Chapter 25: The Hero

Chapter 25:
The Hero

 

CYRILL TURNED to the incoming tendril and focused a spell through her blade. “Chaser!”

Though similar in power and function to her Blaster technique, Chaser exploded into hundreds of tiny, piercing rays of light before impact—each one of which Cyrill directed at different targets. The individual rays were obviously weaker than an undivided attack, but Cyrill focused on the spots Maria had already wounded, causing the injuries to deepen in some places and completely tear apart in others, thus maximizing her damage.

While Cyrill took a moment to bask in her momentary victory, a new threat emerged behind her in the form of a squad of newly born babies.

“Rain!” She threw her hand up in the air, summoning a shower of light.

The “hero” affinity made no distinction between light, dark, fire, water, or any other element. The closest choice would be light, but this was unlike anything a person with the light affinity could conjure up. Yet again, Maria found herself impressed by Cyrill’s power. It was easy to use, cost relatively little, was powerful, and covered a wide area.

“Hyaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Flum slammed her Souleater into the ground, releasing an explosion of prana that her reversal magic whipped up into a whirlwind. It made short work of the babies that Cyrill’s Rain already softened up.

Yet another tendril swooped at Flum; Maria ran to intercept it.

“Divine Protection!”

Her shield was only strong enough to withstand the first two strikes before cracks bloomed across it. The third strike landed hard, and the shield threatened to give way.

“Burst!” Before it could pierce through, Maria shattered the barrier herself.

“Spiral Fragments!”

Her technique caused all of the shards to spin wildly like miniature saws and embed themselves into the tendril.

The tendrils kept coming in, undeterred by their attacks and making little effort to avoid any harm to themselves in the process. As the impromptu team fought off one after the next, the once-powerful tendrils went limp and dropped pathetically to the ground.

Flum, already used to this style of fighting, finally spoke up during a brief lull in the battle.

“Hey, Cyrill, Maria…there’s something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Where the core is, right?” said Maria. “I have an educated guess.”

“It could be a trap, you know.”

“No… I think it’ll be fine. I can faintly feel its presence. Right on the other side of that ceiling is an Origin core.”

Flum looked up at the sky, at Mother’s face surrounded by the wall of flesh. It was way too high for them to reach. And even if they could somehow make it up there, it would all be for nothing if they couldn’t destroy the core.

But unless they destroyed the core, this battle would never end.

“I’m pretty sure I can fly you up there!”

Cyrill hopped out of the way of a tendril and let loose with a Blade attack the moment it struck the ground.

Flum shook her head.

“In that case, you’re just going to have to do it by yourself!” Maria dove out of the way of another attack and slashed through the tendril with her light blade.

“That’s the plan. Gravity Reversion!” Flum knocked some debris out of her way, waited, and leaped into the air just as a fresh tendril swept in.

She careened skyward, chopping through a tendril as it presented itself, kicking off the severed tip, and ending her spell as she rammed her sword into its spasming root.

“Did she just…fly?! Wow! Go, Flum!!” Invigorated by her friend’s achievement, Cyrill picked up the pace as she waded through their opposition—and found time to praise Flum all the while.

“It’s nothing compared to you, Cyrill.”

Flum wasn’t being modest—she really believed that. Of course, she was still overjoyed to receive such praise from her friend. She shyly scratched the back of her head and blushed.

“Just like I thought…” Maria mumbled to herself, though no one heard her through the din.

As the three of them slowly won the upper hand, Mother became more and more desperate.

“All right, let’s do this!” There was a new energy to Flum’s voice as she started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

It took time for Mother to create babies in the first place, and that time varied from person to person, making it hard to calculate. What was most important was that his reinforcements weren’t endless. It all came down to how many people were left in the capital. She couldn’t say much about the tendrils that came at them in droves, but at least there was an end in sight for the babies. In that case, she could leave them to Cyrill and Maria while she went after the core.

Not like Mother would make that a trivial task, of course.

“Cut it out!!” Mother’s voice boomed throughout the capital; his irritation readily apparent. “What gives you the right to ruin my dream, you little brat? You’ve never known suffering like I have! I’ve finally become a mother myself and broken free of my own wretched excuse for a mother. I will not let you ruin this for me!!”

He was nearly hysterical at this point; his voice rose several octaves, causing the hair on Flum’s skin to stand on end. Maria allowed herself a chuckle at his behavior. He was acting like a spoiled child in the midst of a tantrum.

