Kaatohe gets a golden boy's weapon entangled with hers, then pulls hard and disarms him, but he's too experienced to be pulled off-balance by just that, so he immediately draws a long, thin dagger and uses the opening to jam it under Kaatohe's armpit, a weak spot in her armor where there's no plating.
The blade pierces through the chain, as it was made specifically for this, then easily gets past the padding and enters a good five centimetri into her flesh. He wastes no time and immediately twists it for maximum damage and pain, but Kaatohe doesn't feel a thing.
Sainalai has updated the [Materialize] for the soldiers, and they now feel no pain, so Kaatohe simply draws her pistol and presses it against the golden boy's forehead, then blows his brain out. At this range, only the shiny cans' armor is enchanted enough to resist a bullet, so we're distributing SMGs and pistols to the melee squad to supplement their firepower.
But now Kaatohe is wounded, so she pulls back to get healed while another Companion immediately takes her place in the line. But she can't afford to stay away for long as everyone is on a tight rotation due to the gradually increasing pressure on our super fortress.
I cross through another portal, but it's still just another large floating island occupied by a type of almost fully feral monsters. They don't even have huts anymore, just nests, but I'm barely paying attention to them as I'm too busy fighting multiple shiny cans at the same time through Jarn.
Alissa then notices one of ours on the Hau-Hou side getting punted backward into our reserves, but the men are very attentive as the shiny cans have done that a few times already, so they grab the flier and put them down. Then Alissa realizes that it's Lily that was sent flying, but the loli doesn't immediately rejoin the battle and instead clutches her chest, exactly where the super enchantment keeping her curse under control is.
Oh, no!
Ciel is resting, so I send her to check on Lily. The loli takes her helmet off and seems to be in pain and struggling to breathe, almost as if she's having a heart attack. Then Ciel grabs her arms and pulls them apart so that she can inspect the enchantment, but the gem is completely unscratched.
"What's wrong?!" Ciel shouts, trying to be heard over the constant gunfire.
"I'm feeling… tired…" she weakly whispers back, forcing Ciel to read her lips.
Take her to Sai-…!
"Master!" Ted warns me and takes control of the airplane.
I suddenly notice a ginormous shadow over me, but then Ted makes a turn at supersonic speeds, and the sudden extreme g-force makes even me start to blackout.
Alissa enters my mind to control me and ensure that I keep the enchantments at maximum power so that the Raki doesn't disintegrate. Then Ted stops our turn once we're facing away from the ginormous shadow, and blood returns to my brain, allowing me to think once more.
It's the fucking giant that I tried to kill with [Godly Language], golden armor and all, except this time, he's bigger than even our castle in Escanso, and he's standing right above the exit portal while trying to slap me away in slow motion as if I were a little fly.
How the fuck are we supposed to get past that?!
The Four; I need their Gifts, but they're fighting and keeping the fortress from falling…!
"It's getting worse, Wolfy!" Ciel desperately shouts as she runs with Lily in her arms.
We don't have time.
I grit my teeth and accept that shit is about to hit the fan.
Alissa, warn Sandoro; Roxanne, get the teens for me!
The procession of Titans is still occupying the bridge, so the swampy grassland is the only piece of land available to me, and the moment we land, I pull out my precious airship and open a [Gate]. Roxanne, Chesa, and Thant immediately come through it, the two teens looking quite confused. But then they see the super giant, and Chesa's light blue skin becomes even lighter as she pales at the fearsome sight while Thant would be the same if his face wasn't furry.
"Get on the airship before he crushes you!" I shout as I summon Suzy. Then I get back into the Raki and take off.
"What the fuck do you want us to do?!" Thant shouts back while Chesa immediately begins to climb the rope ladder, and Roxanne uses [Heart of Fire] because she wants to show off.
"You blind him while Miss Chesa uses her Gift to attack the giant," Suzy states stoically.
But he frowns at the little blonde doll. "Why do you call her 'Miss' while I get a 'you'?"
"Not the time for that," she replies dismissively, then flies towards the bridge.
And I snort. I didn't tell Suzy to be so rude. But then I put my war face back on.
"W-what's the best way to kill him?" Chesa asks Roxanne with an insecure tone.
"Fry his brain with a lightning storm?" she answers tentatively and shrugs. I also haven't had time to think of a proper strategy myself.
"It'll take time to build up something big enough to wound it," the mergirl cautiously replies.
So Roxanne encourages her a bit, "We have no other choice, and anything is better than nothing. I can try using my [Explosion], but he's too big, even for me."
The fact that nobody makes a joke inside my soul space proves that we're all being serious.
