Chapter 317: Final Round

Chapter 317: Final Round

Four days. Four bloody days. That was how long theyd been at this.

Isaac stumbled, planting Balmungs tip in the ships deck and leaning on its hilt to keep standing. He was dead on his feet, the short bursts of sleep that should theoretically have sufficed being nowhere near enough. And there were very few people here who were in any better shape.

Most big trump cards had been spent in the opening hours, long cooldown [Skills], expensive expendable weapons, and more besides.

Alchemical weapons stockpiles that had taken years to build up, created by Professor Chandler, GSG-13s Division S, which had been loaded up with all the finest Aspects and carefully managed builds utterly stuffed with high-power, long-cooldown [Skills], all in a scant few minutes. But theyd blown open all four of the beasts eyes and filled the resulting holes with all manner of chemical weaponry.

Sadly, all members of that group had to sit out the entirety of the remaining fight.

Of all the S-Rankers present, only around a hundred were in a position to do anything to tank, slow, or otherwise lock down the Leviathan, and of those, there were quite a few that relied on a singular ability that couldnt be rapidly used.

Theyd lost eleven of the seventeen theyd started with, three carriers, and half their initial aircraft, but they were getting new fighters all the time.

And almost a hundred S-Rankers had died. Thered be hell to pay for that, later, their home nations would be out for blood, and some of those people had been the only thing keeping their region stable.

The whole thing had really been a weird game of chicken, where theyd had to have someone close enough to draw the snakes attention, lest it target a population center or an auxiliary force, but not so close to be accidentally splattered. It was a game they lost. Too often.

But the monster wasnt looking much better.

Countless holes covered its body, gashes cut into skin that had now become almost indestructible, and beneath those, the muscles had been shredded.

It might have taken a while, longer than anyone had expected, but theyd finally reached the point where they were regenerating so slowly that theyd been regrowing but still non-functional for over a day, now. It had just taken a grand total of nine kills on each eye to achieve that.

All around it, the sea was stained crimson, with the monsters blood not just creating dark clouds, but actually transforming the water for kilometers around a deep, dark, red. A normal monster or human would have already bled out by now, but the Leviathan was continuously regenerating new blood, for some reason, it sure as shit could have survived completely exsanguinated.

Thered been an attempt to cut it in half, but that hadnt worked either, as to their horror, theyd realized that the toughening field also worked on individual body segments. The closer they were to bisecting it, the tougher the area around the cut would become. Working together, Amy, Patrick, and Karl had managed to expose the spinal cord in one place, burned out the nerve bundle there, and then worked together to shove multiple nukes into the channel in the vertebra where it had been.

The damage had been horrendous, and the last three-quarters of the Leviathans body was almost immobile when compared to its previous fluidity, but the monster was not paralyzed, the way one might have hoped.

Theyd chased and been chased all around the Pacific, trying to kill that damn thing, especially once it decided that something other than their ships needed to die. Some people had been stubborn about evacuating and apparently, a not-insignificant number of people being concentrated in one spot was enough to draw the monsters ire.

Once all this was done, maps would have to be redrawn on a global scale.

The worst part was that this thing wasnt even all that well-endowed? in terms of powers. Most [Raid Bosses] had massive amounts of magic and general reality fuckery at their disposal, capable of unleashing various arcane abilities on a large scale.

This thing, on the other hand, just made the water actively hate living beings, breathed fire, and, oh yeah, it was huge. It had killed a few people directly, but everything else, from the countless ships it had literally rolled over to those killed by tidal waves, had been mostly accidental.

A regular Demon Lord with its standard powerset blown up to anything close to the size of Leviathan, or even just four or five kilometers in height with the same physical proportions as the standard one, could have scorched an area the size of Australia clean by now.

And if, gods forbid, it had been one like Iammax?

Leviathan was a demon, of course, specifically, the Prince of Envy, but thankfully limited in magical ability.

The other Deadly Sins were also around, but only the Princes of Pride, Wrath, and Greed were [World Bosses], those of Gluttony, Sloth and Lust were merely Tier 10 [Raid Bosses], comparable to Iammax in power.

Of course, the power of different [World Bosses] was likely more concentrated, while the Leviathan had the mother of all wide-range powers.

Oceania, as in, the entirety of the islands referred to by that name, was gone, just plain gone. Australias shape had been altered, large chunks of its northern coast washed away, but evacuations there had been thankfully easy, its population had simply headed a hundred kilometers inland.

China had also been hit hard from day 3 onwards, when the Philipines had been effectively reduced to nothing. Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Vietnam had come under fire at the same time, and even India, Russia, the US, and Canada, as well as the South American and African coastlines, had caught some flack.

The only place that had survived relatively unscathed had been Singapore, which had laid the groundwork for a citywide shield a while ago, and had thankfully agreed to serve as a safe staging ground/dry dock for the duration of the conflict.

A more power that functioned in the more immediate area might have been a bigger threat to the people attempting to kill the [World Boss], but it sure as hell wouldnt have caused that kind of widespread destruction.

