novelraw Chapter 253 253: Columbia, The Strongest Hero
Chapter 253 253: Columbia, The Strongest Hero
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Louis stood completely shocked beyond belief as he witnessed Columbia's power.
"Incredible! Even when she is on another planet entirely, her power remains the same! Her connection to America is immense!"
"This will finish you both!!!"
Her aura exploded, then condensed into her fists until she began to distort space and time itself.
"BURNING JUSTICE FIST – BLAZING LIBERTY..."
Her eyes gleamed with blue, red, and white flames. Her aura surged like a meteor descending upon Mars.
"SMASH!!!"
RUMBLE!
The ground flattened instantly. The surface of Mars cracked open and exploded. Thousands of mountains across the planet vanished in bursts of ash.
It was not just one explosion, but dozens in quick succession.
BOOOM!
BOOOM!
BOOOM!
BOOOM!
BOOOM!
BOOOM!
RUMBLE!
It almost felt as if the entire planet were in agony. Another attack like that, and Mars would be finished. It would literally explode.
It was... beyond measurement.
Columbia was a planetary-level threat, a Level 6+ Entity through and through, with strength that rivaled or surpassed most Grievances.
"Haaa... Haaa... Haaa..."
Columbia remained vigilant as she looked down. The level of destruction she had caused made her feel a little guilty, but she could always ask someone else to fix it later.
"Excellently done, Columbia. The second strongest superhero, and the strongest human of that world."
"...!!!"
To her dismay, however, a voice echoed from the enormous clouds of smoke.
CLAP.
With a single clap, all the smoke covering Mars vanished.
And then...
"Time Heart – Reversal."
FLAAASH!
To her disbelief, the entirety of Mars began to repair itself. The cracks she had created closed. The flattened mountains surged once more into the skies.
And in the middle of all this, one pristine white figure stood.
Columbia's eyes widened as she saw Louis's true form.
A radiant, majestic, alien-like white dragon.
"Truly, a hero among heroes! Hahahahahaha!"
"...! I thought you died. How— Nngh?!"
Columbia groaned in pain, feeling the hand she had used to smash the planet hurting tremendously.
No, her entire body did!
"Aaaaaagh?! W-What is happening— Ugh?!"
Her eyes widened as she saw countless holes and slashing wounds all across her muscular body. She had sworn those wounds had all healed with her healing factor.
And yet, they resurfaced, worsening every second.
And then...
"The Fallen One."
RUMBLE!
In a single second, Louis's power skyrocketed tremendously.
"Ahhh! What?!"
Columbia screamed in disbelief as Louis split the sky of Mars apart and reached her in a mere second.
His entire body radiated light and darkness, exuding endless and almighty draconic might!
His power, stats, skills, abilities, and more had all been improved and enhanced by over 500%.
And with that...
"Gungnir."
A radiant spear of golden light manifested in his hand as the titanic dragon thrust it forward.
"Ngh!"
Columbia clenched her teeth, channeling the power of Americans and their Spirits. Her aura exploded with immense force as she attempted to strike Louis's spear and shatter it.
"DON'T UNDERESTIMATE... THE AMERICAN SPIRIT!!!"
BOOOMMM!!!
Her fist clashed against Gungnir at full power. The radiant spear's light flickered for a moment as both sides pushed against each other relentlessly.
However.
CRAAASH!
"Gaaaaah?!"
Columbia lost. Her entire hand and then her arm were impaled by Gungnir. With a single spinning motion, her right arm was torn to shreds.
"Nngh!"
Columbia groaned, covering her bleeding wound as she saw Louis approaching once more, moving toward her like a lightning bolt.
"Ignited Despair – Radiant Ember."
"Uuuaaaaaggghhhh!"
Columbia screamed in horror as countless visions of suffering and agony across many worlds echoed within her.
At the same time, flames took over her body, burning her constantly and feeding on that despair.
"You were strong, Columbia, but in the end... there is always a bigger fish, right?"
"I will not give up... the American Spirit!"
Columbia roared, turning into a giant eagle and flying back toward Earth before Louis could finish her off.
