"What on earth is that thing..."
Even for Li Ke, the entity blocking the horizon was something entirely beyond his past experiences. He had fought through endless oceans of zombies in the 7 Days to Die world, and he had survived other horrors. But this?
He had never faced anything on this scale before.
The abomination before them stood roughly eight to nine hundred meters tall. Yet, the twisting tentacles sprouting from its flesh-mountain body looked to be well over a thousand meters long!
It was a living mountain range. If the previous two monsters still left a tiny, realistic margin for the Demon Slayer Corps to somehow achieve victory, could human effort truly conquer a cosmic nightmare like this?
Li Ke desperately wanted to know the answer.
His flames were extraordinarily potent, but under this kind of absolute, crushing mass, simply igniting the creature's entire body would be a logistical nightmare. Just avoiding those swinging, colossal tentacles would take everything he had!
The surrounding Pillars of the Corps stared blankly at the Nichirin Blades in their hands, then looked back out at the gargantuan threat, completely engulfed by a heavy silence.
This was like trying to slaughter a blue whale with a standard toothpick. It was a statistical impossibility. A physical disparity of this magnitude couldn't be bridged by fluid swordsmanship, unyielding conviction, or the power of love. Pushing past a monster of this tier required an act of much greater, absolute violence.
"To kill something like that, wouldn't you need a nuclear bomb?"
Mai Shiranui's jaw remained wide open as she voiced her thoughts.
She had confidently assumed that joining Li Ke on this march meant she would play a critical, combat-support role. But looking at the scale of the battlefield now, she realized her most practical use on this expedition might just be laying face-down on a futon while Li Ke took his pleasure with her backside!
"A standard nuke wouldn't even cut it... Plus, you can't guarantee that the blasted apart flesh wouldn't cause mass contamination and a secondary biological threat. You would need a hyper-destructive thermonuclear device capable of total vaporization to safely clear it."
Staring at the entity—which radiated an aura of pure, mind-shattering madness just by existing—Li Ke delivered his most logical assessment.
If they used a nuclear weapon against a creature like this, only the absolute epicenter of the fireball would be truly effective by instantly incinerating the meat. The trailing shockwaves and radioactive fallout would likely do zero structural damage to its biology. Worse, it would scatter chunks of eldritch cells across the entire country, accelerating the spread of pollution.
When dealing with a Lovecraftian, Cthulhu-like entity, it was always safest to assume the absolute worst-case scenario.
Hearing Li Ke's technical breakdown, Mai understood the gravity of the situation. Yet, looking across the vast horizon at the impossible mountain of meat, she still felt entirely helpless.
"But if that's the case, how can a monster like that even be defeated..."
The creature's wildly thrashing appendages spanned at least a kilometer in length. They were moving with highly fluid, flexible agility, and there weren't just a few of them—the mountain was a writhing forest of limbs. She truly couldn't conceive a tactical solution.
In truth, neither could anyone else.
Li Ke kept his eyes locked onto the exact territory the flesh-mountain occupied, his mind racing to find a solution. The sheer absurdity of the situation felt incredibly abnormal.
He stared directly into the pupils of that titanic, twitching central eye. But as he looked closer, his gaze shifted upward. The behavior of the low-hanging storm clouds surrounding the peak seemed incredibly bizarre.
He quickly pulled out a high-powered telescope from his gear and aimed it straight toward the upper atmosphere. What he saw through the lens left him completely stunned. Floating high above the monster, thousands of shattered boulders, chunks of earth, and the mangled corpses of various birds were caught in a massive, floating suspension.
These dead animals and geographical debris were slowly orbiting the upper atmosphere in a highly unnatural, synchronized patterns, painting a deeply unsettling picture.
However...
"Anti-gravity?"
This was the exact concept that flashed through Li Ke's mind.
Looking at the monster whose tentacles spanned several kilometers and swayed completely free in the air, Li Ke formed a hypothesis.
A creature of this unbelievable size would simply crush itself under its own weight if it were a normal biological organism. That massive central eye, in particular, should have burst instantly under the heavy atmospheric pressure and gravity of this world.
Even if its core body could endure it, what about those tentacles?
