Aster’s first departure was not Ilseom.
It was Ludovic who launched Aster with his own strength.
Balancing atop Ludovic’s arm, Aster kicked off at the exact moment Ludovic hurled him.
It was the result of combining his own leg strength with Ludovic’s power.
So even if he leapt farther than with Ilseom, he was slower than Ilseom.
Poseidon saw that speed.
The moment Poseidon saw Aster, his eyes turned red.
“You little wreeeetch!!!”
A voice fell like a bolt of lightning. As the god’s roar crashed down from the sky, Aster, for the first time in a while, felt his body tingle.
Only,
“Ah, it’s Aster! Waaaah~~!”
Tadadadada......
Cybel’s voice, shouting as she leisurely ran along the serpent’s back, was ruining the tension.
Kwooom!
A sound came from beneath the sea. At the same time, the surface heaved.
It was a sight Aster had never seen before, but he knew what it meant.
Because the Excalibur he possessed took on a similar form.
KWA-AAAAAA─!
A trident surged up above the surface.
The Trident landed in Poseidon’s hand.
All he had done was grab the spear without doing anything else, yet it felt like he would be pushed back by that pressure alone.
'Just seeing that makes me feel like jumping was a mistake.'
But there was no helping it.
Aster had to cross the continent, and the moment just now had been one of the few chances he would get.
Whoosh─
Poseidon lightly raised the Trident.
Immediately after, a wall rose up in front of Aster’s eyes.
'You’ve got to be kidding me......!'
The sea soared up in a massive wave and turned into a wall that completely filled Aster’s field of vision.
A scale beyond human understanding. Aster was flying straight toward the wall of the sea.
'This time I’ll catch you!'
Poseidon watched the sight, observing Aster’s actions.
He had seen Aster’s Ilseom before. Even a god’s eyes struggled to keep up with its speed and destructive power.
But on the sea, there was no way Poseidon would miss.
'Go on, try breaking through that wall.'
What had risen before Aster’s eyes was still only water. He should be able to break through it.
However, this entire sea was Poseidon’s domain.
The instant Aster tried to pierce the wall, the water would shoot in like an arrow and crush his body.
'If you believe your technique can break that wall, then go ahead and try.'
Poseidon would never fail to catch him. Even if his eyes could not track Aster, the sea was on his side.
But Aster did not use Ilseom.
Instead, he brought his hand behind his back.
What he drew out was a single spear.
'......That’s!'
The moment Poseidon recognized that spear, Aster threw it toward the wall of the sea.
Enkespahlos
Spear of Infinite Trial
Shwiik!
Pwoooosh─!
Enkespahlos was the spear of the god Ares.
No matter that he was Poseidon, he could not block its full power with the sea alone.
For an instant, a massive hole opened in the wave before Aster’s eyes, and with “Ilseom,” Aster passed through that opening.
“You bastard!”
Aster had not tried to pierce the wave using Ilseom alone.
Why not? How had he known he wouldn’t be able to break through it?
Aster’s reasoning was astonishingly simple.
'Poseidon is the god of the sea. There’s no way it would be that easy to pierce.'
Just as Poseidon believed in his own strength, Aster believed in it just as much.
It was a method possible only for Aster, who could oppose gods and still look up to them.
Even if Aster killed a god, he would not let his guard down until the very last moment. He simply did not have that kind of thought process.
'In that case.'
Poseidon tightened his grip on the spear.
'I ought to answer that spirit.'
The Trident possessed the power to control the sea. Of course, that too was Poseidon’s power, but in controlling the sea, the Trident specialized and focused that power.
However, that was not its main feature.
The Trident was, at the end of the day, a spear.
When used as a spear, its true power was revealed.
Trident
Closing the Sky
The three-pronged spear shone, and the flow of the sea changed.
'......This is!'
Aster could see it. The waves grew slightly rougher, and before long they changed direction and surged.
The waves that should have been advancing toward the shore started to tilt more and more.
Soon, the waves crashed from left to right.
“Heh.”
At the absurd situation, a hollow laugh slipped out of Aster.
KWA-AAAH!!
With a force that froze even that laugh, the waves climbed even higher.
The waves that had been crashing from Aster’s left to his right now stretched up to the sky like the wall from a moment ago and then,
Whooom!!
They crashed down over Aster’s head, drawing a circle that encased him.
The wave that had risen on Aster’s right side crossed through the air and fell to his lower left.
Aster’s up, down, left, and right were blocked off as he flew.
Now Aster had only two paths left: to advance or to retreat, and behind his back was Poseidon.
The intent of this ability was all too obvious. With the Trident, it left only a single path so the marked target could not escape.
“You said the Trident doesn’t ‘always hit.’”
The Trident was not guaranteed to hit. There were no legends or records that said so.
But even if it wasn’t guaranteed to hit, it was no easy matter to evade Poseidon’s attacks.
Given Poseidon’s massive size, the spear he held was just as large.
That alone made dodging simply difficult.
Aster had certainly been taught that.
But that wasn’t all—this cut off his paths of escape.
There was nowhere to run.
With Ilseom, he could only open a gap in the distance; in the end, the tip of that spear would still come down on him.
“There’s no way to dodge this, huh.”
He could not escape with Ilseom.
In that case, Aster drew out Ares’ shield, Lynotoros.
'Can I take it with this?'
Lynotoros, like Enkespahlos, was a divine shield.
However, its divine authority focused on the range it blocked. What it prided in was an invisible enormity that blocked the «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» “front.”
In other words, its raw defensive power was not particularly outstanding.
'I’ve never tried it before, but.'
Holding the shield, Aster turned his back.
In other words, while still flying, he faced the oncoming Trident head-on.
Poseidon’s eyes gleamed.
[You’re going to try blocking it, Aster.]
Shhh─!
