Minato's POV
Hours had gone by since our initial attack. We managed to do some significant damage—especially with the surprise attack—but Great Red "dreamed" the effects away, completely restoring his strength and regenerating all his body parts.
He then proceeded to kill Kushina with a condensed dream-energy beam that blew her head right off. She never saw it coming.
Neither did I. I'm always late to save those I love, aren't I?
He began taunting by… dancing. That new dance from America—the "Dougie." It sent me further into a rage, as if he were dancing on my girlfriend's ashes. At Ultimate Class, the strength that can be called upon is monstrous, truly. With physical strength alone, I can destroy a hill.
By reinforcing myself with chakra and mana? Well, it becomes the kind of thing humans of old told legends about.
I chased after the elusive dragon, who kept dodging or dematerializing after every attack. My attacks, even when dodged, still hit other humans and promptly eliminated them. After noticing that, I put all my effort into tagging him with my seal, but whenever it was placed, he simply "dreamed" it away and continued laughing at my struggles.
Now, the chaos of the battle had finally settled a bit, giving most of us time to breathe and re-strategize. All we had been doing was being made a mockery of.
"We're down to less than a hundred of us now. All of us are Ultimate Class or higher, so we can be trusted to at least survive a good number of attacks," said Satoru Gojo. For the first time in a long time, there was a large scar on his chest. It had since healed, but the mark remained—proof that the Dragon of Dreams had bypassed Infinity, one of the most broken abilities around, while Gojo was fighting countless others.
"Fuck that! Just stay out of my way. I've been loading up an attack with his name on it. Do not get in the way!" Thomas Andre snarled. It was clear he wasn't joking; his right arm glowed with a bright yellow tint, and the energy seemed to be increasing.
"Calm down, my friend. Great Red is not the kind of opponent you can just punch into oblivion," said Cardinal Vasco Strada.
"Yes, you can—but for now, we have no one in the weight class necessary to do it," replied Sir Lancelot, running his mana along the edges of Arondight, the holy sword given to him by the Lady of the Lake.
A rumbling started.
Slow, but one all of us picked up on. We fell into defensive positions in case it was an attack from below—or a ploy by Great Red.
The ground shook more violently. Stones shifted erratically, and eruptions of air blasted apart from the soil.
"Brace!" screamed Aisha Romani, the most powerful human witch, with the highest talent for magic creation. She deployed "Walls of Jericho," a spell she designed that absorbs and strengthens itself the more impact it feels.
(P.S. She is a reincarnate with a nerfed Essence of the Archmage. She is on the verge of Satan Class.)
The ground ahead of us erupted violently, as though a huge bomb had detonated beneath it. Luckily, it was far enough that we could weather the shockwaves easily. I quickly scanned the position to see the cause and…
"Is that… Soleil?" I asked, dumbfounded, looking at one of the powerful people supposedly taken out personally by Great Red. A powerful person whose power set was still a mystery to most, if not all of us.
Sure, we knew about his Gates that rain down weapons and magic attacks at subsonic speeds at minimum, and his great skill in cursed energy and magic… but he hardly interacted with people, which led to various speculations on Twitter and forums about just how strong he truly was.
The fact that Great Red singled him out to destroy early added credence to the assumption that he was a top-five human warrior alive—or at least that his power was annoying enough for Great Red to want him gone early in the fight.
His assault had been gruesome and frankly excessive, but the fact that he was still here—battered, with a crazed look in his eyes as he stared maniacally at Great Red—proved one thing.
He was extremely dangerous.
"Red!!!!! You big lizard! I'm still here, and I want your head on a fucking plate!"
"You survived that? You really are as much of a cockroach as Tobisson made you out to be," Great Red replied, completely shedding the playful persona he'd been using for hours as he locked in on Soleil.
"What's going on? He's acting as though he's totally disregarded Great Red as a threat," said Yuji Itadori, a sorcerer with a versatile technique called Shrine. He was one of the few High-Class humans left and was constantly shadowed by his brother, Aoi Todo.
"Something must have happened while he was incapacitated. Maybe he reached enlightenment," Aoi Todo added his two cents.
"You should have gone for the head. Do you know how much pain I was in, buried within the earth? Crushed from all sides. All I could think about was surviving and tearing you apart with my bare hands. For hours, I cast healing magic on myself to stave off death, but it wasn't working properly—your dream energy was still wrecking my body, tearing it apart from the inside.
"Yet here you stand."
"Yes. On the brink of death, I realized reversed cursed energy and started to heal myself, but it wasn't enough. The truth is, you are so above me that even a sliver of your energy remaining was consuming it and making it useless.
"I searched for an answer. I refuse to die like that—in the dark, with no one around, as an afterthought. Like an ant swatted away for moving too close to a giant!"
He began levitating higher and higher, flying faster toward Great Red.
"I realized I am a descendant of the First King! I have authority over all forms of energy within me, so I made a gamble. I made a binding vow: if I did not succeed in my next action, I would die of a heart attack. Permanently.
"I proceeded to merge all the energies I had to try to dominate yours, but I was failing. Demonic energy, mana, cursed energy, Jotun magic, Asgardian magic, Angelic magic—even when forcefully merged, they could barely do a thing against you.
"In that state, I finally achieved it.
"Enlightenment! Your energy, hostile as it was, was still within me regardless, so I did the only thing I could."
"No way," Great Red said, looking surprised—shocked—as his eyes opened wide in wonder.
"Yes way! I merged all of it together, and guess what? I succeeded! I succeeded in taming the power of a Dragon God through sheer spite! And I was rewarded for that.
"Thanks to you, I have done it. I achieved Divinity! I have become a demigod! I created my own divinity thanks to you!
"Here! Let me give you a gift!"
He suddenly stopped mid-air, and the air convulsed. A black hole formed in his palm, growing from a tiny speck until it was the size of a basketball. The surrounding land was a mess—structures and earth moved violently and erratically around him.
He shot it at Great Red at supersonic speeds. In less than a second, it arrived. Great Red tried to escape by dissolving into a dreamlike state, but the ball of darkness kept him solidified. It struck him, launching both itself and Great Red into the sky at tremendous speed.
Soleil then closed his fist and uttered a word that rang around the world:
"Planetary Devastation!"