Chapter 104: Foreign Defender
The mansion crumbled as a monster rose from the ground.
The three demigods escaped relatively alright, but all of them are heavily injured from The Demise Ground's manipulation.
Only for them to witness the sky above Umbros to darken, hundreds of shimmering black spider legs, crooked and jagged, came from the sky. Then a massive spider body emerged from the darkness, thousands of purple eyes dotted across its entire body.
The Demise Ground had revealed its true form to face something equally wicked.
A massive ten-meter muscular monster in ebony, covered in crimson thorns, its elongated neck stretched out as its reptilian-like head opened its mouth. Another roar escaped, challenging the Star God, whipping its massive tail that rumbles the city.
"What the fuck is that...?!", Lea screamed, staring at both monsters raring up to fight it out.
"The one is the sky is a Star God—", Solafant answered, then clicked their tongue.
The knowledge just washed over the other two, erased before they could even comprehend. Jim realized he had forgotten the name of what that thing was supposed to be as well.
"Dammit, just treat the thing in the sky as a Sixth Step demigod!!", they grabbed Lea and Jim's hands, "We have to run quickly!!"
"And abandon the people here?!", Lea yelled back, then clutched her head in pain, "No... ugh..."
"We cannot do anything—"
BOOM!!
An explosion cut them off, forcing them to focus on the origin of the noise. The beast unleashed a beam of pure energy from its mouth, piercing through The Demise Ground before the Star God could react.
But the Star God did not die; rather, it used its power of Creation to open a purple panel and scroll through it, mentally selecting something. The legs pierced the beast, injecting smoke into it. Yet the beast roared, a sound that shook the foundations of Umbros itself.
Crimson thorns erupted from every wound the spider's legs created, blooming like deadly flowers. The injected smoke tried to invade its body, but the thorns consumed it, converting alien energy into more growth. The Demise Ground recoiled, dozens of legs withdrawing. Purple panels manifested around the beast, scrolling through options at impossible speed.
The ground beneath the beast transformed into a massive cage, bars of crystallized space erupting from below. The creature's tail smashed through them like paper, each swing demolishing the construct before it could fully form.
Another energy beam tore from its mouth, carving through three legs at once. Crimson thorns spread along the severed limbs, racing toward the Star God's main body.
The Demise Ground's thousand eyes focused simultaneously. More panels appeared.
Dark smoke flooded the street, thick and choking. Within it, phantoms of twisted copies of the beast itself, born from the Star God's domain of Trial and Despair. A dozen shadow-creatures lunged at the original.
The beast's response was simple and devastating.
It grabbed one phantom in its massive claws and bit down. The shadow-creature exploded into smoke. The thorns covering the beast's body pulsed, grew brighter, fed on the consumed despair itself.
"It's eating the Star God's attacks...", Solafant breathed, horrified and fascinated in equal measure.
The remaining phantoms hesitated. The Demise Ground's eyes flickered with something that might have been confusion.
The beast didn't wait. It charged, ten meters of pure muscular power barreling through the smoke. Spider legs stabbed down like spears, each one thick as a tree trunk. The beast tanked the hits, thorns blooming from every wound, using the embedded legs as leverage to pull itself closer to the main body.
Its claws raked across the spider's underbelly. Reality screamed where they connected, space itself tearing like fabric.
The Demise Ground manifested a cage directly around the beast's head. The creature's energy beam fired through it, demolishing the construct from the inside while simultaneously carving a canyon through three city blocks.
Lea watched buildings collapse in the beam's wake, "The people—!"
"Already evacuating!!", Jim pointed.
In the distance, figures in Adventurer's Guild uniforms and guards were herding civilians away from the battle.
"They felt it when it started!!"
The Star God created a new panel, this one massive, covering half the sky. Big enough for them to read.
[DESPAIR GROUND: MANIFESTED]
The street beneath the beast transformed, becoming a writhing mass of shadow-hands grasping at its legs. The creature sank into the ground, pulled down by thousands of ghostly appendages.
Its tail whipped around, thorns spreading across the shadow-hands. Where crimson touched darkness, the hands withered and died.
Another roar and another beam. This one aimed directly at The Demise Ground's cluster of central eyes.
The Star God manifested several shields made of bricks. The beam punched through them all. Three eyes exploded in purple ichor.
The Demise Ground shrieked and withdrew several meters into the sky, legs pulling back defensively.
The beast freed itself from the shadow-hands, thorns having consumed most of them. It postured again, neck extending, mouth opening for another devastating blast.
Lea could only stare in horror at the devastation, the result of a battle of epic proportions.
Once again, she felt her own powerlessness.
"Quite a kaiju battle, isn't it?", a voice came from behind, pure and full of clarity.
The three turned back, seeing a smiling Charlotte calmly walking with her cane, shimmering with golden light as if ready for activation.