With Mirai, he took off into space and reached the planet Earth once more.
As she fell from the atmosphere, almost unconscious, the endless spring of spiritual energy reached her body again, revitalizing her.
She stopped midway and floated in the sky. Her lost arm began to slowly regenerate as well.
"They're coming...!"
She saw Louis and Mirai descending in their true forms, their auras shaking the sky and distorting reality.
She clenched her fists and channeled her power, piercing the ground with her giant hand and then...
Beginning to retrieve something from deep within the planet itself.
Or rather, from the continent of America.
Within the Continent's Spiritual Realm, born from the collective consciousness where Columbia originated.
Columbia's strongest weapon and secret weapon...
A colossal golden spear materialized in her remaining hand, pulled straight from the heart of the continent itself.
It was forged from the very concept of "American Exceptionalism," a living relic born from centuries of dreams, wars, innovations, and unyielding belief in manifest destiny.
The spear's shaft was wrapped in stars and stripes that moved like living fabric. Its blade gleamed with the light of a thousand fireworks, and its tip hummed with the collective will of every soul that had ever believed in the idea of America.
"LIBERTY'S SPEAR – MANIFEST DESTINY!!!"
Columbia roared, her voice echoing across the entire planet like thunder. She spun the massive weapon once, and the sky itself cracked open with red, white, and blue lightning. The spear grew to thousands of meters long in an instant, becoming a divine pillar that connected Earth to the heavens.
With all her remaining strength, fueled by the last dregs of hope from every simulated American still alive in the crumbling cities below, she hurled it straight at Louis and Mirai.
The spear moved faster than light, trailing a blazing contrail of pure national spirit. Wherever it passed, reality rewrote itself temporarily. Mountains reshaped into eagle silhouettes, rivers turned into flowing flags, and the very air sang the Star-Spangled Banner in a thousand overlapping voices.
Louis's thirteen eyes narrowed in genuine admiration.
"Beautiful…" he whispered. "A true Divine Armament born from belief. Almost on the level of a genuine God Artifact."
Mirai's chaos aura flared wildly. "It's strong...! Is it even... wait, it's comparable to Gungnir, isn't it?!"
Louis nodded once. "Far superior... and it will become great material for its evolution."
His eyes gleamed sharply as he further channeled the power of the Element of Time.
"Heart of Time – Chrono Anchor."
The world around the incoming spear slowed to a near standstill. Time itself bent around the weapon, its unstoppable momentum fighting against Louis's authority over created time.
Even then, the spear continued inching forward, resisting the temporal lock with sheer conceptual weight, leaving Louis almost speechless.
It was truly a ridiculous weapon, the true embodiment of Columbia's conceptual existence.
"Mirai. Together."
"Understood!"
Mirai expanded fully into her eight-armed chaos demon form, her ten tails lashing behind her as all eight hands grasped different chaotic weapons born from her Gates.
At the same time, Louis fully manifested his True Dragon Form, the radiant white-scaled Celestial Ashen Limbo Dragon. Wings spread wide, molten gold patterns glowing across his body, the massive eye on his chest stared directly at the incoming spear.
"Inverse Pandora: Radiant Ember – Maximum Output."
"Spiral of Entropy: Spiral of Hope Form – Fate's Requiem!"
Both powers merged in perfect synergy.
White-gold flames of despair surged from Louis while Mirai unleashed a swirling vortex of pure chaotic hope and madness.
Mirai had learned to directly weaponize her Spiral itself by wielding the Spiral of Hope form and molding it into the technique, Fate's Requiem.
Meanwhile, Louis channeled the power of his strongest Spiral Ability, Ashen Frost, made even stronger through Inverse Pandora into Radiant Embers.
The two opposing yet complementary forces fused into a single spiraling drill of light and darkness that shot forward to meet Manifest Destiny head-on.
The collision was cataclysmic.
BOOOMMM!!!
The impact created a sphere of absolute nothingness for several seconds, a perfect sphere where light, sound, and even time itself were erased.
When reality snapped back, the shockwave alone shattered half the moon still visible in the sky and sent tidal waves across every ocean on the simulated Earth.