Chesa simply hums and nods slowly. Then she turns to the Giant and pales again. "The hand-…! The hand is coming towards us!" she desperately shouts and points.
The giant is attempting to slap them, but it's doing so in slow motion, possibly because the air resistance is extreme since it needs to displace a ginormous amount of air to move. It must be like being underwater for him.
Thant jumps onto the deck, and Roxanne immediately orders, "Thant! Blind him!"
He finally notices the big hand of doom coming towards them and growls, "Shit!" Then he raises his arms, and a mini sun suddenly appears above his head just as Suzy begins to take off.
The light barely bothers us, but the giant shades his eyes with a hand and squints as he attempts to keep track of them. He quickly loses them, though, so they safely fly away. Imagine being blinded by a fly; even though you know where the light is coming from, finding its exact position would be really hard.
Now that he's distracted, I turn the Raki towards the portal, but just as I start to accelerate, the giant decides to sit down and cross his legs with the portal at the center, and then a dome of stone grows and covers the top. But that's a weird thing to do…
Could the Dungeon Master be doing this because they can't fully block all paths to the portal?
That's still quite the vulnerability.
And Roxanne immediately orders the teens to exploit it, "Make him flinch! Hits his legs with lightning!"
"It's going to take some time for the storm to brew!" Chesa anxiously replies.
"I can hit him, too!" Thant eagerly volunteers.
And there's no reason to decline. "Do it!"
Sai casts [Soul Shield], then shoves it into Lily's chest, and it seems to do some good as Lily's pain lessens a tiny bit, but Sai's face is still grim.
Desperation starts to sink in as I struggle to handle everything that's happening at once.
"Put all my points in [Mana Control]; I'll try to create the strongest [Soul Shield] that I can!" Yunia suddenly commands, and I just nod and obey.
Thant launches a laser beam at the giant's knee, but he's completely covered in golden armor, so Roxanne starts gathering mana to help him with an [Explosion], and then we notice that the metal is already beginning to melt due to the intense heat of the beam. It seems that the giant is too big to be covered in an anti-magic enchantment, so we'll punch through it in just a moment!
"[Explosion]!" Roxanne unleashes a medium one, blowing a hole in his armor.
"GUUUH…!" he moans in pain, his voice so low that it sounds artificial, but it hits us with so much power that the Raki and the airship shake in the turbulence. Still, he doesn't move a centimetri, but I fly the plane closer to him to get ready for the smallest of openings.
Roxanne swears and angrily shouts, "Shit! We need to gath-…"
But she stops mid-sentence as multiple portals appear around them, and over a dozen robed Titans on a variety of flying mounts come out of them. There are also weird T-posing naked Titans behind the robed ones, and they're all facing the airship, tracking it even though none of them should be able to see shit with Thant's sun still shining brightly.
Alissa!
I summon her onto the Raki, then open the canopy and slow down so that she can take aim with her rifle.
Roxanne's [Water Spirit] casts an instant [Water Wall] to block any incoming projectiles, but the only thing the robed mages do is cast AoE spells… and Roxanne's "Magic Power" is too weak to interrupt even a single one of them.
FUCK! FUCK!
We have at least a minute before the spells will be completed, so I immediately let Ted take over the controls while I [Gate] back to the fortress, and I praise the Gods for past me having the foresight to leave a [Gate] coordinate in the safe area at the center of the melee squad's position, even though the Gods had nothing to do with that. But it means that I come out right next to the one person that I need.
"PRINCESS HAOTAWA!" I shout as I dash towards her.
The deer woman jumps in her seat from surprise, almost spilling her tea onto herself, and her bodyguards begin to move to intercept me on reflex, but they're thankfully well-trained and let me approach her.
And I immediately deliver my request, "I need you with me, now! You have to interrupt spells from powerful Titan mages!"
She blinks blankly once and almost chokes on her words but very eagerly agrees to it, "You-… yes, take me!"
So I open a [Gate] to the deck of the airship. "Enter this! And your bodyguards too!"
She almost flips the table as she leaps onto the black circle, and her two bodyguards scramble to follow her. Then I close the [Gate] and open another one back to the Raki for myself.
The Princess stumbles forward and almost faceplants due to the drastic change in scenery, but then she [Equip]s her staff and immediately starts interrupting the spells.
The robed mages fall from their mounts one by one as Alissa snipes them from the Raki, but more are being teleported in with every death, though at least there are no silver domes protecting them from her bullets. It's better to kill the mages rather than the T-posing trackers because the mages might still be able to launch spells with some accuracy by tracking Chesa's mana.
