Chương 14: Time Stops for No God

"You are no ordinary mortal... grounded scum." Gloria raised an eyebrow. The first half of that statement had caught her attention, because it was quite true. And the second half was just an insult!

"I'm terribly sorry…" She replied, cupping a hand around her ear.

"Would the mighty god care to speak a little louder? I almost misheard the part where you called me scum. Do you perhaps want to take that back? I might show mercy, if you do." Echidna's crimson eyes remained fixed upon her.

"You speak in jest, yet there exists a reason your kind has worshipped Echidna's since the birth of Titania." Gloria nodded without the slightest hesitation.

"Obviously." She continued her slow approach, each step echoing across the fractured platform while the Archer behind her continued picking off the summoned creatures one after another, every arrow finding its mark with frustrating efficiency. It was certainly effective, but also rather unimaginative. Gloria had secretly hoped to witness a few more interesting techniques after inviting them to the raid…

"You truly are a mighty race." She had to admit.

"You were mighty then, and I won't pretend otherwise, but strength alone has never been enough to justify dominion. The age where power alone decided who stood above whom has long since passed, and however vast your authority may once have been, every ruler eventually discovers there are limits to what even they can command." She drew closer still.

"Your might grants you dominion over many things, Echidna. But not over everything." Echidna stared into her with such unwavering intensity that Gloria gradually forgot about the Archer altogether, every stray thought slipping away beneath those crimson eyes until only the monster before her occupied her attention.

"... That is true." For the first time, there was no pride in Echidna's voice.

"Echidna, as she stands before you now, possesses dominion over only a fragment of what was once hers..." Her expression somehow hardened.

"... Yet even so... The very world still listens to her whim!" And just like that, the stone beneath Gloria's feet vanished. There was no warning nor any gathering mana announcing the attack before the ground simply split apart beneath her, revealing row upon row of colossal ivory teeth rising from the darkness while walls of flesh folded inward around them. The platform itself had become the open jaws of some incomprehensibly large beast waiting patiently beneath the earth.

'Hmm?' For the first time since entering the chamber, Gloria's thoughts faltered. She had fought Echidna more times than she could remember. She had memorized every phase of the encounter, every spell she could cast and every mechanic to utilize against her... yet this was entirely unfamiliar.

"What in the name of the Four?!" the Archer shouted. The sudden drop sent Gloria instinctively reaching for her wings, the urge to take flight so deeply ingrained that it came without conscious thought, yet she forced herself to resist before the motion could even begin. Instead, she allowed herself to fall, one claw already tracing a pattern through the air as a simple magic circle took shape, its design consisting of nothing more than a black ring pierced by a single upward-pointing arrow.

[Kette] A heavy black chain wrapped itself around her forearm before another length shot upward with explosive force, burying itself deep within the stone ceiling. The links snapped taut an instant later, stealing the momentum from her fall and leaving her suspended in midair. The Archer chose a far stranger solution. Rather than searching for solid ground where none remained, they drew another arrow, whispered a single command beneath their breath, and watched as the shaft thickened to five times its size.

With scarcely enough time to aim, they fired it into the fleshy wall before landing atop it. Gloria couldn't help stealing a brief glance in their direction.

'Now that's more like it! That's a unique spell!'

"Are you alright, Archer?" They answered almost immediately, steadying themselves.

"Do not concern yourself with me. This... Echidna seems far more interested in you than in me." Before either of them could say another word, a calm female voice drifted down from above.

"Do not grow disillusioned, worms." Echidna hovered high above the monstrous maw, untouched by the gravity spell anymore, while the chain Gloria had used to bind her had changed beyond recognition. Every black link had softened into glossy scales, its length twisting into the body of a serpent that coiled itself around Echidna's arm before resting its head upon her shoulder with all the affection of a beloved pet.

"Echidna perceives no difference between the insects crushed beneath her feet." Gloria watched as Echidna slowly reached out and laid her fingers upon the chain still wrapped around Gloria's own forearm, which instantly made the cold metal shudder. Individual links began swelling and writhing against one another, tiny scales pushing through iron while the entire length slowly twisted.

"Echidna may gather the knowledge she desires from your corpses just as easily. That would spare her the inconvenience of tearing it from your minds while you yet draw breath." The chain coiled tighter around her forearm, each black link softening as scales pushed through the metal, its shape slowly abandoning iron in favor of living flesh until the outline of a serpent's head began to emerge.