RUMBLE!
"W-What?! Ugh?! Aaaaggh!"
Columbia screamed as the backlash struck her. Her remaining arm shattered, her divine armor cracked across her entire body, and the golden eagle spirit behind her flickered violently, letting out a pained cry.
"N-No…! This can't… be…!"
Louis and Mirai emerged from the explosion relatively unscathed, though both were breathing heavily. Small cracks had formed across Louis's pristine white scales, and Mirai had several deep gashes leaking chaotic energy.
Columbia floated in the sky, barely conscious, her body rapidly losing its divine glow. The connection to the collective belief of "America" was fraying as the cities below continued to crumble and the simulated population panicked or dissolved into Fantasium dust.
She looked down at the devastated continent, tears streaming from her glowing eyes.
"I… I failed them… I failed everyone…"
Louis descended slowly until he was level with her, his massive draconic head looming above her battered form. His voice was surprisingly gentle, almost respectful.
"You fought with everything you had. In another life, you would have been a true goddess worthy of worship. Unfortunately… this world was never meant to last."
Columbia looked up at the alien white dragon, then at the demonic giantess beside him. Despite the language barrier, she seemed to understand the intent behind his words.
A weak, bitter smile formed on her bloodied lips.
"Then… at least let me fall… as a hero."
She gathered the last fragments of her power. The Spirit of Columbia manifested one final time, no longer as a weapon, but as a radiant eagle that wrapped protectively around her body.
"RAAAAAHHHH!"
With a final, defiant roar that shook the heavens, she charged straight toward Louis, intending to take him with her in a suicidal explosion made of all her remaining life force.
Seeing her valiant spirit and brave roar, Louis did not dodge.
No.
After all...
She was far too good a meal for him to simply kill.
Instead, he opened his jaws.
A black-and-gold vortex formed in front of his maw. Columbia and the glowing eagle spirit were pulled in helplessly.
The conceptual power of America, the belief, the hope, the dreams, all of it was compressed, analyzed, and absorbed into Louis's Heart of Time and his Triple Fantasy Core.
Unlike before, without the Venerable, his soul was not pulled into any archived world.
As she was being digested, Columbia's eyes widened one last time, realizing she was becoming part of the power of this great being.
In that moment, she realized humanity was doomed, and that these beings would not stop until everything ended.
She smiled bitterly as she was digested into particles of light.
"…Thank you… for acknowledging us…"
Her body dissolved completely, turning into a brilliant cascade of red, white, and blue Fantasium particles that swirled into Louis's chest.
The massive eye on his torso glowed brighter for a moment, absorbing the conceptual essence of "Columbia."
Gungnir, meanwhile, absorbed the Spear of Liberty's remains. Louis gathered the gigantic golden fragments using Telekinesis, and the spear began to pulse with immense power.
Silence fell across the ruined battlefield.
"Is it done?" Mirai asked.
"It is..." Louis said. "I have honored her and absorbed her, eating her soul and body together. Now, she is my power."
"Well... I guess that is nice?" Mirai was not really sure, but she nodded nonetheless. "You could indeed eat and even refine Entities and Grievances, right? Like Handy or that flower in your soul."
"Yeah, it is a power related to my Spiral," Louis explained. "So it was technically my Spiral that did it..."
"Amazing," Mirai smiled.
The remaining members of House Frostbane slowly regrouped below, all of them breathing heavily but victorious. Phoenix Man, Deep Sea King, Immortal Sorcerer, General Rex, and now Columbia. The Justice Brotherhood had been completely eradicated.
Central City loomed in the distance, its skyscrapers falling one after another. They were finally at the end of their journey through this long dungeon.
Louis shrank back into his humanoid form, though his draconic features remained prominent, such as white scales on his arms, golden horns, and thirteen eyes still visible. Mirai returned to her human appearance as well, though her chaos aura continued swirling around her.
"That was… intense," Mirai admitted, wiping blood from the corner of her mouth. "She was really something else."
"She was," Louis agreed quietly. "If this entire layer had not been artificial, she might have been strong enough to protect an entire world."
