DID YOU KNOW? YOU CAN NOW READ THREE TO SIX CHAPTERS AHEAD. CHECK MY PROFILE FOR THE LINK.
----
One detail that Raphael had managed to decipher after analyzing the false Kaede was the presence of a localized spatial anomaly, a constant, imperceptible gap between her physical body and the fabric of reality itself.
It functioned similarly to a barrier, except whatever fundamental laws governed its construction, Rimuru couldn't for the life of him comprehend them.
And by "him," he meant Raphael couldn't comprehend them either.
"Excess?" Rimuru echoed inwardly, his brow furrowing.
"What does that even mean? How are we supposed to breach something like that?" Rimuru frowned, racking his brain for a familiar point of comparison. "Is it an absolute isolation barrier? Something like [Unlimited Imprisonment]?"
"So we literally can't touch her?"
"Well, what am I supposed to be doing until then?" Rimuru muttered, activating [Beelzebub] directly above himself and Luminous to consume the torrential deluge of venomous rain spilling over from the high-altitude clash of the colossal serpentine constructs.
Meanwhile, down in the scorched basin, the false Kaede casually continued to absorb every single strike launched by the twin Kaedes using her barrier, standing completely motionless as if the onslaught were nothing more than a mild inconvenience.
"Ah, so this is what it feels like to fight myself," the angelic Kaede sighed, flapping her four massive wings to create some distance. One of her brilliant white wings was scorched coal-black at the tip, its feathers ragged and frayed from the spatial friction. "Frustrating doesn't even begin to cover it."
"Stop sulking and give me some actual support over here!" the demonic Kaede roared, ducking and weaving through a relentless barrage of particle beams that battered the landscape, each stray blast violently gouging open the earth and tearing through the fabric of the realm. "Make yourself useful, damn it!"
"[Arc]!" the angelic Kaede bellowed, channeling a massive wave of holy magic, only to watch the spell get effortlessly swallowed into the dark void of the false shield once again. "Damn it... We might have to merge back together, demonic me!"
"It's way too risky! She might just devour the process whole and consume us both! Besides, I don't exactly trust Rimuru to back us up properly, he's no Sally!"
As the demonic Kaede shouted, she strayed a fraction of an inch too close to the false Kaede's defensive perimeter. Her left hand made brief contact with the edge of the shield and was instantly erased, sending a violent jolt of crackling electricity through her body that paralyzed her for a critical split second.
"That's right... Sally!" the angelic Kaede perked up, her eyes brightening with sudden inspiration.
"Don't you dare even think about calling her into this!" the demonic Kaede yelled back, forcing her body to move through the paralysis as her hand began to regenerate.
Before their argument could escalate further, the purple sky above them split wide open with a deafening, thunderous crack. The two giant hydras were violently tossed aside, forced apart by the sheer atmospheric pressure of a blazing pink comet slamming directly into the center of the battlefield.
The crater detonated, scattering molten rock and shockwaves in every direction as Milim Nava rose from the dust, her posture tall and her grin as wild and fiery as the aura radiating off her body. Her fists were literally engulfed in blazing flames, a brilliant, crackling pink fire.
"The Destroyer has arrived!" Milim declared, throwing her arms wide.
She paused, glanced around the chaotic landscape, and then blinked in utter confusion. "Wait... HUH? Why are there three of you, Kaede?!"
"A rather fascinating development indeed," a smooth, cultured voice echoed through the air, drawing everyone's attention to another newly arrived figure hovering casually in the sky above.
Guy Crimson floated down, his crimson hair swaying softly against the backdrop of spatial distortion. "The girl was rather insistent that I intervene. I must say, I am glad to see this situation is at least entertaining enough to justify the trip."
Milim immediately puffed out her cheeks and glared up at him, pointing a glowing fist. "Go away, Guy! This is my fight, and you're ruining my fun!"
Guy Crimson merely chuckled, leaning back slightly in the air as if he were resting against an invisible chair. "Now, now, Milim. Look around you. The fabric of hell is weeping under the strain. If you throw one of your usual tantrums here, you might accidentally flush everyone into the absolute void."
