Lanya was fighting every monster they met. She was now at the eighth level in terms of pure life force and she almost was as strong as Night once she used her draconic form.
Although her instincts were nothing compared to his, she was slowly improving thanks to his training. After the awakening of her inheritance, Lanya's light magic became silver in color and her magic output increased a lot.
With their new speed, they arrived at the undead territory a lot faster.
"It still took three days though. If it was me, we would have arrived on the first day. I even took the opportunity to scan the continent while releasing my killing intent so I could have done it instantly as well," Arima casually said. He wasn't trying to bring her down, but to motivate her.
Night laughed dryly and Lanya's expression reddened in shame, or anger, or maybe both.
"Still, that's an undead zone for sure," Arima remarked after he looked around. The whole place lacked any kind of verdure. The grass was blue and yellow, the trees didn't have any leaves and their trunks were practically rotten. Even the atmosphere seemed to be of a different tint. The landscape looked like a savanna overall.
"Where are the undead?" Night tilted his head and asked.
"Below."
"Ah?" Night looked at the ground and tried to use a detection magic. He clearly freaked out when he used it.
"What's wrong master?" Lanya was curious and was about to inspect the underground when Night hurriedly stopped her.
"You don't have to look…" He looked at Arima, "How many?"
Arima pondered he raised one finger, then another one, and then two others, before showing his hand to Night.
"Four? Four thousand? Million?"
Arima shook his head, "Fifty million per finger."
"What's wrong with your scale?!" Night shouted, "No, wait! Fifty million?! Two hundred million?!" Night suddenly realized and Lanya also was shocked when she heard the number.
"Yeah, at least that's for the ones weak enough to be sensed. There were two hundred million of them." Arima said and lightly stamped, "All down there."
"Seriously? What are we supposed to do now?"
"Well, this zone is quite big. It even goes until the frontlines. I also don't want to eliminate all of them. Getting rid of two hundred million zombies sounds really tiresome. I'll just aim for the strongest. The undead possess a leader and it's thanks to him that they can more or less remain as a territory. Of course, that leader can control zombies but not all of them. I assume he can only make them stay in a limited perimeter but has no way to order them to attack something or someone." Arima explained what he had learned and deduced from the succubus' memories.
"Are you going to aim for that leader?" Lanya asked and Arima glanced at her.
"No. I said I won't make any imbalance. I'll just head toward wherever that leader is supposed to be, and then I'm sure we'll find some high-rank undead there."
"Where is that supposed to be?"
"When I scanned this territory, I spotted only one edifice in it."
"An edifice?"
"Yeah, it looked like a mausoleum. It's most likely a sort of castle here. It's around another thousand miles from here," He said and turned toward Lanya, "Of course, we'll go there on foot. You can fly now, but you still need more training on the ground."
Lanya was speechless, she felt abnormal around those two.
"The undead only reveal themselves at night apparently," Arima added before mounting his summoned lion. "So, this is for you."
Arima snapped his fingers and mana escaped his body like a fountain's water. His aura was condensed into a pillar that pierced the sky. The clouds gathered and completely covered the sky. Worse was that the black thunder clouds Arima summoned were extremely dense and suppressed every ray of light emitted by the sun.
"What-!" Lanya wanted to complain and stop Arima but the ground under her feet cracked open before she could. A hand surfaced and grabbed her ankle. She lost her cool and instinctively used her magic. The hand and its owner were turned to ashes by the silver light.
Arima and Night leisurely burned every zombie below them before they could even get out and observed their surroundings. Countless undead crawled out. Humans, animals, beasts, monsters, all of them had bones and flesh missing. Some of them were just bones, others were just a lump of flesh.
"Wow, what a 'cool' sight. Well, good luck," Arima took out some mithril and began to work on it for some reason.
Lanya didn't even bother to say something. She directly transformed and attacked the undead with light magic, which worked pretty well on them. Then, as before, Night coached her while Arima kept working behind on his summoned beast.
