Antares snapped out of its reverie the moment its instincts began screaming danger.
When it looked up, its singular crimson eye widened at the sight of a gigantic bow and arrow hanging above the heavens, resembling a second moon aimed directly at it.
Before it could even react...
The attack fired.
A blinding, cataclysmic pillar of light erupted from the heavens, descending like an orbital satellite cannon.
Antares let out a screeching roar of agony as the beam struck with pinpoint precision, engulfing its entire body within a radiant column that carved straight through the sky.
Its body began to break apart beneath the overwhelming force, flesh and scales disintegrating layer by layer.
Driven downward, Antares crashed into the ground, the beam forcing it deeper and deeper until the earth itself gave way, forming a massive sinkhole around it.
As the laser continued to press the monster further down, Antares gritted its teeth, its eye flickering wildly as it forced its power outward with another enraged roar.
A barrier flared into existence around its body, straining violently against the torrent of divine energy.
When cracks began spreading across the barrier under the immense pressure, Antares immediately repaired it with Arcanum before launching itself upward, literally swimming upstream against the crushing tide of the beam.
The ground erupted the moment Antares burst back to the surface and continued flying upward, its gaze locked onto the second moon above.
"What?"
Judas' eyelids lifted slightly when he witnessed the scene.
He immediately raised his arm, increasing the output of his attack.
The descending beam intensified, thickened, attempting to crush Antares back down once more.
The barrier surrounding the creature fractured again, pieces breaking apart under the amplified force.
But Antares continued swimming upward through the beam as though it didn't care that its body was slowly being disintegrated, before finally reaching the second moon and smashing it apart.
The distinct sound of shattering glass echoed across space.
The false moon fractured, splintered, and then dissolved into a beautiful rain of fading light fragments.
But the price it paid was far from small.
Major burns covered Antares' body, its chest heaving violently as even portions of its arms and legs had melted away.
It was then that the real moon, hanging silently in the background, shone down.
A pale silver light descended from above, gently bathing Antares' battered body.
Its wounds began closing at a visible rate.
Judas's gaze sharpened into a deadly glare.
'Oh no you don't.'
He had no intention of allowing the creature a single moment to recover.
Without hesitation, he pressed the attack, firing over a dozen spear-sized arrows of light that impaled Antares across its body.
Antares screamed in agony.
Judas' figure flickered and appeared directly in front of it before delivering a devastating punch straight into its jaw.
The impact detonated the air.
A massive shockwave exploded outward the instant his fist connected cleanly, sending Antares hurtling away like a cannonball.
Its body turned into a streak of light, launching all the way deeper into outer space.
Judas watched as Antares crashed into one side of the moon.
The impact struck the lunar surface with catastrophic force.
A massive section of the moon was blown away, chunks of lunar rock blasting outward into space.
When the dust finally settled…
A portion of the moon was simply gone.
As if some enormous giant had taken a bite out of it like an apple.
During the fight, Judas realized something.
'The closer we are to the moon… the stronger we become.'
'Kind of like how Superman is with the sun.'
But when Antares crashed into the moon just now, blowing off a massive chunk of it...
'I felt the Arcanum inside me flicker and weaken slightly.'
Judas clenched his fist as he flew toward the moon.
Right now, they were fully in outer space.
If he looked behind him, he would see the entire world of DanMachi in all its glory.
A sight no mortal in history had likely ever witnessed before.
But Judas had no luxury to admire such scenery.
He narrowed his eyes and saw Antares standing amidst the shattered section of the moon.
A dense, suffocating blue light cloaked the monster's body, pulsing steadily and growing brighter with every passing second before erupting outward.
Layer by layer, a towering silhouette began to refine itself, dwarfing the shattered terrain beneath its feet.
When the radiance finally condensed, a gargantuan entity stood where Antares once was: a towering, six-armed giant made of solid light.
The form was grotesque yet eerily divine, a horrific fusion of Artemis's graceful, elegant outline and the monstrous, chitinous structure of a scorpion.
While the upper torso carried a faint, sacred resemblance to the Goddess, a massive, segmented tail arched high over its head, its stinger gleaming with highly concentrated energy.
At the core of the chest cavity stood Antares itself, barely visible, its singular crimson eye glowing through the translucent body like a cursed heart.
