Editing BlazBlue:Phase Shift 4 Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 5===

On the outside, the clash between the Black Beast and humanity was intensifying like a balloon being pumped full of air.

The Ars Magus Corps ambush unit maintained formation and alternated between trading blows with the Black Beast and gradually retreating northward, with Hakumen and Jubei having a massive impact on the flow of battle as they wielded Ookami and Musashi.

The plan to lure it in a direction other than where Ishana sat was going unexpectedly smoothly. The Black Beast had suddenly started getting impulsive at some point, which made it less vital for the humans to cleverly choose when to start running.

In exchange, its attacks had grown all the fiercer.

Its countless heads started haphazardly devouring anything they could reach, not caring whether it was a living organism or not. The heads flailed about chaotically, mowing down soldiers along with the very ground they stood upon and tearing them to shreds with their fangs.

Hakumen's Ookami felled three of the Black Beast's heads while Jubei's Musashi regularly crushed eyes. No matter how deeply they wounded it, however, the grotesque colossus never slowed down or let up its attack. What's worse, it would use the seithr surrounding it to repair itself on the spot.

Falling back step-by-step in that way, the ambush unit finally led a seriously wounded Black Beast and a massive quantity of seithr all the way into the magic circle, looking like they were being chased by a massive raging wave. Flowing together in complete harmony, the unit and the seithr continued to brawl with each other atop the massive magic circle.

Valkenhayn's force quickly moved to support them, turning the magic circle into a platter of human screams and writhing seithr.

Human voices and the seithr's noises got jumbled together.

Trying to not lose her grip on consciousness, Nine focused on preparing to cast a spell. The rest of the Ten Sages were standing on the edge of the circle spaced at regular intervals, pouring their massive mana reserves into it.

Feeling a sudden wave of cold, Nine glanced across the circle and saw a dragon made of ice shooting through the air. The dragon, fangs bared, was accurately targeting only seithr entities, freezing them solid before shattering them to pieces.

It was Seven's magic. Nine looked at Seven, knowing that the ice must have been created using Yukianesa's power. Seven was currently not chanting the incantation to control the dragon.

The other Nox Nyctores wielder, Three, was pouring mana into the circle as she used her magic to wield Bolverk. Unseen hands held the pair of guns, using them to stop seithr cold in the vicinity of wherever its projectiles made impact.

The magic circle just needed a little more. Just a little more mana and it would be ready to teleport at any time.

As Nine prayed for everyone to hold out for just a little bit longer, a massive shadow abruptly shot over her head.

"Huh...?"

An ominous chill ran down her spine.

Nine wasn't sure what it was at first, but she instantly lifted her head to look. She saw one of the heads of the Black Beast.

Having charged into the magic circle, scattering soldiers and seithr alike, the Black Beast looked down on her.

"Oh no..."

She needed to break off her teleportation spell immediately and intercept it with an attack. As Nine panicked and lost her focus on the magic circle, a bulky wolf flew in from behind.

It was Valkenhayn.

Changing back into a human in the space of a breath, he raised both arms and blocked the head that was about to crush her flat.

"Nng, grrrrrr..."

"Valkenhayn, that's absurd, get away from it!"

As the person managing the magic circle, the place where Nine was standing was significant. Nine knew that he was doing this so that she wouldn't be forced to move.

Grabbing the errant head by the top and bottom of its jaws and holding it back with sheer strength, Valkenhayn threw a reprimand over his shoulder as he withstood the incredible weight.

"If you've got the time to give me lip, why don't you finish the teleportation? This thing seems to be in a good enough position!"

"!"

He was right. The Black Beast had thoughtlessly charged straight at Nine, which meant that it was practically in the center of the magic circle. It was never going to put itself into a more ideal position than this. Nine hurried up, closing her eyes and focusing her consciousness on her task. She blocked off all the noise around her and wove her magic with great haste.

Jubei and Hakumen leaped onto the scene, simultaneously cutting off the head that Valkenhayn was holding back from either side. They heard an unpleasant ripping sound as the giant head fell clear of its neck and onto the ground, scattering into a massive cloud of seithr, but a new one would surely grow in its place soon.

