"…" Zhita'hna lunges forward in a Mana-charged assault, creating a massive horizontal golden hurricane that surges toward . I stomp the ground, shattering it and tearing off a huge chunk of earth that I hurl at her.
Using that as cover, I dash forward with a Mana-imbued punch that explodes on impact with her. The ground around us gives way, cracking and collapsing into the crater her previous attack created, sending us both flying apart.
I soar upward into the sky as she tries to rush , but using [Temporal Speed Blitz] I appear right in front of her and kick her chin. With my tail I grab her waist, and with my legs I wrap around her body, using my hands to pin her wings.
"…!!!" She's firmly locked in my grasp as I plumt downward. She tries to fire her feathers to cut , but I use darkness to form a barrier around her wings, trapping the feathers.
"[Repulsive Moon]" I use the Repulsive Moon magic to slice through the base of her wings, tearing them off. She screams in pain and then headbutts , disorienting as we slam into the ground.
"[Abyssal Cataclysm]" She uses so kind of magic that expands outward from her body like a colossal explosion, hurling away and scorching my body. Everything around us is disintegrated in seconds as my Pure Mana Armor nearly shatters completely.
"Two minutes…" When I say that, she charges at even more frenziedly. The more magic she spends, the more it reduces the ti she has left. Without her wings, she can only run at , though she's still incredibly fast.
As she gets close, I try to punch her, but she leans down to dodge, then stomps the ground hard. With magic, an enormous magical circle forms, and a gigantic pillar of black flas erupts.
My Mana Armor is corroded almost instantly, and I watch as my Mana begins to drop at an alarming rate, as if those black flas are consuming my magic.
"…Urgh" She rips open my stomach with the claws on her legs, but I grab her leg and punch her face repeatedly. She opens her mouth to recite so spell, but I shove my hand into her mouth and tear off part of her jaw.
"…" I tilt her backward and slam her down, climbing on top of her. I start pumling her. With no arms, she can't defend herself. Without her jaw, she can't properly recite magic. And with so much magic being spent, she can barely do anything.
"Thirty seconds!!" She tries one last gambit. She gathers all her magic into her heart, completely abandoning defense. The magic becos so dense in that one spot it feels suffocating.
"[Bloody Eclipse]"
[Bloody Eclipse] alters the atmospheric pressure, causing surrounding bodies to implode, compressed by the drastic pressure change between their bodies and the environnt.
I use this magic I employed in the battle against the humans. The bird-girl's body, due to the imnse environntal shift, begins to compress, but her heart is still active and she resists being crushed.
"…" I lower my head and bite into her chest, sinking my face into the flesh and devouring her heart completely. She lets out a pained sound and all her magic vanishes, consud by my passive ability as my Mana recovers.
"…" The gaze in her slightly compressed face is one of pure disappointnt. She lost. She used all the power she had and still failed.
"Haaa…" I take a deep breath, savoring the intense mass of magic I just consud.
"What madness… I don't know what I was going to do… but I felt I would die. You really bet everything until the very last second, huh? Well, be proud, you…"
"You… lost…" She interrupts , her voice hoarse and garbled but understandable. I'm briefly confused, seeing her distorted "smile." Even dying, she seems truly victorious. Her eyes, crushed by the atmospheric pressure change, hold that triumphant look.
'Lost? How the hell did I lose? I'm almost unscathed, I've used only about 30% of all the magic I currently have, and she has almost no magic left, and is practically dead.' It's only a matter of ti until she finishes dying.
"…Tell ? What did you do!!" Her smile irritates . She's practically dead, and she still says that? It frightens a little. My body senses this isn't a bluff, and if it's not a bluff, what exactly did she gain?
My brain runs through thousands of possibilities in a millisecond. Poison? A curse? A skill? Anything that could kill over ti, used without noticing?
But if it were just that, she wouldn't have said she won. Or rather, she didn't say she won; she said I lost, and there's a difference. The possibilities are so nurous my body shudders, trying to figure out what she did.
'What do I know about her?' I review all the mories I've built since eting her, every fragnt of information I collected, no matter how useless it seed, until one piece of information surfaces.
Not sothing I discovered, not sothing I noticed, but sothing I asked. And she only answered without much interest: the thod to "invite" one of my mother's servants.
