Ariel 2
Using Panoptic Vision to keep an eye on all fronts of the battlefield, I give orders to the taratect monsters by way of Kin Control.
Even if I don’t have the strength to fight on the front lines anymore, taking command from the rear is a fine job, too.
In fact, since things are happening all over the enormous Great Elroe Labyrinth, I can’t turn off Panoptic Vision even if I wanted to.
Frankly, I’m working my butt off here!
But it seems to be helping, since the battle is definitely leaning in our favor.
Most of the water dragons that were attacking the Upper Stratum have already been dealt with.
I was definitely sweating it out when Iena, the water dragon chief, started leading Sophia around by the nose, but it didn’t take long once Wrath came running and tapped into the fight.
Even I was at a loss for words when I saw Iena go down like that.
She was one of the stronger ancient dragon chiefs—the strongest, in fact.
As the supreme ruler of the seas, she could always drown any opponent under the crushing weight of the ocean.
And beyond brute strength, she also excelled at a wide variety of water-based strategies to cunningly keep her enemies right where she wanted them.
Her control over water was breathtaking, and nearly impossible to defend against, since water is a freely flowing liquid.
I once saw Iena fight unbelievably dirty by flooding water into her opponent’s body, then tearing them apart from within.
If she gets water into your ears, eyes, or anywhere else, there’s nothing you can do.
You’d have to avoid all of that water to defend yourself, which isn’t easy to do when she can maneuver it into any shape or direction as she pleases.
Back in my prime, I could’ve just swallowed it all away with Gluttony. Without a move like that, however, the only way to deal with her would be to dispel or erase the water through brute force.
And to do that, you’d have to be more powerful than Iena.
Otherwise, you’d just get swallowed up by the waves.
No one weaker than she was would be able to win, and even someone who’s evenly matched would be in for a hard fight.
That was my assessment of Iena, anyway…
So I can’t believe she got killed instantly…
I mean, Wrath probably did that because he knew it was his best shot at winning.
He correctly assessed Iena’s threat level and chose to end the fight quickly by risking the use of the Wrath skill.
That was the right choice, for sure.
Wrath’s fire and lightning wouldn’t be very good at defending against Iena’s water.
Sophia’s ice was much better suited to fighting her.
Since Wrath didn’t have a reliable way of blocking Iena’s attacks like Sophia did, he would’ve had a hard time winning if he didn’t resort to that strategy.
But still, an insta-kill…
Isn’t that a little extreme?
I guess I should just be grateful that the most dangerous of the ancient dragons went down, though.
Still, it’s wild that even someone who’s lived as long as an ancient dragon chief can still die so abruptly as that.
When you look at it that way, maybe I’m one of the lucky ones, since I at least got to take out Potimas with my own two hands.
I got to fulfill my role, at least to the minimum extent.
The flooding of the Upper Stratum that Iena caused is already being dealt with as Sophia goes around sealing up the holes.
Since she’s also defeating any water dragons she finds, the situation in the Upper Stratum will soon be solved.
It looked real bad at first, but when you look at the end result, the enemy lost a ton of their forces while we took minimal damage.
And now…I change my viewpoint to a different area.
The giant pit the queen created leading from the Lower Stratum to the surface.
An intense battle is unfolding there now.
Fire Dragon Nguyen and Lightning Dragon Gohka, the two ancient dragon chiefs who fought the queen outside, are attacking once again.
And what they’re fighting is another queen.
There were originally five queen taratects in total.
White defeated the one that was here in the Great Elroe Labyrinth, while Potimas’s weapons brought down another one in the battle of the elf village.
But the other three were still alive and well.
I summoned all three of them for this battle.
One lost her life in battle against Fire Dragon Nguyen and Lightning Dragon Gohka, which means two remain.
And now, one of those two is also battling Nguyen and Gohka.
Incidentally, the one that Julius the Hero defeated in the war against humanity was a clone that White created, not one of the original queens.
These two ancient dragon chiefs have already defeated one queen.
So this will just be a rehash of the same fight, ending with the queen’s loss…or so you might think.
Lightning Dragon Gohka thrashes, entangled in the web that was strung up across the pit.
Then the queen assails the trapped dragon mercilessly.
Gohka, who’s relatively small for a dragon, is blown away like a piece of garbage.
Nguyen flies around the pit breathing fire, trying to burn up all the spiderwebs, but he clearly can’t keep up since Gohka was captured.
A spider monster’s strength is using thread in a narrow space.
Since the previous battle was in an open space outside, that queen couldn’t fight with her full strength. This battle, though, is another story entirely.
