"What did you do?" I ask with a suspicious glare. It looked like he somehow swallowed Chaos-Juzual from the inside. But that would go against anything I've learned about my body.
"Think about it yourself." With a shrug, Mataku sneers at me. Then he looks past me toward Tokomaha's back before gazing at the incredibly close Earth. His eyes seem to show a hint of longing, which catches me by surprise.
But the moment is over when he closes his eyes and opens them again to show the blackness of his irises. He then shifts his gaze to me, and a sinister smile plays over his lips once again.
"So, what now?" He asks while spreading his arms. "The moon has been stopped. Should we get to fulfilling destiny now?"
At those words, Mithra appears next to him, and Flann warps out of space next to me. They disappeared earlier when the fighting began, and most likely only returned to ring the bell for the next round. As Flann said, she and her father serve our kind but don't do much more than teleport us around and observe us.
"Let me try out what you just did. Hold off on digesting me when I'm inside you." I remark in a sarcastic tone while running scenarios in my mind for how to defeat Mataku.
Aurelia suddenly wakes up in my arms and looks around in confusion. She's searching for the massive form of Chaos-Juzual, but all she sees is the distant Primordial Terror, accompanied by Mithra. But that's enough for her to tell that we were somehow able to take the third Crawling Chaos out of the picture.
"This isn't the best place for our final confrontation." Mataku states while glancing at Mithra beside him as if he's the one that needs convincing rather than me. "Put the moon back where it should be first. I will let you know when it's time."
"As if." I mutter more to myself than in response to Mataku's careless treatment of our deathmatch. But it seems that he heard it.
"What will you do about it? Do you think you can defeat me right now?" With a nonchalant shrug, he sneers at me. It's true that I don't see any way we can beat him, especially now that he has gained the overwhelming mass of Chaos-Juzual.
I wonder why he would want to postpone our fight right now when this is the perfect opportunity to take care of me once and for all. The only plausible explanation is that he can't. Something is holding him back, or he thinks I have an ace up my sleeve. Whatever the case, I can't let him leave right now.
"First, this." I shout out while at the same time aiming at Mithra with a pinpoint plasma beam. The former court magician warps away right as the beam was about to hit him, leaving behind Mataku. I didn't think it would work, but I succeeded in separating them from each other. That's the opportunity I've been waiting for.
My chest snaps open beyond my frame and spews forth a jet of water in the direction of the Primordial Terror, who stares at it in wonder. As the water evaporates and freezes into crystal mist in the vacuum of the moon's atmosphere, a lone figure flies out from within.
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"It's time to smash!" I announce. That person is none other than Korenga, whom I kept inside my body for the past seven or so hours. The reason I didn't take her out to fight before now was to hide her presence from Mithra or anybody else that could have noticed it.
When I asked her how long she could hold her breath, she said that at one point, she had been tossed into the sea in her Black God form and walked on the bottom of the ocean for around a week before reaching an island. Thus, I circumvented her curse that makes her hard to touch and impossible to swallow for my kind by keeping her in a pool of water inside me.
Korenga launches at Mataku and throws a mighty punch at his face. He raises a hand to block it but is surprised when the Black God's fist rips straight through it. It seems that even with all his mass, it was unable to stop her rage-fuelled swing.
He takes her fist to his chest, and a hole is blown right through it. I have a sense of déjà vu, even though the last time that happened, it was to me. Still, it doesn't do anything to reduce Mataku's mass, as no piece of him is split off or pulverized.
I always took Korenga as mindless in her rage when in her Black God form, and even more when facing her most hated enemy. But she seems to realize the futility of punching him, and changes her tactics.
Just as he mends the wounds and moves to go on the offensive himself, she catches him in a bear hug. Last time, he defeated her in one hit, and his mass has increased even more compared to back then. She understands that she can't let him strike her, or she may be sent off into space this time.
But it seems that she understands the Primordial Terror's weakness. He suffers from the same unnatural apprehension against the Black God's touch as I do. His physical form recoils from her, and he can't muster the strength to break out from her grip. Instead, he seems to break under it; his top and bottom half are squeezed apart. I won't let this opportunity slip by.
"Aurelia, shred!" I say while shooting forward. The golden girl understands what I mean and raises her hand. The mass of shredding blades under Mataku that were suspended in midair when she fainted earlier begin to move again. They turn into a golden blender right underneath Korenga and Mataku.
With a plasma blade, I cut off the lower half of the Primordial Terror hanging on by a small crushed section of his torso. He tries to grab for it with an arm turned into tentacles, but I surround the lower body with a light shield. Then, I throw it at the golden maws under me before undoing the shield right as it hits. Within a moment, the legs are shredded into a million pieces.
Even now, Mataku's mass should be substantially larger than mine. But if that eliminated half of it all at once, I can already consider this a success. The blender will continue to cut the pieces until none of them can hold a new consciousness. I can feel their presence through my Chaos senses and will eradicate them once we're finished with the main target.
The Primordial Terror loses his shape and roars in anger as he slips out from Korenga's grasp. He then consolidates into his true appearance of a roughly humanoid form made of dark gray tentacles for muscle strands. Delivering a backhanded strike at the Black God, he sends her flying across the surface of the moon and into a nearby mountain.
Even now, he has so much mass that Korenga's steadfastness means nothing to him. But whereas she's a hard target, I have a flexibility that will protect me from those hits. Holes will be opened up in my body, but nothing more should happen if he punches me with the surface area of a human fist.
"You wanted it this way." His true voice grates on my mind as he speaks in an angry tone. Even though we're both from the same species, it still affects me to a degree. In the next moment, he extends his palm toward me, which flares open like a trumpet and grows to massive proportions. He wants to swallow me whole.