Before that could happen, however, the magic circle that spread as far as the eye could see was bathed in purple light as it activated.

"Here we go!"

No sooner had Nine shouted out a sharp warning than the magic circle began turning like a cog wheel, shooting out ever stronger light. Several heartbeats later, the Black Beast teleported away along with the great crowd of soldiers and mages around it, as if something had plucked them all up between its fingers.

When the teleport ended, they were standing on a gently sloping plain, the forest containing the Kaka village visible in the distance.

She wasn't sure when the sun had set, but Nine finally realized that night had fallen when they reached their destination. A full moon hung in the sky and a generous quantity of moonlight shined down on their surroundings, ensuring that they could see whether they had magic lights or not.

The nearby city had already been trampled by the Black Beast some time ago, but this plain alone seemed to have been left untouched by both seithr and the creature, so they were surrounded by lush greenery. Only six of the people present had seen why exactly that was the case with their own eyes.

Below this plain, and in fact directly below the spot they had set as their teleportation destination, there was a vast cave. Within it was a spacious natural room full of strange, beautiful, sparkling crystals and air that was remarkably different from that of the rest of the planet. It was a place devoid of seithr, and more than that, it was a place that suppressed seithr. The air in that underground cavern below the plain was so fresh and light that even the soldiers, who had no special knowledge of such things, could tell.

And that air being so perfectly clean meant that, for the Black Beast, it was practically the same as a human being in a room without oxygen.

The creature's massive body that didn't quite fit in with reality, seemingly having come from a nightmare, landed on the plain. The moment it did, it started moving in an awkward, distorted manner, as if it had been entangled in invisible strings.

Its countless heads tried to go on a rampage, but the creature had lost the smooth movements that it had had moments before, its snake-like necks thrashing about in pain.

Hakumen had made the right read.

Now free from her role as the teleportation coordinator, Nine looked up at the Black Beast right next to her, spread her arms wide, and created as many balls of lightning as it had heads.

"Now... be a good boy and accept your fate!"

Zig-zagging through the air, each lightning ball struck true and slammed into one head apiece, making sounds on impact loud enough to split eardrums as the Black Beast roared.

Jubei had started running as she was doing that, and he had one of the heads in his sights. He drew a line with his claws as he ran along its long neck, and as soon as he jumped over its massive head, he sliced open the monster's throat with the Musashi blades he was holding with his mouth and one of his tails.

Musashi glided through it like it was butter. Jubei adjusted the tips of the swords with a subtle movement and cut up the Black Beast's neck like he was carving a captivating pattern into its body.

Following in Jubei's wake, Valkenhayn leaped in with a roar. He slammed a rock-hard fist into the head, still staggered from Musashi's strike. Even without a weapon, his merciless fist smashed through the seithr, slamming the head down into the ground. He followed it up by swinging a wolf leg down onto the beast's brow with all the weight of a blunt weapon, and the head shuddered irregularly like it was seeing stars.

Jubei jumped in again toward the stunned head and used one blade and both claws to slice it to pieces.

Countless particles of seithr fell like torrential rain.

By the time the rain of black mist cleared, whether it was alive or dead, the black head was lying motionlessly on the ground.

In that moment, the atmosphere changed all across the plain.

We can fight it. We can win.

Jubei and Valkenhayns' flurry of attacks was so brilliant and encouraging that it made everyone think that.

Even more troops that had been lying in wait at the teleportation site joined the fray and began sweeping away the seithr.

Leading the charge was the Kaka clan, with Suzukaka at their head. Their inhuman athleticism allowed them to truly lay waste on the battlefield. Many members of the Duodecim were present in this force as well, launching a hail of magical attacks from behind and slowly but steadily peeling away at the beast's seithr.

But even though the Black Beast's seithr was being repressed, it wasn't just going to take this lying down.

Shaking pesky humans off like they were flies around its massive body, it spat up seithr, blanketing an entire column of troops in black in an instant. It howled at the moon like it was venting its hatred, so loud that it made those who heard it want to cover their ears. It snatched up and devoured anyone who stopped moving when they heard that sound, completely erasing their existences from this world.

