48 - Battle Of Destiny II

Chapter 48 - Battle Of Destiny II

Written By Dr Armstrong

->The Wyrm's POV<-< p>

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Turns out, [Heretic Magic] had a lot more versatile uses than simply rending Souls. The Wyrm was surprised when his [Detection] picked up on a high magical frequency spell of the Heresy element being cast.

But in hindsight, it isn't too surprising. The Spider was a Ruler, after all, and his [Taboo] had levelled up when the Wyrm himself became one.

The application of Heresy the Spider opted for was rather surprising, instead of directly harming Rend's Soul, the spell would mess with the perception of him, alongside every other individual that was close by.

Essentially, it was an Illusion spell designed to fool the target's very Soul.

As the Wyrm had both [Detection] and [Third Eye], as well as a high-level [Heresy Resistance], the spell couldn't do jack shit to his sense of sight, but that wasn't necessarily the case for the Overlord Dragon.

The Wyrm helplessly tried to warn the Fire Dragon, but it was for nought as by the time he managed to utter the warning, Rend had already clamped down on the Spider.

Except, it wasn't the Spider, it never was. Instead, it was a tennis ball-sized sphere of compressed poison, a veritable toxin bomb.

"RAAAGH!?" Rend screamed out in pain as he was forced to swallow the bomb, which then promptly exploded inside his draconic throat.

In instinctual response, a cone of inferno quickly gushed out from the Dragon's throat, incinerating most of the poison.

But this was enough, enough of a distraction for the Spider to enact her vicious plan. Without much warning, the roof rumbled as 2 of the giant stalactites fell with bombastic speed, crashing into the Dragon's upper half.

*BOOOM*

The Wyrm jumped back as dust clouds veiled the battlefield in rocky mist, his [Third Eye] opened wide, cautious of any would-be fake Spiders coming his way.

"ENOUGH OF THIS!" As the dust settled down, the Dragon shouted with a furious tone, his eyes blazing with a righteous inferno.

'Second phase, huh? To push the Overlord into this kind of rage, this Spider is quite impressive...' The Wyrm thought to himself as the Spider revealed her true location, hanging upside down from a thread of her web.

The Dragon roared once more before he smashed the rocky floor with both of his clawed fists, the pair of hands crashing down like a meteoric air strike.

"Enemy of God!" The Dragon roared out as he glanced at me with his amber-like eyes.

"This insect is too fast! You hunt and slow it down, I shall engulf it in my flames...!" Sounds like a plan to him, the Wyrm quickly exploded into motion as his body zoomed across the battlefield, blazing bursts of flame and light serving as makeshift rockets.

Luckily, the Spider could not speak Dragon, so the plan wasn't obvious to her as she shot many dozen webs to the ceiling, creating much more manoeuvrability for her future self.

Rend smashed the floor with King Kong-like ferocity, magma bubbling up as the very landmass was beginning to sink into the sea of inferno.

Whilst doing so, the Dragon simultaneously breathed out a giant cone of flames, the blaze blanketing the ceiling and burning down a large portion of the Spider's webs.

This seemed to upset the Spider greatly, but she was unable to throw a counter-attack as the Wyrm assaulted from her flank, claws drawn and teeth coated in acidic flame.

*SHING*

The Spider's freshly regenerated sickle arms assumed a blocking stance as the Wyrm crashed into her, his three eyes looking deep into her.

"So who were you again...?" The Wyrm telepathically asked with a draconic smirk.

The Spider paused due to his words before she responded whilst giving the Wyrm additional status effects with her magic eye Skill or whatever.

"I thought you would recognize me..." She responded with a helpless expression, at least, the closest thing to that a Spider could make.

"I use Heresy a lot, it messes up your mind a bit if you don't have enough resistance. So I don't remember you guy's voice, only your faces and such." The Wyrm said passingly as he pushed down on the Spider before the two of them broke off.

The pair then continued exchanging sharp blows to one another, primarily using their physical bodies instead of magic aside from the Spider's occasionally glowing eye as well as her use of the inferior version of [Dimensional Maneuvering].

She would create small spatial hexagons for her to stand upon, and combined with her web-slinging, the Spider was surprisingly quite agile even in the sky.

The Wyrm hadn't even thought of using [Dimensional Maneuvering] like that, but since the Spider's inferior Skill could do it, his could as well, and it was proportionally larger as well.

'Oh yeah, that must suck...' The Spider muttered as if it wouldn't also apply to her with her Heresy-casting tendencies.

'But I don't think you would have remembered my voice, anyway.' They had probably never been close in the first place.

'I still want to know who you are though...' The Wyrm stated as his attempt to bite down on the Spider only resulted in a mouthful of dust.

'...Wakaba.' The Spider's voice was quiet as she said that.

The Wyrm—no, Issei froze in place when he heard that name.

'My name is Wakaba Hiiro, do you remember me?' The Wyrm certainly did.

Wakaba Hiiro, it was her, the Spider was actually her this whole time. The Wyrm remembered her fondly, he even had a silly crush on her back then, mostly just because of her looks...

'I do.' But that was back then, the new Issei had little resemblance to old one. It also didn't help that the Spider was now a, well, Spider and thus did not have the enchanting looks she used to have.

Looking back, there was absolutely no possibility of him having a crush on her due to her personality, she never showed it, after all. So the Wyrm did not have to face any kinds of emotional problems when confronted with the fact that he'd have to kill this girl.

