The incarnation of destruction, Dagryuu, and the Storm King, Veldora.
What their authorities had in common was lightning.
Dagryuu could freely manipulate the electrical potential difference between the earth and atmosphere through his transcendent abilities. This meant he could make extensive use of lightning—the most powerful attack method in the natural world. But the same was true of Veldora.
Veldora naturally generated lightning by circulating his own energy.
Both of them, therefore, possessed tremendous resistance to lightning. Because of this, there was no point in hurling lightning at each other.
And yet, despite that being the case, the two of them converted their fighting spirit into lightning and clashed anyway.
As a result, the collision of energy with different properties caused pillars of lightning to spring up chaotically across a vast area around them.
Dagryuu could freely manipulate vibration waves. By shaking the earth, he could trigger earthquakes; by vibrating the atmosphere, he could generate discharges. It was also easy for him to intentionally manipulate air currents and produce vacuum waves.
But none of it worked on Veldora.
That went without saying. Veldora was the embodiment of storms, after all.
Dagryuu knew this well enough; there was no reason to panic now. They had been sparring partners for ages and were thoroughly familiar with each other's nature.
However, this was the first time they had fought in their true forms—their combat forms—with their restrictions removed.
The Trinity.
Dagryuu became aware that his blood was boiling with excitement. This was it—the moment to settle things once and for all with Veldora, his long-standing rival.
And so—
"Fuhahahaha! Impressive as always, Veldora.
But now that I have unleashed my true power, I am no longer the same as before!"
He roared.
Three faces, six arms—no blind spots remained. Beyond that, magic was useless against him. And his Physical Body, which had reached the ultimate hardness far surpassing diamond through his Hardening Ability, could repel any attack whatsoever.
Even if a Glasard-class expert attacked him with a Mythical-class weapon, it would not work on Dagryuu. His current form was specialized so heavily in defense that it defied reason.
Invincible. That was what Dagryuu had become.
"Kuahahahaha! Ridiculous!"
Veldora laughed off Dagryuu's declaration without a care.
And then he unleashed his Thunder Storm Roar.
A compressed mass of atmosphere hurtled toward Dagryuu while crackling with discharges.
But that ultra-dense attack was caught in one of the arms Dagryuu thrust out, crushed in his grip, and dissipated into nothing.
"How boring, Veldora. I told you—petty tricks like that won't work on me."
Veldora didn't care in the slightest. His clones had already circled behind Dagryuu, moving even faster than the body that had fired the Thunder Storm Roar.
"The real thing is over here! Take this—Dragon Claw Destruction Strike!"
Veldora's fist, launched at extreme speed, was small relative to the dragon's colossal frame. But the sinister claws growing from his six fingers possessed the Severing Ability, capable of slicing through any material in this world.
Dagryuu's Hardening Ability and Veldora's Severing Ability collided, producing a sound like the world itself was groaning.
Impact—and then, an arm vanished.
One of Dagryuu's arms, which had blocked Veldora's claws, disappeared—and the left fist that had accomplished the feat was destroyed as well.
A draw.
Dagryuu still had five arms intact, and the regeneration of a lost arm was instantaneous. Veldora, for his part, could produce clones at will through Parallel Existence.
"Tch! Same as always, stupidly tough—"
"You're the one who's unreasonable, Veldora. To think you actually wounded me…"
Just as Veldora was irritated that his decisive blow had been blocked, Dagryuu was equally vexed that his invincible body had been scarred.
They were still probing each other. Like fighters enjoying a spar, the intensity of their attacks continued to escalate.
Half-hearted attacks were meaningless against each other—they both knew that perfectly well. But that didn't mean they could unleash their trump cards right away.
Since they couldn't expect the other to let his guard down, they needed to create an opening somehow.
Two evenly matched beings—the "God of Destruction" and the "Storm Dragon." Like the concept of "kuzushi" in judo, the key was first to secure an advantage.
Going all-out from the opening skirmish would be the height of foolishness.
But—
Veldora ignored all of that conventional wisdom and launched his assault on Dagryuu in a single, relentless burst.
"Kuahahahaha! Let's keep going!
Dragon Wing Slash!"
Multiple clones bore down on Dagryuu at extreme speed. Their wings vibrated, transforming into high-frequency blades. The vibrations of both pairs of wings—large and small—created a deadly barrier that severed molecular bonds.
The deadly barrier enveloping Veldora's colossal body became a single enormous sphere of destruction.
And that terrifying sphere of destruction existed for every single clone Veldora had spawned.
All of them attacked Dagryuu simultaneously.
"Hmm!"
But Dagryuu was unfazed. The Glasard's face turned to face the front as he wielded his Two-Handed Greatsword.
Then he intercepted all of the incoming Veldoras at once.