"So, if you would be so kind..." Echidna said, her voice carrying less than zero emotion.

"... die quickly, you lesser creatures." Gloria's gaze fell to the thing attempting to slither across her arm, regarding it with little more than quiet disdain before her lips curved into a smile.

"I believe you have misunderstood something, Echidna. In this situation, you are that lesser creature." A massive white magic circle erupted into existence around her, so enormous that it almost rivaled the Worldforge formation, though where that spell had been impossibly intricate, this one relied upon broad flowing rings and simple geometric lines that spread outward across the empty space beneath her.

[Sprunghaft] A sea of thick emerald slime burst into existence beneath them, pouring endlessly from the completed formation until it swallowed the enormous mouth below in a single surging tide. The strange substance continued expanding with astonishing speed, compressing itself beneath its own impossible volume until the pressure became too great to contain, forcing the entire mass upward. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Gloria and the Archer barely had time to exchange a glance before the rising wave seized both of them, hurling them toward the surface, as Gloria freed herself by crushing the half alive chain.

"Echidna expected as much." Several spheres of dark crimson fire blossomed into existence around her fingertips, each surrounded by a halo of hissing green vapor. Rather than falling like ordinary fireballs, they drifted for a heartbeat before streaking downward with an even greater speed, leaving behind trails of smoking acid.

The first two spheres descended almost lazily, drifting through the air with deceptive calm before dropping toward the two adventurers, yet they traveled slowly enough that neither Gloria nor the Archer struggled to evade them.

Instead of erupting into some spectacular inferno upon striking the tide of emerald slime, they sank into its surface with little more than a wet hiss, though the effect that followed proved far more alarming as the spell rapidly blackened and dissolved, great sections of it collapsing into foul-smelling sludge while thick clouds of steam rolled upward.

"Woah!" the Archer exclaimed, pushing away from their perch just as another section of the slime gave way beneath them.

'Another new attack...' Just as Gloria thought it, three more spheres formed around Echidna's fingertips. By then, however, the rising tide had already carried them nearly back to the surface level, leaving precious little distance for the projectiles to cover. Gloria's attention shifted the instant she noticed their trajectories, her expression hardening as only one sphere drifted toward her while the remaining two curved toward the Archer instead.

She immediately kicked off, every muscle in her body tightening as she hurled herself toward the Archer without the slightest hesitation, yet the motion barely lasted the span of a heartbeat before an unexpected force brought it to an abrupt halt. Something snapped violently around her wrist, wrenching her arm sideways with enough strength to disrupt her jump, and when Gloria's eyes dropped toward it, she found the serpent coiled tightly around her forearm once again.

"So eager to protect another?" Gloria glanced at the approaching spell.

"I have no time for this!" For the briefest instant the serpent resisted her pull, every scale along its body flexing as though it genuinely believed it possessed the strength to withstand Gloria's strength. Then that illusion shattered. The creature ceased to exist as a cohesive living thing. Everything splintered simultaneously and every scale burst apart beneath the overwhelming force of her hand before Gloria violently tore the remains away from her. She was now free to help the Archer…

But that proved entirely unnecessary. The place where they had been standing only a moment earlier now stood empty, the pair of descending spheres striking nothing, while the Archer themselves had somehow reappeared nearly halfway up the cavern wall upon a narrow shelf of broken stone.

'Did they… Just teleport? If yes, then good job!'

"Just so you know lady-" the Archer called toward the hovering goddess while drawing the string until it could stretch no farther.

"I know you keep calling us bugs, but insects are particularly well known for stinging." Two arrows were then shot towards Echidna, who dismissed the attack, sweeping through the air with such casual contempt that it seemed almost insulting. The first arrow that reached her shattered upon contact with her hand, while the second was effortlessly brushed aside as though it possessed no more substance than drifting ash. Then her shoulder jerked.

A razor-thin shaft, so impossibly small that Gloria failed to notice it until after it had already struck, skimmed across Echidna's shoulder and carved a narrow crimson line through her pale skin before ricocheting away into the darkness beyond.

"... Wait." Echidna's eyes settled upon the Archer.

"You just fired an invisible arrow… When did you cast your magic? Echidna witnessed no circle bef..." By the time the words left her lips, Gloria had already crossed the distance between them. One claw traced a compact crimson formation no larger than her own hand, its geometric lines completing themselves in a fraction of a second before she spoke only two words.

