Chương 15: Grand Catastrophe

Among the countless raid bosses that had terrorized the players of DDO throughout its long lifespan, Echidna had once enjoyed a reputation reserved for only the most nightmarish encounters. During the game's first three years, she had stood near the very top of that hierarchy. That reputation had not been undeserved, either.

Released as only the second raid boss in the game's history, barely a year and a half after the servers had first opened, she demanded flawless execution from even a party of eight level five-hundred players, and back then such a feat was difficult to produce. Defeating her had been considered a genuine milestone, and a proof that a party had finally entered the ranks of the elite.

Unfortunately for Echidna, DDO had continued growing for another eighteen years, and while the developers constantly introduced stronger enemies to challenge an increasingly powerful playerbase, they rarely bothered returning to modernize those that had long since fallen behind. By the time the level cap climbed to twelve hundred, the difference between early-game and endgame design had become impossible to ignore. Naturally, that disparity extended far beyond raw statistics.

As each expansion introduced increasingly ridiculous mechanics in an endless effort to surprise veterans who had already conquered everything the game could offer, magic itself gradually abandoned all resemblance to common sense.

Reality-breaking spells became commonplace among high-level classes, concepts such as causality, dimensions, and even the flow of time transformed into ordinary resources that players manipulated casually, while entire schools of magic emerged whose sole purpose was to ignore every rule the developers had previously established. Time magic belonged among the worst offenders.

Any serious endgame player possessed at least one method of resisting temporal interference, because surviving without such protection simply wasn't realistic once other players began throwing that sort of nonsense around. Echidna, however, had never received those updates. Somewhere deep within the mountain of forgotten content, the developers had apparently decided she no longer deserved the attention. To be fair, they had attempted to address the issue exactly once.

At some point an expansion rewarded her with an enchanted necklace that granted resistance against temporal manipulation, though even that solution had been laughably bad. Countless abilities released afterward carried secondary effects that disabled magical equipment entirely, and Gloria's own cutting spell happened to belong to that increasingly absurd category.

They had severed the enchantments woven into everything they touched, leaving the necklace hanging around her neck as nothing more than an exceptionally expensive piece of jewelry. It was a tiny interaction buried within years of forgotten patch notes, one that almost nobody still remembered. That single oversight elevated the battle from difficult to hopeless. For Echidna, that is.

Color bled away from everything around Gloria until the cavern dissolved into endless shades of pale gray, while every sound vanished with such completeness that even her own footsteps produced no echo whatsoever. The stone worms remained suspended exactly where they had been a fraction of a second earlier, frozen in the middle of their charge. Even Echidna herself had become little more than a flawless statue, her expression locked in realization that something had gone terribly wrong.

'Jeez...' Gloria thought as she leisurely wandered through the silent battlefield, clasping her hands behind her.

'This place is honestly kind of creepy...' A grin slowly spread across her face.

'... But I have to admit, I probably look unbelievably cool right now.' She eventually reached the Archer, their… or rather her body tilted in an awkward pose. Gloria studied the girl for several moments before carefully taking hold of her hand, intending to move her somewhere considerably safer, though the simple act of seeing her this closely caused something inside her to hesitate.

The Archer was younger than Gloria had first assumed, perhaps only a few years into adulthood, with remarkably long crimson hair that flowed well past her waist. Red hair itself hardly qualified as unusual. DDO had possessed no shortage of characters blessed with vibrant colors that would have looked ridiculous anywhere else. Her eyes were another matter entirely. At first glance they appeared merely crimson, yet the closer Gloria looked, the stranger they became.

The iris consisted of countless concentric rings alternating between deep red and bright white, each perfectly circular, each surrounding the next until her pupils resembled targets painted by a craftsman rather than anything a human being should naturally possess. Gloria's fingers tightened ever so slightly around the Archer's hand.

"... Impossible." Even from the outside, she felt the faint tremor running through her own fingers. She knew those eyes. More frightening still... She knew exactly who possessed them. For more than a decade she had looked into those very eyes almost every single day. Those were the same eyes as one of her closest friends and guildmates. Gloria slowly raised her free hand toward the Archer's face.

"... Sarasarayumi?" The name escaped almost against her own will, spoken so quietly that even she barely heard it. Her fingertips brushed gently across the woman's cheek before stopping there, unable to move any farther. Then they pressed inward. The skin yielded beneath the slightest pressure, and a tiny crimson bead welled up where her claw had pierced it.

"... Sorry." She caught the droplet upon the tip of her finger before it could fall, spread it carefully across her palm, and smeared the blood all over her hand. [Analyze.] ───────────────────────────── STATUS: Name: Iris Title: Grounded of Gehenna Level: 255 EXP: 122, 450/255, 000 HP: 87, 400 MANA: 300, 800 ───────────────────────────── The familiar window burst into existence before Gloria's eyes, its translucent surface filling with line after line of information that she found herself strangely unwilling to read.