Though it was still unfortunate that it had to be her, there were still some sentimental feelings left in his heart, mostly just nostalgia, really...

'Uhm...you do? Then...do you still want to kill me, Sakurazaki-san?' She asked with a nervous voice, but her Spider body didn't reflect that as it was actually getting more ferocious and intense in its movements.

'Please, just call me Issei. I don't like honorifics much...' The Wyrm just found it unnecessary for himself, though he wouldn't find any trouble using them for other people, it was the social norm in their society, after all.

'...uh, okay...but that doesn't really—' She was cut off by the Wyrm's next words.

'Don't worry about it, of course, I'm still killing you.'

'...'

It seems the Spider couldn't respond to that statement, luckily, she didn't need to as she should instead save her words for when she meets Daddy Grim in the afterlife.

'Alright, but please don't do anything weird to my body if you win...' She seemed rather relaxed at the possibility of death, almost casual even. Understandable since it would not be the first time for her.

'I don't even think I have those organs...' Monsters from the Dungeon didn't seem to reproduce sexually, in fact, all of them seemed to be genderless creatures capable of cloning themselves via parthenogenesis.

...Which would technically make everything here, including the Wyrm, biologically female, technically that is.

'I meant that you shouldn't experiment on my body with magic or something like that...' What, why would she think he'd do that?

'It looks like you did that to yourself some time ago, my [Detection] tells me you're all kind of wrong, buddy." Shit, that hurt like a needle going through his nuts.

'That's probably because of my Species...and my Titles...and my Skills...okay, I'm a bit of a freak, don't judge me.' Hell, even God regarded him as such.

'You weren't one before...?' What an existential crisis-inducing sentence that was...

'...Can I at least eat you then?' Eating the flesh of your fallen foes just hits differently than eating the meat you bought from the supermarket, the dopamine rush was just unrivalled.

'Of course, I'd probably do the same to you if I won.' Wakaba seemed much more talkative now in this second life of hers, perhaps her previously shy demeanour vanished when she started encountering straight-up Dragons and whatnot.

'I don't think you should do that, my body is like a giant hot pot of drugs and diseases.' Unless she wanted to be horrifically mutated by the Chaos element, eating the Wyrm wouldn't be an option.

'Good to know.' 

The Wyrm and the Spider continued exchanging blows of furious power, the very space around them being pulled and distorted by their various dimension-manipulating Skills as an inferno of flame originating from the Overlord Dragon engulfed their surroundings.

*BAAM*

The Dragon dragged the smaller Spider's face against the rocky wall as she constantly barraged his back with poison magic in response, the eyes of the Dragon trailing them from behind.

'Hmm...?' The Wyrm raised his non-existent eyebrows as the Spider stabbed through his chest like usual, but now, an Attack-type Skill had been used, imbuing power to her scythe-like arms.

'What is this...Rot Attack? What is Rot, why is that a unique element?' He thought to himself as Muc finally made itself usefully by pumping the Wyrm with Light Magic that it had continuously absorbed from him and stored in its own jelly body.

The Rot element disintegrated everything that came in contact with it to dust, so the Wyrm was forced to eventually let the Spider go as he severed the afflicted body parts and healed himself after doing so.

'Oi, where did you get this...Rot Attack? Doesn't look like something an arachnid would have.' The Wyrm commented as he counter-attacked a poison cannon by utilizing a Flame and Holy Light-based blast.

'I can say the same for you, why are your fallen body parts still regenerating...they look unreal....creepy' They're not actually regenerating, but the Chaos element inside of them forces flesh and bone to distort, thus making them look like that.

'Oh, well, you see...' The Wyrm pointed a finger at one of the Spider's eyes as he did so.

'It's this special thing called being me.' He shot the Spider's eye with a bullet of Magical Power imbued with Chaos.

Of course, it wasn't nearly fast enough to actually hit her eye, but it did graze her skin, which was more than enough for the unique element's deadly effects to kick in.

The Spider released a demonic shrieking growl as the wound immediately regenerated only to distort into a new eye growing on that part of her body, except it didn't look like one of her arachnoid eyes, but the Wyrm's instead.

'Wha...what did you do to me!?' Unlike before when she was casual with the topic of killing each other, Wakaba was highly distressed when literal tentacles started to grow on her side.

'It's called being me...you enjoy it?' He had tested it before with NPC mobs, and they would always grow weird body parts after being exposed to Chaos, reversible only with Healing Magic.

And unusually, the body parts looked distressingly like him. A mouth grew on your arm? It would look like the Wyrm's jaw, a new hand? It would be weirdly draconic, tentacles? The only body part that consistently grew and didn't originate from him.

It was the height of body horror, should be the exact opposite of Rot, really. Whereas that element gave disintegrating death to anything it touched, Chaos gave life to the target, really messed up eldritch mutated life, but still life nonetheless.

The Spider shrieked as the Chaos wreaked havoc in her body, she tried to escape but was stopped by a giant hand catching her in the air.

It was Rend, the Dragon had jumped to catch the now disorientated Spider, and in his wide jaw, was a sphere of concentrated blue inferno.

*BOOOM*

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"Is this chapter any good? I feel like my skills in writing dialogue is still a bit lacking." -Remark

Power Stones = More Chapters