[Crusixus Grando] Invisible wounds erupted across Echidna's body with horrifying simultaneity as dozens upon dozens of razor-thin slashes carved themselves into flesh from every conceivable angle, each fresh cut overlapping the last until it appeared as though an entire legion of unseen swordsmen had struck in perfect unison. In response, Echidna did something that, to an untrained eye, might easily have been mistaken for agony.

Her head tilted backward as the muscles along her neck tightened, while her jaw slowly descended far beyond what any creature should have been capable of, the bones audibly shifting until her mouth had opened to an impossible degree. A heartbeat later an impossibly shrill scream erupted from the Mother of Monsters, which made Gloria click her tongue in annoyance.

During the raid, this attack had always been little more than an irritating debuff that reduced one's accuracy, nothing worth paying much attention to honestly. Yet the instant the scream washed over her, she realized this version bore only a passing resemblance to the mechanic she remembered, because the sound itself carried enough force to stir the surrounding air into a violent gale that shoved against her body with steadily increasing pressure.

"How creepy can one woman be?" the Archer muttered somewhere behind her, sounding more offended than frightened, though the complaint quickly dissolved into a startled, "Woah!" as the full force of the shriek finally reached them. They dropped to one knee, driving one hand against the stone in a desperate attempt to anchor themselves while the invisible pressure threatened to sweep them away altogether, their cloak snapping wildly behind them as though caught within the heart of a hurricane.

Even then, however, they somehow found the breath to shout back toward the floating goddess.

"And you should know that your breath has an awful odor!" Even Gloria found herself sliding backward despite her overwhelming strength, her hair whipping violently around her face while the pressure continued mounting with every passing instant.

"Yeah, yeah," she replied, sounding thoroughly unimpressed.

"I've heard enough of this." Before Echidna could draw another breath, Gloria stepped forward through the invisible torrent and drove her fist upward into the monster's lower jaw with enough force to snap the ancient deity's mouth shut. The scream ended so abruptly that the resulting silence almost felt deafening, yet the attack had not truly been interrupted.

A final pulse of compressed air burst from between Echidna's clenched teeth, erupting outward in a shockwave so violent that the cavern itself groaned beneath the impact. Gloria shifted back only a single step before planting herself once more, but the Archer fared far worse.

The blast ripped them clean off their feet and hurled them across the chamber before their body struck the cavern wall hard enough to leave a web of fresh cracks spreading through the stone, while shredded scraps of their cloak and outer garments disappeared into the swirling dust. Gloria instinctively turned toward them, intending to make certain they had survived the impact, only for her thoughts to stop altogether the moment her eyes settled upon the figure slowly sliding down the wall. For just a second...

She simply stared. Beneath the ruined remains of the Archer's disguise, features she knew all too well had been laid bare before her. The color of the hair. The shape of the eyes. Gloria had seen that face countless times throughout the years she had spent inside Dragon Dive Online.

'No... It can't be.' Before she could dwell upon the resemblance, Echidna calmly lifted a hand to her jaw as fresh rings of crimson light spread across the shattered bone, knitting together flesh and restoring the damage almost as quickly as it had been inflicted. By the time her fingers fell away, no trace of the blow remained.

"Echidna understands many things," the Mother of Monsters said, her detached gaze drifting past Gloria before settling upon the dazed Archer struggling to regain their footing.

"Yet Echidna cannot comprehend why the stronger insect would burden herself by bringing this little babe into her presence." Her crimson eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

"Still... mortals have always displayed an irrational fondness for protecting those weaker than themselves." The corners of her lips lifted by the smallest fraction.

"That makes Echidna's target painfully obvious." The surrounding cavern answered her command before Gloria even saw her move. Jagged sections of the walls suddenly bulged outward before bursting apart in deafening succession as more than a dozen elongated creatures of razor-edged stone tore free from the rock, each resembling a grotesque worm whose body consisted entirely of overlapping blades.

They accelerated with horrifying speed the instant they emerged, carving spiraling tunnels through the air as every last one curved toward the Archer, who remained far too disoriented to raise their bow, let alone perform that peculiar teleportation technique again. Gloria watched them come without the slightest urgency. Why? Well, because there was no need for it.

The Archer had ceased being in danger the very moment Gloria decided they would survive this battle, and that decision carried considerably more weight than anything Echidna intended to accomplish. One quiet sentence escaped her lips. [Time Freeze]