The Butler and Deotres began to transform rapidly as blood vessels—or perhaps tentacles—driven into the backs of their necks from the Flesh Cocoon took effect.
Their bodies swelled to nearly twice their original size, muscles bulging accordingly. Ears elongated, fangs sprouted, and scales and fur spread across their faces. Even tails emerged from their lower backs. They no longer looked anything like the humans they had been just moments before.
Nor was the transformation fully complete even now; it was still ongoing, their forms continuing to shift in real time.
Rei and Elena charged at the two—or perhaps they should already be called beasts.
The first attack came from Rei's Eye of Nebula: arrowheads that he flicked from his fingers in a motion akin to Shidan, launching them one after another at the two abominations.
Under normal circumstances, they would inflict little more than superficial piercing damage—barely useful as suppressive fire. But that assumed an ordinary user, and Rei's physical abilities were far from ordinary.
The arrowheads tore into the still-transforming bodies of both creatures, ripping through skin, gouging flesh, and sending shockwaves deep into bone. Yet the two abominations showed no sign of concern whatsoever, despite taking blows that would have made even their pre-transformation selves scream in agony. If anything, they remained utterly silent, as though they couldn't feel pain at all.
"No pain response either!? Elena!"
"I know!"
Recognizing that no amount of arrowheads would make a difference, Rei called out to Elena running behind him. She responded instantly, bringing Mirage around in its whip form.
Of the two configurations available through its whip-sword design—longsword and whip—Mirage now lashed out in whip form at the two abominations.
It was a strike so sharp it seemed to slice through not just the air but space itself. In fact, Mirage's blade cleaved clean through the Butler's torso, bisecting him into upper and lower halves, then continued onward—albeit with diminished force—cutting into Deotres's torso as well.
Having already severed the Butler's body, the momentum had naturally faded. Mirage's advance halted after carving roughly thirty percent of the way through Deotres's torso.
But the halt didn't mean Elena's assault was over.
Maintaining the motion of her swing, she wrenched the hilt sharply backward. The whip-form blade retracted through Deotres's body—carving through bone, flesh, skin, and viscera alike—until it returned to her hand.
Elena shifted Mirage back to longsword form with a single flourish, shaking off the blood, meat, and organ fragments clinging to the blade.
"Rei!"
Hearing his name, Rei switched to the offensive—the reverse of moments ago, when he had been the one calling out to her.
The Eye of Nebula's arrowheads had been purely suppressive, but that was strictly a long-to-mid-range concern. Once he closed the distance—close enough for his fists to reach—he could choose to strike with his own hands and feet.
They hadn't exchanged a single word, yet for Rei and Elena, coordinating attacks without so much as a glance at each other was effortless. It was a testament to the deep trust between them.
"Oraaaah!"
Deotres had already taken a bisected torso and destroyed organs—and now Rei's fist came crashing in as a follow-up.
Superhuman physical ability and body control honed through countless battles converged into that single blow, sending Deotres—whose massive frame could fairly be called that of a Giant—hurtling through the air.
What Rei felt through his fist was the sensation of striking a thick rubber tire, followed by the crunch of shattering ribs.
If Rei had possessed Vihera's technique of driving shockwaves directly into an opponent's body, he could have dealt far greater damage. Unfortunately, that was beyond him.
Even so, the strike was devastating... yet Deotres came to an abrupt halt in midair.
It wasn't Rei's Sleipnir boots, nor any psychokinetic force. Purely and simply, the tentacle extending from the back of Deotres's neck had reached its maximum length, arresting his flight.
Punched away by Rei's strength, then forcibly stopped in midair by the tentacle. The jolt was considerable, but with his pain sensation deadened, Deotres couldn't have cared less.
As the massive body slammed into the ground, Rei moved to pursue—but then changed targets, turning toward Celestan instead.
The one clearly controlling the Flesh Cocoon and its tentacles was Celestan. Having already taken the Butler and Deotres out of the fight for the moment, attacking Celestan was the obvious move.
Yet Celestan, still resting a hand gently on the Flesh Cocoon, showed no sign of fear as Rei bore down on him.
Did he have another trump card? The thought flashed through Rei's mind, but he dismissed it. In the current situation, the answer was simple: take Celestan down before he could play anything else. He clenched his fist—
"Rei!"
Elena's voice rang out from behind. At the same time, Rei sensed something slicing through the air toward him. He abandoned his attack on Celestan without hesitation, changing course to put distance between them.
