The Barren Lands had become a graveyard of craters.
Stone ridges had been split open. Dust storms rolled in circles around the battlefield, drawn by the pressure of colliding powers. The sky itself seemed bruised, cracked by light and violence.
At the center of it all, Loki grinned.
"This is getting ridiculous," he said.
Across from him, Luminous Valentine hovered in the air with divine lightning coiling around her fingers. Beside her, Dagruel stood planted like a mountain given flesh, one massive hand resting at his side, the other already flexing with enough force to make the earth beneath him fracture.
Neither of them smiled.
Loki did.
"Come on, then," he said, spreading his hands. "If we're doing this, let's make it worth remembering."
Dagruel moved first.
The giant stepped once—
And the ground exploded.
He crossed the distance instantly, his fist driving forward with enough force to collapse the air in front of it. Loki twisted sideways just in time, the punch grazing his shoulder instead of caving in his chest.
A shockwave blasted past him and ripped a canyon through the wasteland behind.
Loki whistled as he flipped backward through the air.
"Okay," he said. "That's some fire power."
Luminous didn't give him time to finish.
A spear of crimson-white lightning cut across the battlefield and tore through the space he had occupied a second earlier. Loki raised one hand and shoved gravity into the air in front of him.
The lightning bent.
Only slightly.
But slightly was enough.
It skimmed past his face and slammed into the horizon.
BOOOOM.
A pillar of holy light rose in the distance.
Loki landed lightly on a broken slab of earth and laughed.
"Oh, this is fun."
Dagruel was already there again.
His heel came down like a descending fortress. Loki vanished from the slab just before it shattered, reappearing several meters away with a black katana forming in his hand.
He swung at Dagruel's side.
The blade hit.
And stopped.
Loki's smile thinned.
"Huh."
Dagruel glanced down at the katana pressing against his skin.
Then he looked back up at Loki.
"You cut well," he said.
Then he punched him.
Loki crossed the katana and his free arm just in time.
It still felt like being hit by a falling continent.
He shot across the battlefield, skipping through rock and dirt before smashing into the remains of a stone ridge. The entire formation collapsed over him in an avalanche of broken earth.
Luminous raised a hand.
"Don't let him breathe."
Hundreds of crimson lances formed in the sky behind her and rained downward instantly.
The rubble exploded.
Stone and dust and light swallowed the place where Loki had crashed.
For a moment, it looked over.
Then gravity twisted.
The falling lances veered sharply off course as a dark pulse surged up from the rubble. Loki shot out of the collapsing stone with blood on his lip and a grin that had only gotten wider.
"Still here!"
He flicked his free hand.
Three clones split away from him mid-flight, each one armed and moving in a different direction. One rushed Luminous from above. One charged Dagruel from the front. The real Loki cut low across the battlefield, skimming just above the ruined ground.
Luminous destroyed the first clone without even glancing up.
A sweep of divine light erased it instantly.
Dagruel let the second come to him. When it swung, he caught it by the throat and crushed it into shadow with one squeeze.
That left the real one.
Dagruel turned just as Loki came in fast, katana flashing toward his neck. At the same time, gravity folded inward around Dagruel's knees, trying to drag his balance down and compromise his stance.
A smart move.
It worked on almost anyone else.
Dagruel simply planted harder.
The land beneath him sank.
But he did not.
Loki's katana came in anyway, switching from the neck to the eye in a smooth mid-swing adjustment. This time Dagruel raised his arm to block and Loki pivoted off it, using the massive limb like a springboard to launch himself behind the giant.
"Down."
Gravity spiked.
The wasteland groaned as invisible force hammered Dagruel from every direction at once.
For the first time—
The giant bent.
Not much.
Just enough for Loki to notice.
"There we go."
He slammed the flat of the katana into Dagruel's spine.
THOOOM.
The impact rang across the battlefield.
Dagruel stumbled one full step forward.
That was all.
Then his elbow came back.
Loki barely got his guard up.
The blow folded him in half and launched him straight into the air.
Luminous was waiting there.
"Pathetic."
She drove a lightning-wreathed kick into his ribs and sent him crashing back down.
BOOOOM.
Loki hit the ground hard enough to open a crater.
He lay there for half a second.
Then one hand rose from the dust.
Then the rest of him.
He climbed out laughing, though this time the laugh had a rougher edge to it.
"You two really don't know how to play nice."
Luminous stared down at him.
