When the shadowy figure waved his hand, dark spears formed in the void of space, each nearly a foot thick. With a casual flick of his finger, these spears were launched towards the Sky Citadel, crashing against its barrier and sending motes of light flashing across its surface.
“Ohh?” His voice sounded out in surprise, finding that the citadel’s shields had not been pierced. Instead, it seemed that they had actually grown stronger by absorbing the power of darkness. “So, that is where your confidence comes from…”
As he spoke, beams of light struck against his body, causing only minimal damage. These were only the secondary weapons of the citadel, not something truly fit to take on a being like the current Mad King. Still, as the beams repeatedly fired, they were starting to become annoying.
The Mad King was left with a dilemma. On the one hand, the shields had been modified to absorb his power, refining it into greater strength. This made it impossible for him to directly damage the citadel or those inside of it. On the other hand, the enemy was capable of firing constantly against him.
If it were possible, he could simply control the darkness within the citadel itself to act for him. However, he could feel that his senses were cut off from inside the barrier. Although he didn’t know how, it was clear that they had prepared against his current, full power.
“Really, Aurivy?” I asked in exasperation as I saw the fight appearing on the screen. “You made the Mad King a god?”
“Almost a god!” Aurivy corrected, raising a finger. “I haven’t unlocked his divine will, only the body and soul. And before you ask, it was all trained manually within the confines of the game. No admin cheats.”
“Still, this can be considered half of a god that they are fighting…” I could clearly remember the level of power that I had when I had been at this level. Even a disaster like Fafnir, a powerful dragon that Accalia believed Tsubaki wouldn’t stand a chance against, had been powerless to resist my divine abilities. And the Mad King seemed to focus its divinity around darkness.
“I’m guessing there won’t be any conflict with having two darkness related gods, even if he does win this battle.” I shook my head and sighed, though it didn’t particularly make much difference. Even if someone ascended to godhood in the game, it would not reflect on reality. Even less so for a character controlled by someone who was already a god.
“What do you mean if?” Aurivy raised an eyebrow, glancing towards me. “Watch how I win this!”
“Mana levels are falling fast.” Crystal muttered with clenched teeth. Even though they had upgraded the mana generator, it was not enough to make up for the constant consumption of their full arsenal.
They weren’t doing enough damage to settle this battle before their mana ran out, even with their hidden cards. So, desperate for an idea, Crystal called for Dana. “Run us straight into him! His body is composed of the same energy that our shields absorb! We should be able to burn away at him and recharge at the same time!”
Thankfully, this wasn’t Crystal’s first fight with the Mad King. She had long since known that he was no longer a physical creature. Realizing this, Dana changed the direction that the Citadel was moving, flying it directly forward.
The Mad King was no idiot. He could tell what the citadel was doing as soon as it began accelerating towards him. Calmly, he began backing off, calculating his next move. If he could, he’d prefer to simply move the battlefield to more favorable terrain. However, running from this fight would be seen as a forfeit in the terms of the contract.
As he was contemplating his strategy, he noticed a sudden burning in his midsection. To his surprise, the citadel had accelerated beyond his calculations, burying itself in his body. His eyes widening, he immediately spread out his form, creating a void in his body that prevented the citadel’s shields from absorbing him.
“Fire the main cannon!” Crystal’s voice called out within the citadel. From within the void that had once been the Mad King’s navel, the uppermost floor of the citadel split apart. A large, cylindrical tower rose up from this new gap. Within the tower, a bright light seemed to shine.
This light was the fully charged main cannon of the Sky Citadel. Unlike the original model which fired downwards, this cannon was built to fire directly up. Something that could only truly be taken advantage of in a space battle, where ‘up’ was a relative concept.
A scream of pain, carried by mana, echoed against the citadel’s barrier. A beam of light, which grew to be thicker than the entire citadel itself, pierced straight up through the body of the Mad King. For the first time since he had left his home world, the Mad King had suffered true pain.
“Still sure you’re going to win?” I couldn’t help but grin as I asked that. I had to admit that Crystal’s team seemed far more prepared for this fight than I ever thought possible. I’d need to look into what they had done to the Sky Citadel later.
“Y-yeah! Of course I am! Just watch!” Aurivy shouted, her cheeks slightly red from embarrassment. I could see her furrowing her brow in focus, diverting more of her attention to the incarnation that was controlling the Mad King.
“Enough!” The Mad King shouted, fuming in anger. Although the beam that struck through him had been no thicker than one of his own fingers, it still caused a considerable amount of damage to his essence. Unlike physical attacks, this blast had simply erased any of his power that it had struck.
“I am the eternal night.” His body erupted into a cloud, which began to travel in thick streams away from the citadel, condensing only a short distance away. When he reformed, his body was now much smaller, barely twice the size of the citadel itself. “I will not be slain by the likes of two mere mortals!”