Timothy landed nearby, looking pale. "I… I still hate this. They fought like real people. They believed they were real."
"They did," Louis said. "And in a way, their feelings were real. That is what makes Fantasium so dangerous… and so valuable." He clenched his fist, feeling the new conceptual power settling inside him. "We will honor their struggle by making use of everything they left behind."
Zorba laughed as he absorbed the last remnants of Deep Sea King's divinity into his Hecatoncheires. "More power for us. Excellent!"
Selene and Melisa, both still partially transformed with draconic traits, landed beside them. The two girls looked exhausted but proud.
"We did it…" Melisa whispered, gripping her spear tightly.
"Yeah," Selene grinned, though her eyes showed lingering discomfort at the scale of destruction.
Anastasia and Agustina joined them shortly after, both covered in scorch marks and frost burns but otherwise unharmed thanks to their synergy.
"That magician guy was not that hard," Agustina shrugged.
"He was very strong. We were simply stronger," Anastasia nodded and smiled confidently.
Louis looked toward Central City, where the sky had turned into a swirling vortex of narrative text.
"The mid-bosses are gone. Now only the final guardian remains," Louis said. "But I believe the culprits behind everything are waiting for us there, in the Pinnacle Tower, where the Superhero Number One in this world lives." He raised Gungnir, pointing it at the capital.
"Superhero Number One?" Mirai asked. "Wait, is that his name?"
"Yeah, that is his name, Number One," Louis said with a nod. "He is the strongest superhero, even more than Columbia... We do not have time to rest, unfortunately. So take this."
Louis shared powerful pills he had saved and made everyone eat ten of them, revitalizing their bodies and helping them regain their stamina and energy.
"House Frostbane, one last push..." he said with a stern gaze. "Let us move toward our last destination in this wretched dungeon."
Everyone nodded as the group advanced into Central City, ignoring the panicked people and making their way straight to the Pinnacle Tower. They flew inside and reached the top floor.
Everything was awfully silent. Aside from the distant sounds of people panicking over the destroyed cities, there was an eerie calm.
"Where is Number One?" Mirai asked, expecting a bigger welcome.
"He is eccentric, to say the least," Louis said, narrowing his eyes. "But perhaps... he is not really here. Come."
He led them downstairs inside the Pinnacle Tower, checking every floor until they reached the tenth.
"Hm?"
Louis caught the scent of blood and spotted a body on the floor. He rushed over and saw a muscular, red-haired man lying dead, covered in white spears and black swords.
"W-Who is that?!" Mirai asked.
"A crime scene?!" Timothy wondered.
"Wait..." Zorba muttered. "He is covered with the same weapons... isn't he the boss?"
"He is," Louis nodded. "He was murdered... defeated by someone else."
As Louis was about to analyze the corpse of Number One more closely...
"Fufufu, you have finally shown yourself, Louis. Why did you make your sister wait this long?"
"Welcome, Mirai! I have been waiting for you ever since our encounter in Dream Land. Do you remember me?"
The lights in the room turned on, and two figures appeared, sitting on the sofa next to Number One's corpse, casually drinking wine.
"...?!"
"Eh?"
Their eyes widened as they faced them once more. Those strange students looked... quite literally like gender-bent versions of themselves.
A white-haired, yellow-eyed, horned woman resembling Louis.
A black-and-red-haired, red-eyed Japanese man resembling Mirai.
"W-What!?" Mirai asked. "Y-You are the guy from my dreams then?! No, wait, what are you doing here— Wait, aren't you students?!"
"..." Louis remained silent and stoic, but finally asked once Mirai calmed down. "I see. I can assume you are related to Oblivion and the Five Seats, correct?"
The two looked at each other and burst into laughter.
"Hahahahaha!"
"He really knew right away! Hahaha!"
Louis and Mirai felt strange pressures. Black, red, white, and yellow energies spread everywhere like living magical fog, wrapping around their bodies and suppressing them.
Then they once more met the gaze of these "copycats."
"Who exactly are you?" Louis asked. "You look exactly like us, but... different."