An instant later, something whipped through the space he had just occupied.
From his new position, Rei glanced back—and for once, was genuinely dumbfounded.
He could see exactly what had attacked him and where it had come from.
It was the Butler, his torso still half-severed. From the ruptured flesh, his intestines had been swung like a whip—all to protect his master from Rei.
The Butler—or former Butler, rather, since like Deotres his body had swelled to giant proportions—had intercepted the attack.
Rei grimaced at the interruption, but then a question surfaced in his mind.
(His torso is... half reconnected?)
That was the puzzle. During the Butler's enlargement, Elena's whip-form Mirage should have bisected his torso completely. Rei had seen it with his own eyes. If the two severed halves had landed side by side, it might have been possible that the cut wasn't clean and he'd missed it. But Rei had watched the bisected halves fly off in opposite directions from the force of Mirage's strike.
And yet here they were, fused back together.
Rei stared at the sight in disbelief—but reconsidered. Given what kind of creature he was dealing with, this shouldn't seem all that strange.
"Hahahaha, this is incredible. To think it could go this far... Mirares, do you still have your consciousness?"
"Gi... ga..."
In response to Celestan's words, the being called Mirares let out a faint guttural sound. It could have been dismissed as a meaningless noise, but he nodded toward Celestan—a clear sign that his own will remained intact.
(Forced into this form and still obeying his master... Is that loyalty, or should it be called blind faith?)
Rei observed the exchange, but the sound of rushing wind reached his ears again and he leaped clear.
An instant later, the monster Deotres had become slammed both clenched fists into the ground where Rei had stood, carving out a small crater. By then Rei was already airborne, completely unscathed.
Naturally, Elena hadn't been idle either.
With Mirage in longsword form, she charged at Mirares. As far as she was concerned, Mirares was an opponent she had already defeated. Yet he had gone and reconnected his severed torso, coming back to life. No one could have predicted that; it wasn't a failure on her part. Even so, Elena couldn't help but see it as her own mistake—and she had moved to correct it.
Rei said nothing to her and turned to face Deotres.
The wound Elena's Mirage had carved in his torso was bubbling, countless small froths rising from the gash as it regenerated rapidly.
Rei wasn't particularly surprised. After watching a vertically bisected torso get casually reattached, being shocked by something of this caliber would have been the stranger reaction.
"It seems the Butler over there—this one called Mirares—still has his wits about him. Do you?"
Rei posed the question partly out of genuine curiosity, but mostly because he needed time to think about how to kill the thing.
Without Death Scythe, he couldn't use any of the skills he'd acquired through Magic Stones. And since Death Scythe also served as his Magic Catalyst, casting magic was out of the question too. He was confident he could handle an ordinary monster with the Eye of Nebula and his own physical prowess, but having witnessed that absurd regeneration, his options in his current state were limited.
Limited, but not nonexistent.
(Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor... should I use it?)
It was one of the most offensively powerful skills in Rei's vast arsenal. Unlike Death Scythe's skills, it didn't rely on Magic Stones—it was a true skill in every sense.
No matter how potent one's regeneration, it couldn't be truly infinite. With Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor, Rei could see a path to victory.
(Right. Fighting like this, I won't lose—but I won't win easily either. And since they're just stalling for time, I need to bring down Deotres as fast as possible and deal with that seal—the Flesh Cocoon. The problem is whether they'll stay quiet long enough for me to activate it.)
What stood before him was ultimately Celestan's puppet—or more precisely, a puppet of the Flesh Cocoon that Celestan controlled. Either way, Rei wanted to end this quickly.
But Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor couldn't be activated on a whim. It required time to charge. That very requirement was why he hadn't been able to use it during the fight against Black Wolf, despite wanting to.
"Go... gi..."
Deotres let out a short, guttural sound in response to Rei's question, but whether it was actually a reaction was impossible to say. Perhaps even Deotres himself didn't know.
Either way, Rei needed to buy time—building his magic power to activate Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor.
Even as he kept Deotres talking, the magic power emanating from Rei was rapidly growing denser. If Deotres, Mirares, or Celestan could sense magic, they might have caught on to his intent.
But Rei had reason to be confident on that front. Most who had seen or felt his magic power before had been stunned and shaken. If Deotres and the others could perceive it, they would likely react the same way.
And the instant Deotres sensed it—Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor activated.