Her gaze lingered upon it anyway, drifting almost aimlessly across the countless entries until the truth gradually assembled itself piece by piece, each detail quietly stripping away the hope she had allowed herself to entertain. The woman's name was different. Her title, her level, her stats bore no resemblance whatsoever to her friend.

'... Of course.' The disappointment hurt far more than she cared to admit, though it lasted only an instant before reason inevitably reclaimed its place.

'Finding her this quickly would have been absurd.' If one of the very first people she encountered here had turned out to be one of her closest friends, reality itself would have begun resembling one of those terribly written wish-fulfillment novels Gloria had spent years making fun of. Unfortunately, reality rarely proved so generous. Her gaze drifted toward the frozen battlefield surrounding them, since the spell was already beginning to strain beneath its own impossible burden.

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'Right... enough sightseeing.'

"It is time for me to finish what I started." Still holding the Archer securely with one hand, Gloria extended the other into the empty air before her and began forming a new spell. Unlike every formation she had created thus far, this one contained no intricate patterns, no countless symbols, and no layers upon layers of magical structure. It required only a single, perfectly formed circle and an overwhelming amount of power to sustain it. Yet that simplicity made it no easier.

The moment she began drawing, the magic resisted her like a physical force, as though she had buried her hand beneath a mountain of gravel and was trying to drag it through the crushing weight. Every inch forward demanded an ungodly amount of mana, the spell consuming her reserves at a terrifying pace as the circle slowly took shape. Gloria had never considered herself a master of temporal magic. Nor of gravity. Nor of slime. Nor of any of the countless specialized schools she had collected throughout her years.

Those were tools. They were useful ones and interesting ones, but her true specialty had always remained wonderfully simple. Destruction. If there existed a spell capable of reducing mountains to dust, evaporating seas, or convincing the world itself that a particular location should simply cease existing, Gloria had almost certainly mastered it. After all... She was a dragon.

Gloria lowered her palm onto the exact center of the completed formation as black mana surged from her body in overwhelming torrents, feeding the spell until a single silent flame bloomed into existence before her. It burned without smoke, without heat, and without the slightest flicker, its shape almost beautiful enough to admire. [Grand Catastrophe] The instant Gloria completed the spell, the frozen world turned back to its normal colors.

The Archer instinctively tried pushing herself free of Gloria's grasp, believing that they were about to be attacked by those monsters from before. She failed to move a single step though, making her say a surprised "Huh?" while not knowing where she was, or what was going on.

"No..." Echidna whispered, her voice quivering despite her previous grand claims.

"No... that tier of magic should no longer exist. Not even the King was ab..." The sentence died unfinished. The small flame suspended above Gloria's completed spell circle simply disappeared, before instantly manifesting within Echidna herself, and the moment it did, the cavern erupted into an apocalypse that made every spell Gloria had cast until now seem tame.

Black fire erupted from every inch of the 'god's' body with such overwhelming violence that the entire cavern was swallowed beneath a tide of darkness, the flames spreading across the now slimy platform and racing along the walls with a hunger that left nothing untouched. The rock simply died, its surface blackening before cracking apart into brittle fragments, until entire sections of the cavern walls and floor collapsed into ash and pale sand.

The black liquid surrounding the platform reacted to the inferno in its own terrifying way, the once-fluid substance beginning to boil and shimmer beneath the impossible heat before gradually hardening into a glass-like crust. Even that hardened surface could not endure for long, however, as the pressure of the flames continued to break it apart, causing the dark material to fracture into countless grains that drifted downward like a strange, artificial snowfall of black sand.

Everywhere the fire touched, the cavern was left scarred beyond recognition. The stone that had endured countless battles and countless challengers was reduced to nothing more than charred remains, with the platform itself slowly losing its shape as its edges crumbled away into dust. The Archer threw both hands across her face, squinting through the impossible brilliance despite the fire's pitch-black color, and even over the deafening roar she somehow managed to force out a disbelieving cry.

"How...?" she gasped.

"How have you conjured a star!?" The Archer should have died within the first microsecond of exposure. The heat radiating through the chamber was not something a mortal body was meant to endure. It was the kind of temperature that could reduce mountains to ash and turn flesh into smoke before the mind even had time to register pain. Yet somehow, the Archer remained safe. A strange barrier surrounded them, invisible yet absolute, dispersing the overwhelming majority of the heat before it could ever reach their body.

Only the faintest traces managed to slip through, leaving them untouched rather than burned. Gloria, meanwhile, barely seemed concerned. She simply stood within the inferno, allowing the remaining warmth to seep through the barrier and reach her scales. The heat was strangely pleasant, settling into her body with the comforting sensation of basking beneath the sun after a long winter.