The greatsword, now exceeding ten meters in length, moved at a tip speed that easily surpassed the sound barrier. With every flash of the blade Dagryuu swung, the spheres of destruction created by Veldora's clones were nullified.
In other words, each one meant a clone had been annihilated.
Dagryuu did not relent. Immediately after—
"Binding Chain Sealing Destruction Prison!"
The Fen face turned to the front, and he used the Holy-Demon Sealing Chain in his hand to attempt Veldora's capture. Dagryuu's True Eyes could effortlessly identify which of the multiple clones carried the greatest energy output.
No matter how many clones there were, they were meaningless before the True Eyes—so it should have been…
"Sorry! That one was a fake!"
Veldora jeered.
Sure enough, the individual the Holy-Demon Sealing Chain had seized simply dissolved and vanished without a trace.
It had been almost too easy.
"Oh… You actually deceived my eyes. What sort of trick did you use?"
"Hehehe. Dagryuu, even if you unleash your true power, you cannot defeat me.
There's a reason you can't!
And besides, I've grown stronger too. Don't go thinking I'm the same as I used to be!"
Veldora sidestepped Dagryuu's question.
Normally, it should have been impossible to deceive the True Eyes. But through Existence Probability Fluctuation, Veldora could swap between clones in an instant.
It was one of his secret techniques, made possible by simultaneously wielding Parallel Existence and probability manipulation. Rimuru had tried explaining that he also used spatial manipulation on top of those two, but Veldora had tuned that part out.
It didn't matter to Veldora that he didn't understand the fine details of the mechanism—he had mastered the technique instinctively, and that was good enough. In truth, even if he'd wanted to explain it, he couldn't have.
On the flip side, had he actually understood it, he would have boasted about it proudly—which meant that for Veldora, not knowing was actually more convenient.
To give Veldora some credit: it wasn't that he lacked comprehension. The theory was simply too difficult. He could intuitively grasp and use the technique, but he couldn't put it into words well enough to explain it to anyone else.
Dagryuu hadn't expected an answer anyway, so he pressed on without concern.
"A reason I can't win? What nonsense… But it seems true that you've changed from before.
If I can't identify the real one, I'll simply destroy all of your clones at once!"
Even while exchanging words, Dagryuu maneuvered to create a favorable situation for himself. That, too, was part of combat technique. Even a warrior of Dagryuu's caliber never disdained minor tricks. Rather, he believed that gaining even a small edge through such techniques was what truly mattered.
Quietly expanding his spatial awareness and extending the range of his interference waves, Dagryuu used his True Eyes to confirm that none of Veldora's clones were hiding anywhere specific. Then he severed a section of space, creating an isolated dimension.
Within this space, only Veldora and Dagryuu would exist.
And all of Veldora's clones, no matter how many there were, would be annihilated simultaneously.
"Hm!?"
"I've caught you, Veldora. Take this!
Spacetime Annihilation Divine Supremacy!!"
Tremors tore through the severed space. Super spacetime vibrations radiating from Dagryuu as their epicenter flooded the entire interior. A light of immeasurable intensity erupted, generating irreversible destruction interference waves—a technique born from Dagryuu expending sixty percent of his energy.
Dagryuu had transformed his own body into a pseudo-black hole, destroying and absorbing all matter within the space. The friction produced in the process caused brilliant light to spill across the severed dimension and into the original world.
Any living being caught in the interference of this overwhelmingly ultra-dense energy would find continued existence impossible. They would simply be disintegrated and swallowed into the black hole.
However, the majority of the absorbed energy was used to maintain his own existence—Dagryuu couldn't absorb everything, and this was a one-shot kill technique that could not be used consecutively.
Dagryuu held absolute confidence in the strike and moved to verify the result.
The isolated dimension he had created closed simultaneously with the absorption of the radiated light. But a residual distortion lingered in the fabric of the dimension, visibly affecting even the surrounding world.
Over time, that damage would assimilate with its surroundings and return to normal—but it was a scar left by transcendent destruction.
There should have been nothing capable of withstanding that attack…
"G-guh… Th-that was a close one—"
Dagryuu's eyes went wide with shock.
"I-Impossible!! You survived that!?"
The sheer impact of what he was seeing drove Dagryuu to shout. That had been his strongest strike, launched with the full intent of complete annihilation.
His astonishment was entirely justified. It had been a confined space with no escape route, and Veldora should have taken a direct hit. The idea that Veldora could still be unharmed was unthinkable.
And yet, here Veldora was, alive and well.
"…K-Kuah, Kuahahahaha! Th-this much is nothing to me!"
Upon closer inspection, Veldora was anything but unharmed. Both pairs of wings—large and small—were tattered, and his entire body was covered in wounds. He was purely putting on a brave face.