Flum and Cyrill shot a suspicious glance toward Maria at her out-of-character response.

“Let’s pretend that didn’t happen.” Maria scowled and turned away while the other two shared a smirk. They knew exactly how she felt.

He was powerful, to be sure, far more so than anything the second generation could bring to bear. But it was also hard to be scared of him now.

“You’re shallow, Mother,” said Maria. “The saddest thing about this whole situation is that all this power and potential was wasted on someone like you. And the ones who suffered most? The children whose lives you ruined!”

“Those failures? Were it not for my benevolence, they would’ve died off in the wild! I saved them, so it only makes sense that I had the right to use their lives as I pleased. After all the suffering I’ve been through, I’m the one who deserves to have my dreams fulfilled!!”

It was becoming clear to them that Mother’s victim complex had led to this life of selfishness. This was a perfect example, too. Even after all he’d done, after all the lives he’d ruined, he still didn’t show a shred of regret. All because he was still convinced, even now, that he was the real victim in all this.

“Mute was capable of thinking about others,” said Cyrill. “Mother, her friends, and even me. Though we only met briefly, she taught me a lot about how to live.”

“Not just Mute either,” Flum added. “Fwiss, Luke, even Nekt…all of the Spiral Children cared about you!”

“So what?! That’s not the love I’m looking for!”

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand—he simply wasn’t interested in understanding.

Even if he had never had the opportunity to learn about love from his own mother, he’d had countless opportunities to learn it while living with the Children.

“Mute showed me the way,” said Cyrill. “Flum gave me courage. Having relationships with other people may be an immense challenge, but I’m stronger for it. There’s a huge world out there that you’ll never be able to see if you keep rejecting relationships with others!”

The more they spoke, the more a part of Mother began to consider that perhaps he was wrong…which was a feeling that infuriated him, and that made him want to destroy everything in his path as his uncertainty flared into anger. He was now so thoroughly enraged that he was completely out of control.

“Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Stuuuuupiiiiiiiiiid!”

The ceiling of flesh above them rippled. A moment later, massive arms burst from the surface. He shoved one hand into his mouth and jerked it around, tearing open an even larger hole before he fished something out.

It was a head. A blue human head.

Mich Smithee’s biggest problem, the crux of all of this, was that he couldn’t love himself. After being rejected by his own mother for so long, he learned to hate his own face, voice, gender, and even the very fact that he’d been born.

He hated himself so much, in fact, that he dedicated his life to becoming something else. That was why the head in his hand had no face. It looked like a large egg-shaped object attached to bare shoulders, arms, torso, and legs.

Mother dropped it. Its slime-covered legs slammed into the ground with tremendous force, causing the earth to tremble.

They were now facing a twenty-meter-tall giant.

“All right then, it looks like I won’t be needing you—not as my children. So I’ll just have to kill you instead!”

The giant raised its fist high and smashed it into the ground, causing the earth beneath Flum, Cyrill, and Maria’s feet to swirl. The three of them dove into the air, narrowly escaping the center of the sand whirlpool, only to find that the attack’s range was far greater than what Flum encountered in her battle with Luke. They darted off in different directions the moment they landed.

“Gyahahahaha! Big talk coming from a bunch of cowards!”

Mother’s hearty laugh boomed throughout the capital while the giant’s shoulders heaved in sympathetic convulsions.

“This is my womb, and you are all my children, connected to me by an umbilical cord. Fetuses can run as much as they like, but all they’re really doing is kicking around inside my stomach! There’s no escape for you!”

“I have no intention of running away! Accelerate!!” Cyrill swept her sword in front of her and sped up, blasts of light shooting from the tip of her blade at the giant with every pass as she closed the distance.

“Once you’re in close, you’ll no longer be able to reject my love!” The giant raised its arm with amazing speed—far faster than a thing that size had any reason being.

Flum followed Cyrill’s lead, closing in and letting loose with a Cavalier Arts attack. Something fast, piercing, and highly directional: Prana Sting. She landed a solid blow to its shoulder, but even with all the reversal magic she’d put into the attack, it still failed to pierce the flesh. This was far stronger than the resistance even the babies could put up.

She still achieved her objective. Its pounding fists were knocked off their mark, sparing Cyrill. Cyrill stepped through the narrow opening Flum had made, clenched her hand tightly around her sword, and sent light coursing through it. “Blaaaaaaaaaaade!!”

