'Let's try fighting without the spirit's assistance now, shall we?'
This was the conclusion Evan came to and he should have honestly not voiced it out, unfortunately, he wished to inform his party members of the reason why he would not be using his spirits so that they would not be caught unawares.
It's not like it was a bad idea, it was a relatively good one. It's just that the timing at which he had that idea, was the worst possible timing.
"Hey, guys. Let's try something..."
Unfortunately, at the moment before he spoke, the last person that should have heard him say that, turned their gaze towards him and upon hearing Evan's words, the corners of his lips curled up into an evil grin.
◇ ◇ ◇
A man was dressed in a black knight uniform with white and gold colours as a contrast. A black mantle with red lining was draped over one of his shoulders and he sat atop some sort of large golden platform while his legs swayed in the wind.
Just beneath his bangs were a pair of eyes coloured red and blue respectively, an elegantly straight nose, and a pair of thin lips. All came together…perfectly.
The man reminisced on something that someone had once told him.
'The cosmos is boundless.
From the existences of ancient times that have attempted and failed to restore the universe to its primordial nothingness...
The nations of various worlds contending for supremacy...
The strong beasts of the wastelands that emerge one after another...
The races that have lived in seclusion for thousands of generations...
The primordial chaos of life and death in the afterlife...
Unknown alien races, never seen before secret realms, unpredictable trajectories, and hitherto unseen wonders.
All sorts of things like this.
So excessively vast that once could not possibly see it through it all through thousands of lifetimes.
Some, nevertheless, claim that the 'godly beings' who tower over all other existences and their opposites who "aggress" them are responsible for all of these things.
As he opened his mouth to speak, the man continued to stare out at the gathering clouds.
"I was curious to find out if these supposedly colossal and potent godly beings lived up to their reputation. If that was the case, all I could do was to take after them.
But if they were nothing great..."
He turned his gaze downwards and took in the complete design of his perch.
If one were to look at it from afar, they would be dumbstruck at the absurdity of what they were seeing.
All around where the man was seated, was a scene of carnage with what was probably once a beautiful continent, now littered with blood, gore, and death, in every nook and cranny, enough to make even the bravest tremble in fear.
The entire area was deathly quiet except for the sound of the wind, nothing else could be heard.
There wasn't even so much as a fly buzzing!
There was nothing left alive on the continent save for the man surveying the devastation and carnage from above.
Men, women, children of all races, animals, monsters, insects, plants, it all mattered not. As far as it was something to which the concept of life could be attached, it was dead.
In the middle of it all, a massive figure in blue full body armour, standing at several tens of kilometres tall, knelt down on one knee.
To keep his massive frame from collapsing to the floor, he propped it up with an equally massive sword.
On the floor beside his enormous body were the shattered remnants of what was once the helmet that paired with this full body armour.
The entity was surrounded by rivers of golden blood, and additional blood could be seen oozing from its eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
A gigantic sword easily the same height as this gigantic being, was stabbed through this being's back, bursting out from his chest as more golden blood poured out of the stab wound.
The sword was one with an intricately designed golden hilt, a semi-transparent blade with a black line running through it along with various runic languages written on it.
And then came the absurd part of the situation.
The tiny figure of the heterochromatic-eyed man was seated atop the hilt of this gigantic sword as he stared down at the corpse of the 'godly being' his sword was impaling as he continued his statement.
"...then killing off these 'godly beings', is something that I would do myself.
After all, in all of existence, there is no other being who embodies and personifies the concept of 'god slaying' more than I do."
While staring at the golden lightning that crackled beneath the black clouds, he ran his fingers through his silver hair.
He tapped the air, and a screen materialized in front of him, displaying the figures of six beings, three of whom were noticeably smaller in size than the other three, all in a big room littered with the corpses of humanoid monsters.
One of these beings, a boy who looked to be about fifteen years of age, stood up and turned to the others before speaking.
[Hey, guys. Let's try something...]
The moment the man heard the words of the boy, the corners of his mouth turned up in a sneering smirk.
"Very well. Since you want to train so well, I would help you out to the 'best' of my ability."
He burst out into laughter as he flicked his fingers, causing a split-second increase in the concentration of the ambient energies around him.
The next moment, the world around him turned monochrome as everything seemed to have stopped, even a drop of the blood of the 'godly being' he just killed that was in the process of falling down to the ground.
A second screen appeared and this one split into several smaller screens, each showing multiple humanoid monsters similar to the ones on the first screen.
"Sending him the boss would be too much and Artemisia would notice, so how about I send those three?
Individually, they do not match up to the floor boss, but when they are together, they can make short work of it in a few minutes."
Immediately following his words, the secondary set of screens faded away, and colour returned to the world.
He placed his elbow on his lap and rested his face on his palm as he gazed at the remaining screen and spoke.
"Now then, amuse me.
Surrender, is NOT a valid option."
◇ ◇ ◇
Mansion of the Damned, 3rd Basement Floor Monster Room
City State of Magic, Kasteblum
December 22nd
Year 1051
Pride and Eliza took advantage of the time they had to rest and recovered their energies as they knew that the monster room would not end with only one wave of enemies.
Meanwhile, Evan was frowning as he noticed that the enemies were taking longer than expected to spawn.
'It's been nearly five minutes. In the game, the monster rooms all had one-minute cooldowns, did it chance in reality and I'm not aware because I didn't ask the guild?'
He had assumed that all monster rooms had the one-minute cool down between waves, game, or reality but he was beginning to think that he was wrong on that assumption.
For a moment, Evan felt his vision go monochrome but after rubbing his eyes and looking again, everything looked normal so he ignored it and turned his attention back to the abnormal situation.
'Either that or something else I going on...
What do you think Kayla?'
He called out to his contracted spirit who was always seated on his shoulder but heard no reply. He then looked at his shoulder and realised she was not there anymore.
"Huh? Kuro, where did Kayla go?"
Turning around, he looked in the direction of the monster corpses but he did not see the familiar black cat.
All he saw was a pile of monster magic stones that were dropped on the ground messily.
He tried contacting them through his connection with them but for some reason, it didn't work!
A chill ran down Evan's spine as he turned in Pride's direction. He had an idea of what happened and he hoped it was not the case, however, when he did not see the familiar flame spirit on Pride's shoulder, he realised he was right.
This situation was very obviously not normal.
"Guys! Something's wrong!"
He ran up to the two who stared at him quizzically while tightening their grips on their weapons and spoke.
"The spirits, they're gone."
It was then that Pride realised that the fire spirit Amy was not on her shoulder anymore.
"What...?"
The high demon was nonplussed as she never even felt the spirit move an inch, yet, it had suddenly disappeared.
"I can't contact Kayla and Kuro either, it's as if my connection with them has been cut off but the contract is still there!"
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