"Yeah, we are you but of the opposite gender. Ridiculous, isn't it?" the young man asked with a laugh. "Nice to meet you. I am Minato."
"Fufufu," the white-haired beautiful lady chuckled, her draconic eyes staring at Louis with predatory bloodthirst. "And I am Lisette, heir of the Frostbane Kingdom. Or rather, I am now the Empress."
"..."
"..."
Louis and Mirai were left speechless, their eyes wide as they looked at their own parallel versions of the opposite gender.
Louis... could somewhat rationalize it. After all, in Sinner Academy, when playing as the main protagonist, it was possible to choose between male and female.
The player could choose any name for their character, but default names existed.
Mirai for female.
And...
Minato for male.
However, what about this Lisette woman? There had never been a female Louis in the story. This was all made-up nonsense. It did not exist.
Or rather, it existed now, as she stood right in front of his eyes.
"Surprised, are you?" Minato asked. "It is not strange to be surprised. We are indeed your parallel selves, or as They call us, 'Remnants'!"
"Remnants?" Mirai asked.
"We originate from the countless Timelines across this cancerous multiverse," explained Lisette. "We are Remnants of the Original Timeline, long ago ruined and destroyed. Every single one of 'us' is a remnant of our originals."
"...?"
"...!"
Louis and Mirai could hardly understand what they were saying, but slowly, they started to piece things together.
The Venerable who always spoke to them as "remnants" and kept saying that "the war was already won" and that "it is pointless to continue fighting."
It was indeed as if a great war had already been fought and won, and they were just leftovers struggling against impossible odds.
But then there was something strange as well, something that terrified even that Venerable.
The Heart of Time in Louis's possession, which the Venerable had said he "stole" from his master.
"Ah, is it all clicking together now?" Lisette asked with a bright smile. She drank all the wine in her glass and threw the cup onto the floor, shattering it into many pieces. "Now, now, I wonder what we should do, Minato."
"Hm..." Minato smiled, looking at Mirai while mostly ignoring Louis. "We were told by Them to stop them from jumping Timelines. It seems that the Heart of Time is an incredible relic if it has allowed these little fragments to escape His grasp this entire time."
"Them? His?" Louis asked. "Why don't you stop speaking in riddles and reveal who you serve? Are you afraid of speaking their names?"
"You must already know them, don't you?" Lisette asked. "The Venerables? We are their Apostles."
"And 'Him' is obviously their supreme master, the Great Master of this Multiverse—no, it would be better to say he is like the 'Game Master' or something, hahaha!" Minato laughed. "Oblivion! Does it ring any bells? That is his name. I am not afraid of speaking his name."
"Oblivion?!" Louis and Mirai gasped.
Everything was connecting together. Even these parallels that had infiltrated the Sinner Academy and aimed for them right now.
They were serving the Venerables, who in turn served Oblivion!
"But why would such a powerful being like him bother with insignificant beings like us?!" Louis asked. "The only thing I want is to save my country from destruction...! I never cared nor wanted to get involved in any of these cosmic wars. They have nothing to do with me!"
"Huhu..."
"Hahah..."
"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"FUFUFUFU! HOHOHO!"
Minato and Lisette laughed out loud, their eyes gleaming with predatory bloodthirst as they found Louis's words completely hilarious.
"Don't make me laugh, Louis!" Minato laughed. "You just killed His Eyes! And you are telling us you don't want to get involved?! Isn't it already too late for that?!"
"And you already became aware of the Heart of Time within you! You fool, do you really think you can just keep running away?" Lisette asked angrily. "It must have been nice to regress every time something bad happened to you, hm? While I had to do the unthinkable to not die..."
The two of them stood up.
It was time.
They were no longer interested in talking.
Their auras surged, so immensely oppressive that they rivaled the Venerable that Louis and Mirai had killed.
Perhaps even stronger, since that man had already been greatly weakened.
"Sinner Academy? Taking it easy? Making friends? Just wanting to free your Kingdom? Who cares about any of that boring crap?!" Minato asked, laughing. "The multiverse is so much vaster, and with your power, you are wasting your life on this rotten planet?!"
