On a Godless Planet:Volume2B Chapter 36
Chapter 36: Sword of Vermilion[edit]
–This is no fantasy.
●
This was an honorable battle for Bilgamesh.
“Hm.”
For now, his location was poor. This space was meant for negotiation, so he moved to the riverside and turned to face his opponent. And…
“…!”
She was already thrusting a giant white spear toward him.
…She’s faster than last time.
She must be taking this seriously, he thought just before something happened.
The enemy’s spear expanded before his eyes. The surface cowling spread out, revealing what lay within: white light. The spear looked like it was burning.
“Piesi Dory!”
●
It released pressure.
Shifu heard a rupturing sound.
“That crushed the air.”
The air wasn’t torn, pushed, or cut. It was unable to bear the pressure and burst.
The force of the attack was plain to see.
The very shape of the riverside changed.
“I-it’s been paved?”
The heat produced by the pressure whipped up the wind and a cylinder about 50m wide was torn into the riverside along the path of the white god of war’s spear.
The riverside stones were turned into pavement.
The pressure emitted by the spear pushed it down, broke up the larger stones, and created a wide pathway.
The river wind washed across the flattened land, cooling the pressure heat. The temperature difference caused more stones to burst, creating quiet popping and colliding sounds.
But that wasn’t all.
“Check out the other side of the river.”
Shifu pointed to the rocky area where the boys had been fishing in the afternoon, to the forest, and to the rocky slope beyond that.
“is that thing a compressor?”
An invisible cylinder 50cm across had been thrust out.
It had torn through everything, causing the exposed edges of the torn materials to burst.
It happened to the rocks, the trees, and even the river surface
It even tore through the stone wall at the limit of its range and the results of the compression were visible at those farthest reaches.
Nothing kept its original shape and the steam produced by the compression heat likely came from the moisture in the crushed trees.
The rocky area and the forest had been crushed, creating…
“Is that only 30cm thick?”
●
“Was that Athena’s attack said to have moved the island of Sicily during the Gigantomachy?”
One theory said she had thrown Sicily to crush and clear away the giants.
“I require believers to use it at full power.”
“But,” said Athena while her god of war closed her spear up.
“It wasn’t enough for this battle.”
“So it seems.”
Kuwajiri nodded.
She had to agree with their enemy here. Because…
“How did he defend against that?”
She saw someone standing atop the compressed floor created on the riverside.
It was Bilgamesh.
“He’s still got that confident tucked-in-shirt look!”
That accurately described the 5th generation half-god’s condition.
He was unharmed.
●
…This is why gods are such a pain.
She understood it all too well because she was one, but no enemy was quite as troublesome as a god.
Was this his physical abilities?
Was it his authority?
Did some special physical laws apply to him?
Or was he simply absurd?
Whatever the reason, her primary weapon, the Piesi Dory, had been ineffective against him.
“I’m glad I learned this right away.”
It would have been so much worse for this to happen on what was supposed to be the finishing blow. She had revealed it right away because, as contradictory as it seems, it was the Olympus style to go all out from the beginning.
And the attack that might have been a finishing blow hadn’t hit.
But this told her something else.
“The next time I go for the kill, I won’t screw it up.”
With that, she transformed her cowling spear.
She transformed it from a long spear to a short one. It now had a larger forearm portion and she held it in her right hand. With her left hand, she drew the knife equipped at her hip.
“Here I go,” she started to say.
But her opponent was already moving.
“––––––”
He was quick on his feet.
●
A god of war’s sensory system compressed the pilot’s senses. The maximum compression was 1000x. The standard was between 10x and 100x, which came at the cost of minor exhaustion.
…My current compression speed is around 30x.
She had used the god of war’s processing power to create a virtual cockpit made to look like a hill overlooking the sea.
But the sea before her eyes was not the Mediterranean.
When leaving her virtual manifestation, she had gone to Japan. So to follow the Divine States-World Correspondence, she was viewing the Seto Inland Sea from the Kojima Peninsula.
She had since grown accustomed to seeing the rocky area with pine trees, the sandy beach, and Shikoku visible across the inland sea.
When she walked through that virtual scenery and raised her hand into the wind, the god of war mimicked the action.
The sensory system brought her information on the outside world.
Bilgamesh was charging toward her. He was moving quickly, but her 30x compressed senses stretched out each second in the outside world to 30 seconds.
The somewhat dimly lit images reaching her mind had the lighting enhanced by the god of war, making them look as bright as midday. Wait, it’s night out there, isn’t it? Maybe I overdid that, she thought.
“––––––”
She kept walking.
Each step she took from the hill to the beach was mimicked by the god of war’s combat maneuvering.
The advanced control system and OS did not require the pilot to perform actual combat actions. As long as she moved and perceived her surroundings within the virtual world of compressed senses, the god of war would convert her movements into combat maneuvers. It would fight the way she would have if it were up to her.