The giant heaved its arms back into the air. “Aww, too slow. And you call yourself a hero!”

Maria spoke up next. “You’re the one who’s too slow, I’m afraid!”

She anticipated that another attack was coming and launched a spear of spiraling light.

KREEEEN!

It spun through the air and landed in the same spot where Flum’s Prana Sting had already torn into the giant, creating an even deeper wound.

“You stupid harlot!! And you call yourself a nun!”

“Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”

While Mother continued on his tirade, Cyrill charged in close and hacked at the injured arm, finally cleaving it from the giant’s body. She may not have had Flum’s reversal magic or Maria’s Origin power to help her along, but she didn’t need it. Simply put, her Strength was ratcheted past 17,000—more than enough to slice through the giant’s toughened body.

“My arm…it’s just an arm, but…no, it’s more than that! What in the hell are you so happy about?!”

Mother was clearly shaken up by this development, all the while reaffirming to Cyrill that she could be useful.

The wound on his arm quickly twisted shut until the bleeding stopped.

This was all the evidence Flum needed in order to know what they were dealing with.

“Huh…so this isn’t like all the other chaff we’ve been fighting. This one has an Origin core.”

Maria fell back to stand next to Flum. “So you picked up on it, too. Just like the second-generation Children, this giant requires the power of multiple cores in order to retain its shape.”

“Now that I think about it, Mother must’ve given the Children those cores in the first place.”

“The use of multiple cores has a synergistic effect. The Children were even more complex and powerful than the Chimera project in some ways, putting aside the fact that they were incredibly hard to control.”

“But Mother chose to use one of his limited cores on creating this giant.”

“Right, which explains why the tendrils stopped attacking and the baby production has slowed.”

In short, now was their chance. If they could take down that giant, Mother would be down an irrecoverable asset. It was no easy task—and he knew it. It was why he created the giant in the first place.

Cyrill paid his confidence little mind and kept hacking away.

“Hyah! Fwaah! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” She was moving so fast, thanks to her Accelerate ability, that her blows blurred into each other. Any normal opponent would have been sliced to ribbons long ago, but the giant still held strong, in spite of its gashes and scrapes.

Cyrill kept the pressure up, leaving no room for the giant to counter. Stuck in place, the giant clenched its fist tightly for a moment before disappearing from sight. Cyrill’s eyes went wide.

“It disappeared?!”

She felt a powerful, angry presence looming behind her. It didn’t disappear at all; it only made a short Connection jump.

“Aaah, yessss. I see it now: getting revenge is what I’ve always longed for.”

Countless tendrils sprouted from the giant’s back. The tips whirled at an unimaginable speed as they whipped at Cyrill from all sides.

“Victory is mine! Ehyahahahaha!”

“Maybe if you were fighting one-on-one, sure.”

“I don’t know how many times we have to tell you we aren’t alone.”

A blade of light and prana lopped the tendrils off.

“Now that’s hardly fair!”

“What’re you going on about??” Flum rushed the giant and scored a deep gash where its left arm was joined to its torso.

“You’re surrounded by all your beloved babies, aren’t you?” Maria came in next, heedless of the newly grown tentacles intent on spearing her, as the giant tried to focus through the pain. She dove high into the air, easily avoiding the attacks thanks to the Origin core in her body boosting all her stats, and hurled a barrage of light spears into the gash, opening the wound wide.

“You’re just wasting your time fighting us like this!” With one powerful slash, Cyrill amputated the giant’s remaining arm.

“Rejecting others and trying to recreate them in your own image will won’t do anything to eliminate your loneliness, satisfy your complex, or make your dreams come true,” said Flum. “It’s just going to make your life even more empty than…”

“Graaaaaaaaaaooooooooooor!!”

Mother was now beyond irritated. The arm sprouting from the sky shoved its fingers into the large face up above while its eyes went bloodshot.

Flum pressed the attack and dove toward the giant’s chest, where the Origin core should be. However, just before she could make contact with the core, Mother let out an immense howl.

“That’s…not…truuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeee!!!”

A powerful tornado sprung up around the giant.

“Flum, watch out!” Cyrill was the first to pick up on the danger and charged into her, knocking them both to safety. If she’d been only a bit slower, Flum would have been torn to shreds.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. But what are we going to…”

Maria approached the both of them. “That’s definitely an issue. We can’t get close like this.”