The queen moves nimbly for such an enormous creature, bouncing every whichway around the pit, easily maneuvering whether she’s on a wall or in midair.
Aside from the webs she’s strung up everywhere, she can also make footholds in the air with Dimensional Maneuvering, leaving both Gohka and Nguyen several steps behind.
On top of that, the queen’s underling arch and greater taratects are adding in long-distance attacks from farther down the pit.
And the queen’s sticky spider threads prevent the two ancient dragons from reaching the arches and greaters.
Meanwhile, those threads also serve as both shield and scaffolding for the spiders.
Nguyen and Gohka’s respective dragon minions have joined the fray, too, only for most of them to get shot down and stuck in spiderwebs.
Since the pit goes from the surface to the Lower Stratum, it’s a quick way to get close to the Bottom Stratum here.
But we wouldn’t leave a shortcut like that unguarded.
The queen strung up her threads there in advance and was lying in wait to meet any would-be invaders with all her strength.
This pit is a fortress of sorts. An impregnable one.
It gives the queen a home field advantage as well as the help of her minions, and she was already stronger than Nguyen and Gohka in terms of stats.
On top of that, the two dragons had already fought another queen outside.
They must have taken a short break in between, but they can’t be fully recovered.
With all those conditions lined up in our favor, this was the natural outcome.
…It’s strange, though.
There’s no way Dustin wouldn’t realize that we’d be guarding the pit, nor that Nguyen and Gohka are on the verge of exhaustion.
Even if the aim was to attack at the same time as Iena and overwhelm us, this still seems like a poor strategy.
I haven’t seen the other ancient dragon chiefs yet, and I have no idea why he’d keep them out of play at a time like this.
I’m sure Iena’s swift defeat must have been as much of a surprise to them as it was to me. Still, it seems downright reckless for Nguyen and Gohka to rush in like this.
Nguyen is a fire dragon, well-rounded and strong.
His attack and defense are both on a high level, and he has the extra advantage of being able to fight in the air.
But this also means he doesn’t stand out on any particular front, so while he can reliably defeat less powerful foes, he inevitably struggles against stronger ones.
He just doesn’t have enough firepower.
Which seems silly for a fire dragon.
So while theoretically he’s got the type advantage over a queen and should be able to handle it even though his stats are outmatched, the results are as you see now.
As for Gohka, he’s kind of a meathead, the total opposite of Nguyen.
His stats are incredibly high, maybe even the strongest of all the ancient dragon chiefs in terms of numbers alone.
In fact, his stats might be on par with the queen’s, or even higher.
His skills, on the other hand, are unpolished; he just uses his excessive stats to muscle his way through everything.
That’s not really a problem in itself, though.
The power of his stats is so simple that it’s difficult to counter.
If you tried to beat him with cheap tricks alone, he’d eat you alive.
Even with strategies that rely on traps and such, he could very well beat you using brute strength before you have time to lure him into them.
At the bare minimum, you’ve got to be strong enough that you wouldn’t die on the spot if he attacks you head-on.
He’s got that powerfully destructive lightning as his main attack method, and high enough physical stats to maneuver around quickly and tear apart enemies with his fangs and claws.
It’s a simple yet effective method that might rank him first among ancient dragons in terms of raw destructive power.
Although the trade-off for that high output is that he runs out of gas quickly, putting him at a relative disadvantage in longer battles.
That’s probably why fighting two queens in a row is clearly taking a toll on Gohka.
Even with a break in between, he didn’t have enough time to recover all his SP and such.
I can tell that his movements are already losing their polish.
That’s why he got caught in the queen’s web so quickly.
…Or maybe it’s just because he was jumping around without thinking, as usual.
Gohka is one of those fighters who uses his high speed and small frame for a repeated hit-and-run style of attacking.
Fighting in a pit with threads restricting his movements was never going to work out well for him in the first place.
I feel like Dustin would’ve thought of all that, too, so I don’t understand why he would send Gohka into a battlefield where he’d have a clear disadvantage.
It makes a little more sense with Nguyen, who at least has the advantage of fire being strong against spider threads.
But if he wanted to use Gohka to his full potential, he should’ve had him stay out of this fight and get some rest.
There must have been someone who would be better suited to attacking the pit.
If it were me, I probably would’ve picked Ice Dragon Mia or something.
She’d have the attribute advantage, since her ice can freeze threads, and her specialty is slowly wearing her opponents down with extreme cold and curses.
A strategy like that would force us to go on the move instead.
Which would mean most of the webs set up in the pit would go to waste.