"YOU FUCKING BITCH!!!!!" She used so much magic, it must have alerted everything within a radius larger than several solar systems. Magic spreads far, and Pure Mana spreads even farther.
There was so much magic being released at once for several minutes, it must have reached incredibly far.
'This slut didn't want to win!! She wanted to alert sothing!!' I think about her behavior, the bad feeling I'd been having as if sothing dangerous was approaching each day.
Along with the fact I had already deduced she was so servant of my mother's toy, since she was alive.
The island has stopped moving. We've been "stationary" in the sa spot. From the mont the fight started and she began to lose, she decided she'd rather attract sothing dangerous than lose completely.
I didn't underestimate her. I took her seriously. I know how dangerous Abyss beings are. But even so… she was clever. She did sothing I didn't foresee.
"I need to leave before…" As I get up to flee, knowing a being with a level above 500 million is coming, I freeze. An aura of death stares at my back, as if my power were nothing.
Once again, the roles reverse. In seconds, I go from predator to weak prey. But it's worse. It's never been this bad before. This ti, the chance of victory is 0, the chance of escape is 0, and the chance of survival in a fight has also dropped to 0.
Other tis I encountered stronger monsters, the chance of survival was never 0. I always had ways to survive with the power I had, whether by fleeing or doing sothing similar.
But this ti, I feel that even if I used the copy ability I used to escape the spider girl, I wouldn't stand a chance.
'Breathe, breathe, breathe! I need to stay calm.' My heart is racing, full of adrenaline and fear of a powerful predator I haven't even seen yet. The aura isn't necessarily close.
Rather, it's on the move, which ans I'm within this thing's detection range, but it hasn't arrived yet.
'What do I do? I've already been spotted.' There's no running now. Maybe if I had realized earlier it would have been possible, but now, whatever this monster is, it has already noticed and is coming to get .
[System Alert.
An Apex Predator has appeared. It is a top-tier predator of the Abyss, typically a being at the very top of the food chain in a region, a monster no other monster is willing to attack.
Normally, monsters tend to attack any other type of monster, but with Apex Predators, things change. Monsters avoid them at all costs and try not to enter their sights.
If caught, they usually give up on life, because there isn't much to be done. An Apex Predator is the apex of the apex in a territory, aning in physical, magical, ntal, and general capabilities, it is the maximum of everything.
Thus, only an Apex Predator can face another. Normally they don't leave their territories, but currently, it is pursuing an "intruder" that has caused it irritation.
The user is that "intruder" – an unnatural monster in the territory that caused problems by having many offspring with a being and rapidly increasing their numbers. This caught the attention of the Apex Predator, who was not at all happy with the ecosystem changing in this way.
As the top predator, it rigidly controls how the numbers of beings fall or rise, and if one type of monster increases in numbers too quickly, the Apex Predator cos to investigate.]
'W-What the hell!! This thing is after ?!' I thought it was after the bird-girl, but no!! This thing is literally hunting !! All because of that damn spider bitch who used as an egg incubator!!
"S-System, how can I escape!! I need to escape!!" The primal fear invading is the greatest I've felt since I was born. I've never seen anything so "dangerous." Even the goddesses didn't give a sense of danger like this Apex Predator does.
[Normally it would be possible if you were a common monster. But despite being fragile, you are also an Apex Predator. That is, a monster that shouldn't be here. A territory should not have more than one Apex Predator.
If it does, it's usually for very specific reasons, such as Partners, Offspring, or Master-Servant relationships.]
"That doesn't…" Before I can say that's useless, I feel it arrive. Out of nowhere, it crossed the entire distance almost instantaneously, and being this close, my body panics, shivering completely.
[Warning, Warning. The system alerts that due to the aura of an Apex Predator, you may be induced to commit suicide.]
The system warns of sothing I've already noticed. My tail seems to want to impale my own body completely, growing agitated, and only not attacking because I don't want to die. I still have a target to kill.
I still have to destroy the human goddess. I won't die until then. So I suppress the instinct to kill myself.
'I-I'll get out alive… I'll make it!' I was so happy with my new power. It's a fucking cruel joke for such a strong being to appear just to ruin my excitent.
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