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Ank

I froze.

Had I mistaken something?

[Name: Tezmont, Ruler of the Ethereal

Race: God

Level: 112.082]

No, I hadn’t. That [God]’s [Level] was over one hundred thousand.

Tezmont, the unimaginably powerful [God] looked each of us in the eyes, confidently smiling; he even snorted at Taffy’s sight.

Bu- But, he found us, and was saying that we wouldn’t be able to keep moving forward, he was threatening us, right? So, should I resist? Should I attack that guy right then and there?

…Resisting would even mean anything? He probably could crunch all of us like vermin before we could even realize what was going on. He did get inside the inn and stopped right by my side without any of us noticing. No! Now that I was really paying attention, we all had been taken to another pocket dimension identical to the inn from before, without even noticing!

…The smug deity closed his eyes, and nodded, satisfied. When he opened his mouth, about to start to say something, however, I interrupted him:

“There is meaning in resisting”, I said to myself, tightening my fists, and frowning. My twin sister was there, after all, and I would forgive no one who harmed the most precious person in my life.

“Hu?” Tezmont looked at me, eyes wide, mouth gaping, genuinely confused. He forced a laugh, after shacking off his surprise, and said: “Looks like I overestimated your intelligence. I hoped that these floating numbers over my head would be enough to scare you all into submission, so I could put some sense in your naive, naive heads…”, His smile suddenly darkened, and a freezing cold aura started to leek from him, such an immense pressure that the ground beneath him instantly became dust, and though the [God] was clearly suppressing his full might so not to immediately kill us all with just the energy emanating from him, it was hard to even breath. “But it looks like a couple of twins doesn’t recognize certain death when they see it.”

“Oh, we do”, I reached into my deepest parts to find the strength necessary to even just talk back while immersed in such an aura. “I just judged that it would be even riskier to just accept your ‘going nowhere from here’ threat.”

“You still can talk?”, the most powerful foe I ever came across raised an eyebrow at my defiance, and threw a sideways glance filled with disgust at Taffy, who simply stared at everything that was going on with a neutral expression, still taking sips from her drink calmly.

“S- Shit! [Pocket Dimen-!”, Kon stepped forward and tried to use his skill, but was interrupted when his father mumbled:

“[Dragon Cage]”, and a golden cage sprouted from the ground, and trapped both the 1^st Guild Master and his older sister in an instant; they tried to break it with their own power, but failed to put even a scratch on the thing, unable to use any [Skill] or [Spell] inside of it.

“FATHER!”, Kon gripped onto the gold bars, eyes burning with hatred. “Are you’re involved with this?!”

“I just don’t want to be marked as a traitor… It would be hard to keep ‘jumping from bar to bar, slowly rotting away’ if that was the case, after all”, the older man replied, continuing to drink with the same defeated expression as when I saw him for the first time.

“Very well”, Tezmont stepped toward us, twins, cracking his neck and stretching. “I think I just have to make you truly understand the difference between our powers. Then, when I order you to stop being an adventurer, and killing [Gods], you’ll gladly do so.”

“Go fuck yourself”, Hunah talked back at the mention of stop killing deities.

Then, her jaw disappeared, removed from her body in less than the blink of an eye.

“G- GWUAAH?!”, my twin sister screamed, stepping back, her tongue hanging down her throat.

“What were you saying again?”, Tezmont asked casually, spinning her amputated jaw on a finger.

“Son of a bitch!”, I dashed towards the [God], extending on hand, about to use my [Perfect Summon Embodiment].

I was quite aware that our chances of victory in a direct fight were less than 0%, but if I managed to distract the deity down enough so Hunah could create her own [Pocket Dimension], and fill it with highly effective traps, perhaps we could actually achieve a miracle; it was our only choice!

“Watch your mouth, kid”, Tezmont (badly) pretended to be angry, pointing his index finger at me, lecturing. My index finger; he had stolen all ten of them without my notice.

“What?!”, I stared at my butchered hands.

“Hmm… This wasn’t fun at all!” the [God] before us seemed genuinely disappointed this time. “Let’s do this way, then!”, he snapped his fingers, and, again too fast for my eyes to follow, Hunah and I were completely healed, only quickly disappearing vestiges of black smoke remained as a signal of the enemy’s magic. “Come at me with all you have! And I’ll put you, mortal trash, into your place”, he concluded, a disgusting wide smile crossing his face.

“Tch! Don’t go crying of regret later”, I tried to convince myself that we actually weren’t doomed already. “[Perfect Summon Embodiment: Flaming Proto-God]”, I turned into a fiery version of the giant sea-monster we killed before entering the death pocket dimension: four leathery wings came from my back, a tail grew from the end of my back, and vicious claws sprouted from the tip of my fingers, as needle-like teeth filled my mouth. My skin, however, turned into burning black and red embers, and a corona of flames involved my entire body, and my power reached a higher height than any moment during my stay in the death [God]’s domain before.

Just by my side, my twin sister, for the first time, was covered in crude equipment made from the bones, and skin of dead [Gods], and was so buffed up that she emitted almost as much light as I did.

