Chapter 26 : Chapter 26
Chapter 26. Who Gave You the Courage?
“Die!”
Boom—!!
With a sharp cry, the air tore apart.
A mass of energy rapidly condensed in Lilith’s hand, and then a gigantic black fireball came crashing down, instantly swallowing everything in front of her!
The Pure White Collector seemed startled for a moment, but it still reacted with astonishing speed, dissolving into a mass of bandages and scattering apart.
The terrifying heat singed those split bodies, and the originally spotless white bandages instantly turned black and curled.
“What destructive power...”
After murmuring that under its breath, the Collector’s figure re-formed more than ten meters away.
Aside from a few scorched patches on its body, it seemed largely unharmed. Faced with Lilith’s fury, it showed no fear at all. Instead, its gaze grew even more feverish.
Clutching its head with both hands, it let out a crazed scream:
“Wonderful... wonderful... an enraged subject... the beauty of struggle and defiance... it is simply... breathtaking!”
“Shut up, you freak!”
Lilith did not give it the chance to finish.
Her figure vanished from where she stood.
In the next instant, she appeared above the Collector’s head like a phantom.
Her skirt flared.
Those long, slender legs wrapped in paper-thin black stockings had now become deadly weapons.
【Succubus Battle Art · Heel of Judgment】
Lilith twisted at the waist, her supple body drawing a perfect arc through the air. Her calf, faintly revealing the delicate sheen of flesh beneath the black silk, came slashing down with a shriek of wind and crushing force!
Empowered by magic, the strike seemed to carry the force to smash through anything in its path, and a dark blade of energy came howling down with it!
But in the Collector’s eyes, that kick was art itself. It was a flawless masterpiece that deserved to be frozen in bandages at this very instant and admired forever.
“Beautiful!”
Bang————!
A dull crash rang out.
Lilith’s heel smashed heavily onto the Collector’s shoulder.
There was not the slightest suspense. Like a sharp blade cutting into tofu, the Collector’s seemingly tough bandaged body instantly collapsed.
By the time it realized what had happened, it had already been split cleanly in half from top to bottom!
“It is not over yet!”
Her sharp cry came from the air.
After landing, Lilith did not pause in the slightest. Borrowing the momentum of that landing, she twisted her flexible body around, and her agile heart-tipped tail shot forward like a venomous stinger, wrapped in dark crimson magic, instantly piercing through the Collector’s chest!
Whoosh—!
Shadowfire poured through her tail into the Collector’s body. In an instant, it turned the creature into a massive torch.
“Aaaahhh—!”
Its scream echoed through the entire gallery.
A few seconds later, just as Lilith had expected, the humanoid mass of bandages was completely reduced to ashes, collapsing into a pile of charred black remains on the floor.
“Hah... hah...”
After finishing all that, Lilith withdrew her tail.
She lightly tossed back her disheveled white hair. Her cheeks were flushed from the exertion, and her chest rose and fell violently with each breath, yet there was a vicious gleam in her eyes.
「The guardian of the eighth floor? This is all it has?」
「It wants to turn me into a specimen? In its next life.」
“Pah.”
Thinking that, Lilith even spat in contempt before turning around, preparing to lower Hill from where she was hanging in midair.
However—
Just as she turned around—
“Heh... hehehehehe!”
A low laugh that made one’s skin crawl rang out once more from that pile of ashes.
“What?!”
Lilith spun around abruptly.
The heap of ashes that should already have been burned to cinders had begun to squirm in a grotesque way.
Immediately afterward, countless white bandages from the walls, the ceiling, and even the cracks in the floor surged over as if they were alive, instantly gathering over that pile of ashes.
Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—
In the blink of an eye—
the Pure White Collector, wearing its tall hat and tattered tailcoat, stood there again completely unscathed. Even its clothes looked brand new.
“Again?!”
Lilith’s eyes widened.
「What is wrong with the monsters in this Abyssal Labyrinth? Every single one of them can come back to life? They are all built around some absurd gimmick!」
“You still will not die even after I burn you to ashes?”
“Hehehe... it still hurts... but at the same time, it pleases me deeply!”
The Collector still wore that hideous grin. It patted the dust from its body, its yellowed eyeball streaked with blood as it lewdly stared at Lilith, its tone filled with mockery and ridicule.
“What beautiful and powerful destructive force... If we were outside the labyrinth, perhaps you truly could have killed me.”
“But unfortunately, this is the eighth layer of the Abyss!”
As it spoke, the blood vessels in its dark yellow eye swelled, and it spread its arms as though embracing the entire space.
“Do you still not understand, honored guest?”
“I am this layer of the labyrinth, and this layer of the labyrinth is me!”
“Every brick here, every monster, every inch of air is my body!”
“I am an immortal bearing the seal-blessing of ‘Ragnarok’! As long as the eighth layer remains, I am invincible!”
“Hahahahaha!”
After saying all that, the Collector once more burst into mad laughter, its ghastly cackling reverberating through the entire corridor.
On the other side, hearing those words, Lilith suddenly understood.
「So that is it?」
She finally understood why her phone had been unable to detect the source of the seal earlier.
It was not because the source had been moving, nor because the phone was broken.
It was because the entire eighth layer itself was one gigantic source of the seal!
So no matter where the needle pointed, it had always been detecting this place!
“In other words...”
Lilith clenched her teeth, and a fierce glint flashed through her eyes.