Not only was the tornado lethal in its own right, but it was also pulling in debris, and its range was slowly increasing. They had no idea how big it could get, but Cyrill realized that they would soon run out of places to hide.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!! No, that’s not true at all! Nooooooooooo!” Mother’s crazed screams sounded remarkably like a child throwing a fit.

“It’s like time stopped for him when he was still a child.”

“You’re absolutely right. The world would have been spared so much pain and suffering if he never existed.”

“I know. I just can’t stand by and do nothing as so many are sacrificed for no reason at all.”

The two glared straight ahead at the giant at the center of the tornado while Maria stood quietly and listened to Cyrill and Flum. Obviously, he’d gone too far, but she still understood how Mother felt on some level. In the face of unavoidable tragedy and the loss of the object of their hate, sometimes a person chose to reject the entire world instead.

Everyone she’d loved had been murdered by demons. The church, the people whom she thought she owed everything to, had ties to those demons.

Everything she’d believed in was a lie.

If, in the right moment, she’d found a reason to live that was as great or greater than everything she lost…then maybe she could have gotten back on the right track. Sadly, that encounter came far too late to do anything but feed her bitterness.

“We have to break through that spiral somehow. Do you have anything that could work, Cyrill?”

“I guess it can’t hurt to see if we can just break through with a powerful-enough attack.” Cyrill stepped forward and thrust out her sword with both hands, leveling it at the giant’s heart. She slowly let out a breath. “Blaster!”

A bright flash of light erupted from her blade.

“Whoa!”

The subsequent shock wave caught Flum off guard and caused her to stumble back several steps, while Maria bent her knees slightly to absorb the shock.

The ball of magic slammed straight into the whirlwind; the two forces battled back and forth for several moments before Cyrill’s shot was knocked away and sent crashing into a building, leaving smoldering ruins in its wake.

“Hng… I can’t break through. That was the best I had, too.”

“Still, it held up!”

“If I can weaken the spiral with my magic, then you might be able to blow on through.”

“Let’s give it a shot.”

“I’ll support you with all my magic, too.”

“Be careful, Flum!”

Flum felt a little more strength in her step from Cyril’s concern as she bounded off toward the spiral. If it was able to knock magic away so easily, she figured laying hands on it was her best option.

She gripped the crimson hilt of the Souleater tightly, squinted as the strong winds pummeled at her face, lowered her stance, and pointed the black blade into the whirlwind.

“Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!! Blast Through! Reversion!” She swung the sword with all her might. There was an explosion of light the instant her reversal magic made contact with the Origin field. It was even brighter than when Cyrill’s Blaster made contact, if that was even possible.

“As a fellow core user, I’ve got only one thing to say…” Spinning rays of light rose up all around Maria. “Take this! Take it all!”

With a wave of her hand, they shot off toward their target in unison. It was hard to tell who was having a greater impact, but in any case, the whirlwind was weakening.

“Now you’re done! Blaaaaaaaaaasteeeeeeeeeeeeer!!” Cyrill held her blade steady with both hands and let loose another powerful burst of energy. The force of the blast caused her to slide backward; the ground gave beneath her where she’d dug in her heels.

Even with her impressive stats, the attack was so powerful that it was a challenge to maintain it.

“Get ’em!!!”

The attack gathered yet more power as she willed it forward.

“It’ll never stand a chance. You’re wrong, after all. It simply won’t make it throoooough!”

Mother was all talk. The ball of light broke through the whirlwind and crashed into the giant.

JABOOOOM!

An immense heat enveloped the giant, disintegrating its upper body in an instant.

Flum found the Origin core floating among the sizzling remains. “Reversion!”

Her magic flowed into the core and reversed the spin of the spiral inside.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuugh!!” Mother let out an anguished scream as the black crystal broke in two with a crisp snap. Flum and the others had no way of knowing this, but the remaining babies reeled back in pain at the very same moment.

“Well, that’s one core down,” said Maria, “but we have no way of knowing how many more are left.”

“By the looks of it, Mother’s stunned for a bit, at least.”

“If we’re going to fly,” said Flum, “now’s our chance.”

The three turned their eyes to the sky. Flum scanned Mother’s massive face for cores.

“You sure about that, Flum?”

Cyrill looked worried; Flum felt a jolt of contentment from her friend’s concern.

