A faint vibration reaches me.
It's the most violent of all the battles happening throughout the forest.
Recognizing it for what it was, I cracked my eyes open just once to glance at Kuro, then teleported away from the scene.
Yamada-kun's group had been neutralized, and the rest should be fine if left to the oni kid and the vampire kid.
I also figured out that the reason Yamada-kun was suffering was due to hitting the cap on his Taboo.
At the rate he was going, even after waking up he wouldn't be able to act right away, and there was virtually no chance he'd run into the Demon King.
So leaving him alone was more than sufficient.
More importantly, I wanted to focus on dealing with the elf's final weapon that had finally shown itself.
That's right — the elves had finally brought it out.
A weapon that made the robots I'd been dealing with earlier look like nothing in comparison.
What I saw upon teleporting was the taratect forces being utterly decimated.
The small spiders that were once like me, the larger spiders they grew into, and the even bigger spiders that those in turn evolved into — all of them, equally powerless, being torn apart.
Among them was even the Queen.
Floating in the air above.
If I had to describe it in one word, it was a sea urchin.
A massive sphere easily ten meters in diameter.
Countless spines protruding from that sphere.
Yeah. A sea urchin.
A giant metallic sea urchin.
Now, its appearance was a bit of an awkward thing to process, but its performance was insane.
Every one of the spines covering its body served as a cannon barrel, raining carpet bombardment down upon the ground.
There was no escape.
From the sky where the sea urchin hovered, shells poured down like a deluge, turning the land into scorched earth.
The forest was blown away.
Along with every taratect in it.
Even the Queen couldn't escape the bombardment, her body being whittled away piece by piece.
With her enormous size, she was simply too large a target — nothing but easy prey for the shelling.
Though normally, the Queen could dodge incoming attacks with speed befitting a monster of her stature, there was no counter when shells were scattered across such a vast area.
But then again, you had to hand it to the Queen.
Whether it was royal pride or sheer stubbornness, even while being riddled with shells, she was converging a black light — a contradictory energy — within her maw.
A breath attack.
The strongest-class Monster, the Queen, unleashing her breath at full power.
An incredibly thick beam of black light hurtled toward the sea urchin floating in the sky.
It vaporized the shells firing from the urchin, and with the explosive force of its energy, obliterated the urchin itself — the beam even reaching into the heavens beyond.
That's the scene I visualized.
It had that much power.
The Queen's full-power strike, if it hit directly, had the destructive force to blow away mountains and reshape the terrain.
A mere ten-meter lump of metal should have been erased without a trace.
And yet, the sea urchin was unscathed.
The breath had hit it dead on.
It didn't even make a move to dodge.
As if dodging was simply beneath its consideration.
The barrier deployed around the sea urchin had nullified the Queen's breath.
Nullified.
Not blocked.
That barrier had outright erased the Queen's breath.
As if it had never existed in the first place.
I knew that barrier.
I'd experienced it firsthand, after all.
From the ancient civilization facility underground.
The magic disruption I'd suffered there.
The barrier version of it.
It was technology from an ancient civilization long past, so it wasn't surprising that
Which meant it wasn't strange for there to be a weapon utilizing it.
That, right there, was the elf's final weapon.
With the breath attack rendered useless, there was nothing the Queen could do.
All long-range attacks were intercepted by the urchin's barrier.
That left only pure physical attacks, but the relentless rain of shells made that impossible too.
The Queen desperately tried to take to the air using spatial mobility, but before she could even get her first step in, shells pinned her to the ground.
Each time a shell struck the Queen's body, it carved away at her, and before she could regenerate, the next shell was already upon her.
A Queen of the same species as Mother — completely powerless, being decimated.
What kind of terrifying weapon had they gone and developed?
Could a single one of those conquer the world?
I mean, there'd be issues with remaining ammunition and the energy needed to operate it, but still.
Actually, it didn't seem to be running out of ammo.
They probably had spatial expansion inside it, with shells stored in some extra-dimensional pocket.
Otherwise it didn't add up.
I wasn't just standing around observing the titanic monster versus future-weapon battle, mind you.
Despite appearances, I was actually attacking the urchin to help the Queen.
But every attack was being blocked by the barrier — so far, all of them deflected.
A Böse shot into extra-dimensional space? Blocked by the barrier, which prevented the portal from even opening.
Sniping with magic? The barrier erased that too.
Grrrr!
The barrier's strength was higher than I expected.
Magic disruption barriers weren't omnipotent.
It was disruption, not total negation — so there was a definite upper limit.
Basically, if I hit it with an attack that exceeded the barrier's disruption capacity, it wouldn't be able to erase it completely, and some would get through.
But to do that, I'd have to attack with more energy than the barrier could handle, and given that it had erased the Queen's breath without issue, the barrier's strength was obviously considerable.
Yeah.
No way!
Well, it wasn't that I couldn't do it.
It was just that doing so would consume a frankly absurd amount of energy on my end.
It was a waste, plain and simple.
So I decided to take a different approach.
Honestly, this wasn't something I really wanted to do.
But beggars can't be choosers.
I opened my eyes.
Focused the power in my pupils.
And locked the sea urchin into my field of vision.
Gluttony's Evil Eye — activate!
This Evil Eye was a new one I'd developed after becoming a god.
Its ability was similar to the Demon King's Gluttony Skill.
That was why I named it Gluttony's Evil Eye.
Its ability was simple: the forcible theft of energy.
It broke down any magic within my field of vision, converted it to energy, and absorbed it.
The magic disruption barrier mounted on the urchin — technically, that was a form of magic too.
Magic that disrupted and erased other magic.
That was the true nature of a magic disruption barrier.
In that case, all I had to do was develop magic that erases magic-that-erases-magic.
What I focused on was the Demon King's Great Sin Skill — Gluttony.
Gluttony's ability was to convert absolutely everything into energy and devour it.
I analyzed its principle and modified it to specifically target magic for conversion — and that was Gluttony's Evil Eye.
It was one of the trump cards I'd developed specifically for dealing with Kuro.
Which was why I hadn't really wanted Kuro to see it.
The urchin's prized magic disruption barrier was devoured by my Gluttony's Evil Eye, and it didn't stop there — even the magic keeping it afloat was consumed. The sea urchin plummeted toward the ground.
The Queen was waiting below.
The urchin fired shells in a desperate bid to resist, but with no barrier and falling to the earth, it had no chance.
The Queen's massive fangs pierced through the steel sea urchin, tearing it into scrap.
Victory.
Or so I thought — in that very instant, the urchin detonated.
Caught point-blank by the explosion, the Queen lost her entire upper half, the remaining lower body collapsing lifelessly to the ground.
Damn it!
Self-destructing at the very last moment — thanks for that.
Well, the annihilation of the taratect forces including the Queen was a heavy blow, but on the other hand, that alone meant we'd destroyed the elf's final weapon.
I'd just have to accept it as an unavoidable cost and move on.
As I was thinking this, another image entered my field of vision — sea urchins floating in the sky.
Not one.
Countless.
… … … Huh?
Wait, what?
Hm?
Hmm?
HMMMMMM?!
Hold on a second!
Wait wait wait!
Seriously?!
There wasn't just one of those things?!
And there were way too many of them, weren't there?!
At a glance alone, I could see over a hundred sea urchins floating in the sky.
And right at the center, there was something far larger than the urchins — a massive regular tetrahedron.
Wait… could it be that the sea urchins weren't the final weapon at all, but mass-produced units?
And that tetrahedron in the center was the real final weapon?
Oh, crap.
I think I massively underestimated the elves' military strength.