「As long as I destroy it completely, down to the last scrap, the seal on this floor will be broken too, right?」
「If killing it once is not enough, then I will kill it a hundred times! A thousand times! I will keep killing it until it can no longer come back!」
“Stop laughing, you freak. Die already!”
Having figured it all out, Lilith roared and charged forward once more instead of retreating!
This time, she held nothing back. Her ninth-tier magic erupted in full!
【Succubus Battle Art · Dance of the Dark Rose!】
As magic surged through Lilith’s body, countless black petals of magical power bloomed in the air, swirling around her like butterflies as they attacked the enemy before her along with her irresistibly seductive figure.
Every single petal contained enough terrifying force to slice through steel, and once it struck, it would rapidly generate intense heat. One hit alone was enough to set the Collector’s body ablaze at once.
The Collector could not keep up with Lilith’s movements. Though it tried to evade her, after dodging only one of her punches, it was struck by the petals.
Boom————
After that, everything became simple.
Its body was burned apart by the petals, then quickly restored, then burned apart again, then restored again.
Once, twice, three times...
Ten times, twenty times, thirty times!
Flames were everywhere. Burned bandages were everywhere. The entire corridor had been reduced to utter ruin by Lilith’s fire, yet the Collector’s bandages seemed inexhaustible, and its speed of recovery remained astonishing.
“Hah... hah... hah...”
A few minutes later, Lilith’s movements finally began to slow.
She still had plenty of magic left, but her stamina was starting to fail her. That wretch of a Collector kept laughing as it fled, occasionally lashing back at her with its bandages, irritating Lilith to no end.
「My physics teacher lied to me. Energy clearly does not conserve at all!」
「What kind of boss cannot be killed no matter how many times you beat it? Even regeneration should have a limit!」
“Have you had your fun, little kitty?”
The mocking laughter drifted through the air as the Collector’s perfectly intact figure stepped out of the smoke and dust, still carrying the leisurely composure of a cat toying with a mouse.
“Since your performance is over, then next... it is my turn!”
“Hah?”
Hearing that, Lilith’s eyelid twitched, and she immediately retreated two steps, taking up a defensive stance.
But who would have thought that the Collector did not need to attack with its main body at all?
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—!
With the slightest lift of its hand, countless bandages that had long been lying in ambush around Lilith shot out like giant pythons pouncing on prey!
Lilith sensed the danger, but before she could even take flight, her ankle had already been bound fast.
“Mmgh!!!”
Then her wrists, her waist, her neck!
A tremendous pulling force struck her, and by the time she realized what had happened, she had already been spread into an X-shape and slammed hard against the wall.
“Let... let go of me, bastard!”
Lilith struggled with all her strength, her black-stockinged legs kicking wildly in the air, but it was completely useless.
“Hehehe... what marvelous vitality!”
The Collector slowly floated over, greedily sweeping its single eye over Lilith’s exquisite body.
More than a dozen bandages under its control drifted up and swayed before her, making her heart tighten at once.
“Let us return to the unfinished subject from before... Since you refuse to admit that you are a girl, then I can only help you face reality through more thorough means!”
“What? You would dare—!”
Watching those flexible, writhing “tentacles,” Lilith’s forced-apart legs tensed through the arches of her feet, and for the first time, real panic appeared in her eyes.
“You... ugly old mummy with your twisted tastes! Just try touching me, and I... I will definitely mmph mmph mmph!”
As she spoke, several bandages wrapped around her mouth, leaving her unable to make another sound.
“What a filthy mouth, though it does not matter~”
“Once I have examined your body, I will savor every inch of you, inside and out, from head to toe, and turn every inch of your skin into a perfect exhibit, hehehehehe!”
The Collector spoke with a hideous grin.
Then it raised its right hand and began to walk toward Lilith step by step!
「Damn... damn it!」
At this moment, Lilith had never felt such terror since her transmigration!
「To think I would be cornered this badly by some third-rate villain! If I had already mastered my skills... if I had enough combat experience... how could trash like you ever have...」
「Damn it... I cannot break free... curse it all!」
As those thoughts ran through her mind, a glimmer of moisture appeared at the corner of Lilith’s eye. Then she closed her eyes, as though she had already accepted defeat...
Those tentacles fell like rain. In less than half a second, they would touch the succubus’s impossibly soft, delicate body...
But at that critical instant—
RUMBLE————!!
A world-shaking roar erupted, as though heaven and earth themselves were collapsing.
In that instant, the roof of the Eternal Gallery was ripped away by a terrifying force beyond description!
“What?!”
The Collector looked up in horror, only to see rubble flying and dust billowing everywhere.
A pillar of black fire descended from above, instantly swallowing the tentacles before Lilith—and the once-arrogant Collector along with them!
“AAAAAAAHHHHH—!”
This time, the Collector’s scream was more shrill than ever before, as though even its soul were being burned.
Then—
a tall, cold figure, radiating such dreadful pressure that the entire space trembled, slowly descended from within those black flames.
In those crimson eyes burned a fury fierce enough to destroy the world.
With one casual motion, Asmodeus pulled the disheveled, tearful Lilith into his arms, one arm wrapping tightly around her soft waist.
“Mmph! Demon King!”
Whether from instinct or reflex, Lilith let out a cry that was almost pitiable.
Then Asmodeus looked coldly at the Collector’s rapidly restoring body and said,
“Who gave you the courage to touch what is mine?”