An octopus can only move its tentacles with that level of flexibility because of the natural buoyancy of seawater. While this entity was highly suspected to be a Cthulhu-style aberration, there had to be some specific mechanical force supporting its physical framework and locomotion.
Combined with the floating debris he saw spiraling in the sky, Li Ke had every reason to suspect that an anti-gravity field was sustaining the titan's massive frame. It was the only thing allowing it to manifest its reality in this world.
Of course, there could be other factors at play. The first two monsters had altered the local ecosystem and the natural environment. It made perfect sense that this final creature was designed to alter the core structural physics of the planet itself.
With that perspective, the presence of an anti-gravity field became entirely logical.
After thinking it over carefully, Li Ke decided he needed to test the field himself. If the meat mountain's survival depended entirely on an anti-gravity field, he might be able to coordinate an attack from safely outside its operational radius.
As for engaging it in close-quarters combat? That was out of the question.
Li Ke took a long look at the hundreds of giant tentacles whipping around the creature's core body. He decided some dangerous experiments were better left untried.
"I'm going to probe its boundaries and verify a few of my theories."
The moment Li Ke announced his intention to move forward, the Hashira of the Demon Slayer Corps voiced their immediate objections. Mitsuri Kanroji, in particular, reached out and firmly grabbed his arm.
"I am coming with you!"
Li Ke gently shook his head to decline.
"No, it's far better if I handle this alone. I possess unique escape methods that allow me to blink back here at a moment's notice. None of you have that kind of utility."
His blunt words left Mitsuri completely stunned. Before Kanae or Shinobu Kocho could even voice their arguments, Li Ke's form blurred as he bolted toward the mountain of flesh at extreme speed.
As he closed the distance, the sheer weight of the monster's impossible mass and raw biological presence grew heavier. Just approaching its outer perimeter triggered a crushing sense of dread. His chest felt incredibly tight, as if the very oxygen was being forcefully vacuumed out of the atmosphere.
The further he ran, the more unnatural the sensation became. While he certainly respected the monster's power, his physical body shouldn't be failing this obviously.
"Wait... if it really is an anti-gravity field... could it be pulling the surrounding air molecules up into the sky along with the rocks? What kind of cosmic physics is this thing operating on?"
Staring at the meat mountain as it grew larger in his vision, Li Ke clearly saw its gargantuan eye shift. It locked its gaze right onto his approaching figure.
He couldn't be entirely sure if his theories were completely accurate, but one reality was crystal clear: pulling off a sneak attack against a creature like this was a statistical impossibility.
Realizing that manual breathing was becoming increasingly difficult, Li Ke abandoned running and switched to a far more efficient method of locomotion!
Earth, Water, Wind, Fire... heed my command!
After shouting the chuunibyou slogan silently in his mind, two massive columns of roaring flame violently erupted from his back. The intense thermal blast instantly incinerated his upper clothing, but the massive kinetic thrust launched him forward. He sailed toward the distant titan in a low-altitude glide.
The wind roared like a localized hurricane in his ears. Utilizing his Pyrokinesis and Mana Burst for jet propulsion had plenty of practical drawbacks—such as terrible steering control and an explosive acceleration that made accidental collisions lethal to himself.
However, if the singular goal was to rapidly close a gap and secure a quick escape route, it was an incredibly potent maneuver.
As he breached the deeper layers of the zone, breathing became practically impossible. Not only that, but he noticed that while maintaining the exact same energy output, his forward momentum was rapidly accelerating!
The aerodynamic drag of the atmosphere was completely vanishing. The loose dirt and heavy debris kicked up by his sonic approach were drifting downward at an incredibly sluggish, floaty pace.
"Just as I suspected! The gravity around this monster is vanishing! The closer you get to it, the weaker the gravitational pull becomes!"
Having confirmed this critical piece of information, Li Ke immediately decided to retreat.
After all, the oxygen level here was completely inadequate. Even if he truly intended to wage war against this abomination, he would need to come back thoroughly prepared with proper oxygen equipment.
But the very next instant, the mountain before him moved.
Yes, that titanic flesh-mountain actually mobilized!