Not to mention that another nine new volcanoes had grown out of the sea floor. Knocking those down was easy, shearing off enough of its top for water to flood the lava channels and plugging them, but there was one small extra issue with this. The damn things grew back. The pressure of the magma would crack the solid rock in the channels, push up, solidify once more, a little higher this time, over and over again until the volcano erupted. Again.

And they still hadnt seen how hard it would be to finish off the current bastard.

A loud, metallic, tearing noise followed by a loud crunch drew Isaacs attention, causing him to turn to look at the Ting Juan, one of the two Chinese battleships.

But theyd hold long enough to slap that overgrown reptile around a little.

The first salvo impacted with the force of a meteor, which the kinetic projectiles, also known as rods from god, technically were.

Boom, you fucker!

Hit after hit shook the Leviathan, flesh tearing and bone crunching, but the monster was still alive. The same went for the second one, the inferior staves, and the third one.

But by the time the fourth was on its final descent, the Leviathan had already broken free, twisted its head to face the sky, and unleashed a massive plume of fire that melted the projectiles right out of the sky. Obviously, the molten metal still hit, but it was vastly less damaging than it would have been in solid form.

Fuck. That. Thing.

However, the Leviathan wasnt done, surging upwards, head going straight for the origin of the rods from god.

Regular snakes could rear up to a full third of their body off the ground, and with the Leviathans length, that would have allowed them to reach up to 150 kilometers into the sky. Or so Isaacs estimate had been. As it turned out, if the Leviathan managed to wind its body around an underwater volcano or wedge itself in a canyon, down there, it could get considerably further.

It still didnt get anywhere close to the full 300 kilometers it would have taken to physically snap up the launch platforms, but the plume of fire did.

Blue flames washed across the entire group, with only those lucky enough to be near Isaac being safe within a bubble the flames seemed to be bending around.

Oh verdammt!

Isaac realized what was about to happen almost too late. If the snake let itself fall back down from that height, goodbye a good third of humanity, probably.

Leviathan is about to crash into the planet, I can stop it, but I need full cooperation!

And then, he began barking orders, hoping, praying that hed bought himself enough trust and goodwill to get the support he needed.

A portal flashed open high below him, showing the snake from below. He sped towards it and blew through it, phasing to avoid hitting the atmosphere and being slowed down by the air resistance, and moments later, hed once again left the atmosphere, flew into another portal.

For a second time, he appeared near the surface of the ocean, giving him even more space to accelerate.

Then, the supporting [Skills] began to start landing.

Seven uses of [Instant Acceleration] granted an instantaneous boost to his speed, [Pinpoint Strike] helped him with his targeting, [Skillful Adhesion] would help him stick to the monsters hide, and dozens more were stacked onto him.

Isaac aimed straight for the hole the crazy mages had carved into the Leviathans neck, around twenty kilometers below the head, and triggered [I Am The Sword] in its pushing configuration. The flesh around the hole was already practically indestructible, but between the durability, adhesion, and the [Skill] reducing his penetrative capacity, he knew he wouldnt blast straight through.

This never would have worked if the monster had stayed on Earth, he wouldnt have been able to get the right angle, and even if he had, he wouldnt have tried flinging the monster into the void because it would have been too tricky and risky.

But with how far the monster had already extended itself, it had been the only option. Note to self, never lure the Leviathan towards the sky.

For 0.13 seconds, Isaac was immobile and immovable, even with the entire weight of the massive monster trying to pull him back down, and during that time, he managed to move almost a thousand kilometers skywards, tearing it completely out of the atmosphere and utterly shattering the underwater structures the monster had used to anchor itself.

He slowed down ever so slightly to separate from the monster, and yet another portal zapped him back to the planets surface, so he could accelerate again.

The Leviathan twisted to try and avoid a repeat performance, but it was too slow, with Isaac slamming into place like a meteor, far faster, this time.

Another one and a half thousand kilometers into the air, and Isaac had enough mana for one more use of his [Skill], and he was given yet another portal.

After the final impact, the Leviathan was left tumbling through space, but already slowing down as gravity began to exert its exorable pull. If they failed now they were fucked.

But massive weavings of magic below began to counter the motion, reducing gravity and pushing at the snake, and hundreds of exhaust trails began to draw lines in the atmosphere.

Have you ever heard of the Orion Drive? Karl suddenly asked out of the blue, I bet its designers never expected the first proper use of the concept to be used to throw a snake around.

Blow after blow, they kept going, kept pushing the monster higher and higher, but Isaac had stopped really paying attention to the thing after barely a minute. It was no longer a problem, at least not one he could really help with. Or wanted to think about.

Karl talking about the history of spaceflight and the concept of detonating nuclear weaponry at an appropriate distance behind a spacecraft to provide acceleration was far more pleasant.

Eventually, they managed to push the thing to escape velocity whether they wanted to or not, but they kept the last few missiles in flight and took the time to steer them into existing holes in the beasts hide.

Isaac had been so enraptured by watching the display that hed practically missed the kill notification.