"What a boring and miserable life!" Lisette laughed, white scales growing across her body as her eyes gleamed bright red. "Why don't we stir things up a little?"
"W-What did you do to the Academy?! To the other students?!" Mirai asked angrily, hearing them laugh about their entire life as if it were all a joke.
"Hm? Ah, right. What happened again?" Minato wondered, racking his brain. "Ah! We left a Dimensional Rift there. Or rather, around a few dozen."
"...?!"
"Le Cirque decided to take care of that, you know them, right?" Lisette asked with a happy smile. "They are a wonderful troop of interdimensional performers that spread Fantasy across Reality! They also serve Them."
"Cirque?!" Louis recalled his conversation with the Boss of the First Layer, about her past and the Cirque that had landed in her world, distorting it and turning her into a Grievance. "Agents from the Venerables... so it is all coming together. Then what about the Gardener? The Abyssal Mother? Or the Sage of the Nine Suns?"
"Hm? Who?" Lisette asked, raising an eyebrow. "Ah, those must be just a bunch of nobodies."
"If we don't remember them, then they are pretty much not important to the plot at all, right?" Minato laughed.
"...What?" Louis was confused. How could they not know about two Tier 0 Venerables born in this world, or about the Gardener? It was bizarre. It seemed they either had limited knowledge or... those were unique instances born only in this specific parallel world.
"Anyway! Yapping is getting really boring, so shall we begin?" Lisette asked. Her nails turned into long golden claws, and her entire body transformed into her radiant Dragonoid form, overflowing with divinity.
"Yeah, it has gotten boring. I hate explaining shit to idiots who will die anyway," Minato shrugged. He also transformed, his skin turning red as his short hair grew long. He gained demonic claws, tails, wings, black scales, and long horns. "Let us kill them in one strike. They are too weak to even resist."
"Everyone!" Louis panicked, unleashing his power to protect them all.
But it was too late.
BOOOMMM!!!
A gigantic fist made of demonic flames and a claw made of blinding celestial light struck the entire skyscraper. The Pinnacle Tower was smashed down, shattering the entire building into pieces.
Gigantic boulders flew everywhere as Louis, Mirai, and everyone else were crushed by a planetary-level strike. It shattered the center of Central City and spread countless titanic cracks across the Tenth Layer.
RUMBLE!
People screamed as they fell into the cracks, were crushed under buildings, or disintegrated by the immense shockwave that followed.
The entire planet literally cracked almost in two. A cataclysmic strike that shook everything and everyone. Lava poured everywhere alongside flames, burning everything in its path.
The two floated in midair, glancing down at the gigantic crater their combined strike had formed. The entirety of America was sinking into an endless pit of hell, leading straight to the molten core of the planet.
"This is just the Tenth Layer of this shabby dungeon, but who would have thought it could recreate an entire planet," Lisette laughed. "Ah, I love the sight of an entire world being destroyed! I cannot get enough of this."
"Me neither. It sure brightens my mood," Minato smiled calmly. "But they are not dead yet."
"...?" Lisette's eyes widened as she saw two large figures floating in the sky, covered in blood, bruises, and visibly tired.
But alive!
"What?! Impossible!" Lisette said furiously. "How did they survive that?! Weren't they barely Tier 7?"
"Clearly, not anymore..." Minato said. "I knew it... In the time they disappeared, those few days... something weird happened. They have been suppressing that power this entire time but..."
"Don't tell me...?!" gasped Lisette. "They awakened their Spirals of Fate?!"
"Yes, they have learned how to grasp their own Destiny and cultivate it. Likely, they have awakened their Rebirth Abilities, being reborn and evolving... Hmm, this is really unexpected! How did they even find out all of that without a Venerable helping them?" wondered Minato. "Ah, right. They killed one... but I really thought they just killed it thanks to that annoying fairy. Was I wrong?"
"Louis even attained his true dragon form... this is detestable," Lisette clicked her tongue. "When it took me hundreds of years to obtain mine, after I slaughtered entire kingdoms, after I ate dozens of divine dragons and their flesh and blood... How frustrating! Why? Why does he get to awaken it like that?! So easily? So pristine, so pure?!"