Li Ke felt the earth underneath him violently trembling. He watched in sheer horror as the colossal meat mountain rapidly advanced straight toward his position. Massive fissures ripped across the landscape from the sheer weight of the creature's locomotion. Due to the violent upheaval of the terrain and his own lack of familiarity with low-gravity movement, Li Ke was thrown off balance and slammed hard onto the ground!
Staring at the four massive, trunk-like legs supporting the creature's lower body, and witnessing a literal mountain charging full-speed at him, Li Ke's mind completely short-circuited.
"This thing can actually run?!"
Even though he had mentally prepared himself for the monster to attack using its tentacles, visually witnessing a living mountain range vaulting toward him was something his brain struggled to accept!
Yet, the absolute absurdity didn't stop there. The very next split second—
The flesh-mountain leaped into the air.
Faced with an event so utterly ridiculous and physically impossible, Li Ke was left completely speechless. He could only stare wide-eyed as the mountain range uprooted itself from the earth, slowly blocking out the sun above his head and erasing the sky from view. It sailed through the air, descending straight toward him.
There were no flashy elemental visual effects. There were no strange, supernatural spells. There wasn't even a complex, hard-to-predict attack pattern.
The abomination's method of assault was purely primitive: simple, brutal, and overwhelmingly effective.
Looking up at the descending titan, Li Ke's adrenaline spiked to unprecedented levels, forcing his latent physical power to explode outward. He completely forgot to teleport away in that initial second, because a geographical-scale attack rendered normal running entirely useless. Instead, he channeled every single ounce of his latent power into a single focal point. A blinding, golden Dragon Power flame erupted and swirled frantically around his body!
Violent arcs of lightning crackled across his skin. In the face of an seemingly invincible enemy, Li Ke unleashed the absolute pinnacle of his offensive capabilities!
The golden flames, tightly compressed with roaring lightning, launched upward to intercept the falling colossus. But before the strike could even bridge the gap, the colossal atmospheric pressure wave pushed down by the monster's descent instantly sheared away more than half of Li Ke's attack, causing his Energy to shatter and dissipate in mid-air.
Fortunately, a few persistent arcs of lightning carrying the golden fire managed to strike the monster's underbelly, but the damage was entirely negligible.
With a deafening, earth-shattering boom, the titanic abomination smashed into the ground, completely burying the remnants of the golden light and Li Ke's figure beneath a continent-crushing impact.
The observing Hashira on the distant ridge didn't even have a chance to cry out in horror. The resulting hyper-sonic shockwave forcefully blasted all of them off their feet, hurling them across the landscape and leaving them heavily wounded on the floor.
Even Mai Shiranui was no exception to the devastation. Her body was launched high into the sky by the sheer force of the kinetic wave. Her beautiful, ample figure was caught in free-fall, directly in the path of a torrential storm of flying boulders that threatened to shred her into a bloody mist.
Yet, amidst the impending doom, Mai Shiranui's expression remained surprisingly peaceful.
"Is Li Ke dead...? Perhaps I was never truly meant to survive from the very beginning anyway."
She couldn't help but remember her harrowing experiences inside the 7 Days to Die world, alongside everything she had endured since arriving here. But just as she closed her eyes to face the descending torrent of massive rocks, fully prepared to embrace her demise—
A blinding, majestic arc of sword light flashed directly across her vision. It effortlessly pulverized the deadly boulders in front of her. The next thing she knew, her full body slipped smoothly into a thoroughly familiar, comforting embrace.
"Giving up already? That doesn't sound like a proper martial artist at all."
Li Ke swung his free arm effortlessly. Backed by the immediate, overwhelming reinforcement from this universe, his rapidly replenishing physical stamina allowed him to deploy his flames once more, instantly blasting away the lethal rock showers threatening the rest of the scattered Pillars.
The instant his feet touched the solid earth, Mai Shiranui stared up at Li Ke with absolute delight. She had been utterly convinced that he was a dead man, but she never imagined he could actually survive an impact like that!
"You're actually still alive!"
She tightly gripped his arm, completely unable to contain her shocked exclamation.
"Of course I survived. Did you already forget everything I told you?"
