"Kyahhh!!~"
Yaukusta, Walburga, and a huge number of witches and devils were all swallowed up by Akuto's exploding magic!
"This… this is Chief God-class aura! How is that possible?!"
Even though she was resisting with everything she had, Yaukusta still failed to completely withstand that wave of explosions. Her figure was entirely engulfed by Akuto's explosive magic and vanished from sight!
As for Walburga, there was even less to say. Her power was far below that of her master Yaukusta.
Before using the Evolution Heart, Yaukusta's strength had only barely reached Super Maou-class. Walburga was even weaker and had not even touched the peak of Super Maou.
(For reference, even Kyoma, while wielding his Sacred Gear, had only reached the peak of Maou-class.)
After using the Evolution Heart, Yaukusta's strength had climbed to Chief God-class, which at least barely qualified her to attempt to resist Akuto's instant-cast exploding magic.
Walburga, on the other hand, even after using the Evolution Heart to raise her strength by nearly a full major tier, still had no ability whatsoever to stand against Akuto's explosion magic!
"Vmm~"
The moment her body touched the overflowing explosive spheres, the spell arrays covering Walburga's body instantly dispersed!
And it was not just Walburga. The devils and magicians outside, the entirety of Kuoh City, plus the instance cities next door like Lingkong City, Chuangzhu City, and Anvale City, were all drawn into the scope of this single explosion spell!
This move's area-of-effect was simply enormous, so much so that even Grayfia, Serafall, and the others were wrapped up in it!
Grayfia reflexively tried to defend, only to realize that the explosion magic was not harming her at all!
Bathed in the radiance of the exploding magic, Grayfia experienced Akuto's terrifying power firsthand.
There was no doubt that this strike of Akuto's had already reached Chief God-class, and it was absolutely not just the level of someone who had only just stepped into that tier!
"But… isn't Akuto-sama not even using his Sacred Gear?"
Once the light of the explosion faded, Grayfia looked at Akuto in confusion.
Just as she had suspected, Akuto was not clad in any kind of Balance Breaker armor. He looked exactly the same as he had moments before, his stance unchanged.
Seemingly having noticed Grayfia's doubt, Akuto calmly explained:
"Grayfia, at this point I've already achieved initial fusion with the Red Dragon Emperor's Gauntlet, the Boosted Gear. You could say that I am the Red Dragon Emperor, and the Red Dragon Emperor is me. So even without using Balance Breaker, I can still bring out my full power."
Just as Akuto said, after obtaining the knowledge of the God of the Bible, he had delved deeply into Sacred Gear theory. Out of all Sacred Gears, the one he had researched the most thoroughly was his own. He had already embarked down the path of completely fusing with the Boosted Gear.
In theory, once he crossed the threshold of "maintaining Balance Breaker for 24 hours straight," Akuto would be able to fully fuse the Balance Breaker mode and gain a permanent Chief God-class combat level.
The next step in Akuto's sights was "maintain Tyrant Dragon Mode for 24 hours." Once he achieved that, it would be another massive step forward on top of his initial fusion.
By continuing along these steps one by one, Akuto would gradually bring every last bit of the Red Dragon Emperor's power under his complete control.
After entering Tyrant Dragon Mode, once he finished mastering and surpassing the Red Dragon Emperor's fundamental power, Akuto would have completely fused with the Red Dragon Emperor's soul.
At that point, the Red Dragon Emperor would be him, but he would by no means be limited to just the Red Dragon Emperor.
It was precisely for this reason that Akuto planned to resurrect Elsha, the strongest female Red Dragon Emperor.
After initially merging with the Red Dragon Emperor's dragon soul, Akuto had, in a sense, become the "Sacred Gear-ified Red Dragon Emperor dragon soul" itself and thus possessed the qualifications to choose his own "Sacred Gear wielders."
Akuto's original plan was to resurrect every female Red Dragon Emperor, then use a power similar to "Fate Overlap" to stack the talents and strength of all the Sacred Gear users together, turning quantitative change into qualitative change and, together with his own power and that of all past wielders, surpass the Sacred Gear's limits.
From a conceptual standpoint, Akuto's approach was almost identical to the God of the Bible's Sacred Gear fusion theory. The similarity between them was extremely high.
…However, for now, having all the past female Red Dragon Emperors wield the same Sacred Gear was still too complicated.
Without any prior experience, Akuto intended to experiment first on three people: Yaukusta, Walburga, and Lint.
All three of them were female God-slaying tool wielders who appeared in the original story, and they all wielded the same Longinus. They naturally carried the "supporting cast" kind of fate, which made them relatively easy to handle.
When researching delicate existences such as souls and Sacred Gears, it was only natural to go from big to small, from simple to complex.
…In short, given that Akuto had already achieved initial fusion with the Red Dragon Emperor's dragon soul and had fully fused the Balance Breaker mode, his permanent combat strength had now reached Chief God-class.
"Boom~"
With a single Chief God-class explosion spell, even an instant-cast one, it was easy for him to blanket Kuoh City and the surrounding cities in one shot!
When the explosion finally ended and everyone once again saw the sky, Serafall and Grayfia discovered that… there were only three figures left up there.
Yaukusta and her two companions.
At this point, even her disciple Walburga was in a state of near-fatal injury, plummeting toward the ground.
"How is this possible?!"
