"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Ablaze with rage and murderous intent, Subnock lunged.
Rest evaded a jet of Saliva of Decay that cut through the air like a high-pressure water laser, then soared toward the sky.
"Stealth, Floating, Wind Control, Fly Drive."
He activated the spells as a Quartet. Using illusion magic to mask his presence, Rest kicked off the air and began his ascent.
(Closing in for a direct strike... no, he’s not going to make that easy for me.)
"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Having lost sight of his prey, Subnock began thrashing about, lashing out at his surroundings with reckless abandon. The beast had clearly realized that Rest was hiding behind a veil of magic. If Rest approached carelessly now, he risked being crushed by a lucky strike.
(In that case... this really is my only option.)
"Wind Control."
Rest flew directly over Subnock’s head and continued to climb. He pushed himself higher and higher. The atmospheric pressure dropped, making every breath a struggle, and a biting chill set in as the temperature plummeted.
After about three minutes of sustained flight, he reached an altitude of four thousand meters. He was well below the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner, yet high enough to look down upon the peak of Mount Fuji.
Up here, the winds were far more violent than on the ground. When he looked down, he couldn't see a single human soul, but Subnock’s massive frame was still clearly visible.
"...This should be high enough."
Rest came to a halt, hovering in the void. Below him, Subnock continued his blind rampage, but from this distance, there was no way the beast’s attacks could reach him.
Looking down at the creature, Rest spoke aloud to steel his resolve.
"Subnock’s hide is too thick. High-tier magic and Quartet composites won't leave a scratch. Star Eater could gouge his flesh, but the range is far too short. I can't use other spells or physical enhancement while it’s active, and there's no way I can get close enough to hit a vital spot on a beast that size while he’s thrashing around."
So, what was the solution?
He had reached one logical conclusion: he needed to strike with an attack equal to or greater than Star Eater from extreme long range. Unfortunately, none of the spells Rest had mastered fit that description. His mana capacity might be infinite, but his Magic Output—his raw destructive power—was only average.
"Star Eater."
This was the most powerful spell in his repertoire.
As he invoked it, a sphere of pure darkness manifested at the tip of his right hand. Simultaneously, the flight spells he had been maintaining were forcibly canceled. He began to plummet.
It was skydiving without a parachute. A primal terror of the void clawed at him, but it was far too late for second thoughts.
"This is... unexpectedly intense...!"
He was in free-fall from four thousand meters with no magic and no special equipment. The fear and the freezing wind were overwhelming, but he couldn't afford to falter. Rest poured his mana into the dark star, forcing himself to stay calm.
"Absorb the light... O dark star that devours all!"
In an instant, the plains below were plunged into shadow. The sun’s radiance vanished as if a total eclipse had suddenly gripped the world.
Humans and monsters alike must have been paralyzed by the anomaly, but Rest ignored them. He was commanding the dark star to drink in every scrap of sunlight from the surrounding sky.
He had originally conceived Star Eater as a magical black hole. If it could pull in physical matter and erase it, then it stood to reason it could capture light as well.
"Normally, anything pulled into the dark star is annihilated. But this time, I won't let it disappear. I'll stop the light just before it’s erased and compress it."
The ground rushed up to meet him.
Three thousand meters. Two thousand five hundred. Two thousand. Fifteen hundred.
As he neared the surface, Subnock’s form, once no larger than a grain of rice, grew sharp and clear.
"GYAO...?"
The beast stopped its rampage. Sensing the unnatural darkness falling from the sky, Subnock looked up. Though the sun had been bled from the sky, it seemed the monster possessed keen night vision.
Across a distance of a thousand meters, the boy and the beast locked eyes.
"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"So you finally found me... but it’s too late."
Rest’s hand now held a sphere brimming with concentrated solar energy. For nearly a minute, he had fallen from four thousand meters to one thousand at two hundred kilometers per hour. In that time, he had gathered the vast majority of the light that should have fallen across the entire plain and held it in the palm of his hand. Even he didn't truly know how much energy he was currently holding.
"This is just an improvised application... let's see if you can survive it."
If this failed to finish Subnock, Rest was out of options. He would either die on impact or be forced to flee in total disgrace.
(I suppose an original spell deserves a name...)
"Amaterasu."
Rest gave the light trapped within the dark star a single direction and released it.
A blinding, incandescent arrow of light screamed toward the earth, aimed squarely at the behemoth below. It was a spear of radiance born from the pitch-black sky—a strike of condensed solar power, as if the Sun Goddess herself had emerged from the Ama-no-Iwato to reclaim the world.
"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Subnock unleashed a massive jet of saliva toward the falling boy. But it was a futile gesture, like spitting at the sun. A drop of water could never hope to quench a divine judgment.
"GYA...!"
The saliva evaporated in a heartbeat, and then Subnock’s body was swallowed by the light. The beam punched through the center of the beast's torso, vaporizing meat and bone without a hint of mercy.
The King of the Plains. The Master of the Magical Wilds.
The monster that had so arrogantly claimed the title of 'King' was pinned to the earth and pierced through by a divine hammer cast down from the heavens.