If Nia had shown up, I was afraid I’d have to send in Sophia or Wrath to deal with her, to the point that it feels strange that they didn’t pick such an effective strategy.
Is she going to attack from another angle?
Maybe she’s even attacking already?
But I don’t see anything strange when I scan the entirety of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
So maybe it’s going to happen later?
That timing seems way too slow.
We’ve already repelled Iena’s attack, and the queen is winning against Nguyen and Gohka.
The battle is clearly going in our favor.
I can’t figure out why Dustin wouldn’t send in the rest of the ancient dragon chiefs at this stage.
Am I missing something major here?
Sure, I’d be in trouble if I got hit with a surprise attack in the Bottom Stratum, since I’m alone down here at the moment.
But I don’t sense anything coming, and even if it did happen, I could summon the last queen who’s guarding the other entrance to the labyrinth right now. That would at least buy enough time for Sophia or Wrath to make it back to me.
No problems here…I think.
Things are going great.
So why can’t I shake off this strange feeling of anxiety?
Something has definitely gone wrong on our opponents’ side of things.
Since I can’t figure out why Dustin would be holding back on his resources this late in the game, the only logical conclusion is that there must have been some kind of change in circumstances that left him with no other choice.
Just like Iena, Nguyen and Gohka are far too valuable to use as throwaway pawns.
It’s probably safe to assume that he can’t make a move if I’m a sitting duck down here and nobody’s come after me yet.
Could this mean that the ancient dragon chiefs I haven’t seen yet actually broke off from Dustin’s side?
That would certainly explain why Nguyen and Gohka are attacking so recklessly.
If they’re his only game pieces left, he’d have no choice but to attack with them, even if it doesn’t make sense.
In which case, the reason he sent these two in not long after they defeated the first queen was probably because he figured he had to pile on the attacks while Iena was still alive.
Although in point of fact, Iena had already been beaten by then, rendering Nguyen and Gohka’s reckless attack on this front fairly pointless.
If Iena, Nguyen, and Gohka were the only ones who stayed with Dustin, they don’t stand a chance at winning anymore.
Iena is gone, and Nguyen and Gohka can’t break through our defenses alone.
If he’s still got the other ancient dragon chiefs on hand somewhere, that would be another story, but I really don’t see why he would be holding out at this point…
The moment when Iena and the other water dragons attacked the Upper Stratum would’ve been the best time to attack. With that window of opportunity closed, all that accomplished was losing a major player like Iena for no good reason.
So the theory that the rest of the chiefs abandoned ship makes the most sense. Why would they do that, though?
Well, I can kinda see Nia bailing.
She’s always been a shut-in anyway.
But Hyuvan and Reise? That makes less sense.
Hyuvan has a strong sense of duty and always carries out orders faithfully, despite his ridiculous demeanor.
And Reise is so loyal that he let himself be sealed away all by himself to protect the Sword of the Demon Lord.
It’s a little hard to believe that he would leave Gülie’s faction.
If he did, I’m guessing something really serious must’ve gone down on their end.
The scary part is, I have no idea what that could be.
Does this mean something is happening elsewhere that’s so important it could have a huge effect on our side, too?
Something that would cause loyal dragons like Hyuvan and Reise to secede?
…Okay, if that’s true, it can’t be anything good.
And it’ll be tough to figure anything out from way down here, where I’m not getting any information from the outside world.
That doesn’t mean I can just up and leave now, though.
It wouldn’t be wise to change our course of action based on nothing but a vague suspicion.
We’ve got to stick to our guns.
Focus all of our efforts on defending the Great Elroe Labyrinth to the bitter end.
Whatever might have happened to throw a wrench in the other side’s plans may just work out in our favor, anyway.
I’ve got to concentrate on commanding my own army.
Still, at this point, we’ve just about clinched it.
Things were already going well for our side, and now the puppet taratects have arrived.
That’s four puppet taratects along with the queen.
Not to mention nine arch taratects and plenty of smaller spider monsters, too.
On the other hand, Nguyen and Gohka’s side only has two ancient fire dragons and one ancient lightning dragon left.
The others have all been defeated already.
They were a match for us in terms of legendary-class monsters, but otherwise our defenses were just too strong.
Now that the puppet taratects have arrived, Nguyen and Gohka have zero chance of turning things around, when they couldn’t even handle the queen and her underlings alone.
Nguyen must realize that.
Not sure about that meathead Gohka, though.
Their best option here would be to retreat…but will they?
Nguyen howls.
Even though I can’t hear it as I watch through my Panoptic Vision, I can feel the forceful drive behind it.