"I don't care about spatial anchors!" Milim barked back, though the pink flames surrounding her fists flickered with even greater intensity. "I haven't had a proper brawl since... well, since earlier! And that duplicate thing over there is practically begging to be smashed into tiny pieces!"
"She's not just a duplicate, you absolute idiot!" the demonic Kaede shouted up at her, flexing her newly regenerated left hand to test the fingers. "She's wearing my face, using my abilities, and her defense is wrapped in some bizarre concept that eats everything we throw at her!"
"Sounds fun!" Milim beamed, her eyes flashing with pure excitement.
Before anyone could stop her, Milim kicked off the shattered earth, leaving a crater fifty feet wide as she propelled herself directly at the false Kaede. She didn't bother using a sword or preparing a complex spell; she simply drew back a single, pink-flame-engulfed fist and drove it straight toward the imposter's chest.
"Milim, wait! Don't touch that barrier—!" Rimuru yelled from above.
The impact was deafening. The sheer kinetic force of Milim's blow generated a shockwave that flattened the surrounding mountain peaks, sending a wall of dust and displaced magicules roaring across the desolate plains.
Yet, when the dust settled, the false Kaede hadn't budged a single inch.
Milim's fist was stopped cold just millimeters away from the imposter's armor, held at bay by that same dark, flower-like distortion in space. Worse still, the pink energy coating Milim's arm was actively being siphoned off, spiraling into the center of the shield like water down a drain.
"Huh?" Milim blinked, her fiery grin faltering for the first time. "My magicules... they're getting sucked in?"
"Get back, you brainless dragonoid!" the angelic Kaede screamed, swooping down with her four wings flared wide to grab Milim by the back of her collar, hauling her backward just as the false Kaede's barrier flared with a retaliatory burst of dark energy.
Milim landed heavily beside the twin Kaedes, staring at her bloodied knuckles in genuine disbelief. "Okay... that actually kind of hurt. What is that thing?"
"It's a barrier of Excess," Rimuru called down, flying closer alongside Luminous while keeping a safe distance from the central impact zone. "Raphael—I mean, my skill—just finished analyzing it. Her defense takes whatever force or energy you throw at it and multiplies its spatial depth infinitely before eating it. The more power you put into an attack, the bigger and denser and more dangerous her shield becomes."
Guy Crimson raised an eyebrow, a genuinely intrigued expression crossing his face as he observed the dark duplicate. "Infinitely multiplying and devouring spatial depth? How absurdly tedious. It seems brute force alone won't break through, no matter how much raw energy Milim pumps into it."
"So what are we supposed to do then?" Luminous demanded, her crimson eyes flickering with irritation as she glanced between Guy and Rimuru. "If spatial slashes, holy magic, and the physical force of a Demon Lord are all rendered meaningless, how do we inflict a single scratch on her?"
The false Kaede slowly turned her head, her empty, lifeless eyes sweeping across the assembled powerhouse of Demon Lords and True Dragons. For the first time since the fight began, a faint, eerie tilt touched her chin.
[xxx]
"You find it odd too, don't you, sister?" Veldora asked Velzard, just as the True Dragon of Ice was preparing to leap straight through the dimensional tear.
Velzard wasn't particularly sure why she halted her stride. Seeing Veldora acting rationally and offering well-reasoned observations was something that filled her with a rare sense of pride, a sign that her little brother was finally maturing and coming into his own, even if he still had a long way to go.
Still, understanding the full weight of what he was implying made her hesitate. "I do. The sheer scale of her power... is entirely unnatural."
Veldanava, the Star King Dragon and the eldest of the True Dragons, had constructed the Cardinal World under very specific laws. He had forged the physical realm with a baseline suppression field, drastically dampening supernatural energies while enhancing the world's structural durability to absurd, near-indestructible levels.