But without the robed mages' [Dead Zone] to protect the mounts and T-posers, Roxanne executes them with a quick [Explosion] so that they can't threaten the airship. There are dragons among the mounts, and they could do some nasty damage if they were allowed to fly freely.
Haotawa grimaces at the weird sight of the T-posers, but then she finally notices the Giant and shrieks in terror, "WHAT IN HEAVEN'S PISS IS GOING ON HERE?!" And Hana grins internally at the use of "Heaven's piss," though the Princess is certainly not using it with the same meaning as she does.
"We need to get Wolfy through the portal, but the giant is guarding it!" Roxanne tersely explains.
"MAYBE WE SHOULD CALL FOR THE ARMY?!" Haotawa shrieks again, still desperately interrupting the area spells as they perfectly follow the airship. Her bodyguards look around warily, shields up and ready with [Wind Shield], and their eyes tell that they'd ask the same question if they could.
"We can do this, have some 'Piety'!" Thant boldly declares, and he glances at Chesa, but the mer girl pretends she didn't hear anything because she's not as courageous.
But his beam is actually working as it forces the giant to put his armored hands over the opening at the knee, and the golden gauntlets steadily melt. Meanwhile, Chesa's storm is starting to take form and launch little bolts of lightning all over the giant's head and shoulders, making him twitch with every strike.
We're almost there!
I [Gate] Alissa to the airship so that I can freely approach the giant again. He's starting to sway in agony, and maybe I can do something to help.
Then a large stone platform suddenly comes out of a portal, and it's covered in robed Titans, but then our stomachs sink as we instantly recognize the silver titan at the center. He's T-posing with large nails hovering over all of his joints, which are immediately pierced, but we don't get frozen.
Alissa aims her rifle at them and fires, but we hear the characteristic metallic ringing as the silver barrier appears once again. Then Roxanne notices that the anti-curse talisman in her robes is shaking. She immediately pulls it out, but the shaking is rapidly becoming wilder, and then the little golden plate cracks.
It's going to break.
I turn the Raki towards the platform and pull the acceleration lever to the max while boosting the enchantments again.
We have just seconds left before the talisman breaks, but I can't let Chesa get interrupted…! And then a crazy idea comes to me.
"Wolfy! NO!" Alissa reflexively tries to stop me.
But we can't wait!
"[I order this plane to become unbreakable]," I calmly speak with [Godly Language], and then I ram the nail bastard with the Raki.
--
"Master! Have you recovered?!" I hear Ted's robotic voice call to me with a soothing amount of worry. I love attention, and seeing the kuudere golems expressing so much emotion makes my heart feel warm with love.
But then that warmth turns into heartburn, and I start to recover from my delirious state. There's a horrible taste on my tongue, which I unfortunately recognize as a mixture of an HP potion, an MP potion, and puke. Then I groan as my whole body protests my attempt at moving, so I just swallow heavily and remain in my seat.
"Is everything… alright…?" I whisper with a hoarse voice.
And Roxanne replies in my soul space with a chipper tone, "Yep, we're fine! You crushed the silver dude, throwing him away like a ragdoll, and then bounced off of the platform like a ball, which looked so ridiculously silly that it's now something I'll never forget!"
If she's making jokes, then I think it's safe for me to rest just a bit longer…
"Wolfy, Lily isn't getting any better," Yunia tensely warns me.
Shit…
I force myself to move, and Ted helps me drink another MP potion. Then my mind clears enough for me to take in the situation again.
The giant is now using his body to cover the portal, and he's constantly moving so that his armor doesn't get melted by Thant's beam, but that also makes it very dangerous for me to approach the portal. At this rate, it's going to take all night for the cat to significantly wound the giant, and we don't have that long.
Back at our fortress, Hana suddenly notices a little ball flying towards the line, and she immediately recognizes it as a Titan grenade, so she un[Equip]s her armor and activates [Draconic Body] as she throws herself at it. It's flying slow enough that she manages to grab it, and then she hugs the grenade and presses it against her belly.
It explodes after a second, and the impact makes her wince, but all it does is break some scales while the nail shrapnel just falls away harmlessly when she opens her arms.
Then four more grenades are thrown toward our men.
Princess Belind suddenly zips across the sky like a blur, hitting each grenade with her lance and redirecting them back at the horde as if she's an experienced batter. The explosions startle the men since they're so close, but thankfully, no shrapnel reaches them.
"I assume these things are dangerous?!" Belind shouts as she flies towards Hana, sounding quite pleased with herself.
But Hana remains silent as she grimaces. Her [Draconic Body] is quickly healing any wounds the grenade caused, but what bothers her is that she recognizes that the situation has become untenable.
"We have to retreat!" she shouts as she grimaces.