KUUUOOOOOO!!
Inside the cylindrical wall of the sea that surrounded him, the Trident pierced straight through the one path.
Aster clenched his teeth.
The power of that spear was far too ferocious to trust in Lynotoros’ power alone, and Aster was never that type to begin with.
'......Ah, screw it,'
Aster Evans Original
Shield Equipped
Ilseom
'all of it!'
KLAANG─!
Gripping Lynotoros, Aster thrust Ilseom toward the Trident. In other words, he moved in a direction completely opposite from the way he had been flying.
Aster’s divine body shot out and wedged itself between the two outer prongs of the spear, and the inward-curving face of the Trident collided with his shield.
“Uuuuuugh......!”
The Trident was so large that, rather than feeling like he had blocked a spear, Aster felt as if he were holding back a massive wall.
If possible, he wanted to take the force and deflect it away, but it was so strong that simply enduring it was agony.
As expected of Poseidon.
'If I get pushed back like this, the shock will reach the ships!'
Aster’s goal was to reach Quinie’s ship, but he had no intention of smashing all the ships to pieces in the process.
If he did not somehow kill this force, it wasn’t just him—every ship would be shattered.
[Stop, Poseidon.]
At that moment, Jormungandr blocked Poseidon’s path.
[Move, Jormungandr! I’ll kill that brat right this instant!]
[I’m afraid I can’t allow that.]
After Jormungandr spoke, Cybel, bouncing along his back, shouted,
“That’s right! He’s my friend, you know!”
At Cybel’s voice, Poseidon’s mood twisted.
[Your insolence knows no bounds, human!]
Poseidon reached out his hand.
“Huh?”
In that moment, Aster suddenly felt his strength drain away.
Poseidon had withdrawn the Trident.
He drew the Trident far back.
KWA-AAAAAA!!
Following its trajectory, the sea soared up like a rising current and gathered onto the Trident.
From there it was already a single storm, a waterspout.
“......Ugh.”
Cybel let out a short sound.
[Wait! Poseidon!]
Jormungandr shouted, but his voice did not reach Poseidon’s rage-filled ears.
His fickleness was truly like the sea.
Even though Jormungandr stood in his way, Poseidon did not pull back his spear. He aimed for Cybel and seemed not to care about anything that blocked his path.
Cybel saw the spear tip flying toward her.
No, considering its sheer size, you could call it a falling meteor rather than a spear.
It felt as though the entire sea was rushing to kill her. Or perhaps that wasn’t just a feeling.
In that one moment,
if Poseidon had seen the future, he would have known.
That this was the signal flare of Ragnarok.
Creak......
If Poseidon had listened a little more closely, he might have heard it too.
Creak creak creak creak!!
Gears spun without end,
Clack─!
and finally came to a stop.
“Waaah.”
Cybel’s eyes simply sparkled.
The waterspout Poseidon had used earlier had had no intent to harm Cybel.
In truth, nothing had happened, and Cybel had let the waterspout carry her up into the sky.
But this attack was different.
Blatant killing intent.
That is to say,
“He’s trying to kill ‘me.’”
It was time for fate to move.
Poseidon did not yet know what he had just touched.
Whooong─!
Poseidon’s spear stabbed into the space beside Cybel.
[?!]
Poseidon’s expression twisted.
He had not deliberately made it miss. By common sense, Cybel had dodged.
But was that something she could do?
From atop Jormungandr’s back, in the middle of the inescapable sea, had Cybel dodged something so large you could just as well call it a falling building instead of a spear?
'No! This isn’t evasion! What is this bizarre feeling! I’ve felt this somewhere......!'
Confusion crashed down upon Poseidon.
“Hmmm.”
Meanwhile, Cybel spoke.
“When the difference in size is this big, the discrepancy becomes visible.”
Up until now, Cybel had avoided attacks like this. Everyone who had fought her had thought Cybel had dodged well. Or that luck had made the attack miss.
The opponents Cybel had fought until now had all been of a “common-sense” size. Even if a monster like a Minotaur stood before her, compared to Poseidon, that could still be called common sense.
But Poseidon was a god, and the mass of one who ruled the sea was anything but ordinary.
For that god’s spear to miss, a discrepancy had to arise in reality.
And Poseidon had felt this sensation once before.
'This is similar to when I met the three goddesses, the Moirai!'
The three goddesses of fate, the Moirai.
Right now, Cybel gave off the same kind of aura.
'So what I felt when I first met this child wasn’t my imagination!'
There was no doubt.
Cybel was something related to fate.
But he still did not know her true nature. She was not one of the Moirai, so could there really be someone with power on that level? And a human at that?
─You mean someone is worth you dying for? The one you said you were going to meet?
─I never said they were human.
At that moment, Poseidon recalled the words Jormungandr had spoken, and,
Cybel Forte Original
Mana–Aura Combination
Petal
Blue
KWA-AAAAAA!
Cybel’s rapier shone.
The seawater rushed in around it and coiled around Cybel’s rapier.
Before the master of the sea, Poseidon, Cybel claimed a portion of that sea’s domain as her own.
The blasphemy was outrageous.
If Cybel were human, that is.
[......Cybel, there’s no going back now.]
Jormungandr spoke.
Cybel grinned.
“You’re one to talk, Mr. Jorm—you look pretty mad yourself.”
[Ah, of course.]
The serpent’s head turned toward Poseidon. His eyes gleamed with killing intent.
Just now, Poseidon had tried to kill Cybel, including Jormungandr.
It was not something that could be let slide.
[I’ll chew you from head to toe, lengthwise, Poseidon.]
Jormungandr, with Cybel riding on his back.
They had clearly declared war on the chief god.
And so now,
[......A mere serpent, daring to.]
Poseidon’s attention toward Aster had vanished completely.
