The sounds cracking sounded out as Idolatry lost strength, his body slowly reduced to nothing but a skeleton, having none of his flesh on his arms and legs, he still push against the maw of the snake, resisting with what little he had left.
His mouth seemed to move a bit but no sound came, he no longer had what was necessary to speak but he kept on saying his silent prayer as Milleral didn't lay off his assault, arrows constantly assaulted the sin's body.
Turning into snakes, which would merged with the others to form a larger one, it was coiling around Idolatry's chest, compressing it and threatening to completely shatter him at any moments.
Sensing a sudden increase in the sin's energy, Milleral squinted his eyes and started backing off, it didn't seem natural, the amount of energy he was holding was enormous, much too big for its vessel, the sin's demise had suddenly been advanced.
'He's going to blow up!' realised the hero as he just let go of the various transformations of his snake and let the half-dead sin fall to the ground.
He poppled down as if he had no articulations at all as he started violently shaking, the shadows all around twirled and the light bent under the pressure coming from him.
Fusing back all of the snake's parts again, Milleral made it collapse the whole cave on itself as he threw himself outside and just started running, he thought that the closest habitations were a good distance away but he wasn't certain if that would be enough to be outside of the range of whatever was going to happen.
After a whole minute of sprinting, a loud sound washed all around, pushing trees into the ground and a bizarre light filled every vision in the surroundings and even further, the light made from the intense fake holy energy of Idolatry was visible all around the continent as it rose in a pillar that pierced the sky.
Milleral was sent forward, eating some dirt in the process as his surroundings were nothing but brightness for over ten minutes.
Standing back up, while things could be considered to have turned out well, it was still daunting to see.
Idolatry's last ditch effort hadn't expanded into a wide dome and engulfed the surroundings but had grown up and below, leaving an enormous pit in its wake, it appeared as though the clouds wouldn't dare ever going over this hole.
Milleral guessed that the sin's fake holy energy would be present for a long time, as it permeated the air and seemed to have almost completely replaced the ambient mana.
While Milleral was certain that the blast hadn't reached the last village he had been at, he couldn't know if another hadn't been vaporised on the other side, what was certain was that the sin was dead at least, even though he had finished himself off, the XP had gone to the hero and he had received the kill notification.
A lesser sin dying was to be celebrated but he was too tired to do anything of the sort, not that he was the kind to jump in the air or swing his arms around, so he just layed on his back.
"Aah, at least I'll get to brag about it to Ilmna..." he said, suddenly raising his upper body up.
'Hold on, when did I start competing with her? I spent too much time around that club psycho, she has infected me' he thought in a type of horror no amount of lesser sins could provoke in him.
He heard a distant roar but paid it no mind as he rested his eyes.
__________
"Oh, another one got offed, this was Idolatry I think" remarked Greed, sitting on some sort of mass of flesh.
"Corruption, I could understand, he wasn't fit as a fighter but Ingratitude and Idolatry? They weren't pushovers" spoke Lust, laying on the floor as if waiting to be fed grapes, she seemed beyond bored, since Gregory, their hadn't been any good catch on her part.
"Their loss isn't a big damage but this might get some people riled up, thinking that they can stand up to the cardinal sins" on the other side of the room, Vainglory was sitting completely still on her throne.
"By the way, that loud roar, was that Sloth, it sounded like her a bit?" added the lich queen afterward, making to the two other women tilt their heads.
"No way, yelling that loudly would take too much effort-" said Greed before being cut off as Vainglory pointed her finger at a window, opening it alongside the flaps, filling the room with an unusual light.
"Idolatry went with a boom, heh?" smiled Lust as the other two stayed silent.
Whether this was intentional or not, such a bright shine must have kicked Sloth out of her nap.
"Where was she again?" wondered Greed.
"In some remote country, she can trash the place all she wants, they had no use by themselves" coldly said Vainglory as she put her head in her large hand.
Greed didn't say anything else and gave a nudge to the mass of flesh she was sitting on, the mass sprouted a protruding eye, it seemed as though it could fall off and roll on the ground at any moment.
"How is it going Simony?" she asked.
"Well, every second is pure agony, the very air causes me to feel as though I am nothing but a bundles of nerves that are being pulled in every direction and when a bit of dust falls on me, I blackout completely and forgets who I am and where I am for a short while" responded the lesser sin without sprouting any mouth or anything similar.
"I meant the production" simply clarified Greed.
"Oh, it is going smoothly, halfway through completely understanding the structure of the things you gave to me, then, the production should be starting without any problem" he simply responded, despite his earlier words, his voice was devoid of any pain or discomfort, sounding disinterested and professional instead.
"Great" simply responded the sin as Lust looked at her, wondering if Simony was that comfortable to sit on.