Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor.
It was one of Rei's trump cards.
Having activated it, Rei took a step forward toward the eyeball floating in the sky.
Of course, he was still walking on the ground, leaving a considerable gap between himself and the airborne eyeball.
Even so, the moment it saw Rei advancing with Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor deployed, the eyeball recoiled, trying to put as much distance between them as it could while retreating through the air.
"What's wrong? You have the ability to create or summon monsters from sacrifices, don't you? Then show me that power. Otherwise, you're the one who's going to be hunted down."
What Rei's words actually provoked in the eyeball, even he couldn't say for certain. But the fact remained that, as if in direct response, the eyeball sprang into action.
Whether it felt insulted by Rei's dismissive tone, or couldn't forgive itself for cowering in fear—the reason didn't matter. What the eyeball understood with absolute clarity was that Rei, spear-throwing included, was a threat to its existence in its current state.
That was precisely why it launched an attack at him.
What it unleashed was, just as before, lightning.
But this time wasn't limited to that alone. The tail extending from behind the eyeball like an optic nerve lashed out at Rei as well.
No—calling it a tail would be generous. It was more like a strike from a whip.
Despite the eyeball itself remaining motionless, the appendage snaked toward Rei with a will of its own.
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The eyeball roared, but Rei, just as he had done before, slashed through the lightning with Death Scythe, incinerating it, and nearly simultaneously dodged the incoming tail strike.
...That said, his body was covered in Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor.
Having dodged with extreme perception, the tail barely grazed the armor... and in that instant, the liquid coating it evaporated, releasing a horrendous stench in all directions.
"Wh—!?"
To be honest, this was completely unexpected.
Rei seized Vihera's hand on instinct and leapt backward.
"Hey—!"
The sudden movement caught Vihera completely off guard, and a startled cry escaped her.
But Rei, who heard her voice right beside him, didn't respond. His gaze was locked elsewhere.
...At the ground, which had turned purple and was actively dissolving.
Poison, he realized. Troublesome.
If it had been a simple physical attack, deflecting it with Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor would have been trivial. But poison—and not just any poison. A substance potent enough to dissolve earth on contact, even in its evaporated, smoke-like state. That changed everything entirely.
In solid or liquid form, Rei had any number of countermeasures at his disposal, starting with the armor itself. But as a gas, it couldn't be blocked.
Evasion was his only option.
Well, there might have been other methods, but in that moment, evasion was the only thing he could think of.
Swing Death Scythe to disperse the toxic air? No, if it were just me, that'd be one thing. But Vihera is right next to me, and Elena, Marina, and Set are all nearby too. With that in mind...
While Rei weighed his options, the eyeball wasn't about to sit idle.
Moreover, having recognized that its tail attack was effective against him, it sent the appendage lashing out once more—while simultaneously unleashing everything it had at Rei. Tentacles, lightning, all at once.
"GOOOOOOOOOO!"
"You'd better not get too focused on just Rei!"
An arrow fired in sync with those words traced a complex trajectory, guided by the Wind Spirits. It curved along a path that would be nearly impossible to intercept even with a tentacle swing, homing straight in on the eyeball.
Naturally, Marina wasn't the only one unhappy about being ignored—Elena felt the same way.
"Take this!"
Elena unleashed one of her trump cards. Dragon Language Magic activated, and a massive dragon's arm materialized in the sky, hammering down toward the eyeball.
The eyeball had shown almost no reaction to Marina's arrow, but it clearly perceived the arm appearing directly above it as a threat, redirecting several of its remaining tentacles to intercept.
Whether it actually recognized it as a dragon's arm was highly questionable. After all, the creature had no frame of reference—no body, head, tail, legs, or wings. It was simply an arm, floating in midair.
This was, of course, an existence Elena had called forth through Dragon Language Magic, and it could only maintain itself in this world for a few seconds at most.
But with a dragon's arm right above and the eyeball directly beneath it... a few seconds was more than enough.
BOOM!
The arm came crashing down, slamming the eyeball into the ground.
The tentacles sent to intercept it were utterly useless, torn apart as effortlessly as paper ribbons.
The eyeball tried to dodge, as if it had anticipated the outcome, but—
"GOH!?"
Marina's arrow pierced through it mid-evasion.
An arrow strike that should have been nothing more than a minor sting. But Marina, who had spent the time the eyeball was fixated on Rei gathering a massive amount of Wind Spirits, delivered a shot that didn't just pierce the eyeball—it punched clean through it.
An arrow lodging itself was one thing. An arrow piercing entirely through was another matter entirely. While not quite a fatal wound, the damage was undeniable.
And so, with its movements halted—whether by pain or some other cause—the eyeball had no chance of evading the descending dragon's arm.
A thunderous roar erupted across the battlefield, loud enough to reach even the distant positions where Knights and Soldiers stood in reserve. The eyeball was driven into the earth.
With that, the tail and tentacle attacks meant for Rei went wide, each striking completely different patches of ground or slicing through empty air.
And Rei... and Vihera... were not about to let an opportunity like this slip by.
Vihera especially had been unable to attack at all while the eyeball was airborne. There was no way she would let this opening pass. The instant she saw her chance, she charged.
"Haaaaaaaaaah!"