They kept going on like that for around ten hours. This time it really was night time and Arima dispersed the clouds. When he did so, he looked at the stars on a whim and his eyes widened. He stood up on his lion and carefully observed the stars.
"What is he doing?" Lanya asked Night with a tired face. She had been battling for too long and could finally rest during dinner.
"I don't know. He does some strange things sometimes. Don't mind. I'm sure he'll explain it later on his own," Night responded and munched on a piece of meat.
Arima stared at the starry sky. His eyes were already shining with a bright light. He stood there for around ten minutes, without moving a single muscle, and finally got off of the lion with a stiff expression.
"Hey, Arima, what's wrong?" Night asked, earlier he thought there was nothing to worry about, but now he couldn't help but ask when he saw Arima's expression.
"Why…?" Arima only muttered that and didn't answer Night's query. He summoned Superbia in a kind of urgent manner. He laid down on the ground and pointed his rifle at the sky whilst looking through the scope.
"Night, resonate with me. Get ready to use the 'One hundred parade'. Lanya, you escape as far as you can." Arima ordered hurriedly. Night was surprised but soon resonated with Arima.
Lanya was in a similar state. It was the first time Arima had called her by her name. She thought it was serious and listened to him. She deployed her wings and flew off.
"{What is going on?}"
"You should be able to know it now that we're resonating."
Night concentrated on his own a bit and looked at Arima's mind, "{…hey, hey! Are you serious?!}" Night's reaction was most likely the most agitated he ever had since he was born.
Arima laughed, "I don't know who the hell did that, but he brazenly aimed at me."
"{What? That thing is something aimed at you?}"
"Yeah, the course this thing took can't be something like a coincidence." He said and looked at the sky and Superbia's scope. With his draconic vision, he could easily see a red dot in the sky, becoming bigger and bigger. "You should also realize that this thing already took fire although it's not even in the mesosphere. Do you think it's natural?"
"{Who, or what would do that to you, and why?}"
"Beats me. We should hurry. If we can destroy that thing before it enters the atmosphere then maybe we can also destroy the magic protecting it and the remaining parts will turn to ash before reaching the ground."
Arima released his aura. Night prepared his spirit, "[Agnitio vultus unum centum]" Arima chanted and his body was altered again.
Superbia began to make some noise. Lightning erupted from the cannon and destroyed everything around. Thunder roared and many threatening explosions occurred around him. That was just the charging process.
"[Karma]," Arima unexpectedly called Karma. "[Verto](Change)" The katana emitted a blue light and shrunk until it became a silver bullet. Arima put the bullet in the chamber and pulled the bolt.
Karma, which was inside the chamber, started spinning and producing plasma and some really powerful lightning. Some runes on Superbia glowed in red light. Around Arima, as far as the eye could see, the area was shrouded with lighting and the ground was destroyed and burnt.
The place Arima was laying down started fissuring. "[Adducere exitium] (Bring destruction)," He intoned and countless magic circles formed in a straight line toward the sky, from the barrel's tip.
"[Gun metuunt blasphemantes] (Rail gun)," Arima grunted and pressed the trigger. He had personally increased the power of the detonation inside the barrel by at least a hundred-fold.
The discharge of energy destroyed Superbia, and Karma in the form of a bullet left the barrel surrounded by a fifty meters wide black pillar of lightning. The bullet went through each magic circle placed beforehand and each time, it got faster and stronger.
The recoil from Superbia's shot crushed Arima against the ground, which created a huge crater. Some undead, that were still underground, were reduced to paste by the pressure. Arima viewed the pillar he conjured and smirked.
At this point, of course, everyone on this continent, maybe even half of this planet saw the black pillar ascending to meet a huge red dot among the stars. Their eyes couldn't leave that sight.
Lanya was looking at it agape from afar.
In a few minutes, Karma reached outer space and directly clashed with the meteor descending at great speed. That thing was thirty miles wide. If it were to hit the planet, then maybe more than half of it would be destroyed, considering the fact that this planet may protect itself.