"What?!" Belind exclaims in disbelief.
And Hana tersely explains, "Those grenades can heavily wound and even kill our men! We're just too exposed out here!"
But the way Hana used [Draconic Body] gives me an idea… and this time, Alissa doesn't complain as there's little danger to me.
"We can still-…!" Belind's complaint is interrupted by more grenades, and this time, not even she can stop them all. Our mages know to intercept any flying projectiles, but the battle is becoming too chaotic with white smoke everywhere from the guns.
A grenade falls behind the Companions, and while an [Earth Spirit] raises an [Earth Wall] to protect the mages, three of the girls shriek in pain as their backs are showered with humanoid-seeking nail shrapnel. My heart hurts from seeing this, but their comrades immediately pull back the wounded and bring them into the fortress for healing.
Then Hana floats closer to Belind and shouts, "Please protect our men while they retreat! I have to help Wolfy!"
The armored pixie frowns but nods in understanding. I admire her for her bravery and her desire to protect the Sky Lands, but we're too soft-hearted to sacrifice our men.
So Hana flies to the command area and orders the retreat of the melee squad, then flies into the fortress to search for Samkelo.
--
"You want what?!" the gnome manchild exclaims in disbelief, but Hana just fearsomely grins back.
--
"GUUOOOH…!"
With each minute, the giant is punished harder, and his moans of pain cause little earthquakes. It has gotten so bad that even the DM has stopped the procession of Titans from coming out from under him because he's accidentally crushing them repeatedly.
But with each minute that passes, Lily's condition worsens. Even with Yunia using all of her MP and replenishing it with [Redirect Mana], the curse is still progressing, somehow.
Then Hana finally gives us the signal that everything's ready, so I summon her on top of the Raki's canopy. She quickly gets herself into a safe and comfortable position, her wings folded and [Draconic Body] fully active, even though she's still wearing armor, and then I fully pull down the accelerator lever.
The giant's golden helmet has mostly melted off, and he doesn't stop moaning in pain, doing so in slow motion, so it's almost like he's constantly yawning… creating a house-sized opening that seems pretty easy to get into.
But I can't sacrifice the Raki yet, not until I get to the core, as we need its supersonic speed… though I notice something odd.
"Isn't the plane shaking too much?" I worriedly question out loud.
"Perhaps the use of [Godly Language] has damaged some of the sensitive enchantments," Ted wisely suggests.
And I grit my teeth in anger.
Please, my boy, hold on for just a little longer.
The giant continues to moan in pain, but then he suddenly jerks his head toward us as he somehow senses our approach, even though Thant is still keeping him blind. He immediately lowers his body to protect the portal, but we aren't aiming for that.
"Master, we're getting too close!" Ted concernedly warns.
"We need the speed!" I growl back through gritted teeth.
And the Giant raises a hand, ready to swat us.
"That's enough!" Hana shouts in my soul space.
Then she jumps off the plane while I brake and turn away as fast as I can.
The [Fly] enchantment in her armor creates a bubble that keeps her from tumbling and flailing at a supersonic speed, but there's still enough drag that she slows down at a worrying rate.
Still, the giant hesitates, not knowing what to do as Hana approaches his face while I turn away, and he's too slow to close his mouth in time.
Hana is bathed in his hot, stinky breath, which also smells of blood as his wounds and burns have piled up. A huge tongue comes towards her from below, but it's still too slow to crush her against the roof of his mouth.
She casts [Spirit Light], illuminating the damp, fleshy cave of his mouth as she spreads her wings and continues to fly forward. Then she soon spots the pink wall of the back of his throat.
The giant suddenly freezes still, unsure of what to do, but then Thant's beam hits his cheek, and he turns away to not be burned anymore.
Hana reaches his throat and stops just before the fleshy wall, then raises the wooden board she's carrying, which has a [Gate] "coordinate" from Alcander, who opens it after Ciel gives him the signal, and Gods-know-how-many tons of C4 appear on top of it.
Hana struggles to keep herself stable in the air while carrying something so heavy, but the timed fuse has already been activated, so I summon her, and the C4 explodes a second later.
"GWACK!" the giant lets out a weird, fleshy groan as the back of his neck bulges out and explodes, releasing huge chunks of flesh everywhere. His head is still stuck to his neck, but a good half of it is gone, effectively decapitating him.
"You are now level sixty-seven."
And so, Nearly Headless Nick's whole body falls limp onto the portal.
Oh, wait…
And then a new portal appears above his corpse.
Oh, good…
The remaining Titan mages and T-posers all turn to me, but they're too far away to intercept, so I fly at full speed into the portal.
--
--
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