He burns up the threads around him with fiery breath and fights back against the puppet taratects as they descend on him.
So he’s not gonna run.
I guess that proves that their side has their backs against the wall.
If the other ancient dragon chiefs were still on standby, that would mean Dustin is doling out his forces in piecemeal attacks, sending them in one by one only to get destroyed.
There’s no way he would do something so stupid.
It makes more sense to assume that Nguyen isn’t retreating because he knows there’d be no coming back if he did.
At this point, I have to assume that the other ancient dragon chiefs really did defect.
Their only remaining option was for Nguyen and Gohka to break through the queen’s defenses in the pit.
But we’re not nice enough to just sit back and let them do that.
The puppet taratects assault Nguyen from all sides, moving in perfect sync.
A fiery breath attack shoots from Nguyen’s mouth toward one of them—Ael.
She produces poisonous liquid to cancel it out.
Since he’s stronger and has the attribute advantage over her, Nguyen’s attack wins out, and Ael gets blown back by the fiery breath.
But the other three attack Nguyen in the meantime.
Their six sword-wielding arms slash away at Nguyen’s tough scales.
That’s three of them with six arms each, for a total of eighteen attacks at once.
Since Nguyen’s stats are higher, a single attack doesn’t leave a very deep cut—but it’s not shallow enough to ignore, either.
Eighteen of them at once is enough to deal some major damage to his HP.
In evident pain, Nguyen produces fire from his entire body in a last-ditch effort to drive them away, which only proves their attack did enough damage to make him cautious.
Ael, Sael, Riel, and Fiel.
These four puppet taratects are my elite force.
The puppet taratect species is exclusive to individuals handpicked by me. It can’t be reached through the normal taratect evolution tree.
But their numbers have been greatly reduced, and now only these four remain.
The rest of the puppet taratects fell in battle.
(Let’s not talk about the fact that it was White who took out most of them.)
These four elites who survived all that are the best of the best.
It helps that they were already particularly strong compared to the others, which is why I kept them out of that fight as my bodyguards.
That’s why they survived getting slaughtered by White.
And they’ve continued to survive even throughout this final battle.
Sure, they haven’t grown as quickly as reincarnations like Sophia and Wrath—even Merazophis has grown faster.
But they’ve definitely become more powerful by surviving so many fights.
I don’t just mean in obvious ways like higher stats and more skills, either.
Their techniques and teamwork have grown, too, in ways that numbers alone can’t convey.
These four are the puppet taratects who have survived it all.
And they’ve spent more time together than any of the others did, too.
No one can top their teamwork.
They cover for each other and fight in harmony without ever using Telepathy or anything of the sort, like their hearts are beating as one.
Riel and Fiel use their threads to catch Ael and bring her back right away.
Ael looks a little scorched on the surface, but the puppet taratects’ real bodies are the tiny spiders hidden inside their doll-like exteriors.
Damaging the outside won’t kill them as long as the spider at the core is safe.
With Ael and the other two brought together, Sael is left alone on the opposite side.
Nguyen notices this right away and goes after her.
But the other three puppet taratects leap at his back.
Nguyen senses them coming and flips around to fend them off.
Then Sael promptly takes that opening to attack.
Her sword slices up Nguyen’s wing.
In this four-against-one fight, they’re able to conquer Nguyen even though he’s stronger and has an attribute that’s their biggest weakness.
Now Gohka flies toward the puppet taratects, maybe in an attempt to rescue Nguyen.
But he can’t catch them.
They run along the threads or swing on them, zipping around in all directions.
This strange movement is harder to follow than any normal flight, making it hard for Gohka to keep up, even though his stats are higher.
Almost no one can catch the puppet taratects in a space like this, where they can use threads to their full advantage, except maybe someone like Hyuvan, the fastest of the ancient dragons.
And once Gohka stops moving, the threads wrap around him.
He only froze for a second, unsure which of the puppet taratects to chase when they split up into two groups.
That was long enough for his body to get wound up in thread.
And then the thread starts to cut into him.
Gohka surrounds himself with lightning, burning the threads away so he can escape.
But he still sustains some major scratches, unable to completely get away in time.
Nguyen uses his fiery Breath to stop them from attacking any further, but the puppet taratects are at a clear advantage.
They’re not just winning because they work together so well—it’s also because Nguyen and Gohka aren’t working together well at all.
Nguyen can’t keep up with Gohka’s speedy movements, and it would never occur to Gohka to try to match pace with Nguyen.
That Gohka really is a meathead, after all…
So instead of four-against-two, it’s more like four-against-one-and-one.