“I’m the only one who can do it.”

“I see… You’re truly amazing, Flum.”

“It’s pretty terrifying, ya know? Looks vile, too. If I could just keep my eyes shut the whole time, I would.”

Maria laughed. “You’re right about that. I’d certainly want to keep my distance.”

“You too, huh?”

“I’m only two years older than both of you, you know. I may be one of the holy sisters, but I’m still a girl at heart.”

It was impossible to read her expression through the mask, but this was the first time she’d expressed any sort of affection for Flum or Cyrill.

“Anyway, I want to do whatever I can to help Flum arrive there in the best shape possible.”

“Count me in, too. I’m gonna get you there, promise.”

“Thanks, you two.”

Flum felt her spirits lift immensely at their offerings of support. She knew that there was no way she would lose now.

“Gravity Reversion!” She tumbled into the sky again, borne for the ceiling.

“Not gonna…happen…!” Mother was slowly recovering from the pain. His voice oozed resentment.

Flum watched as two massive arms appeared from beyond the thick membrane serving as a ceiling over the city.

Cyrill and Maria offered up their support from where they were stationed on the ground.

“Stop right there! Blaster!!”

“Sacred Lance!”

The arms flinched at the blows, and the two kept up the pressure, focusing on the arms’ joints as their attacks slowly ate away at flesh and muscle. A look of peace came over the two heroes’ faces, though the battle was far from over for them.

Mother put the last of his strength into a last-ditch flurry of tendrils. His first snaked toward Flum, but it was quickly felled by her friends on the ground. He sent two more. These were also blown away by Cyrill and Maria. He sent volleys of four, eight, sixteen.

“Seems like he’s doing something different this time. These are easy to destroy, but they keep increasing in number!”

“The core has to be located at the base of all those tendrils. If we focus our fire there, maybe we can take them all out in one go!”

“It’s a good plan, but if we let off on the tendrils, they’re going to get Flum!”

Flum still had a ways to go. If things continued at this rate, they’d soon be unable to keep her safe, to say nothing of stopping the core itself. She took out a few with her sword as they came in, but it was difficult for her to control her movement as she fell upward through the sky.

“I’d hate to have to call her back just because these tendrils grew to be too much and we got overwhelmed,” said Maria.

“Stay back! I refuse to let you come to me! Your dreams are not meant to be fulfilled! Happiness is not meant for wretched humans!!” Mother continued to double down on his strategy, sending more and more tendrils out as they twisted, contorted, and moved about unimpeded.

A literal wall of over sixty tendrils rushed toward Flum.

“How is he still so strong?!” said Cyrill. “I don’t know if Flum can run from that!”

Her whole body, brain and heart included, was at risk of being pulverized.

“Eaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuugh!!” Every tendril was severed in the blink of an eye by a man on the ground wielding an immense stone sword.

He was covered head to toe in oozing wounds but still very much in the fight.

“Gadhio?!” Excitement filled Flum’s voice as she caught sight of her friend.

“What?!” said Mother. “But how? How could you break out on your own??!”

“Heh, I don’t know either. All I know is that I crawled out when your power waned.”

The destruction of the first core sapped every remaining cocoon. Their mental contamination weakened and, for those with a strong enough will, it became a relatively easy endeavor to break free.

“Damn…damn you!!! But…but I’m still not done yet!!”

“And neither am I! Haaah!”

A volley of arrows streaked into the sky, blasting through more tendrils.

“Linus!” Relief swept over Maria as she caught sight of Linus and knew he was safe.

Just standing up was a fear for him at the moment, since he had to rip the blood vessels from where they’d speared into his body. He smiled at the sight of Maria running over to cure his injuries.

“I’m not done yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!”

Mother was still trying desperately to eke out a victory.

“Unfortunately for you, I made it, too.”

A shower of water bullets shot up into the sky and tore the latest barrage to shreds.

“Eterna, you’re okay!”

“And still got a ways to go.” Eterna flashed a confident peace sign in Flum’s direction.

It was an obvious facade, but she was still alive—they all were. And all here to help her.

“You and your stupid friendship! Who the hell needs relationships with people??”

Mother was no longer able to stop Flum’s advance.

“Hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”

Her sword pierced Mother’s forehead. She used her reversal power to beat back Origin’s attempts to force her out. She hacked and slashed her way deeper and deeper into his head toward the core deep within.