"Good! Good!!!"
The White Horse descended at full power, charging straight at the dragon king Yamm!
Under that blazing white-gold sunlight, Yamm's body began to melt away.
But even so, it was still not enough to make the dragon king disappear immediately.
At the end of the day, Erica and Liliana's raw strength was still lacking.
If a true Campione had been the one using the White Horse, it would have pierced straight through Yamm's dragon body from the start and blasted right through his torso.
Still, this was enough.
Under Erica's full-power White Horse bombardment, Melqart had no choice but to pour all of his divine power into maintaining the dragon king Yamm as a shield at his side.
But... Liliana's arrows could curve.
Now that both Yamm and Melqart were pinned down by Erica's White Horse, and with Yamm unable to actively intercept them, the golden arrows curved around the dragon king's massive body and struck Melqart behind him!
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
With several consecutive impacts of flesh being pierced, the four golden arrows struck Melqart's limbs one after another. In an instant, Melqart's godhead was sealed!
With Melqart's godhead sealed, the dragon king Yamm became water without a source and dissipated directly into the air.
Once Yamm vanished, Erica's White Horse also came crashing down in full!
"Haaaaah!!!"
Driving the White Horse with golden divine power, the unyielding knight unleashed the attack until Melqart's entire body was swallowed by blazing golden sunlight.
Meanwhile, on Liliana's side...
The moment she confirmed that Melqart's godhead had been sealed, Liliana immediately dropped the Warrior incarnation and switched to the Goat incarnation.
"All enemies shall bow before me, before me, the embodiment of victory! Thunder. Thunder. Thunder. Gather unto me, and protect me from the hands of the unjust!"
Boom! Boom boom boom!!!
As Erica rained down sunlight, Liliana continuously called down the Goat's divine lightning to strike Melqart's massive body!
A little more than ten seconds later...
The White Horse went out.
The Goat fell silent.
Thud!
With a tremendous crash, the god-king Melqart collapsed to the ground, unable to rise again.
...
Elsewhere, on Akuto's side...
In truth, before Melqart noticed the disturbance in the dragon aura barrier, Akuto had already discovered it first.
"Hm? Someone's trying to break open my dragon aura barrier?"
Once he sensed the exact situation outside, Akuto could not help but frown.
Because he had already recognized which idiot was attacking his barrier.
"Salvatore Doni, huh? After all this time, he finally decided to show up..."
The reason Akuto called it late was simple. Italy was in Southern Europe, and from a territorial standpoint, both Italy and the greater part of Southern Europe were within the sphere of the Sword King, Salvatore Doni.
Under normal circumstances, as long as Doni had not deliberately avoided it, he absolutely could have come at once to deal with Verethragna and Melqart.
But instead... he had dragged his feet the whole time? Was he waiting for reinforcements from Rome to arrive?
Whether in Akuto's eyes or in Seirou's, Doni had no chance of making it in time for this battle between two gods.
...
And Akuto was right to frown.
When Salvatore Doni arrived a few minutes earlier, he truly was full of regret.
He had spent his whole life running around the world in search of god-slaying battles, yet somehow, while exploring ruins left behind by a god, he had gone and triggered layer after layer of traps because he had been too obsessed with pursuing power.
Two gods. A full two gods! That was enough to equal several years' worth of his normal record.
So yes, he regretted it bitterly.
But... what could he do? At the time, he had been deep inside those ruins and completely cut off from the outside world.
The moment he emerged, his royal attendant Andrea had immediately informed him that two gods had appeared in Italy.
The instant he realized he had missed two divine prey, and that Italy had already been sealed off, Salvatore Doni had jumped straight off the plane and flown in personally to intervene.
...
As soon as he got off the plane, a bolt of lightning came flying toward him.
The one who had appeared was the Black Prince Alec, who had been lingering outside the barrier this whole time.
"Yo. Isn't this Germany's Black Prince? What are you doing in Southern Europe without even changing out of your usual outfit?"
Doni actually remembered fellow Campione, or at least beings on the level of people who could give him a satisfying fight. He was not like he was with random others whose names he could not even be bothered to remember.
That said, he did not have a particularly good impression of Alec. It stopped at the bare minimum of remembering who he was.
Because the Black Prince was just too annoying to fight. Battles against him had no feel to them at all. Worse, Alec was exactly the sort who deliberately avoided pointless battles.
The last time Doni had gone looking for him, Alec had only agreed to fight because Doni had nagged him into it.
But once the battle started, Alec had clearly been holding back and had shown no intention of letting Doni enjoy himself. He had even grown irritated midway through because it was obvious the fight would not produce any clean result. It had been utterly boring.