Karma easily pierced the meteor surface but compared to the size of the asteroid, the pillar was too small. At best, it would destroy the magic cast on it and split it in two. But the two parts that would result afterward would still be too big. Arima didn't have the ability to stop two of them. There was a chance that maybe someone else would do it, but he couldn't bet on that.
"[Karma]," Arima who was still laying down, called his weapon.
The bullet inside the pillar suddenly stopped moving in the middle of the asteroid. It began to vibrate and manipulate the lightning and plasma around it. After a few seconds, Karma exploded and spread the energy it carried across the asteroid's surface. The meteorite cracked on all sides and broke into countless small rocks.
Arima sighed in relief. He called back Karma and Superbia into his soul. When he saw that Karma was just a wisp of silver light, he smiled bitterly. He knew that his weapon would need at least a week to restore itself and Superbia would need three days.
"{Arima, we have a problem.}"
Arima frowned and looked at the sky and rolled his eyes in annoyance, "Are you messing with me right now?"
There was a broken part of the asteroid that was big enough to destroy a city entering the atmosphere. It wasn't the only bit that could do damage to the planet but the rest was small enough to be dealt with by other people on the planet.
"{Where is that thing going to crash?}"
"I'm not sure," Arima analyzed the meteorite's trajectory and groaned exasperatedly, "It will fall on a human city…"
He took a deep breath. He punched the ground and stood up, "I'm too nice, honestly. I'll seriously take revenge against the damn bastard who did this," He uttered and teleported away.
He reappeared above the human city in question and flapped his wings.
"{What will you do?}"
"I'll meet it head on and send it to another dimension. I couldn't do it to the original one because it was too big and protected by magic, but this one should barely fit," He replied and accelerated.
It took him five minutes to feel the air being heated and the wind deformed by the meteorite. He looked at the asteroid and growled, "That's quite a frightening sight…"
Arima immediately drew a magic formation to help him and channeled a huge chunk of his mana. He actually even released his mana pool so that it would cover the entire asteroid. Things were happening very quickly. Arima was just about a hundred meters from the meteorite.
"[Altera rationem terram]" Arima chanted, his mana pool expanded and the asteroid clearly slowed down and space was deformed around it.
A worrying sound of glass breaking and ear piercing noises resounded and even reached the surface of the planet. Arima coughed blood as he was pushed back by his own magic.
"Shit! It's small enough but it has too much kinetic energy!" Arima exclaimed and tried to go against the force. His hands were shaking and his bones were being put to the test. Some of his veins had already been damaged.
Arima clicked his tongue, "(Do I have to use it?)" He wondered if he had to use a really dangerous magic to pull it off. At that exact moment, a giant magic circle appeared behind him and temporarily evacuated the meteorite's energy.
He took the opportunity and the asteroid finally disappeared into the other dimension.
"{Thank god, we did it… Wait, what will you do when you release the dimension? It will come back to this side as lava.}" Night was worried but Arima just shook his head while panting.
"Don't worry… I benefited from the space crack to teleport the asteroid above the water on the other side… when it comes back… it will just become a stone underwater."
Arima directed his eyes toward a certain place on the planet's surface as he was talking. Although there was quite a distance, his eyes met with an old man's who was staring at him too.
"{…Is that the guy who helped you around the end?}"
"Yeah…"
Arima squinted his eyes and teleported away just after the old man nodded to him. He reappeared in the monster territory, just next to Lanya who was hiding in a cave. She yelped when Arima appeared out of nowhere like that and since he still hadn't ended the 'One Hundred Parade', he seriously looked intimidating.
Arima ended the resonance and dropped on the ground willingly, "Ah, fuck…Some of my organs are crushed. I need to heal up for a bit. Night you should sleep too."
Even though Arima said that, Night had already fallen asleep in his dragon form. Fortunately, the cave was big enough to keep him in. Arima followed his example just after, leaving Lanya alone in an extremely awkward situation.
