D.I.O

Chapter 221

Boom!

As Regrants faded, Adalcha’s right arm exploded like a bursting balloon, and Thousand Scents wasn’t any better. She had tried attacking Regrants from behind, but she bounced off like a ball hit by a bat and shot toward the school building. The four-sided defensive barrier always guarding her blocked the blow, preventing any injuries. However, she had been blown away.

“What… how did you stop my Cruel Nightmare Hall attack? It’s impossible to defend against!”

When he saw Adalcha’s exasperated expression, Regrants laughed and pointed at his head.

“Oh, that? I did get caught by it. Right here.”

“You split your mind… you only experienced a part of Cruel Nightmare Hall?”

“Right. By the way, you have a unique taste… in my opinion, your taste seems a bit perverse.”

Boom!

As Regrants grinned, Thousand Scent’s body, which he had sent flying away, collided with the high school, causing the entire five-story building to be smashed into pieces. This created a vast crater underneath the rubble. Although the explanation of events seemed drawn out and complicated, all of this happened just a few seconds after the users started attacking.

Rumble!

Regrants was about to continuously attack Thousand Scents when Lionel blocked him. The latter was wearing a blue fabric all over his body, and every time Lionel and Regrants’ fists collided, space bent, and the earth split.

“Oh, my! How are we supposed to join this fight? Isn’t this a war amongst gods?”

“Stop crying and get into Return to Heaven Formation! Split into two groups and- huh? This is?”

A blue spherical light fell over the heads of the Masters conversing with each other through whisper chat. Though they appeared quiet on the outside, internally, the users had been busy shouting at each other.

“Damn it!”

Taken aback, Merlin grabbed Arc and Youngmin by their shoulders and teleported across space. In an instant, he moved them to a residential area more than a kilometer away from the battlefield.

Boom!

The 30 or so users who couldn’t avoid the light-based attack were ‘erased’ without the chance to scream. Since the light sphere had a radius of a few hundred meters and arrived immediately, only a few users survived. The only ones who used teleportation and escaped that way were Merlin, Arc, Youngmin, and Jeros, while Cruze shot out of the vicinity like a bullet.

“I guess he won’t allow us to watch and engage comfortably. Come out, Requiem!”

Cruze kicked off the ground with a cry and jumped, and soon, golden spiritual qi gathered in the air and covered her body. In less than a tenth of a second afterward, she was aboard a Gigas, a gigantic 15-meter-tall bipedal mech weapon.

“What is that, bro? Is that some sort of materialization that aura power users can utilize?”

At Youngmin’s question, Merlin shook his head.

“No, it’s her flying shuttle. Well, since she designed and customized it herself, at this point, I guess it can no longer be called a traditional flying shuttle.”

Of course, there were essential requirements for all flying shuttles of a certain level or higher, such as space flight and atmospheric escape. However, Cruze focused the remaining functions of her flying shuttle solely on combat; the vessel probably couldn’t cross galaxies and instantly move between solar systems.

Soon, the resurrected users reappeared and started commenting.

“Oh, the flying shuttle isn’t restricted by the civilization-level limitation! Come out, Gust of Wind!”

“Satelli!”

“Ugh! I think I’d just be wasting my energy if I summoned my flying shuttle. It’s not built for close combat.”

“I don’t even have one! Since we’re attacking our target from a long distance, let me board one of your flying shuttles!”

The battle was fierce, so it was impossible to know when death would arrive. For users, dying in DIO was an annoyance rather than something to fear. Moreover, in this mission, the operators removed the death penalty, and players could resurrect up to three times. Like this, the users could focus entirely on combat.

Bam! Boom! Ting!

The confrontation between Regrants and the four Grand Masters was unfolding relentlessly. The 30 or so remaining melee-based Masters were still in a Smashing Vajra Formation with Arthur at the center. They constantly checked Regrants after he swept away the Valiant Heavenly City’s Holy Land ruler, Lionel, who had grabbed Regrants’ ankle before being flung back. If Regrants could use his full strength, he could wipe out the users’ formation in one blow. Alas, since he was facing four Grand Masters, he could only hold his position by avoiding or deflecting the various attacks flung at him.

“Evidence of transcendence, burning flames….”

Merlin analyzed the battle of the transcendents and absorbed everything he could while Arc quietly chanted something beside him. The school of thought Arc trained in was called the Blak Yak school of thought, and it relied on extreme stability. Due to this, Arc chose to become a battle mage who specialized in a defensive form of martial arts, the No Thoughts Gold String Technique. Hence, she could engage in fiery combat while performing her spell chant.

‘It’s a completely different path from Jeros.’

Though non-mages wouldn’t understand the differences, the truth was that Arc and Jeros were practitioners of the same Black Yak school of thought. Black Yak’s standardized characteristics, which were formed on absolute stability, could be personalized to suit each practitioner. Thus, Arc went down the path of utilizing defense while Jeros focused on building gigantic magic formations based on the Black Yak’s solid stability principles.