Inside the citadel, Crystal had a confused expression on her face. Two–oh right… Aurivy wouldn’t have been paying attention to know that Crystal Soul joined us. There wasn’t really any way to use this knowledge to their advantage, but it was nice to have some confirmation that Aurivy was keeping her word.
“Load the Kingslayer.” Now that the Mad King had shrunken his body, their trump card would be able to show its full power.
Within the depths of the Sky Citadel, Crystal Soul jumped up from her seat at the weapon controls. Running to the back of the room, she found the large, silver container loaded halfway into a pipe. With a smile, she pushed the tube fully into the pipe, closing off the cap at the end. “Kingslayer loaded!”
“Fire all secondary guns.” Crystal commanded with a grin. Her eyes were still on the screen, watching the Mad King. Their preparations had even shocked Crystal herself with their effectiveness, and she was finally confident in winning her old deal with Aurivy.
All at once, numerous beams of light shot out from the hovering cannons along the Sky Citadel. Only this time, the Mad King was no longer passively accepting the attacks. His body shifted to the side, dodging and weaving even as the beams seemed to lock onto him. They curved, some striking directly against his body while others shot by him.
Stretching out his hand, he conjured a swirling portal of darkness above the citadel. “Descend!” Within the portal, a giant rock could be seen falling down, forcing the citadel to immediately take evasive action. Their cannons stopped firing as they ducked out of the way of the giant rock, but the Mad King didn’t realize that it was already too late.
In order to deliver his own powerful attack, he had been forced to stop dodging. This was an acceptable sacrifice in his mind, as he could still take countless of these smaller laser blasts before being truly injured. Unfortunately, he didn’t notice a small, silver tube contained within one of the beams.
Once that beam curved and struck against his back, the Mad King’s eyes went wide. There was an eruption of energy from within his body, his very essence turned into a bomb to destroy himself. He had no time to scream, his body self-detonating faster than he could suppress it. In under a second, his entire form had erupted like a supernova.
However, Crystal was not entirely at ease. There was no popup declaring that the enemy had been defeated, no reward that had been issued… as far as she was concerned, the battle was still ongoing. A belief that was only further proven when that same swirling mass of darkness appeared before the citadel again.
To Crystal’s shock, horror, and… frustration, the Mad King once again appeared at his full size. Towering over the citadel like a giant, as if the previous battle had simply never happened. “Okay, that is so not fair…”
“Relax, I got this!” Dana called out from the navigation room with a laugh. “It’s all part of the contract. The summoning ritual I used ensures that neither side is truly killed in the ensuing battle. Otherwise, how could they grant the victor a wish?”
When Crystal heard that, she froze. “Does this still count as my win?” She asked herself, only to get a response directly from Aurivy.
Yeah, yeah, live it up… this is your win, Julia. This wasn’t a message sent over the system, or the Mad King speaking via its mana, but Aurivy sending a message directly into her mind. I thought I had you there, too… what was that last attack?
“Uhm, I… well, Dana and I… okay mostly Dana.” Crystal struggled with how to explain. “We found one of your fragments, from after you crashed into a moon. Using that, we engineered a bomb that would spread an explosive ‘virus’ through your body. We just had to wait for you to get small enough to hit you all at once with it.”
A… fragment? But I’m an energy being! How do I have fragments!? Wait… maybe it was just a chunk of rock that had absorbed my power after passing through me? This is so not fair!
Crystal couldn’t help but chuckle when she heard that. “You think it’s not fair? How were you planning for us to fight you like that!? I mean, it worked out in the end, thanks to preparations that I had always assumed were complete and total overkill, but still.”
“Uhm, can I get my wish now?” Dana asked, having arrived in the throne room to find Crystal talking to herself.
“O-oh right, sure.” Crystal nodded, agreeing to Dana’s request. As she had said, most of this victory had been caused by Dana herself. Julia and Aurivy still had their original deal, which didn’t require any wishes. There was no reason for her to ask for Dana’s wish.
“Alright!” Dana shouted, jumping around and running outside. “Mad King, I wish for you to become my personal summons!”
“You what now?!” Aurivy shouted out from next to me on the couch after hearing Dana’s wish. At the same time, I couldn’t help clenching my sides, leaning back and letting out a roaring laugh.
“Now now, Rivy, you made a deal.” I teased, grinning towards her. I had checked with Vivi secretly during the fight. The contract summoning that Dana had used was a truly binding one. As long as the wish was something that the other party could accomplish, the contract would see that it was so.
Now that Dana had used her wish to acquire the Mad King as a personal summons, it did not matter that the Mad King himself was far beyond her in terms of power. Aurivy could adjust the amount of power given to the summons to make it require an obscene amount of mana to actually summon, but there was no way for her to deny Dana’s wish at this point.
“Oh, and just so you know.” I spoke up, wiping a tear from my eye after laughing so hard. “Vivi recorded the entire fight. She wants to use it as a promotional video for space battles.”
“She what now?!”