In truth, he hadn't fully evaded the attack. By pushing King of Chaos to its limits and thinning his existence probability to the absolute minimum, he had barely managed to avoid the interference waves of destruction energy. But several clones had failed to dodge and were swept up and annihilated.
It was a terrifying technique. If it had been the Veldora of a short while ago, he would have been obliterated without a doubt.
Veldora reintegrated all of his clones and assessed the current situation. Factoring in the portion
*(Quite the drain. But just as I calculated!)*
Dagryuu and Veldora were nearly even. Veldora had lost approximately thirty percent of his energy to Shion before the battle began, which meant he needed to exhaust Dagryuu to overturn his disadvantage.
Current remaining energy: Veldora at fifty percent versus Dagryuu at forty percent. The tables had turned.
But while the gamble had paid off, the probability of surviving that last attack had been vanishingly small. Veldora had bet on his ability to evade using King of Chaos.
And Veldora had won that bet.
…Though it was undoubtedly true that even if he'd lost the bet, his plan had factored in being resurrected by Rimuru.
*(If I know I'll get resurrected, no dangerous gamble scares me! Kuahahahahaha!)*
Laughing to himself with a heart he could never show, Veldora guffawed on the outside.
This was precisely the reason Veldora had spoken of earlier—the reason Dagryuu could never defeat him.
"Do you even realize what you did? One wrong step and you would have faced irreversible, fatal annihilation!
Why didn't you just focus on defense? If you'd gone all-out defending without taking that risk, you would have avoided annihilation… I had no intention of finishing off a combat-incapacitated opponent. Why must you stake your life for Luminous and those humans!?"
"Hmph! Then let me ask you, Dagryuu.
Why should you have to follow someone like Veldana? That person is not my brother!"
"…Perhaps not.
But that overwhelming presence—the sovereign aura—was unmistakably Lord
"Laughable! To be used like a tool by an impostor—the name of the God of Destruction weeps!"
"Silence, Veldora! Even you, as his brother, cannot be forgiven for mocking that being."
Dagryuu raised his fighting spirit. His colossal body, roughly fifteen meters tall, shrank rapidly before his eyes.
Now approximately three meters in size, Dagryuu crackled with lightning and radiated super-compressed energy.
"Hm!?"
"Fuhahaha. Wasn't it you who taught me, Veldora?
That controlling one's anger grants access to even greater power?"
Those words jogged Veldora's memory. Come to think of it, he had once shared knowledge from the Sacred Texts with Dagryuu.
From that single piece of information, Dagryuu had managed to elevate his understanding to practical combat application—a truly remarkable feat. The compression had produced an extraordinary energy density.
Size meant power, but at this rate he'd be at a disadvantage. Veldora recognized that immediately.
"My, my. To think you'd master that level of control. As expected of Dagryuu. But I haven't fallen behind either!"
Veldora also assumed humanoid form and compressed his energy to match Dagryuu.
A transcendent close-quarters battle began.
Dagryuu's fist burrowed into Veldora's abdomen. At the same instant, Veldora's elbow punched through Dagryuu's face.
The fight raged for hours, with neither side yielding a single step.
A kick answered with a kick. A fist answered with a fist. Every attack delivered by one was reflected right back as an attack on the other.
They didn't fight rooted to the ground—the battlefield shifted constantly. From high altitude to the ground, then blasting through the surroundings into a desert, then soaring back up again. At times, they even clashed beyond the atmosphere.
For beings that were essentially constructs of energy, the battlefield made no difference anywhere. They used their own bodies as launch platforms, driving super-compressed energy into their opponent. The key was to expel received energy outward as effectively as possible to prevent fatal wounds.
Minimizing one's own energy expenditure while exhausting the opponent—that was what mattered.
Attacks powerful enough to annihilate even an Upper Rank demon in a single blow intersected as the two clashed. Enormous collateral devastation spread around them, but neither side cared about such things anymore.
The titanic battle seemed like it might continue forever.
But—
Veldora had been biding his time. His training with
Close-quarters combat was Veldora's specialty above all else.
"I thought I'd mastered it, but I still have a long way to go…"
"Dagryuu, I'll say it one more time. Stop following that impostor."
"You're repetitive, Veldora. My loyalty will never change—not even in death!"
"Is that so—what a shame, Dagryuu. Then I shall end this with my ultimate technique!"
Tension shot through Dagryuu at Veldora's words.
But it was already too late. The preparations were already complete.
Veldora activated his ability.
In that instant, a rainbow-colored darkness engulfed the surroundings. It swallowed an area vast enough to cover the entire territory of the Holy Papal State of Lubelius and the Dead Desert.
"Fertile Mystic Wave!!"
Veldora whispered softly. Within the rainbow darkness, a cruel miracle manifested.