— — — — — —
"Tohru said she doesn't want to go. She said she's found a place where she belongs. Didn't you hear her?"
"Old ma, she's not going with you. She's staying with me."
"Whether human, dragon, or demon, as long as I'm alive, I won't let anything hurt her."
Kazuma stared straight at Damocles. The heat rolling off the dragon king felt like it could incinerate everything, but Kazuma still spoke without a hint of hesitation.
"So you think you can protect her? A mere human? What arrogance. And this is the second time you've dared spout such nonsense.... Then perish."
Damocles's fury finally broke loose. His power erupted, flooding the area with blistering heat that could burn the world to ash.
The barrier and concealment spell Tohru had spent a full week preparing evaporated instantly.
And the giant shrine itself didn't burn… it vanished. Completely vaporized.
"You trying to scare me? If you're that fired up, then... tatakae."
Natural energy surged around Kazuma, shielding him from heat that could melt mountains. He met the dragon's rage with equal intensity.
"I knew words were pointless anyway. Let's settle this with a fight. Yolda! Send us to a dimensional space!"
Everything inside Kazuma was operating at its peak. There was no avoiding this battle.
Crimson wings unfurled behind Damocles. For the first time, he began taking the human in front of him seriously.
To survive his aura without being vaporized… maybe this one wasn't as weak as he assumed.
"???"
"Yolda! What are you doing? Why isn't the dimensional space open? I gave you days to prepare. Don't tell me you messed up."
Kazuma looked toward the demon maids.
Yolda and the other three could barely stand. Under the crushing mana pressure from Kazuma and Damocles, they were almost dead already.
Just being nearby was too much for them.
"M… move… can't…" Yolda forced the words out.
"You're pathetic."
Kazuma wrapped her in a layer of his own power, shielding her from the pressure. "There. Now you can."
"Y-yes!"
She immediately opened the dimensional gateway. This wasn't a teleportation spell but a door to a parallel space carved out inside the current world.
A high-order technique only top-tier spatial demons could perform. No matter how destructive the battle became inside that space, the real world would remain untouched.
In the blink of an eye, everyone vanished from the ruined shrine and reappeared beneath an endless sky.
This was the battlefield.
"Tohru. Take Yolda and go."
Kazuma stared at Damocles, gathering strength.
"… okay."
Tohru wanted to say she'd stay and help, but the look in Kazuma's eyes left no room for argument. She carried the exhausted Yolda away, leaving only Kazuma and the dragon emperor in the sky.
"Human, your words earlier were admirable. I can see in your eyes that you truly care for Tohru."
"But human lives are too short. A hundred years? A thousand? To us, that's little more than a nap. When you die, Tohru will be left alone, and she'll lose the place she thought she belonged."
"She is my daughter. I refuse to watch her end up wounded and broken. So let me bring her home. I can forgive your earlier insolence. So what do you say?"
He offered Kazuma one final chance. If possible, he still didn't want to interfere with the human world. If he acted… the consequences would be enormous.
"Tohru may be your daughter, but she's also with me now. And I'll say it one last time. If she doesn't want to leave, you're not taking her."
Before Kazuma even finished the sentence, Damocles appeared in front of him.
Kazuma reacted instantly, launching a full-force counterattack.
A deafening impact cracked through the sky.
Terrifying mana surged outward, burning even the natural energy wrapped around Kazuma's body. The raw physical power alone felt like colliding planets.
"…Hm?"
Damocles frowned. That strike didn't feel right. This boy had blocked his blow, and worse — Kazuma's counterattack had pierced his scales.
Barely, yes. Weak, yes. But it pierced them. How?
"Pft."
Kazuma spat blood, then pulled something from the Treasury: the Stormforge Aetaris Armor.
The armor snapped over him in an instant, blazing with the five elements: wood, fire, lightning, wind, and earth. Every one of his attributes doubled on the spot.
"A magic armor? Your power did jump, but you're still far too weak."
Damocles gathered power in his throat, a dragon's breath capable of evaporating a country in seconds. For ages he had led the dragons against the gods in the name of freedom. He never allowed himself to grow soft. And now he struck with the intent to kill.
"Secret Art: Power Boost!"
Kazuma invoked the technique he learned from Principal Shidou, pushing his body to an even greater extreme.
"More-More~ Twentyfold Magic!"
His already monstrous magic swelled until even he had trouble controlling it. Not the limit of Moa Moa no Mi (More-More Fruit), but his body.
"I admit I can't win a fistfight with you. Lucky for me, brawling was never my specialty."
Golden ripples spread through the air as the GOB flared open.
In mere moments the entire sky of this parallel world turned golden. One after another, golden spear-like treasures appeared.
"In ancient myth, Indra, the god of lightning and king of the devas, used this to slay evil dragons."
"This noble phantasm is called... Vajra. Shakra Vajra!"
With his words, countless Vajra scattered across the sky and transformed into roaring bolts of lightning. As the weapon of Indra, lightning was its natural means of attack.
And because it once slaughtered dragons, its anti-dragon attribute was overwhelming, able to pierce scales with maximum efficiency.
"Heh." Damocles unleashed his breath. Lightning and breath clashed, exploding in a blinding wave of power.
Even the parallel dimension shook violently.
"I'm not done! I've got plenty more where that came from!"
Kazuma poured in more magic. Golden ripples multiplied and an even larger storm of Vajra appeared. Bolts rained down like a thunderous wall, sealing every direction, sky to ground, east to west.
Blinding lightning filled the world.
"Raaah!"
Damocles roared in fury, shifting into his full dragon form. His next breath carried enough power to erase a continent.
"Shadowkhan!"
Kazuma refused to clash head-on. He dove into the shadow world with the shadowkhan, dodging the attack, then immediately reemerged with more Vajra to strike again.
"This power… these weapons…"
Damocles finally realized something was wrong. The attacks weren't overwhelmingly strong, but they were bizarrely effective. Every strike pierced his scales as if they weren't even there.
Scales that could withstand strikes from gods.
And the wounds wouldn't heal. The energy had a corrosive quality. Combined with the sheer number of hits…
A human phrase suddenly popped into his mind.
Too many ants can kill an elephant.
Normally he would laugh at such nonsense. No matter how many humans swarmed him, they could never break his defenses. Ants were still ants.
But the boy in front of him was forcing him to take that phrase seriously. That strange penetrating power gave the human a real chance to wound something far stronger than himself.
Damocles shifted back into humanoid form, wings unfurled, and shot toward Kazuma at a speed faster than lightning.
The attacks were too dense in dragon form, but with a smaller human frame he could slip through them easily. And his instincts screamed the same thing they always did in battle:
Break the core. Get close. One punch ends the fight.
Kazuma watched the Emperor move faster than lightning and immediately retreated. He triggered an ability of Vajra: targeting lock.
"Damn it, I knew this was going to be a problem. He's way too fast."
"But if I picked any other treasure, I probably wouldn't land a single hit. He'd punch my head off before I even activated it."
Kazuma had purposely chosen the fastest treasure to deploy and attack with. Even so, Damocles was still faster than the lightning itself.
.
.
.