"Calm down," Minato said. "Clearly, they just got lucky and received help from the fairy or something... The Heart of Time is an Interdimensional Treasure after all. By chance, the 1124th remnant of the Original obtained it... and here he is. What a nuisance."
"Hmph! Without it they are nothing..." said Lisette. "And I will take it from them... and bring it back where it rightfully belongs, within Master's own heart."
Lisette, unlike Louis, exuded a red and white aura. Her eyes glowed completely red, and then she transformed aberrantly. Her entire body grew mutated and bulged into cancerous tumors that then rearranged into a massive white dragon covered in red blood-like tattoos all over.
Her appearance was both majestic and aberrant. She had dozens of sharp jaws across her body, six enormous featherless wings with long bloody claws, and her head consisted of two heads stuck together that spread open to reveal a gigantic mouth running all the way down her chest, filled with eyes, razor-sharp teeth, and long tentacle-like tongues.
Her horns were gold but also red, forever bloodied by all those she had massacred and devoured like a vicious aberration, seeking her True Dragon Form through a path of wicked slaughter.
While Louis had only gone as far as extorting some family members for nails, scales, and blood, this woman... as she had stated, had devoured her own family.
All the divine dragons Louis admired, she had eaten them all in her own timeline.
Perhaps...
Louis had to ask.
"How many of our kin have you eaten, you monstrous aberration?!" Louis asked. "How could you commit such an awful sin! To eat your own family!"
"Heheheheh.... HEHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Lisette laughed. "And they were all very DELICIOUS! THEY DENIED ME MY DRAGON FORM! THEY REJECTED ME! SO I DECIDED TO JUST TAKE IT FROM THEM! PIECE BY DELICIOUS PIECE! AHHH, THEIR SWEET BLOOD! I WANT MORE! I CAN STILL REMEMBER... MY SICK, DYING MOTHER... SHE TASTED THE MOST DELIGHTFUL."
"A-Ah...!" Louis gasped, his eyes widening as he fell silent. His eyes darkened, and his entire aura... disappeared.
"L-Louis? Don't listen to them. They are clearly trying to provoke you!" Agustina said.
"S-She ate her mom?!" Timothy screamed.
"W-What have we even gotten into now?" Anastasia wondered.
"She is a monster!" Selene said angrily.
"Louis...?" Melisa asked.
"How... how... is it possible... for you to speak... like that... about our mother?"
Louis's eyes grew red. His aura changed and then...
"FOR A REPUGNANT BEAST LIKE YOU... I WILL TEAR YOU TO SHREDS WITH MY OWN HANDS!"
RUMBLE!
Louis awakened the righteous fury he had inherited from his grandfather at long last.
The three Cores of Will, Spirit, and Heart awakened fully, resembling three jewels in his chest and spreading immense power everywhere.
Ascendancy Laws that had been developing within them awakened as Louis's own Divinities and Divine Abilities converged into a massive ring.
No, three rings in a row, gleaming behind him!
"What sort of power is that?!" Lisette, who had never inherited anything from the Dragon King, was shocked to see that strange power.
"Fool, why did you provoke him with such words?" Minato shook his head. "Now he is mad... and he has the same bloodline as your stupid grandfather. He is now going to act stupid too and sacrifice everything to kill you... We cannot be completely sure now that they have grown beyond our measures."
"Tch! Shut up!" Lisette hissed. "I will kill him... he is mine, okay?!"
"..." Minato seemed to greatly dislike her despite the two teaming up. "Whatever. I came here for her anyway. You can have the flies flying around them if you want."
"Oh? Yes, I want to see the face he will make once I tear his precious friends apart, hahahahaha!" Lisette laughed.
From what Louis and Mirai could gather, these two did not have the same romantic relationship they had. They hated each other and were mostly reluctantly working together because they served the same master.
If anything, it was quite clear these two were true monsters whose hearts could never really develop any sort of love for someone.
Somehow, this made them feel relieved.
Louis and Mirai had always believed they were monsters themselves.
Turns out there is always... someone worse out there.
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