Even if it couldn't regenerate its wounds anymore, it still had the seithr that was teleported with it and the seithr of its own body. Narrowly dodging the sword-like masses of seithr swinging around her as she jumped back, Nine furrowed her brow in hatred.

"Even after all that, we're just equal now?"

They hadn't closed the gap in power: they had just narrowed it.

"Are you all okay, everyone～?"

From within the army that had just charged into the fray came Trinity, calling out to Nine, Jubei, and Valkenhayn and running toward them. Terumi followed behind her, then finally Hakumen fell from above and landed in their midst.

He looked at everyone around him.

"We won't last long. Cut down every head, then wait for the signal from the inside."

Hakumen gave his orders without hesitation or doubt. So saying, he sprang high and grabbed onto one of the beast's necks.

The neck bucked and heaved, trying to shake Hakumen off, and a different head opened its mouth wide, trying to devour him along with its own fellow head. Making another jump to get above the head, Hakumen swung Ookami down.

His massive slash rent the air and severed the seithr. The wave from his slash cut through its throat and he followed it up with another strike, this time burying the blade directly into it and slicing the head right off.

Innumerable specks of seithr sprayed out across a wide area, but they disappeared as the air purified them. If the seithr disappeared, then the Black Beast wouldn't be able to regenerate.

"Alright...!"

Jubei followed in his wake. He cut into the beast like he was grabbing a snake by the neck with both claws, then spun in the air to slide Musashi easily through it. He could have diced it into cubes if he had wanted to, and he used that sharpness to fell another one of the Black Beast's heads.

The beast howled again. It seemed to be directing its desire to kill every living thing in the area at the untainted air. It spit out a burst of seithr that fell over the entire area like a rain of needles.

"I'll handle this...!"

Trinity rushed forward with an uncharacteristic confidence. She thrust her long, thin staff into the ground. With a clear ring of the bell, she cloaked the entire area that the seithr was going to land on with a layer of metal, instantly creating a roof.

The seithr was unable to break the thick layer of metal reinforced with Trinity's defensive magic, and Trinity returned it back to the thin air it had come from when all the needles had been blocked.

Nine was already poised and ready by the time the instant roof went away. She assaulted the creature with countless rays of light wreathed in lightning all at once. The lights relentlessly targeted a single head, exploding on its black-and-red face one after the other. By the time the mind-boggling number of lights had finally been spent, there was nothing resembling a head left.

While that was happening, Valkenhayn had turned into a wolf and broken into a sprint. He sprung forward to meet one of the crook-necked heads, fangs bared, but he changed back into a human just before the massive thing was about to swallow his wolf form whole, leaving only his limbs in their lupine shape.

"Taste this!!"

Bellowing vigorously from deep in his belly, he simultaneously slammed a punch and a kick carrying all the power a beastkin could muster into the seithr of the creature's jaws. Below him, Trinity cast her magic and bestowed his strikes with even greater power than they already had.

He was already as tough as a rock, but now he also had the hardness of steel. Valkenhayn's cataclysmic punch pierced so deep that it buried his arm up to the shoulder and burst out of the creature's forehead.

A seemingly endless chain shot out into the action, slicing through the air as it entangled another head. The chain was Terumi's Geminus Anguium: Ouroboros. Moving like a real, living creature, the chain wrapped around the black head and constricted it, and the Black Beast bucked and writhed mightily as it tried to shake its infuriating restraints off.

The chain only dug in all the deeper, though, seemingly warning the thing against trying to resist. Appearing out of thin air, another length of chain with knife-like fangs at the end ran the head straight through in one go before slicing it from top to bottom, like it was dissecting the thing.

Many certainly died as the Black Beast struggled, but nevertheless it was losing more and more of its sinister heads before their very eyes.

Six turned to five, three turned to two.

Finally, the last head was left looking down at the ground from on high, its eyes burning with rage and blood lust. Holding the tip of his blade low and dropping his hips deep, Hakumen took his stance.

Just as he leaped forward and brought Ookami down on its final neck, the Black Beast suddenly came to a halt.