Lanya was fighting every monster they met. She was now at the eighth level in terms of pure life force and she almost was as strong as Night once she used her draconic form.
Although her instincts were nothing compared to his, she was slowly improving thanks to his training. After the awakening of her inheritance, Lanya's light magic became silver in color and her magic output increased a lot.
With their new speed, they arrived at the undead territory a lot faster.
"It still took three days though. If it was me, we would have arrived on the first day. I even took the opportunity to scan the continent while releasing my killing intent so I could have done it instantly as well," Arima casually said. He wasn't trying to bring her down, but to motivate her.
Night laughed dryly and Lanya's expression reddened in shame, or anger, or maybe both.
"Still, that's an undead zone for sure," Arima remarked after he looked around. The whole place lacked any kind of verdure. The grass was blue and yellow, the trees didn't have any leaves and their trunks were practically rotten. Even the atmosphere seemed to be of a different tint. The landscape looked like a savanna overall.
"Where are the undead?" Night tilted his head and asked.
"Below."
"Ah?" Night looked at the ground and tried to use a detection magic. He clearly freaked out when he used it.
"What's wrong master?" Lanya was curious and was about to inspect the underground when Night hurriedly stopped her.
"You don't have to look…" He looked at Arima, "How many?"
Arima pondered he raised one finger, then another one, and then two others, before showing his hand to Night.
"Four? Four thousand? Million?"
Arima shook his head, "Fifty million per finger."
"What's wrong with your scale?!" Night shouted, "No, wait! Fifty million?! Two hundred million?!" Night suddenly realized and Lanya also was shocked when she heard the number.
"Yeah, at least that's for the ones weak enough to be sensed. There were two hundred million of them." Arima said and lightly stamped, "All down there."
"Seriously? What are we supposed to do now?"
"Well, this zone is quite big. It even goes until the frontlines. I also don't want to eliminate all of them. Getting rid of two hundred million zombies sounds really tiresome. I'll just aim for the strongest. The undead possess a leader and it's thanks to him that they can more or less remain as a territory. Of course, that leader can control zombies but not all of them. I assume he can only make them stay in a limited perimeter but has no way to order them to attack something or someone." Arima explained what he had learned and deduced from the succubus' memories.
"Are you going to aim for that leader?" Lanya asked and Arima glanced at her.
"No. I said I won't make any imbalance. I'll just head toward wherever that leader is supposed to be, and then I'm sure we'll find some high-rank undead there."
"Where is that supposed to be?"
"When I scanned this territory, I spotted only one edifice in it."
"An edifice?"
"Yeah, it looked like a mausoleum. It's most likely a sort of castle here. It's around another thousand miles from here," He said and turned toward Lanya, "Of course, we'll go there on foot. You can fly now, but you still need more training on the ground."
Lanya was speechless, she felt abnormal around those two.
"The undead only reveal themselves at night apparently," Arima added before mounting his summoned lion. "So, this is for you."
Arima snapped his fingers and mana escaped his body like a fountain's water. His aura was condensed into a pillar that pierced the sky. The clouds gathered and completely covered the sky. Worse was that the black thunder clouds Arima summoned were extremely dense and suppressed every ray of light emitted by the sun.
"What-!" Lanya wanted to complain and stop Arima but the ground under her feet cracked open before she could. A hand surfaced and grabbed her ankle. She lost her cool and instinctively used her magic. The hand and its owner were turned to ashes by the silver light.
Arima and Night leisurely burned every zombie below them before they could even get out and observed their surroundings. Countless undead crawled out. Humans, animals, beasts, monsters, all of them had bones and flesh missing. Some of them were just bones, others were just a lump of flesh.
"Wow, what a 'cool' sight. Well, good luck," Arima took out some mithril and began to work on it for some reason.
Lanya didn't even bother to say something. She directly transformed and attacked the undead with light magic, which worked pretty well on them. Then, as before, Night coached her while Arima kept working behind on his summoned beast.