'Well... I suppose this is one advantage of being a lizard.' The thought briefly crossed Gloria's mind as she relaxed slightly.

'Give me enough sunlight and a nice warm rock, and I am still perfectly happy.' The black inferno continued expanding without the slightest sign of slowing, climbing higher through the cavern, spreading farther across the walls, and reaching toward the gate as though intent on escaping into the world beyond.

"And enough." She spoke so casually that it almost sounded like someone ending a conversation, yet the spell responded with absolute obedience. The endless ocean of black fire froze in place before reversing all at once, every flame abandoning the stone it had been consuming as torrents of darkness rushed back toward their point of origin, converging from every corner of the ruined cavern until the impossible inferno compressed into Echidna's ruined body.

By then, Echidna scarcely resembled a living creature anymore. Her body had become little more than a charred silhouette held together by sheer stubbornness, glowing cracks spread beneath blackened flesh, and every scream that escaped her throat sounded impossible.

'Damn... that was a lot!' Gloria thought as she stared at the destruction surrounding her, a strange mixture of satisfaction and discomfort settling within her.

'And I mean a lot more powerful than I thought it would be.' She also released the Archer's hand, allowing the girl to stumble backward and regain her balance, though instead of looking frightened by what she had just witnessed, the woman looked completely captivated. Her eyes remained fixed on the cavern with an expression of pure disbelief, as if her mind was desperately trying to find some explanation that could fit what she had seen.

She was so absorbed in the aftermath that she failed to notice the strange cloak concealing her identity had already been torn apart, leaving her true appearance exposed. The Archer slowly lowered herself onto the ground, placing her hand against the remains of the platform and letting the fragments slip between her fingers.

"No..." she muttered, her voice filled with confusion rather than fear.

"No, even a star shouldn't be able to do this." She frowned, turning her palm over as the dust fell away. The first thing she noticed was not the destruction, but the strange lack of heat. There was no burning sensation, no unbearable warmth lingering in the air, nothing that matched the devastation surrounding them.

"It isn't even hot... A star would melt the stone. It would turn everything into molten rock, not this..." Her gaze returned to Gloria, her curiosity only growing stronger.

"What kind of magic did you use?" The question was asked with such pure fascination that Gloria almost forgot the girl was even speaking to her.

'There is no fear in her voice?' She simply wanted to know. To the Archer, the destruction before her was not an act of horror, but an impossible phenomenon that demanded an explanation. Normally, Gloria would have enjoyed answering. But before she could respond, something else caught her attention. That something being a faint movement came from the remains of Echidna's body. It was that damn ring of blood.

Throughout the entire attack, the artifact had hidden itself within its master's body, burying itself deep enough that even Gloria's flames had failed to completely destroy it. Now it slowly emerged again, though the difference from before was impossible to ignore, as it had shrunk to less than half its starting size. It circled around Echidna's body, sending thin streams of blood into her, desperately attempting to restore what had been destroyed. And somehow... It was succeeding.

The remains began changing before Gloria's eyes as the blackened flesh slowly regained its original color, the cracks covering her body shrinking as damaged tissue repaired itself. The burns that should have been impossible to recover from faded layer by layer, the ring continuing to pour more of itself into its master until Echidna's broken body once again began resembling something alive. A rough cough escaped her throat when her consciousness came back to her.

Her fingers moved against the ground as she forced herself upward, her body still incomplete but already recovering at an unnatural speed.

"I... will not be defeated again..." Echidna rasped, her voice rough from the damage, though there were already some healthy-looking patches of skin on her neck. She slowly forced herself upright, swaying for only an instant before her spine straightened once more, a proud smile gradually returning to her lips despite the pain that still lingered throughout her body.

"Not like this. I am Echidna!" Her chin rose ever so slightly as she looked down upon Gloria, refusing to acknowledge the devastation surrounding her as anything more than a temporary setback.

"I have stood against the Supreme Beings themselves," she declared, every passing word growing steadier as the ring continued restoring her strength.

"I have survived battles against the greatest of beings to ever walk any world! I endured magic that erased armies, and... I have fought Gloria Superba herself. You may possess frightening power, little insect, but compared to those monsters..." She laughed, though it came out hoarse.

"... you are but a child." That single name drew Gloria's full attention.

"Yes," Gloria replied.

"You have fought Gloria… But you have fought her one more time than you think, it seems." Echidna frowned, the confidence on her face giving way to visible confusion before irritation quickly replaced it.

"... What do you mean by that? And how dare you throw around the name of the Mighty? You are not worthy of speaking it!" Gloria let out a chuckle before unfolding the massive wings that had remained wrapped around her waist throughout the battle, as she had finally decided there was no reason to keep pretending to be anything less than what she truly was to someone like Echidna.

"Tell me, Echidna, who do you think stands before you now?"