Yaukusta had originally thought that the main course for today would be the leaders of the three factions, and that Akuto was a rare delicacy she had discovered by chance.
Who could have known that she herself was nothing more than prey in Akuto's eyes!
"Wait… those missing magicians and devils aren't dead?!"
Through the Khaos Brigade control spells she had planted on her rank-and-file members, Yaukusta sensed their current state.
She was correct that the missing magicians and devils were not dead. It was just that they were no longer in the real world. They had been taken into Akuto's personal inner world instead.
The next instant:
"Vmm~"
A full-coverage purification ritual swept through Akuto's inner world, completely severing the link between Yaukusta and her subordinate dark magicians!
From this moment on, Akuto had effectively pocketed all those Khaos Brigade rank-and-file members.
He had only been able to achieve this thanks to his constantly evolving explosion magic.
At present, Akuto's explosion magic existed in three main versions:
[Explosion]
The purest form of explosion magic. It can alter its own shape according to the host's will, turning into a lightsaber or a light cannon. The longer the chant, the greater the power of the explosion.
[Explosion — the World! (World-type)]
The evolved explosion magic rewarded by the system. It can shatter any barrier or inner world.
[Explosion — Create the World! (Creation Burst)]
A new skill created by fusing explosion magic with the Holy Spear. It can blow apart the rules of the old world, then use the Holy Spear's dominion to generate a new world. As long as one does not surpass the upper limit, one can be omnipotent within the newly created world.
…The move Akuto had just used counted as a modified version of Explosion — the World.
After all, if he had used Creation Burst, that would have basically been the same as exposing his identity. As long as anyone investigated even slightly afterward, they would discover that this move was identical to the one that had sealed off the Vatican.
Drawing on some of the conceptual framework of Creation Burst, Akuto had used Explosion — the World (world-type explosion magic) instead.
After modification, he added a friend-or-foe recognition function and a "threshold-triggered" mechanism to the spell.
Originally, Explosion — the World already had the property of "destroying things but not people." After one round of fine-tuning and the incorporation of both basic explosion magic and Creation Burst, he finally achieved the miraculous effect from just now.
With a single move, Akuto used the basic explosion magic to strip the witches of their ability to fight, then used the world-type explosion's discrimination rules so that, once the damage landed on a target reached a preset threshold, a teleportation routine would automatically trigger.
This one move concentrated the essence of "Search – Strike – Extract" and could be called the ultimate "carry-and-bag-them" skill.
Search (wide-area coverage and identification)
Strike (explosion magic to remove their ability to resist)
Extract (once damage reaches the ceiling, trigger teleportation)
…
Realizing that her subordinate witches and Old Maou devils had been mass-packaged and carried off, Yaukusta was both shocked and afraid.
No good, she would have to use that move!
Yaukusta lightly extended a hand toward Walburga. The spell seed she had planted within Walburga's body instantly activated!
The Holy Cross (Altar of the Purple Flame Lord) was a God-slaying tool specialized in soul attacks. In addition to dealing holy-attribute damage, it also inflicted extra soul damage.
Because of this, Sacred Gear users of the Holy Cross tended to have very deep research into souls. This was what had allowed Yaukusta to seize the Ice Princess's body.
After taking over the Ice Princess, in order to draw out the greatest possible combat power, Yaukusta had handed her original Longinus to her disciple Walburga.
Judging from the situation now, it was obvious that Yaukusta had left a backdoor in Walburga's body as well.
"Boom!~"
Following Yaukusta's activation, cross-shaped flames erupted skyward from Walburga's body!
Once the pillar of flame died down, Walburga's condition recovered somewhat. She pulled from her personal storage a constantly writhing "Chaos Snake."
At the same time, Yaukusta made the exact same motion as Walburga and took out Ophis's snake.
Faced with an enemy as powerful as Akuto, she had no choice but to go all out.
[Absolute Demise — Balance Breaker! (Balance Breaker – Eternal Silver World of Unending Thoughts!)]
[Incinerate Anthem — Balance Breaker! (Balance Breaker – Yaukusta of the Purple Flame!)]
[Incinerate Anthem — Balance Breaker! (Balance Breaker – Tyrant Flame Judgment of the Final Arbiter!)]
"Yaukusta of the Purple Flame" was the personal Balance Breaker mode that Yaukusta had developed for herself.
"Final Arbiter's Tyrant Flame Judgment" was the unique Balance Breaker mode created by Walburga.
Right now, as the original wielder of the Longinus, and using the soul chains she had left on it, Yaukusta and Walburga were jointly invoking the Balance Breaker of the God-slaying tool "Altar of the Purple Flame Lord"!
"Oh~ as I thought, a Sacred Gear can indeed be wielded by more than one user at the same time."
For once, genuine excitement flickered across Akuto's face. He was very satisfied with Yaukusta's performance. It was like being handed a pillow right when you were dozing off.
Though not fully proven yet, Yaukusta had clearly helped him complete a major part of an extremely valuable experiment.
"Boom!~"
Behind Yaukusta, three massive silhouettes surged up from the ground.
They were the "Ice Princess Phantom" from the Balance Breaker of [Eternal Ice Princess], as well as the "Purple Flame Giant" and "Purple Flame Eight-Headed Serpent" from the Balance Breakers of [Altar of the Purple Flame Lord].
(End of Chapter)
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