They kept going on like that for around ten hours. This time it really was night time and Arima dispersed the clouds. When he did so, he looked at the stars on a whim and his eyes widened. He stood up on his lion and carefully observed the stars.
"What is he doing?" Lanya asked Night with a tired face. She had been battling for too long and could finally rest during dinner.
"I don't know. He does some strange things sometimes. Don't mind. I'm sure he'll explain it later on his own," Night responded and munched on a piece of meat.
Arima stared at the starry sky. His eyes were already shining with a bright light. He stood there for around ten minutes, without moving a single muscle, and finally got off of the lion with a stiff expression.
"Hey, Arima, what's wrong?" Night asked, earlier he thought there was nothing to worry about, but now he couldn't help but ask when he saw Arima's expression.
"Why…?" Arima only muttered that and didn't answer Night's query. He summoned Superbia in a kind of urgent manner. He laid down on the ground and pointed his rifle at the sky whilst looking through the scope.
"Night, resonate with me. Get ready to use the 'One hundred parade'. Lanya, you escape as far as you can." Arima ordered hurriedly. Night was surprised but soon resonated with Arima.
Lanya was in a similar state. It was the first time Arima had called her by her name. She thought it was serious and listened to him. She deployed her wings and flew off.
"{What is going on?}"
"You should be able to know it now that we're resonating."
Night concentrated on his own a bit and looked at Arima's mind, "{…hey, hey! Are you serious?!}" Night's reaction was most likely the most agitated he ever had since he was born.
Arima laughed, "I don't know who the hell did that, but he brazenly aimed at me."
"{What? That thing is something aimed at you?}"
"Yeah, the course this thing took can't be something like a coincidence." He said and looked at the sky and Superbia's scope. With his draconic vision, he could easily see a red dot in the sky, becoming bigger and bigger. "You should also realize that this thing already took fire although it's not even in the mesosphere. Do you think it's natural?"
"{Who, or what would do that to you, and why?}"
"Beats me. We should hurry. If we can destroy that thing before it enters the atmosphere then maybe we can also destroy the magic protecting it and the remaining parts will turn to ash before reaching the ground."
Arima released his aura. Night prepared his spirit, "[Agnitio vultus unum centum]" Arima chanted and his body was altered again.
Superbia began to make some noise. Lightning erupted from the cannon and destroyed everything around. Thunder roared and many threatening explosions occurred around him. That was just the charging process.
"[Karma]," Arima unexpectedly called Karma. "[Verto](Change)" The katana emitted a blue light and shrunk until it became a silver bullet. Arima put the bullet in the chamber and pulled the bolt.
Karma, which was inside the chamber, started spinning and producing plasma and some really powerful lightning. Some runes on Superbia glowed in red light. Around Arima, as far as the eye could see, the area was shrouded with lighting and the ground was destroyed and burnt.
The place Arima was laying down started fissuring. "[Adducere exitium] (Bring destruction)," He intoned and countless magic circles formed in a straight line toward the sky, from the barrel's tip.
"[Gun metuunt blasphemantes] (Rail gun)," Arima grunted and pressed the trigger. He had personally increased the power of the detonation inside the barrel by at least a hundred-fold.
The discharge of energy destroyed Superbia, and Karma in the form of a bullet left the barrel surrounded by a fifty meters wide black pillar of lightning. The bullet went through each magic circle placed beforehand and each time, it got faster and stronger.
The recoil from Superbia's shot crushed Arima against the ground, which created a huge crater. Some undead, that were still underground, were reduced to paste by the pressure. Arima viewed the pillar he conjured and smirked.
At this point, of course, everyone on this continent, maybe even half of this planet saw the black pillar ascending to meet a huge red dot among the stars. Their eyes couldn't leave that sight.
Lanya was looking at it agape from afar.
In a few minutes, Karma reached outer space and directly clashed with the meteor descending at great speed. That thing was thirty miles wide. If it were to hit the planet, then maybe more than half of it would be destroyed, considering the fact that this planet may protect itself.