On top of that, supporting fire from the queen and her brood makes it even harder for Nguyen and Gohka to get anywhere.
The queen is the biggest threat of all, and the two dragons can’t just ignore her.
But do they really think they can keep an eye on the queen’s movements while also fighting the puppet taratects?
They’re overestimating the queen and the puppets both.
The puppet taratects all fire Dark Magic spells at once.
Nguyen and Gohka weave left and right to avoid the attacks, only to suddenly stop in midair.
Looks of alarm arise on both their faces.
They’ve been captured in threads too fine to be seen by the naked eye.
While the two of them were busy fighting the puppet taratects, the queen carefully surrounded them with threads without their noticing.
How could they have picked up on it, when they were battling four elite fighters while also trying to keep an eye out for the queen?
And even those thin threads are strong enough to stop Nguyen and Gohka from moving for a moment.
The puppet taratects’ Dark Magic spells hit their marks.
Magic isn’t very effective against dragons, thanks to their Dragon Scales line of skills.
But it’s not nothing, either.
The spells stab at the dragons’ scales, damaging them.
Then the puppet taratects are close behind.
Tangled up in threads and still recovering from a barrage of spells, Nguyen and Gohka can’t fight back against the puppet taratects’ attacks.
They’re unable to dodge or defend themselves as the four fighters with six arms attack, for a total of twenty-four slashes.
Nguyen and Gohka are soon covered in wounds, dripping blood everywhere.
It’s hopeless for them now.
Still, these are two supreme rulers of the powerful ancient dragons.
Fierce flames rise from Nguyen’s body, while Gohka is wreathed in purple lightning.
The puppet taratects are too close to dodge in time.
Direct hits from fire and lightning turn the puppet taratects into ash…or at least, their marionette bodies.
But their real bodies leap out of the puppets, unbeknownst to Nguyen and Gohka.
Four palm-size spiders whirl through the air.
The threads they control take on a cutting edge and slice through the two dragons’ bodies.
Remember, the puppet taratects’ exteriors are just that: puppets.
Though they serve as both armor and weapons for the tiny spiders inside, you could also say they’re nothing more than that.
The puppet taratects’ tiny true forms might look weak, but they retain all of their stats and skills, not the puppet bodies.
In other words, even at that size, they still have stats in the ten thousands.
They’re plenty strong even without their puppet bodies.
Now their Cutting Thread attacks prove to be the finishing blow.
Nguyen and Gohka are no longer moving.
Since their bodies are still caught up in threads, they go limp in midair as if crucified.
Nguyen’s mouth moves slightly, and his body dissolves into dust.
Seeing this, Gohka says something as well, and his body does the same.
…They offered themselves up to the system.
I wasn’t very close with either of them.
But we certainly knew each other for a very long time.
Now those old, familiar acquaintances are gone.
Though I feel some sadness at this loss, it also tells me in no uncertain terms that the end is finally near.
After a moment of respectful silence for Nguyen and Gohka, who fought bravely until the very end, I give a few words of thanks for the puppet taratects.
“You did great.”
Not that they can hear me from so far away, but it’s the feelings that count here.
The puppet taratects are looking sadly at the charred remains of their puppet bodies.
White made those bodies especially for them.
They were far from ordinary puppets: visually indistinguishable from real humans, thanks to White’s impressive thread work.
I wouldn’t be able to remake them to nearly the same quality.
So I’d like to have White remake them, although I’m not sure if there will be time after this battle is over.
“She’d better come back safe for all of our sakes, including the puppet taratects’.”
I utter a prayer for White, who’s still locked in battle.
Just then…
“Testing, testing, one-two-three. Hello? Can you hear me?”
A voice suddenly echoes in my head.
Is this…Telepathy?
I don’t sense anyone nearby.
They must be sending this message from outside the labyrinth.
That would take a seriously high skill level.
The Word of God church has quite a few high-level Telepathy users, and stations them in most towns and cities to create a sort of telephone network. That’s how the Word of God headquarters gathers information from all over the world.
If this person is skilled enough to reach me all the way at the bottom of the Great Elroe Labyrinth, they’ve got to be one of the church’s trained Telepathy specialists.
“Who is this? Someone from the Word of God, I assume.”
“Hello? Hi. You’re half right, I guess. Oh, this is our first time talking, so I guess I should say nice to meet you. Although we’ve technically seen each other before. I’m Kenichi Ogiwara, one of the reincarnations. I’ve got a unique skill called ‘Unlimited Telephone,’ you see.”
This telepathic message was about to turn the entire situation upside down.
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