Ting!

“Hmm?”

Yet, at that moment, a forceful ripple spread from Arc. Unconsciously, Merlin flinched after feeling the qi waves, but before he could say anything, a loud noise rang out from behind him.

Bang!

When Merlin turned his head to check the source of the noise, he saw Regrants holding a huge bullet in one hand. Regrants smiled as he looked at Cruze, who was seated in a gigantic Gigas a considerable distance away.

“If this hits me, will it do anything?”

[…]

Cruze had been firing non-stop with the built-in railgun on her Requiem flying shuttle. Before she briefly flinched and hesitated, she shouted, “Oh, man, all these bullets are useless if they don’t hit!” Though she knew there was a considerable difference in power between her and Regrants, she never expected that someone who appeared to be such an average-looking middle-aged man could snatch her railgun bullets with his bare hands. Moreover, Regrants didn’t even put up a defensive barrier around him.

[Fine, then. Have a taste of this! Operate Divine Weapon! Crown of Nihility!]

While it wasn’t observable from the outside, a brilliantly shining white crown was placed on Cruze’s head after she called for her Divine Weapon. It was a Master weapon that instantly amplified her memory capacity. With the Crown of Nihility, she could boost her memory to a petabyte (one million gigabytes), so she could materialize things that she could not even dream of normally.

[Operate Limited Arms! Burst! Genocider!]

She summoned a large, 15-meter-long silver weapon. It looked quite heavy, even in the hands of the enormous Requiem. The weapon resembled a bazooka with a handle attached to its cylindrical body, and this barrel began spinning in different directions and making mechanical whirring sounds as soon as it appeared.

“Huh? Hey, that’s….”

[Since you’re so confident, take this!]

Ping!

A short beam of light, which looked comparatively shabby for the gun’s large barrel, sped forward at the speed of light toward Regrants. Regrants raised his right hand to defend himself.

Whoosh!

At the same time, everyone felt an enormous amount of energy across the battlefield. The power was enough to make Arc stop briefly, with her previously chanting in a concentrated state. In addition, the Masters operating Smashing Vajra Formation looked shocked as they hurriedly stepped back dozens of meters. Merlin groaned as he realized what type of weapon Cruze had materialized.

“… She materialized an antimatter cannon?”

“D-damn it, are you crazy!? Why are you using something like that in a confined space where everyone is gathered!” one of the Masters shouted.

“Ah, damn it! Log out! Log out!”

“Did she lose her mind?! Is it such a hopeless situation that she needed to self-destruct?”

“No, before that… how did she even materialize an antimatter cannon?”

Everyone was shocked and taken aback by the unfolding scene. They tried to escape, but unfortunately, logging out took considerable time. Of course, users could spend EXP points to reduce the logout time, but since the players could use these points in so many other ways, no one really focused on lowering their logout time. Even Arthur, the one with the most EXP points, took nearly ten seconds to log out.

Ting!josei

Conceptually, antimatter was something opposite to matter, so the moment it touched anything made of matter, it annihilated the matter-based object and converted it into energy. The energy was usually diffused as heat and light, but the problem was that the amount of this newly-created energy was so enormous that it was difficult for ordinary people to even imagine, let alone endure.

The energy emitted by antimatter was equal to the mass of the two substances combined, so in theory, antimatter annihilated in pairs. However, in terms of outputted energy, the released energy was equal to 43 billion times the initial input mass. In other words, just one gram of antimatter possessed the explosive power of 43,000 tons of TNT, which meant that it could exert more force than a modern nuclear bomb.

‘Wouldn’t the antimatter contained in Cruze’s antimatter bullet be only one gram?’

As he thought this far, Merlin reflexively grabbed Arc and Youngmin. He decided to teleport through space and escape the area of destruction. The antimatter bomb’s power was indeed staggering, but it was far from enough to blow up an entire planet. Even if an antimatter bomb exploded, if someone traveled hundreds or thousands of kilometers from the detonation site….

“Tsk.”

At that moment, Regrants grabbed the antimatter bullet.

Pop!

And with a simple squeeze, he extinguished the antimatter bomb.

[… Huh?]

Cruze groaned. She had used up all her amplified strength to fire that single shot, so her Crown of Nihility immediately disappeared. And then, in front of her, a massive palm of strong qi appeared.

Crack!

Cruze’s Gigas stood over 15 meters tall, the same size as a five-story building, and yet, Regrants squeezed it into the size of a human’s fist. Cruze was still riding atop the Gigas; naturally, she died instantly.

“How… how was he able to extinguish the antimatter bullet so easily? The antimatter bullet should have possessed an unimaginable amount of energy.”

As if hearing Merlin’s groaning voice, Regrants kindly answered.