The AI was not predicting what she wanted. She was currently combined with the god of war as a data entity, so the god of war recreated the decision and actions made within her own data, allowing her to move as herself.
She had just arrived at the sea.
She was intercepting Bilgamesh on the freshly paved floor.
There was no difference between the two.
“Combat and nostalgia are found on the same horizon.”
She fought. She used equipment meant to fight gods to do battle with a hero of the distant past.
●
“That thing’s faster than I thought!”
Raidou meant the god of war. He had expected a big machine like that to be a lumbering thing, but it produced the same relative speed as human-sized gods in combat. And given the scale difference, it had to be moving several times faster than those gods.
“Is there any reason to bring out a machine like that? Isn’t it meant to fight giants?”
“In this case, Athena is physically controlling it using an Auth Spell. She is using gravitational control and inertial control together.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Functionally, it provides her with a center of gravity and then eliminates all recoil. But…”
She sent a knife strike down toward Bilgamesh.
Noise and sparks scattered, as did the rocks around him.
“She can also direct those things toward a single point. This means she can achieve war god level speeds in that giant thing but also place its full weight behind its attacks.”
“I sense a but coming.”
“You sense correctly,” confirmed Kuwajiri. “How can Bilgamesh fight back against that?”
●
“Is he using artifacts?”
Demeter saw something amid the flying rocks and stones around Bilgamesh after he blocked the attack.
He had something in his hands.
Golden equipment.
A Gauntlet and a Red Line Shield.
He also had Jet Boots on his feet.
They had cast that equipment themselves and it had been given divine blessings.
The gauntlet and shield had grown to several meters in size. They deflected and endured Athena’s attack, but more due to their wielder’s skill than their inherent defensive power. However…
“What is the meaning of this?”
Athena’s god of war was designed for combat and its sensory compression had to be in effect. And yet…
“How can Bilgamesh respond with his slow, uncompressed senses?”
●
“It’s simple really.”
Ki watched her partner handle the god of war’s high-speed maneuvering and tremendous strength. She heard countless sounds of clashing metal and saw sparks flying, but her partner was never knocked back.
“He’s actually moving forward.”
“Right. That’s his experience talking.”
She understood this all too well.
“ ‘He who saw the deep’ means he has gone to see all things. He has even peered into the depths of despair, so while his greatest weapons probably are his divine artifacts, I don’t see it that way. I’d say it’s his overwhelming amount of experience.”
He was moving forward. But what kinds of obstacles did he have to surpass to do that?
“When I was with him, all he did all day was train, train, and train some more. I couldn’t believe he never got tired of it, but the physical body of someone who would grow tired of it could never support the kind of mentality needed to go see the depths of despair found in this world.”
A breath.
“He has seen everything combat offers – both on the offense and defense sides. Someone like that can predict where any battle is going.”
●
…His perception!!
Athena could tell that was the strength keeping her enemy unharmed.
Increasing her reaction speed did not actually increase the speed of the actions themselves or how many actions she could perform at once.
It gave her time to think, make decisions, and detect her opponent’s openings, but she could not endlessly change the course of an attack in progress. And this enemy was…
…Predicting my attacks and defending against them in advance!
He wasn’t just detecting the very start of her movements.
He was predicting her next move, the one after that, and the one after that – probably to seven moves out.
The ineffectiveness of feints proved that.
If she wasn’t fully committed to an action, he would detect that while she was preparing to take it.
So all her strikes were deflected.
“––––”
She looked up into the blue sky of the Seto Inland Sea and wiped away her summer sweat.
The distant image of Shikoku seemed to waver. Was that a sign of her unease? But…
“That’s right.”
She understood why her Piesi Dory hadn’t worked earlier.
“He saw it.”
●
“He saw it, didn’t he?”
Kuwajiri was certain of that as she observed Bilgamesh’s movements.
She knew why he hadn’t been harmed by Athena’s earlier attack.
“Most likely, Bilgamesh saw the instant that Athena activated her spear. So he chose to dodge it.”
“Dodge it? But how? That press was an AoE attack.”
“When paving a road, a road roller isn’t always enough. Especially when something like pebbles are present, a single flattening is not enough to create a flat surface.”
So what would they do then?
“Athena’s spear opens up when it releases its pressure attack. But that means it releases several different pressure attacks from the gaps between its armor panels. Each one covers a small area, but they combine so quickly it looks like a single large attack.”
You could tell if you looked carefully. The gouged part of the forest across the river had been scattered around.
That would be the result of the many overlapping pressure attacks.
“A single attack could have been sharp or it would catch at a point and tear apart the target. That it shredded and then gouged means it was actually multiple small-area attacks. I do not know what kind of system it uses, but that spear releases several attacks around itself and then launches them all forward.”
“So when you say he dodged it…?”
Yes, the answer was obvious.
“He detected one of the gaps created between the different attacks and moved there to dodge them all. He detected the spear opening, the timing of the launch, the number of times it would need to flatten everything, and where the different strikes would hit. That he could do this shows he really was a king. Because the good ancient kings had river management and constructions skills.”
