at the same time.
The light ray burned and melted the ground, and countless pillars of flame erupted afterwards.
There were now no traces left there of the once prosperous Captis.