Karma easily pierced the meteor surface but compared to the size of the asteroid, the pillar was too small. At best, it would destroy the magic cast on it and split it in two. But the two parts that would result afterward would still be too big. Arima didn't have the ability to stop two of them. There was a chance that maybe someone else would do it, but he couldn't bet on that.
"[Karma]," Arima who was still laying down, called his weapon.
The bullet inside the pillar suddenly stopped moving in the middle of the asteroid. It began to vibrate and manipulate the lightning and plasma around it. After a few seconds, Karma exploded and spread the energy it carried across the asteroid's surface. The meteorite cracked on all sides and broke into countless small rocks.
Arima sighed in relief. He called back Karma and Superbia into his soul. When he saw that Karma was just a wisp of silver light, he smiled bitterly. He knew that his weapon would need at least a week to restore itself and Superbia would need three days.
"{Arima, we have a problem.}"
Arima frowned and looked at the sky and rolled his eyes in annoyance, "Are you messing with me right now?"
There was a broken part of the asteroid that was big enough to destroy a city entering the atmosphere. It wasn't the only bit that could do damage to the planet but the rest was small enough to be dealt with by other people on the planet.
"{Where is that thing going to crash?}"
"I'm not sure," Arima analyzed the meteorite's trajectory and groaned exasperatedly, "It will fall on a human city…"
He took a deep breath. He punched the ground and stood up, "I'm too nice, honestly. I'll seriously take revenge against the damn bastard who did this," He uttered and teleported away.
He reappeared above the human city in question and flapped his wings.
"{What will you do?}"
"I'll meet it head on and send it to another dimension. I couldn't do it to the original one because it was too big and protected by magic, but this one should barely fit," He replied and accelerated.
It took him five minutes to feel the air being heated and the wind deformed by the meteorite. He looked at the asteroid and growled, "That's quite a frightening sight…"
Arima immediately drew a magic formation to help him and channeled a huge chunk of his mana. He actually even released his mana pool so that it would cover the entire asteroid. Things were happening very quickly. Arima was just about a hundred meters from the meteorite.
"[Altera rationem terram]" Arima chanted, his mana pool expanded and the asteroid clearly slowed down and space was deformed around it.
A worrying sound of glass breaking and ear piercing noises resounded and even reached the surface of the planet. Arima coughed blood as he was pushed back by his own magic.
"Shit! It's small enough but it has too much kinetic energy!" Arima exclaimed and tried to go against the force. His hands were shaking and his bones were being put to the test. Some of his veins had already been damaged.
Arima clicked his tongue, "(Do I have to use it?)" He wondered if he had to use a really dangerous magic to pull it off. At that exact moment, a giant magic circle appeared behind him and temporarily evacuated the meteorite's energy.
He took the opportunity and the asteroid finally disappeared into the other dimension.
"{Thank god, we did it… Wait, what will you do when you release the dimension? It will come back to this side as lava.}" Night was worried but Arima just shook his head while panting.
"Don't worry… I benefited from the space crack to teleport the asteroid above the water on the other side… when it comes back… it will just become a stone underwater."
Arima directed his eyes toward a certain place on the planet's surface as he was talking. Although there was quite a distance, his eyes met with an old man's who was staring at him too.
"{…Is that the guy who helped you around the end?}"
"Yeah…"
Arima squinted his eyes and teleported away just after the old man nodded to him. He reappeared in the monster territory, just next to Lanya who was hiding in a cave. She yelped when Arima appeared out of nowhere like that and since he still hadn't ended the 'One Hundred Parade', he seriously looked intimidating.
Arima ended the resonance and dropped on the ground willingly, "Ah, fuck…Some of my organs are crushed. I need to heal up for a bit. Night you should sleep too."
Even though Arima said that, Night had already fallen asleep in his dragon form. Fortunately, the cave was big enough to keep him in. Arima followed his example just after, leaving Lanya alone in an extremely awkward situation.