"Do you know what is going on?", Jim asked, no, demanded as he stared at her.
That same smug expression as if she already knew what was going on.
"That beast right there...", she pointed at the black and crimson beast, "Is what is known as a Dragon back on Earth. A European Dragon, specifically."
Dragon? With no pain coming, it seems the unknown being decided this information wasn't something to hide, or it was too irrelevant to have any impact.
"European Dragons are immortal, they can be killed and die, yes, but they always come back one way or another.", her eyes landed on Jim's sword, "Curruid is the name of one such Dragon."
"What are... Dragon?", Jim asked, feeling curiosity come over him.
She readily answered, "Dragons are Earth's defense mechanism against Outsiders, enforcers of natural order. Though they are pretty lazy most of the time, they do their job once the situation escalates."
With a tap of her cane, several images formed around them.
A red serpent-like beast with arms and legs soars through a mountain, erupting in blinding flame. It wiped out said mountain.
A winged black lizard is facing off against an army with technology higher than this world, firing off bullets like storms. With one breath of flame, it scorched the terrain into a wasteland, yet the army seemed relatively unharmed.
A winged emerald serpent soars through the sky, creating tornadoes with every flap of its wings. What it was facing was even more horrifying and incomprehensible.
A beast lumbering through a desert, quaking the very earth it walks. All trembling under its very might.
A whirlpool that seems to suck everything in endlessly, with only rows upon rows of teeth breaking the surface as they spin in opposite directions.
They are Dragons, the defense mechanism of another world. Each of them is horrifying in its own way.
All eyes turned back to the battle between the Star God and the Dragon...
Then Jim realized, look at his sword, "You..."
"I gave your sword a fragment of a Dragon, yes.", Charlotte nodded, "Though I am surprised Curruid could revive again with only the lifeforce of an Avatar."
"How the hell do we stop it?!", Lea demanded, her consciousness barely holding on as she stumbled toward Charlotte.
"Simple, kill it.", she says with a grin.
Lea turned to the Dragon that seemed to grow larger the more it fought The Demise Ground.
"I'm kidding~ this is way too difficult to ask you all.", Charlotte shrugged, looking at the haggard trio, "So, I ask you, people of this world, can I annihilate this city?"
"Yes!!", the Formless agreed.
"No!!", Jim and Lea answered at the same time, then they glared at Solafant.
Feeling the gaze, they quickly changed their tune, "I-I mean, no. My Lady, you can't simply wipe out a city when there are people living here..."
At the same time, Curruid was dragging the Star God through the city, throwing The Demise Ground across several districts. It roared again, already growing to thirty meters, charging through Umbros to reach its enemy.
"It might just need some rebuilding...", Solafant let out a dry, awkward laugh.
"Just let Curruid rampage a bit, after it had killed the honestly way too creepy spider.", Charlotte said casually.
"Can't you deal with it?", Lea grumbled, irritated toward the most dangerous person here.
"Yes, but that would mean saying goodbye to this city forever.", she said frankly, "The reason why I asked if I can annihilate this city is that..."
She tapped her compass, "All of my weapons are anti-army or above. I don't have a single thing that cannot preserve the city."
The problem is that... Charlotte's arsenal is way too overkill.
"Well... there is something I could do, but you have to convince them.", she tapped her finger on her cane.
"What do you mean?", Jim asked, looking at the black and gold cane.
"This cane housed a fragment of Earth's Ego. I could summon the Ego of Earth and have them command Curruid to stop its rampage—"
"Then let's do it, quick!!", Lea jumped in, hurrying to stop the Dragon, she was losing consciousness quicker.
And they need to get Jim treated from her curses.
"Alright, but I warn you, the Ego of Earth is... a bit special.", Charlotte smiled, "I call upon you, Ego of Earth. The Dragon of Calamity, Tiamat Abzu."
She stabbed her cane to the ground, firmly planting it... from the cane, darkness began to spill out, pitch black that seemed to consume light itself.
"Well, you deal with them, I'll be going now. I will take my cane back later.", Charlotte waved, slipping into a crack in reality.
From the shadow, something rises up. A relatively humanoid figure, hooded with two horns in the front and arching back. A veil covered their face, yet it could not hide the crimson glows of their eyes.
It would be pretty normal, except for the fact that, apart from their eyes, their body was completely made of shadow.
In an instant, as the shadow laid eyes upon them. An unnerving sensation swept across the trio, a pressure that forced their weakened bodies to kneel down.
"Well..."
Their voice was creepy, something between a snarl and a growl. But their words were... special.
"What the fuck do you cunts want? You fucking mongrels? And where the fuck is that batshit insane bitch?!"
This was the Ego of Earth, Tiamat Abzu, the Dragon of Calamity.