With a deafening roar, the Elsos Ruins caved in on themselves.
Towers of ancient stone crumbled as the entire structure folded inward, as though the earth itself had swallowed it whole.
A massive cloud of dust and debris surged outward, forcing everyone to shield their faces as the shockwave rolled past them.
The ground trembled violently beneath their feet before slowly… gradually… settling.
Silence followed.
Where the grand ruins once stood, there was now nothing but a mound of shattered stone and drifting dust illuminated by the pale moonlight.
"…It's gone."
Lante muttered quietly.
The weight of it settled over the group.
They had made it out…
Just in ti.
Belle remained kneeling on the ground, her gaze fixed on the collapsed ruins as her breathing slowly began to steady.
Behind them, the night continued on as if nothing had happened.
But for those standing there, covered in dust and wounds, it served as a grim reminder…
Just how close they had co to never seeing the sky again.
And as if that wasn't enough...
Another massive shockwave rolled past them, causing the earth to tremble once more.
"What the…"
The sky flickered as though thunder was about to roar across the heavens, yet there were no clouds overhead.
And then...
"A mushroom?"
Asfi muttered as she adjusted her glasses.
"No… that's an explosion."
Hers corrected, lifting the brim of his hat with a frown.
Belle narrowed her eyes as she stared toward the horizon.
Belle narrowed her eyes, straining her vision.
Far in the distance, a titanic pillar of fire and smoke was billowing into the stratosphere.
It was so far away that even with the enhanced eyesight granted by her Falna, she struggled to make it out clearly.
But judging from the fact that it was still visible from all the way here…
"That thing… is even bigger than the Tower of Babel."
Belle said quietly, a chill running down her spine.
Beside her, Hestia's face went entirely pale, her eyes wide with pure horror.
"That… that… is Artemis' Arcanum running wild. Didn't Judas defeat Antares? What's happening now?"
Hestia muttered, lifting a trembling finger toward the distant explosion.
"Ah… right. I haven't told you guys yet."
Lulune stepped forward, briefly looking toward the giant mushroom cloud with a solemn expression before turning back toward everyone.
The entire group shifted their attention to her.
Lulune let out a long sigh and began explaining everything that had happened between Judas and Antares.
She recounted how, after Judas had supposedly killed Antares and stopped the world-ending moon from fully manifesting… Antares had sohow survived and taken on Artemis' form.
Then she explained how both Judas and Antares ended up absorbing Artemis' divinity in a tug-of-war over her Arcanum, as well as the disappearance of Artemis' clone.
"I see… so that's what happened."
Hers muttered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he sank into contemplation.
"Artemis… temporarily turned Judas into her champion… her avatar… so he could fight Antares."
Hestia said quietly, folding her arms.
"So… what are we supposed to do now?"
Lante asked.
Now that everyone understood the situation, the first thing that crossed their minds was how they could help.
But Hers imdiately shut down that idea.
"You can't."
His voice was calm, but firm.
"This is a battle between two wielders of Arcanum. Even if the divine power was split between them and made them sowhat weaker than actual gods… you wouldn't be wrong to consider them demi-gods."
"Trying to interfere in a battle like that is suicide. The shockwaves from their clashes alone would completely incinerate your flesh and bones before you could even draw a weapon."
After Hers spoke, silence fell over the group as everyone processed the weight of his words.
"Then… all we can do is stand here and wait?"
Laurier asked reluctantly.
"Yeah… this battle… we can only leave it to Judas."
Hers replied as he turned toward the distant battlefield where the two demi-gods continued to clash.
And then another earthquake struck, shaking the ground violently once again.
"Crazy… they're fighting that far away, and yet their battle is still affecting us all the way over here."
Hers comnted as he held onto his hat to keep it from being blown away.
Right now, everyone's attention was fixed on the distant battle between Judas and Antares.
Inside the giant blue crystal, Artemis... who had remained asleep this entire ti... had her eyelids twitch ever so slightly.
'Orion...'
…
In a Barren Wasteland...
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Deafening explosions rang out one after another as Judas and Antares exchanged blow after blow, trading attacks at Mach speeds.
Every collision unleashed shockwaves powerful enough to devastate the surrounding landscape, even triggering earthquakes and natural disasters in the process, violently altering the geography.
The battlefield they fought upon had once been a craggy, mountainous region.
But their clashes had beco so intense that the mountains had been ground into fine, chalky sand.
The entire landscape had been flattened into a cratered, post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Thankfully, when Judas had dragged the battle all the way out here, he had already confird there were no signs of human civilization for several dozens of kiloters in any direction, ensuring no one would be directly caught in the crossfire.
Even so…
He could still sense the tectonic plates shifting beneath the continent with each clash.
'I can't let this continue for too long… or the continent itself will suffer damage it may never recover from.'
As that thought crossed his mind, Antares let out a piercing, unholy screech.
It brought its upper arms together, fusing its claws into a singular, heavy mallet of pure Arcanum, and smashed it downward toward his skull.
Judas crossed his forearms, bracing for impact.
BOOM—!
The force of the blow drove him straight into the earth, blasting a trench miles wide into the sand as spiderweb fissures erupted across the wasteland.
'Tch... that hurt.'
Judas winced internally.
His eyes snapped upward.
High above him, floating in the center of the dust storm, Antares manifested a massive bow and arrow forged entirely from blinding silver light and aid it directly at him.
Judas didn't wait.
His figure flickered, soaring into the sky as a blur of azure lightning.
Antares tracked his trajectory relentlessly.
Despite having only a singular, lidless red eye in the center of its face, its tracking capability was supernatural, locking onto Judas like a heat-seeking missile.
The mont it calculated his path... it loosed the string.
The Arcanum bolt shot forward like a streak of light, illuminating the heavens as it emitted a deep, low-pitched buzzing sound.
When Judas turned and saw it approaching…
A bead of sweat slid down his chin.
Judas abruptly stopped midair, narrowed his eyes, and clenched his fist.
A bow and arrow ford within his own hands, aid directly toward the incoming projectile.
'Minimize the area at the tip for greater penetrating power…'
He released the string.
The two divine arrows collided perfectly in mid-air.
For a millisecond, there was absolute silence.
Then, the resulting explosion that followed was akin to a nuclear warhead detonating.
A blinding, white-hot sphere of energy expanded outward, erasing the sky.
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15 chapters at patreon/drdedot
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