“I’m getting more and more curious.”
With the battle raging urgently around them, there was no time for further talk. Meliodas held his longsword at an angle and was the first to charge toward Yuno.
His footwork was as swift as a flash of lightning, as if he could close the distance to his opponent in a single step. In fact, this footwork itself was far more difficult to master than any sword technique.
And what Meliodas used was the exact same set of movements he had used every time he had subdued Yuno in the past.
Yuno had challenged him numerous times before, and every single time, she had been defeated by this footwork, never once managing to break through it.
Now that Yuno had fallen and become a monster, she still appeared calm and unhurried. Meliodas wondered if she was so composed because she was certain of her victory.
In that instant, Yuno matched his pace. With a sweep of her long spear, she cleanly and decisively parried his sword.
Meliodas’s eyes widened behind his helmet.
“That move just now!”
He had seen it clearly. Yuno had kept up with him using the very footwork that represented his mastery of the Realm.
However, her movements were clearly stiff; there was no exquisite finesse to her technique at all. Yet the result was right there—she had truly reached a limit that should have been impossible to catch.
To an ordinary person, that footwork would have looked like teleportation, too fast to track. But Yuno clung to him tenaciously, pressing forward while swinging her spear to find an opening to strike.
“Impossible.”
Meliodas gasped for air as he pulled back to create distance, the words escaping his lips.
What was technique? Technique was something that allowed one to maximize their strength and ability, turning the impossible into the possible, breaking through limits to reach a higher level. That was why it was called technique; that was why it was called martial arts.
But now, Yuno was trampling over that self-evident truth.
“The Commander was always nagging about why we should hone our martial arts; I heard it so much my ears grew calluses. But in the end, don’t we practice martial arts just to achieve what we can’t do with this physical body alone?”
Yuno grinned, feeling every cell in her body surging with restlessness.
The colony’s martial arts could be traced back to Queen Kerrigan. Back then, she had been captivated by the staggering skills of a beastkin warrior, which led her to begin modifying her own body and continuously absorbing various techniques and martial arts.
But even Kerrigan, who devoted herself to the study of the martial path, could not deny one fundamental fact: a powerful physical body is the foundation of all powerful techniques.
“Technique is meant to compensate for the body’s deficiencies... so you modified your body for the sake of technique?”
“You think it’s absurd, don’t you? I thought so too at first.”
Yuno nodded at Meliodas’s dazed murmur.
The Great Devourers had originated from a mere swarm of ants; at their root, they were an organization with no foundation. But conversely, having no foundation meant they had the hope of carving out a path that no one in the universe had ever walked before.
Those laws hailed as absolute and those common-sense truths taken for granted were, to them, merely barriers that could be shattered at any time.
“Feel it for yourself, Master.”
Yuno concentrated all her power into the tip of her spear.
The symbiotic carapace ant covering her was the latest mutant variant, having undergone repeated refinements. Elise had been continuously accumulating knowledge and experience; besides using it to create stronger Lictors, she had also poured a massive amount of effort into modifying the symbiotic carapace ants.
The resulting ultimate biological weapon merged with the bodies of the Legion Commanders, delivering performance that far surpassed conventional enhancement suits.
Sensory perceptions were pushed to the extreme, and the durability of muscles and joints was sufficient to support movements that transcended physical limits. The reason Yuno could perform offense and defense at the same level as Meliodas, despite being slightly inferior in skill, was entirely due to this physical gap.
‘Holy Light Destruction Spear.’
Meliodas recognized the terrifying destructive power coiling around the spear as Yuno charged. It was the supreme height of the Holy Light Destruction Spear that Yuno had once practiced desperately to reach, even at the cost of broken bones and torn muscles.
In the past, she had never been able to complete it due to her own inadequacies. Now, that very move was being fully demonstrated before Meliodas’s eyes.
Not only that, but with her body becoming tougher and the additional output from the power device implanted in her, its power was incomparable to the past. The aftershock, spreading in a conical shape, was enough to grind the surrounding land and buildings into dust like a meat grinder.
And at this moment, the entire impact of this strike was converging into a single point, lunging toward him.
“Ugh...”
Meliodas also gave his all to resist. He centered his enhanced holy power on the longsword in his hand, transforming it into a forcefield that expanded to form a high-density zone.
This move could suppress a large area while also serving as a means to maximize his holy power for focused defense. It was because of this that Meliodas barely managed to keep his life.
After Yuno’s spear and psionic energy rushed into that high-density Holy Sanctuary, they snapped and crumbled under the violent resistance. In the end, the spear only pierced through his armor and flesh before coming to a halt.
If it had been even a fraction stronger, his entire body would have shattered, leaving nothing behind.
“Cough...”
His sword had snapped. Meliodas gritted his teeth as he looked at his shattered armor and Yuno’s spear, which had ultimately pierced through his body.
“My spear finally touched you. Has it been ninety-eight years? With this, my record is one win and six hundred twenty-seven losses.”
The intense recoil caused the exoskeleton of the symbiotic carapace ant to crack and peel away in places, revealing Yuno’s face. She looked very much like she did when she used to wear her Holy Light Winged Armor.
Beneath the rough and peculiar shell, there was still the face of a beautiful young woman.
“Commander!”
The two top-tier experts had clashed with all their might, but the actual exchange had lasted only an instant. Amidst the violent aftershocks that had altered the terrain, several knights of the Empyrean Star Guard stumbled over.
“We must retreat! The others are about to surround us!”
They had already lost companions fighting the Lictors. Now, they barely managed to support Meliodas, who had been speared through the abdomen, and instantly flew into the sky, retreating desperately without looking back.
“There’s no use chasing them; we won’t catch them anyway.”
Yuno stopped the soldiers who wanted to give chase. In truth, even the Lictors were powerless to do anything, and chasing those fleeing individuals would yield little result. Although she should have pursued them personally, Yuno herself was currently damaged by the battle’s aftershock and was not in a normal state.
‘I think I roughly understand why she became like that.’
Meliodas watched the ground gradually recede and sighed, enduring the pain. By joining the Great Devourers, Yuno had gained everything she desired.
The chance for endless battle against enemies spread across the universe, and the immense power that allowed her to be victorious in those battles.
Meliodas himself felt that, compared to the Goddess, the Great Devourers seemed to have given Yuno much more. They had given her such a tangible miracle, and since Yuno had already harbored doubts about the Goddess’s authority and power, it would have been stranger if she hadn't turned against them.
‘Even so, she only poked a hole in my stomach; that’s just one point. At most, I just have a dislocation.’
He let out a bitter laugh at the same time. At that final moment, if she had raised the tip of her spear just a little higher, it would likely have pierced his heart directly.
Whether it was out of lingering affection for the past or something else, Yuno had ultimately let the panicked him go.
Rate on N.U.
