Reincarnated as a dragon’s egg ～Lets aim to be the strongest～ - Chapter 558

558 – The Saint’s Trump Card
Lilixira points her staff at me.

“[Holy Sphere]”

I dive down, holding my foreleg out to crush her. Even if she tries to block me with magic, I won’t let her get away. I’ll end it with this attack.

A white light explodes from Lilixira. But it seems her [Holy Sphere] wasn’t aimed at me.

My claws cut through empty ground. She got away. She blasted herself away with her own [Holy Sphere].

I didn’t expect her to be so prepared to damage herself. Because of the light, I lost sight of her.

Still, she was already on the verge of death from my first claw attack. There’s no way she could still be okay after hitting herself with [Holy Sphere]. All she did was ensure her survival for that one attack.

Tracking her presence, I quickly spot her again. She’s flying away with her wings of light, drifting down the cliff.

I suppose with [Float] and [Holy Wing], she can keep flying no matter how battered her body becomes. She caught the blast wave of the [Holy Sphere] with her wings, and used it to gain a burst of speed.

I spot one of her arms tumbling to the ground. It must have been torn off in the explosion.

I’d thought she was ruthless, and saw her followers as nothing more than tools to fulfil her objective. But, I was wrong. She’s even more extreme than that. She even sees her own body as a tool.

She’s still close enough that I can close the distance in almost an instant. I follow the cliff round, chasing her presence.

She shouldn’t have any [Spirit Servants] left. Her limit is two. She’s lied to me about a lot, but I don’t think that was untrue. If she could use three, I would have seen so sooner.

She started with Eldia and Beelzebub, and then only collected the clay guardian after Eldia died. It hasn’t been long since Beelzeubb died, so she can’t have had the time to prepare another monster.

As I turn a bend in the cliff, I come face to face with Lilixira floating in the air. Clutched in her bloodstained hand, her staff is pointed at me.

Right, she has a high level of [Soft Steps]. She intentionally let me follow her presence so I would chase her, then activated her [Soft Steps] once she passed the bend to confuse my [Presence Perception].

“[Gravillion]!”

Six translucent black walls appear around me. She ran away to gain time to prepare this large-scale magic, it seems.

The six walls press in on me. The increased power from her second divine skill is noticeable from the pressure. It’s significantly stronger than the last time she used it. I could probably still break through with brute force, but I have a way of dealing with this skill.

I activate [Wormhole]. It’s a skill that bends space and overwrites my coordinates.

A black light swallows me. Seeing me, Lilixira begins to fly away again.

I teleport outside the black cube. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the cube collapsing in on itself.

I used [Wormhole] in a hurry, and so accidentally set my target coordinates inside the cliff, burying my leg and wing inside the rock face. Of course, to me the cliff is as soft as sponge. I easily tear my leg and wing out.

However, it didn’t at all feel like my leg was being crushed by the rock. It seems that anything at the target is scraped away.

I had only been seeing this skill as a counter to [Gravillion], but if it can delete anything at the target coordinates, then depending on the situation, it could become a terrifying weapon. I’d thought it was mostly useless, but its true value might have been as an attack, rather than for mobility. It’s probably best if I remember this.

“This much has to be enough…”

With her remaining arm, Lilixira points her staff at me.

I swing my foreleg. She still has some distance, but she’s already on the verge of death. She shouldn’t be able to react to my [Dimension Claw].

“I didn’t want to do this, but it can’t be helped.”

A light envelops Lilixira’s surroundings. The light shifts between colours, cycling through all the colours of the rainbow. But, rather than looking pretty, it appears sickening.

“[Metamorphosis]”

I sense Lilixira’s presence expanding inside the light. What is this…?

I release my [Dimension Claw]. I feel the response of hitting something. I send a second and third [Dimension Claw] in to the light.

I feel something tearing apart. The light fades, and I see what looks like the pure-white corpse of Lilixira falling to the bottom of the cliff. Her head, body, and limbs are all separated.

But… There’s no way she could be dead. I haven’t gotten the experience points. What is happening…?

It might be fastest if I look at the skill she used, [Metamorphosis].

【Normal Skill [Metamorphosis]】
【Magic that violates the boundary between humans and monsters.】
【Transforms a human into a monster, or a monster into a human.】
【The boundary between humans and monsters cannot be crossed twice. As a result, it becomes an irreversible curse.】
【It is easy to resist, and so does not work on targets larger than the user, or those with more powerful magic.】

Suddenly, something Lilixira once told me passes through my head.

『In the Holy Country, there is an anecdote that the [Saint’s] miracle once turned a wicked monster into a kindhearted boy. If I continue to raise the level of my [Saint] skill, I may learn such magic one day.』

Did she get that skill from reaching the maximum level in [Saint]!? I’d thought for sure she was just spinning a tale to lure me in. But it seems that magic really did exist.

I now know the true nature of what looked like her dead body. It’s the result of her moulting. It’s whiter than a person could be, and well as thinner and more brittle. It was just a cast-off husk.

At the bottom of the cliff, I see a huge white snake uncoils. A human upper body is attached to the end. Giant wings sprout from its back, and four arms reach out from its shoulders.

I’m taken aback by Lilixira’s strange appearance. Crawling along the bottom of the cliff, she looks down her snake-like body and touches a finger to her cheeks, feeling the split in her mouth.

Lilixira… Am I someone you have to go that far to defeat?