With a battle cry, Vihera bore down on the eyeball pinned to the ground.
But naturally, the eyeball wasn't about to sit still and let her close the distance.
The dragon's arm strike and the piercing arrow had dealt significant damage. Yet, perhaps because it wasn't native to this world, it didn't let pain or shock slow its movements.
Whether it remembered Vihera—more specifically, the Magic Impact Palm that had destroyed tentacles in a single blow—was unclear.
Even so, it clearly sensed the danger bearing down on it.
Snapping several of the tentacles around its body like whips, it lashed out in a rapid flurry to drive her back.
But this was Vihera.
Every ounce of frustration from being unable to attack while it was in the air, every ounce of urgency from the poison smoke incident that demanded a swift kill—she channeled it all into this charge.
She wove through the incoming tentacles with footwork that defied description—movements so precise they bordered on precognition—without losing a shred of speed.
Sensing the threat she posed, the eyeball unleashed lightning.
But not a concentrated bolt like the one it had aimed at Rei—not a Lightning Spear meant for a single target. Instead, it sacrificed raw power, scattering lightning across a wide area in a disabling pulse.
From what it had observed of her dodging the tentacles, it must have concluded a focused bolt would be evaded.
In truth, her visceral disgust toward the eyeball only sharpened her determination to avoid its attacks at all costs. And unfortunately for the creature, that determination made her movements all the more razor-edged.
But even for someone of Vihera's skill, while she could dodge a bolt flying directly at her, evading a widespread discharge should have been nearly impossible.
...Assuming, of course, the lightning had been released at its full, original power and range.
"Too bad!"
The dragon's arm, summoned by Elena's Dragon Language Magic.
The arrow, imbued with devastating penetrating power by Marina's Spirit Magic.
Those two preceding attacks had disrupted the lightning's distribution, leaving it erratic and uneven. Some areas were saturated with far more electrical discharge than intended, while others were completely untouched.
And Vihera threaded through those gaps as if she had known the safe path all along.
Naturally, she hadn't known. She had simply read the battlefield with the raw instinct of a born warrior, sniffing out the Safe Zones in the electric storm.
The eyeball couldn't have anticipated that. But it still had one weapon left.
The optic nerve tail—a touch from which could melt an opponent where they stood.
That very strike that even Rei could only evade—the eyeball swung it at Vihera.
"You really think I'd let you do that?"
Rei's voice cut through the chaos, as though he had read the creature's intent before it even moved.
Slash!
The optic nerve tail was severed mid-swing by Death Scythe. But Rei wasn't done. Using the very motion of the scythe swing as a wind-up, he hurled the Twilight Spear in the same fluid motion, impaling the severed tail and sending it hurtling into the distance.
No matter how much toxic fluid coated the tail, once it was flung somewhere the poison couldn't reach, it was meaningless.
A small wisp of toxic smoke rose from where the tail was severed at the base. But forewarned was forearmed—Rei swung Death Scythe in a wide arc, scattering the fumes.
Recalling the Twilight Spear from its distant flight—he had thrown it still impaling the tail—he drove it straight into the eyeball's body. Or what passed for its body, at any rate.
Enhanced by Rei's mana, the Twilight Spear punched through the eyeball's fallen mass without resistance.
At that exact moment, Vihera slammed a Magic Impact Palm—charged with every ounce of power she could muster—into the creature. Elena, somewhat drained from her earlier use of Dragon Language Magic, lashed out with Mirage in its whip form. Marina unleashed close to three dozen Wind Arrows, conjured through Spirit Magic, into the mass. And Set, though still tingling with residual numbness from the earlier lightning strike, brought a foreleg crashing down.
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Even after absorbing all of that, the eyeball refused to die. Worse—it began flailing countless tentacles wildly in every direction, while once again discharging lightning across a broad area, sacrificing power for coverage.
Rei and his party handled the tentacle barrage with relative ease. In truth, those tentacles possessed a nasty ability—they could absorb blood and flesh on contact. An exceptionally troublesome weapon.
But as if to declare that any attack meant nothing if it didn't connect, the party neutralized each one—slashing them apart, battering them aside, smashing them to pieces rather than simply dodging.
The real problem was the lightning.
Rei, with Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor active, could perform the absurd feat of simply burning it away.
Elena and Marina, attacking from range, were far enough to be safe.
Those who found the lightning genuinely threatening were the two fighting up close—Vihera and Set.
Set, however, inherently possessed high resilience as a Gryphon. A surprise strike like the first one could catch him off guard, but if he saw it coming, he could tank the hit.
What was truly astonishing was Vihera.
She was dodging lightning on pure instinct.
Or perhaps "instinct" was no longer the right word. Calling it semi-precognition wouldn't be far off.
Granted, the fact that the eyeball was being assailed from all sides by multiple attackers meant the scattered lightning was thin and patchy, which made evasion possible. But even so, under normal circumstances, no one should have been able to dodge lightning attacks. Let alone while simultaneously evading and countering tentacle strikes at the same time.
"Too bad for you. ...Now, die."
Confirming that none of his companions had taken damage from the lightning, Rei readied Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear—and delivered the final blow.
The others knew it too. This was their moment. Each and every one unleashed the most powerful strike they could muster.
The eyeball stopped moving.