The surrounding space trembled.
It looked as though a gigantic monster had emerged from the moon itself.
Judas' gaze sharpened further as he took in the transformation.
The giant creature of light raised all six of its arms and grabbed the floating chunks of the shattered moon surrounding it.
Without hesitation, it hurled them toward Judas with the precision of a professional baseball pitcher.
Chunks of the moon tore through space toward him, their speed amplified by the monstrous force behind the throws.
Some were so massive they rivaled an entire mountain.
The vacuum screamed silently as the colossal rocks closed in.
As the fragments hurtled toward him…
Judas narrowed his eyes, instantly calculating their trajectories.
'I can't just dodge those… if I leave them alone, those giant rocks will turn into literal meteors and cause catastrophic devastation if they crash in the wrong place.'
'I have to stop them all.'
He exhaled quietly, stabilizing himself midair as the first massive fragment closed in.
He lunged forward.
His figure blurred, vanishing from his original position as he shot directly toward the incoming debris.
The first fragment loomed over him, its shadow swallowing his figure whole.
Judas raised his arm.
Instead of destroying it outright, he drove his fist into its surface at an angle.
BOOM—!
The impact redirected its trajectory, sending the massive chunk veering harmlessly away from the planet below.
But he didn't stop.
There were still more.
His figure blurred repeatedly.
Weaving through the incoming barrage, he struck each fragment with calculated precision.
Some he split cleanly in half.
Others he deflected just enough to alter their path, turning what would have been a catastrophic meteor shower into scattered debris drifting harmlessly into deep space.
But while Judas was occupied...
Antares used the opportunity to charge a devastating attack.
Judas suddenly felt his instincts screaming danger.
He snapped his head around just as a blinding flash of light completely engulfed his vision.
...
The giant light-construct opened its maw, gathering motes of energy into a swirling whirlpool.
Simultaneously, glowing runes written in the ancient language of the Gods manifested around its neck, forming rotating rings of power.
A brilliant glow illuminated the surrounding space, causing those on the surface who witnessed the sky at that moment to mistake it for the sun itself.
When the attack was ready, the giant creature raised its neck and pressed its foot harder against the moon's surface, causing visible fractures to spread even further.
Just as Judas finished redirecting a massive fragment the size of several football fields, his vision was suddenly consumed by blinding light.
A gigantic beam of death was rushing straight toward him.
A bead of sweat trickled down Judas' face.
'Antares is sucking out the power of the moon to strengthen its attack.'
To the naked eye, nobody could see it.
But Judas could.
Invisible white threads extended from the moon itself, flowing directly into Antares' body.
The attack had been further empowered by the moon.
The moment he sensed its power, Judas immediately realized it couldn't be deflected.
And in that instant, a single thought flashed through his mind...
If he moved, the beam would tear through space, pierce the atmosphere, and cleanly punch through the continent below, erasing millions of lives in a fraction of a second.
'This guy… must've realized what I was trying to do and is using it against me.'
Antares had realized that Judas was being particularly wary of their battle causing too much widespread destruction on the surface world below.
By lining up its attack perfectly, the monster was basically forcing Judas to take it head-on… or the people below would die.
It was practically asking him...
'What do you do now?'"
Judas clenched his fist and calmed down.
'Establish a connection with the moon...'
A second later, blue light coated his skin before erupting outward.
The energy expanded rapidly, taking shape around him until it formed a gigantic construct of himself floating within outer space.
Borrowing Antares' strategy, Judas began drawing power from the moon as well, strengthening himself while vast amounts of energy gathered around his palms.
He slowly took his stance.
'If it's a beam clash you want…'
His eyes perfectly reflected the incoming beam as he thrust both arms forward.
'Then it's a beam clash you'll get.'
Blue light erupted outward as a second beam tore through space.
The instant the two attacks collided, a gigantic sphere of energy formed between them, both forces struggling to overpower the other.
The resulting collision unleashed a devastating shockwave that rippled through space itself, propagating endlessly until it was eventually felt even on the surface world.
From the Far East all the way to Orario, the entire world trembled.
Back at the remains of the Elsos Ruins, Belle and the others looked up toward the distant battle with unease.
"Is that a giant version of Judas?"
"Then that monster on the moon must be Antares, right?!"