What Doni disliked most was that kind of person. Someone whose behavior before and after a fight was so obviously inconsistent.
Really... at that point, what was the point of pretending otherwise? Were not all Campione walking engines of disaster anyway?
In short, Salvatore Doni did not think highly of the Black Prince, so the moment they met, he directly questioned why Alec had come to Southern Europe, which was under his management.
...
When he heard that "friendly greeting" from the Sword King, the Black Prince merely kept smiling beneath his black robes.
"Sword King, I did not receive an invitation from the Pope of the Holy Church, so my appearance here does not count as interference in Italy's affairs. I only came to investigate the major incident involving Prince Yamm."
Alec did not harbor any particular hostility toward Doni.
He just thought Doni was an idiot.
And once he had fully grasped the nature of that idiocy, there was no point in taking him too seriously.
After all, if one kept arguing too long with an idiot, would that not make one an idiot too?
"Is that so? Here to prevent the disaster from spreading further? That's a very high-sounding excuse."
"But by now, you've already returned the Great God's gift, haven't you?"
"Or are you planning to fight me for the prey after returning that gift?"
As he spoke, Doni smiled and removed the sword case from his back, drawing out a magic sword fitted with a specially made scabbard, one sturdy enough to withstand his full power.
Shing.
Silver light spread over the blade. In the instant the two men crossed swords, the Sword King's edge was already cutting toward the level of an Authority.
Because at this point, using an Authority carried no downside for him whatsoever.
All he wanted was a battle he could truly enjoy. He did not care in the slightest what practical purpose that battle served.
The reason he activated his Authority now was simple. He wanted to tell Alec: unless you defeat me, I will never allow you to lay a finger on the two gods in Italy.
At this point, Alec had only three choices.
The first was to yield, in which case it would come down to whether Doni or the gods could overpower the barrier first.
The second was not to yield, and to fight a Campione battle with him before the god battle even began.
The third was to withdraw for the moment and wait for a chance to steal the kill while Doni was busy slaying a god.
No matter which choice Alec made, Doni would still get the kind of fight he wanted.
If Alec chose the first path, Doni would gain the right to fight the gods now in Italy.
If Alec chose the second, then Doni could finally have an open clash with the Black Prince right there at the airport. Unlike the last time, when Doni had gone out of his way to provoke him, this time there was a real reason for conflict. If Alec truly intended to compete for the prey, then of course they should fight.
And the third option worked for Doni too. Although the possibility of Alec trying to steal the prey later would irritate him immensely, Doni figured he could always use that as a reason to demand a proper fight from him afterward.
Alec, naturally, understood all of this perfectly well.
After a few seconds of silence, he finally shook his head.
"Sword King, first, I do not have permission from His Holiness the Pope, so I have no reason to kill gods within Italy on my own authority. Second, whether I interfere or not, unless you break that atmospheric barrier, you are powerless to affect the magic inside it."
"So rather than considering whether to fight me, you would do better to consider how to break through that barrier."
"Otherwise, Sword King, you will be just like me and can only stand outside and watch."
What the Black Prince said made perfect sense, so much so that Doni threw back his head and burst into laughter.
"Hahaha!!! Fine! In that case, I won't fight you for the prey after all!"
"It's just a dragon aura barrier, right? Then I'll just cut my way through it!"
He raised his silver-crystallized arm and magic sword high, chanting a sacred incantation as he drove his already surging magical power into outright berserk overdrive!
"O drunken shrine maidens... call forth the child of god."
"Drunk on the violent wine of the gods, abandon your homes and vanish into the mountains. Worship the god of fate!"
"Let there remain only the violent wine of god!"
The Rampaging God's Wine was an Authority Salvatore Doni had stolen from the wine god Dionysus. It could throw magical power, stamina, and even Authorities themselves into a state of total berserk overflow.
The exact effect differed somewhat depending on whether it was activated through long preparation or as an instant release, but either way it forced Doni's body and magical power into an utterly maximized frenzy.
Normally, there were very few methods capable of further amplifying a divine Authority. Yet Doni's Sacred Madness, the Rampaging God's Wine, was one of those rare Authorities that could push power beyond even its normal berserk limit by simultaneously strengthening and restricting it.
It was called a restriction Authority because, with enough preparation time, Doni could even send himself fully out of control, creating a situation where his enemy had no choice but to engage him in direct close-quarters combat.
And in the original story, Doni had used this very move many times to forcibly twist the flow of battle. It could truly be said to push frenzy all the way to its absolute limit.
(End of Chapter)
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