Li Ke took deep, steady breaths to rapidly stabilize his physical condition while keeping his eyes locked onto the giant flesh-mountain that was still glaring at him in the distance. He casually tossed out a cluster of Living Flame to start patching up the heavily injured Hashira, though deep down, he still didn't see a clear path to victory.
This particular abomination was simply way too absurd!
"But actively defeating a creature like this is out of the question for now. Our only real play is to retreat."
Letting out a quiet sigh, he confirmed his suspicion that the Pillars were essentially dead weight in a continent-tier fight. Then again, there was really no helping it; he only managed to stand his ground because he possessed an array of specialized, system-backed abilities. Without those cheat-like perks, he would have been crushed to death instantly too.
Staring at the titanic entity across the wasteland, Li Ke knew for a fact that his superficial, scratch-damage elemental attacks weren't going to do a damn thing.
However, unexpected miracles always tended to manifest themselves out of thin air—especially within a universe operating under strict narrative rules.
Just as Li Ke was actively supporting the heavily concussed Mai Shiranui and Shinobu Kocho, a figure slowly and deliberately stood up right next to where Tanjiro had been knocked unconscious.
This specific silhouette stood completely soaked in the glaring morning sun. Staring at her older brother who was currently bleeding from a severe head wound, and looking across at the massive abomination that had just attempted to flatten Li Ke into the dirt, her eyes held nothing but raw, absolute ferocity.
Yes, she had been shielded from the initial kinetic impact, meaning she hadn't witnessed the exact moment Li Ke dashed out to rescue Shinobu and the other slayers. From her perspective, the absolute worst had occurred: Li Ke had been completely crushed under a mountain, and Tanjiro was left mortally wounded by the resulting shockwave. In that singular fraction of a second, her human rationality snapped completely.
Intricate, highly mystical markings instantly webbed across her pristine, fair skin. From her forehead, two jagged, terrifying demonic horns violently burst outward, and her entire physical form effortlessly floated right up into the open air.
Roaring torrents of reddish-gold fire wrapped around her levitating figure. The shifting earth, the atmospheric sky, and even the literal sun, moon, and stars seemed to actively vibrate in perfect resonance with her presence.
Li Ke, who had been prepping a tactical retreat, suddenly froze in total bewilderment. He could feel an impossibly massive force waking up within the fabric of reality. The lingering remnants of World Power that had been anchored to his own soul were rapidly detaching, flowing like a torrential river straight into her levitating form.
At the exact same time, the surrounding Pillars watched in utter shock as countless floating golden light particles began to drain out of their own bodies, racing across the sky to merge with her.
This was, without a shadow of a doubt, the unmitigated manifestation of World Power. And the entity channeling it was none other than Nezuko.
"The ultimate World Power... why is it triggering exactly at a moment like this?"
Li Ke was thoroughly astonished. When that localized energy had been resting within his own system, it had never shown anywhere near this level of volatile, hyper-active behavior. But after giving it a brief thought, it made total sense—she was the world's absolute favorite biological daughter, while he was just an outside independent contractor. Facing a massive disparity in corporate benefits was only natural.
What he couldn't quite wrap his head around, however, was why the universe hadn't simply activated this ultimate cheat-mode the very instant they laid eyes on the flesh-mountain.
"Is it because pulling off a transformation like this requires a terrifyingly heavy personal price?"
Staring across at Nezuko—whose current energy output had scaled so high it completely transcended his ability to measure it—Li Ke formulated a highly plausible theory.
Nezuko, however, had absolutely zero intention of wasting time on verbal monologues. Her physical form abruptly vanished from everyone's visual perception. The very next millisecond, she materialized right on top of the colossal, writhing meat-mountain. The dense layers of reddish-gold flame wrapped around her launched forward like a volley of homing missiles, slamming forcefully into the titan's flesh.
A split second later, a sudden, localized hyper-sonic gale swept across the battlefield, instantly fanning those flames until they completely engulfed every single square inch of the living mountain's body.
Witnessing this cinematic spectacle unfold, a very specific, unshakeable intuition crystallized deep within Li Ke's mind.
"Ah... the narrative has officially locked us into a scripted QTE cinematic battle scene."