And that power manifested itself as a certain fact here.
“Someone capable of all that would be able to predict and respond to a god of war’s attacks.”
●
He’s pretty good, thought Demeter, arms crossed.
When her crossed arms lifted her chest, the human on the other side struck a pose and turned toward her.
“Whaaaaat!?”
Cut the dramatics.
And why does the goddess in charge of him feel the need to lift hers to compete with me? And now the human has fallen to his knees to worship her… Is that how human worship works? Whatever.
Anyway, Athena and Bilgamesh are what matter here.
“He might be 5th gen, but he’s only a half-god. I wasn’t expecting much from him, but he is pretty good.”
Heat was starting to grow within the power system for Athena’s machine. This wasn’t a malfunction. That meant the engine had finished warming up. Gods of war were machines, but they were also modeled after the pilot’s body. The respiratory system was replaced by the machine and could not breathe in outside air, but the circulatory system worked basically the same.
That meant gods of war were in top form a bit after they got started. So…
“Speed up, Athena.”
●
Athena had arrived on the beach.
She had left the hill, traveled down a path too winding to call straight, and reached the beach where her feet sank into the sand and she heard the crashing of the waves.
“–––”
The sand caught at her shoes, so she removed them and walked to the edge of the water in the summer sun.
Was she imagining how cold the wet sand felt? Or was that part of the nostalgia?
When a wave crashed in, she backed out of the way. When it receded, it carried in sand that buried her feet up to the ankles.
“Yes.”
The second time, she let the wave hit her.
The water rose further past her ankles than she had expected and even her jeans cut just below the knees seemed too long. But even as the sand danced in the receding wave and passed between her toes, she was not shaken. So…
“Time to go.”
She walked to the side of the waves. Her hair was cut short, but…
“Yes.”
She could see the sand of the beach out of the corner of her eye. On the wave-wet sand, she saw her shadow with long skirt fluttering in the wind and spear in hand. The shadow’s hair danced as it was blown back by the sea breeze.
“It’s been too long, Victorious Empress.”
●
The god of war changed form.
As heat filled its circulatory system, it was allowed to expand and the radiators were released. A lot like…
“It changed clothes?”
Before, the feminine god of war had been surrounded by armor, but some parts of that armor opened up, its armored clothing fluttered around it, and the radiator cables dangling from its head armor danced behind it like they were blowing in a hot breeze.
“…!”
All the armor opened to radiate heat. Overheated ether blew out as shimmering heat. The ether light was nearly gold, dying the entire god of war in that glowing color.
Sounds of rearrangement and spraying water came from all across it.
It activated the system necessary to easily push past its previous speed. But…
“White Sword.”
Bilgamesh sent his sword toward the center of that raised speed.
●
They exchanged attacks.
With a chopping motion, Bilgamesh launched an attack that would instantly rend everything across a distance of 200m.
In the instant before that white light struck, the god of war moved.
It slammed its short right spear toward the base of the launched blade.
“Piesi Dory!”
Unlike with the longer spear, the spear’s armor opened in eight directions. It took a certain shape.
“A shield!?”
The two forces collided a moment later.
The giant white sword was thrust in as soon as it appeared. And…
“––––!”
It split.
The White Sword was torn down the center.
●
“ ‘He who saw the deep’ might have a lot of experience, but there is one experience he couldn’t possibly have.”
The sword was split in two after hitting the great shield and Athena’s Victorious Empress moved between the two halves.
“He cannot possibly have experienced combat with later mythologies. The same is true for us. But we fought our predecessors who still came after Mesopotamian mythology and always defeated them. The quantity of our experience may be inferior, but the quality is superior.”
That was the power Athena was using now.
“You can see what the Piesi Dory does now, can’t you? It does not use wind or gravity. It uses the isolated concept of ‘pressure’, which should not be physically possible. That is an authority only Athena possesses. You get what that means, don’t you?”
They could see it even if they didn’t.
“Defeating a god using the laws of the human world is a challenge, but with the authority of another god, they are evenly matched. Athena’s pressure can work just fine against those 5th generation artifacts, especially when boosted by the god of war.”
And it had worked. The white sword had completely broken and shattered. Which just left…
“Go, Victorious Empress. I mean you, Athena.”
●
She used a flaming sword.
She held it opposite of the Piesi Dory which had been turned into a shield. She opened the cowling covering the knife in her left hand.
A great length of pressure power was released. That was her divine authority and it pressurized and overheated the air and dust in the human world around her. All of this created…
“Prota – Phloga Basileus.”
The pressure sword was enveloped in a flare measuring a few dozen meters long as the god of war’s great strength sent it racing out.
The head-on strike was aimed at…
“Apology Man!”
It hit.
Interlude[edit]
“In a game, a hit like that would take half your health.”
“Druaga and Ishtar don’t display your health, so you can’t really tell how much it does.”
<To be clear, this battle is being fought under the combat field rules I manage.>
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