"You are not here to be entertained."
Dagruel rolled one shoulder.
"You are here to be crushed."
Loki tilted his head lazily and then stopped.
Because Luminous had raised one hand.
Her eyes were cold.
"You've had your fun."
Her voice carried no volume.
Yet it silenced the battlefield.
Loki glanced at her, one brow lifting slightly.
"Oh?"
Luminous did not move.
She simply spoke.
"Disintegration."
For one fraction of a second
Nothing happened.
Then the world beneath Loki lit up.
A vast holy magic circle erupted into existence under his feet, lines of radiant script spinning outward in perfect geometric precision. Symbols of faith and annihilation layered over one another, forming a structure far too complex for ordinary magic.
Light did not burst outward.
It collapsed inward.
Reality at that point began to erode.
The ground dissolved into particles of pure radiance.
Space itself flickered as spiritrons were forcibly dismantled.
Loki looked down.
"…Oh."
The circle detonated.
Not as an explosion, but as absolute erasure.
A pillar of white light engulfed him entirely, rising into the sky like a divine judgment. Everything within it ceased to exist, broken down at the fundamental level of body, magic, and soul alike.
Dagruel narrowed his eyes.
"…Holy magic."
The beam lasted only a moment.
Then it vanished.
Where Loki had stood—
Nothing remained.
No body.
No residue.
Not even dust.
Only a perfectly circular void carved into the earth, smooth as glass.
Silence spread.
The Ten Saints stared upward in awe.
Dagruel crossed his arms.
"Hmph. Overkill."
Luminous lowered her hand slowly.
"That thing was dangerous."
Her voice remained flat.
"Better to erase it completely."
For a heartbeat, it truly looked finished.
Then—
A crack appeared in midair.
Like glass fracturing from the inside.
Dagruel's eyes sharpened.
"What?"
Golden light seeped through the fracture.
Another crack formed.
Then another.
The air shattered outward and Loki fell out of nothingness, landing lightly on his feet as if stepping through a doorway.
He dusted off his sleeve.
"…Okay."
He glanced down at himself, checking for damage.
"That one actually hurt."
Luminous's eyes widened a fraction.
'Impossible! Disintegration destroyed spiritrons themselves. Nothing should remain to regenerate.'
Loki looked up and smiled sheepishly.
"Good thing I had insurance."
A faint shimmer of dark-gold energy flickered across his skin for just a moment before fading, like a contract quietly fulfilled.
Dagruel's grin slowly spread.
"HAHA…!"
He slammed a fist into his palm.
"Now this is interesting!"
Luminous's expression hardened again.
"…You survived."
"Aw, did you want me dead?" he said. "And here I thought we were bonding."
He raised both hands.
The field around them changed instantly.
Gravity folded and tore at the ground. Boulders ripped free from the earth and rose into the sky. Dust spiraled upward in black rings. More clones emerged, five this time, then ten blurring across the battlefield with perfect coordination.
Two rushed Luminous.
Three dove for Dagruel.
The real Loki stayed back, fingers spread, controlling the field.
Luminous narrowed her eyes.
"You're stalling."
"Me?" Loki asked innocently. "Never."
Then the entire floating mass of rock above them collapsed.
Dagruel looked up once.
Then roared.
The sound alone shattered half the falling stone before it even reached him. He launched upward and tore through the rest with his body, punching straight through a boulder the size of a fortress and turning it to gravel.
Luminous's lightning split the sky.
Her attacks were precise where Dagruel's were absolute. They didn't waste movement. They didn't waste effort. Every strike was chosen to kill.
Loki dodged the first chain of spears.
Bent the second off course with gravity.
But the third clipped his shoulder.
The fourth tore through his side.
He hissed.
That one had gone deep.
The clones vanished.
His concentration slipped for only a second, but it was enough.
Dagruel hit him full in the chest.
It sent Loki tumbling across the wasteland again, spinning through the air before crashing along the ground in a long, brutal skid.
He didn't get up immediately this time.
The Saints watching from the far edge of the battlefield saw it.
Hinata, still bruised and bloodied, forced herself up another inch and narrowed her eyes.
He was still smiling.
But the smile was changing.
Not gone.
Just more focused.
Loki pushed himself upright.
'Yeah.'
The thought came cleanly this time.
'Not enough.'
He had known it before.
Known it while fighting Velgrynd.
Known it while laughing his way through battles he could dominate.