A tremor struck the moment the shockwave reached their location, nearly throwing everyone off balance.
"Woooah!"
"Everyone… be careful!"
The ground shook uncontrollably as visible fractures spread across the earth.
Belle grabbed Hestia and leapt away just as a lightning-shaped crack tore through the floor and swallowed the ground whole.
"That was scary…"
Hestia's face turned pale at the sight.
"There's a massive underground structure beneath the Elsos Ruins. The ground was already unstable to begin with."
Hermes commented while staring at the enormous sinkhole before them.
Right then, a sharp, fracturing sound echoed.
The blue crystal imprisoning Artemis suddenly began to crack.
The fractures slowly spread across its surface.
"Artemis-sama!"
"Artemis…"
The sound of the crystal breaking drew everyone's attention.
Eventually, the crystal shattered completely.
With a final, resonant pop, the crystal burst open, freeing the Goddess.
Rethusa stepped forward just in time, catching Artemis before she could collapse onto the ground.
"Hey! Don't you dare look!"
Rethusa shouted toward the men while covering her goddess' naked body as the members of the Artemis Familia hurried over with spare clothing.
"Artemis… can you hear me?"
Hestia asked softly, kneeling beside her old friend with deep concern.
Artemis' eyelids fluttered weakly as a soft groan escaped her lips.
"Hestia… everyone…"
Her voice was faint, her pupils slowly focusing on the faces around her.
"We need to help Orio— Judas… we need to help him."
"Goddess, please… you need to rest."
Rethusa urged, but Artemis shook her head.
"This is not the time…"
Her gaze slowly landed on the Arrow of Orion resting in Lante's hands.
"Lante… hand me that arrow."
Though the Goddess of the Hunt spoke weakly...
Her eyes burned with unwavering resolve.
…
Meanwhile, in the cold void of space, the tide of battle had turned dangerously dire for Judas.
He gritted his teeth as he thrust both arms forward.
Blood trailed from the corner of his lips while veins bulged along his neck.
'I knew this would happen… but to think I can barely hold on.'
The beam fired by Antares slowly advanced toward him.
In a direct clash of raw firepower, he was clearly inferior.
As if proving that fact, the beam he was firing continued shrinking little by little, gradually being overpowered and pushed back toward him.
He quickly assessed the situation and realized the gigantic avatar he created had already begun giving way.
Cracks spread across its massive surface as fragments broke apart and drifted away like fading shards of light.
It wouldn't last much longer.
On the other side, Antares sensed its impending victory.
Seeing its beam steadily gaining ground, the monster's grotesque face twisted into a smug, confident smirk.
If it could eliminate the pesky fly in front of it and devour the remaining portion of Artemis's Arcanum, nothing in the Lower World would ever be able to stop it.
It was already plotting to descend upon the mortal realm, slaughter the remaining Gods, devour their divinity, and ascend as an unrivaled, supreme being.
Antares had already envisioned such a future.
Lost in its delusion of grandeur, the creature's posture relaxed slightly, assuming the battle was already won.
"Hey! I was waiting for you to finally let your guard down, you bastard."
Antares was violently snapped out of its reverie by a mocking voice echoing right next to its ear.
Judas had purposefully reinforced his words with Arcanum, forcing the sound to carry through the vacuum of space.
The moment Antares turned its head...
Judas delivered a devastating punch into the side of its jaw.
BOOM—!
The impact detonated with explosive force.
Antares' gigantic avatar of light was launched violently across the moon's surface, its body cracking apart instantly upon impact.
Fractures spread throughout the construct as it skidded uncontrollably, carving an enormous trench across the lunar terrain.
Before the dust could even begin to settle, Judas drove his fingers deep into the moon's crust.
'It's a gamble.'
With a sharp, violent motion, he wrenched his arms upward.
When Antares shook its head and looked up, its crimson eye widened.
A colossal wave of lunar debris...
An entire section of the moon's crust...
Was surging toward it like a tidal wave, an overwhelming tsunami of stone and destruction.
Far away, the moon's surface began cracking apart like an egg before suddenly distorting...
BOOM.
A cosmic, silent explosion rippled.
And when Belle looked up at the sky, her eyes widened in utter disbelief.
"The moon… just shattered?"
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