It was the sole reason why multiple world-ending entities could coexist on a single planet without accidentally annihilating reality itself through their mere presence. The True Dragons, the Primordial Demons, the Great Holy Spirits, all of them were held in check by these foundational laws. Powerful spatial attacks that could slice ordinary pocket universes in half would only leave a shallow gouge in the Cardinal World, and explosions carrying the condensed force of collapsing stars would merely produce a localized crater.
Massive, unchecked scale was something that simply wasn't supposed to happen here. Such was the absolute balance upon which the creation was built.
And yet, the monstrous entity that had descended from the sky had manifested on a scale so incomprehensibly massive that it defied the world's core logic. It was a chilling realization: if that creature's output was already being suppressed by the world's laws and could still swell to such terrifying proportions, then...
"Could it be because of..."
"That abomination is no True Dragon!" Velzard cut her brother off sharply, her icy aura flaring. "No, something far more sinister is at play."
Veldora stroked his chin, going deep into thought. His Ultimate Skill, [Faust, Lord of Inquiry], began rapidly connecting millions of fragmented variables, sifting through probabilities and processing the cosmic data to lay bare the underlying truth.
"The scale... was calculated to force a reaction," Veldora murmured, his eyes widening slightly in realization.
"From whom?" Velzard asked, turning her sharp blue gaze onto him.
"From everyone," Veldora declared, the pieces falling into place. "The sheer level of destruction such a threat promised is something no top-tier power could afford to ignore. And Rimuru, above all else, would never dream of engaging in a full-scale battle anywhere near his domain with the risk of reduced collateral wiping out his people."
"Moving the battle to an isolated realm was the only logical choice. With an anomaly of that size, nowhere on the surface of the Cardinal World would have been safe, forcing them to drag it into a parallel-dimension entirely," Veldora continued, his tone turning unusually grave. "And did I just sense Guy crossing over as well? If that's the case... then right now, five Demon Lords are currently trapped inside hell with that thing."
"A parallel dimension wouldn't stop them, though," Velzard mused aloud, her icy gaze lingering on the jagged fracture in the sky. "Beings of that caliber can breach spatial boundaries with ease."
Veldora opened his mouth to offer a counterargument, but paused, finding that he had none. "That is true as well... So what is it that we are missing?"
[xxx]
"Is that... Yuuki's [Anti-Skill]?"
Rimuru's eyes widened in utter disbelief as he plummeted toward the earth, landing heavily on his knees. His body felt unnaturally weightless yet completely unresponsive, his magicule flow grinding to a agonizing crawl.
Luminous dropped to the scorched ground beside him, her divine aura flickering out like a dying flame. Opposite them, the angelic and demonic manifestations of Kaede were forcibly yanked back together, coalescing into a single, breathless figure.
Even Milim's expression had turned deadly serious. The roaring pink flames that usually engulfed her fists had vanished without a trace, leaving her staring at her own hands in silent shock.
As for Guy Crimson, he merely looked down at his palms with a faint, dangerous tilt of his head. "Hmm... How intriguing. So there is a connection here after all. I suppose this is the price I pay for rushing in blindly. I was never one for impatience... and yet, I have stumbled into quite the discovery."
He seemed entirely lost in his own thoughts, analyzing the anomaly as if it were a complex puzzle.
High above, both of the colossal Hydras had completely vanished, leaving behind a sky that was no longer merely dark, it was a suffocating, absolute pitch-black. Threads of faint, iridescent violet energy were woven across the expanse, wrapping tightly around the perimeter of the entire realm like a cosmic web.
"What... what is she doing?" Kaede managed to choke out, clutching her chest as her internal energy shuddered.
It was Guy who answered her, his voice devoid of its usual playful nonchalance. "Your future self is attempting to lock this entire domain out of reality, well, she has already succeeded in isolating us within Hell, to be precise. Now, she is preparing to launch this entire sub-realm straight into the absolute void, casting us out to skim along the bottom of the abyss."
"I'm sorry, what?!" Rimuru blurted out, his head snapping toward Guy in sheer panic.
"And by doing so," Guy finished, his crimson eyes narrowing into sharp vertical slits as the reality of the situation set in, "she has just effectively eradicated ninety percent of all demonkind."