But this—
This was different.
Dagruel was a wall.
Luminous was a knife.
And together, they were enough to push him into a place he didn't enjoy admitting existed.
'If I keep this up, I might actually lose.'
Loki exhaled once.
Then he grinned again.
"Well," he said.
Luminous frowned.
Dagruel's gaze remained fixed.
Loki spread his hands.
"I've learned enough."
The two of them moved at once.
Luminous's lightning came first.
Dagruel's fist followed.
Loki snapped his fingers.
Gravity inverted beneath him.
Space twisted.
A black circle opened under his feet.
He dropped backward into it just as lightning and force hit the same point.
BOOOOOOM.
The battlefield vanished under light and impact.
When the dust cleared—
He was gone.
Silence followed.
Luminous's expression darkened.
"He ran."
Dagruel lowered his arm.
"He survived."
Neither sounded pleased.
Far away from the battlefield, in some unknown corner of the world, space folded open above a quiet stretch of ruined stone.
Loki dropped out of it, landed on one knee.
"Yeah," he muttered to himself between breaths. "No shame in that one."
He sat back, one hand pressed against his side, and looked up at the sky.
Then he laughed.
Softly this time.
"Tough crowd."
---
Elsewhere.
Another world.
Tokyo.
The city was wet with evening rain.
Streetlights reflected off dark pavement in long trembling lines. Cars moved through intersections. People hurried past each other beneath umbrellas, each carrying some private thought, some private irritation, some small ordinary purpose.
Among them was a man named Satoru Mikami.
He had been alive not long ago.
Then he had not.
The memory came back in flashes.
A scream.
A knife.
Heat in his stomach.
Blood.
Then darkness.
And now—
Awareness.
Satoru tried to open his eyes.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
"No, wait," he said.
Or tried to say.
There was no voice.
No sound.
No breath.
He panicked immediately.
'What the hell?'
He tried to move his arms.
He had none.
He tried to sit up.
That didn't make sense either.
He couldn't tell where his body began or ended. His entire sense of shape had become soft, vague, wrong. He felt the world not through sight or hearing, but through pressure. Temperature. Contact.
Everything was strangely dull and strangely sharp at the same time.
He wriggled.
Or at least, something like wriggling happened.
And then he bumped into stone.
Cold, rough and real.
'Okay.'
He went still.
'Not dead, then. Probably.'
A pause.
'Or this is hell.'
He tried to reason through it.
The last thing he remembered clearly was getting stabbed for no reason while he was enjoying an evening walk. Then pain. Then blacking out.
And now this.
No body.
No eyes.
No real voice.
No clue where he was.
He tried moving again and felt himself slide across the ground in a smooth, wet sort of way.
That was bad.
Very bad.
'That did not feel human.'
He stopped.
Thought.
Moved again.
Same sensation.
Smooth. Soft. Compressible.
His panic deepened.
'No, no, no.'
He concentrated on his shape.
On his edges.
On what he could feel.
Round.
Squishy.
Small.
Horribly small.
He bumped against another stone and sort of deformed around it before settling back into shape.
That was the moment it really sank in.
'…What am I?'
There was no answer.
Only darkness.
Then—
A voice.
More like a thought imposed on his existence itself.
[Notice.]
Satoru froze.
'…What?'
The voice continued, calm and mechanical.
[The individual has acquired a new body. Analysis complete. Current species: Slime.]
There was a long silence.
Then Satoru's entire being convulsed.
'A slime?!'
He bounced slightly off the ground in disbelief.
'You're kidding me!'
No answer came immediately.
Only his own horrified thoughts echoing through the dark.
A slime.
Of all things.
Not a dragon.
Not a hero.
Not even some tragic undead monster.
A slime.
The kind of thing people beat in the tutorial area of fantasy games.
He tried moving again.
Bounced off a wall.
Rolled.
Stopped.
It was humiliating.
'This is awful.'
He sat there in the darkness of his new cave, no longer a man, not yet anything else.
Then—
Slowly—
His panic gave way to curiosity.
Because for all its absurdity, this was still happening.
He was still thinking.
Still existing.
Still alive.
Somehow.
'Alright,' he thought at last.
'If I'm a slime… then I guess I'd better figure out what a slime can do.'
---
Find early chapters and daily updates on my patreon
[Patreon.com/tenten100?]
Follow me on Instagram [www.instagram.com/tenten100_?]