Chaos side

Cutting weapons are useless against me, though. I was scattered into tiny pieces by Zenlith's imagination, but survived by reconnecting in an instant. Since I have plenty of mass stored inside me, on the outside, even a piece the size of my pinky could hold my consciousness. As long as my mass doesn't get erased by something like Zenlith's beam weapon or turned to ash by Serent's strange scythe, I can survive anything now.

Oinos performs a strangely slow horizontal swing with his right hand, moving right to left across his own chest. It appears slow not just because I have Nymphy's eyes, but rather a deliberate-

I feel my body being torn at by an unseen force. My arms and legs are twisted off, and my neck isn't feeling so good either. Even as I stay suspended in midair, I sense my form slowly disintegrating.

Then it stops, and I find that all that's left of me is a frayed head and torso. My arms and legs are nowhere to be seen, so I quickly regrow them using mass from inside me. Looking at Oinos, I find that he's getting ready for his next swing. No matter what that was, it will be bad if I get hit by it again. Before Oinos can complete his swing, I have to close the distance between us and get inside his ridiculously long range.

With a sonic boom, I slam right into him with all of my mass - or that was the plan. But he has grabbed my neck with his free hand extended, causing me to almost rip off my own head due to my momentum. I realize that I've made a huge mistake, as his sword is now poised to swing left to right, with me right in its path.

But not this time! I detach my lower half right as his blade would cut through me. I do the same with my neck, causing his vise-like grasp to crush the empty husk I leave in its place.

In the next moment, my three pieces each grow into a full me, each moving independently from one another. As with any body-splitting technique, they each only have a third of my total mass, rendering the pile bunker unusable by either one of them. But I can still use the Imagination Engine through all of them individually and see from three different angles for maximum coverage.

"That's new." Oinos remarks when he sees the three of me surrounding him. His surprise seems genuine, which means that Alverost didn't see my battle against Zenlith and Serent.

"Flann!" I call out to the blonde girl to initiate my plan. She should have remained in the throne room or disappeared somewhere to hide from the battle, but she knows to continue monitoring me at all times.

With this, I know she's going to appear any second now. That's why I use two of my bodies to cast a multitude of light barriers around Oinos and the third me that formed from my head. Trapping myself inside a tiny space with him is meant to take his attention off the fact that his movements will be restricted if he doesn't break out immediately.

"So, you think this cramped space will stop me from swinging this sword?" The Walker of the Wild looks around without a worry in his mind. Then he lowers his weapon - and lets the blade sink right through the multiple barriers as if cutting through soft butter. "Don't underestimate this Ame-no-Murakumo."

"I knew it!" Head-me points at the sword that is just an oversized katana. Of course, Alverost would give it a Japanese name. Just taking a name from mythology is a clear lack of creativity, though. And that coming from an Old Human who prides himself in having created demonkind. "Well, I thought as much."

The fact that the blade can move through the barriers created by Sintress isn't surprising anymore. For being an inviolable sanctuary, plenty of things have been able to break through it. Of course, that could be because I never learned how to do it right. Imagining an unstoppable force is just as impossible as it is to reach absolute zero with the Imagination Engine, so there must be something else to it.

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"How about this then?" With these words, I propel myself forward once again. It has the same result as the last time, but I immediately lose my form and spread all across him. I also avoid the silver lines on his body, which would cut my tentacles to pieces if I have any part covering them.

Instead of trying to turn rigid with my diminished mass, I simply cling to Oinos as a form of distraction. In the meantime, torso-me and legs-me draw the barrier closer to restrict his movements further. The fact that we haven't been teleported yet means that this is still too much movement for Flann.

With a thought, I place layers of barriers on top of my tentacles, which essentially turns me solid. Oinos is rendered entirely still, and I see the surprise on his face. Then he grins, and I understand that this still isn't enough.

Pumping up his muscles so quickly that my tentacles snap, he easily breaks out of the restraints. With a swing of his empty hand, he rips through all the layers of the barriers put around him from the outside. Then he spins around himself and lets Ame-no-Murakumo trail behind him.

Torso-me and legs-me dodge up and down respectively, avoiding the invisible attack by getting within the range of the sword. The apex of the pyramid is disintegrated, and a massive swath of destruction in the city below follows the trajectory of the sword. It has gouged out the earth, leaving only a sickle-shaped crater running from the southern to the northern city wall. Rather than cut, this weapon seems to rend anything in its path with incredible forces similar to gravity. Or maybe it really is gravity.

Luckily, it was only at this angle. Otherwise, those in the throne room would have been caught up in it. But that danger still exists, as Oinos turns around and raises the sword above his head, aiming at head-me. With the pyramid right behind me, that kind of move will blow it all away.

"Don't!" I scream, but he brings the weapon down in what seems to be an even slower swing than before. Extending my hands to each side, I have torso-me and legs-me flow back into my mass. Then, with two massive hands covered in rubber-like skin, I catch the descending blade between my palms.

Even though I stop its momentum, the pressure from the weapon beats down on my regular Crawling Chaos body, almost causing it to break apart. The sandstone behind me is ground away, but it's not enough to destroy the entire building.

Then the strength behind Oinos' arms forces my back to the ground. I switch my form around and surround the blade with all my mass, trying to make it too heavy for the Walker of the Wild to swing. Of course, under normal circumstances, that would be useless against somebody who can throw my full weight with a single hand. But the sword seems to be incredibly dense, which is probably the reason a swing from it can cause tremendous pressure. With my added weight, he shouldn't be able to move it anymore.

In the next moment, I'm lifted off the side of the pyramid like it's nothing. It would seem that all of my mass doesn't even represent a fraction of Ame-no-Murakumo's actual weight. I revise my strategy immediately and travel up the blade toward the hilt using a multitude of tendrils. Even if he can rip some of them off, he can't stop them all.

It seems that he doesn't even need to do that, as he almost casually swings the sword and causes me to slide along its length and fly off the tip. Then the pressure from the blade hits me, and I quickly turn my body into a spear. With my tip facing where the pressure is coming from, I'm barely affected by it in my aerodynamic form.

Once the swing is complete, I maintain my shape and turn my entire mass into a projectile - the Chaos javelin - before shooting at Oinos with as much speed as I can imagine. Before my mind can even catch up to my own acceleration, I find myself in his left hand, just millimeters away from his eye.

That's when I deploy an on-the-fly second stage to the Chaos javelin form; a pile bunker only as thick as a pencil, but with all the mass behind it, shoots out of my tip and pierces Oinos' right eye. Or that's what it was supposed to do, but he's able to dodge just enough for the spike to only cut open his temple and scrape across his skull while generating sparks.

He lets go of me in surprise and staggers back while holding the wound, from which golden liquid gushes forth the way it would in a human's head wound. I doubt this is going to work again, and he's going to heal quickly, so I have to come up with something new fast.