Tezmont, the [Level: 112.082] deity, meanwhile, was yawning.

Gritting my teeth, I honestly considered using all of my power to run away. But, from the corner of my eyes, I could see Kon and Ur tightly holding hands, as they stared at Hunah and I from inside their golden cage. And I remembered of Jao, Nif, and Tapa. The [Sunight Party]…

There was no way I’d let my [Party] die off again!

“Grraah!”, I dashed forward and threw a dozen flaming punches against the bored enemy before me in less than a second, the heat generated immediately setting the entire inn aflame. But all of the attacks seemed to hit an invisible and impenetrable wall just before reaching Tezmont, untouched by my fists and by the fire alike. I hadn’t finished yet, however, and kicking the ground beneath me, I jumped above the head of our opponent multiple times faster than the sound could travel, and used two skills, of both powers I was embodying at the same time: “[Proto-God Breaching, Laser Compression!]”, I mashed together the sea-monster water surface breaching attack, with the fire mage spell from the fiery aspect I was using; all the fire from the burning inn and around my body was gathered around my fist, which started to shine like a star.

Punching down this time created a pillar of white light so intense that its brightness alone raised clouds of vapor from the nearby ocean. And I wasn’t alone in the attack:

“[Inventory Missile]”, Hunah threw [god]-item after [god]-item against our target, hundreds of them in a single volley. But that was only half of her damage: “Kuuuh!”, pushing her body beyond her limits, using more of those super-powerful items at the same time than she ever had before, she fished two swords made from the bones of Deon from her magic windows, and slashed with both of them against Tezmont, the horizontal cut traveling so fast, and far, and carrying such a strength, that thousands upon thousands of trees in a wood kilometers far from us were cut down instantly.

As my attack started to fade away, I flapped my wings and retreated to the side of my twin sister; both of us panting and exhausted from our strongest possible hits; only then did the sonic boom from our movements catch up, and the entire thing finished in less than about a second.

Then dust and smoke started to dissipate. Slowly, the shadow of a figure became visible.

“Is that all?”, The opposing deity asked, cleaning his nails, completely unharmed; differently from the melted crater he stood in.

“…Damn”, Hunah cursed.

“Are we dead?”, I quoted her from not so long ago.

“RUN!”, the 1^st Guild Master screamed from his cage.

“Forget about us! Run away!”, Kon’s older sister added.

Even without any trick in our sleeves remaining, tired to the bones from our last attacks, and with little to no chance of victory, however, we kept our ground. Tezmont didn’t seem to like that:

“Tch. Then, now is my turn”, the deity warned, stepping forward, and instantly freezing the boiling liquid rock puddled inside the crater.

Then he vanished.

Just to re-appear right beside me, and moved just fast enough so I could follow him with my eyes, and punched me right in the face; the resulting impact literally shredded my face and teeth off, and I was sent spinning away from the enemy with my facial muscles and bleeding gums exposed, crashing into a nearby carbonized wooden house:

“BOOM!”

Tortured and weak, I tried to get up, but my sister came flying soon after me, and in my direction, pinning both of us down on the ground again; both her arms had been so much twisted, they looked like a pair of springs.

“Snap!”, a familiar finger snap after, we were both healed and our energy had been restored to its full potential. And, still, our situation didn’t change at all.

“DO…”, Tezmont screamed, sending my twin sister and I flying upwards with a kick that broke all of our bones; all our joints turned in the wrong direction, and so many blood vessels had been ruptured that our skin turned completely black. “YOU…”, he continued after healing us again, then swiftly cutting off our fingers and toes, arms and legs, nose and lips in thin slices with impossible-to-follow hand chops. “UNDERSTAND…” making every wound vanish another time, the deity punched with both hands at the same time, covering us with his black magical mist, and corroding away all of our flesh and bones, and organs and tendons, and veins and arteries, leaving behind only our brain and nervous system to scream in pain. Which also lasted for just a moment, after which both of us, twins, had been healed yet again. “NOW?!”, Tezmont concluded, hurling Hunah and I back down.

Falling legs first, we, twins, saw our limbs, up to our waist, being crushed to paste against the ground fortified by the enemy’s magic. And only then we finally had time to scream in agony:

“GRAAAUUUAAH!”, even with our pain resistance, and after being cut, beaten, and crushed time and time again, the torment was too great.

“Ank! Hunah!”, the 1^st Guild Master and his older sister screamed for us, for we had ended up back where the fight started.

Then:

“Snap!”, instantly Hunah and I were healed, though the pain had been real, and our bodies were still covered in sweat and convulsing. “There is no hope for the two of you. You can’t win against the [Gods]… At least, not against us, the real owners of this world. Give up, and become my subordinate”, Tezmont was smiling, more than ever.

“F- Fuck you”, I muttered, through my chattering teeth.

That didn’t affect the good mood the deity was experiencing after beating us down, though, for he looked at Taffy, who still simply awaited nearby, and walked to her, after which, proudly, he groped our savior’s breast lustfully, and said:

“That’s right… Let me tell you, then, the same truth I used to convince the 3^rd Guild Master and his underlings to work for me… The truth about your guild, and this monster over here!”