Game reloading?
Emilia had never played a game, so she didn't quite understand, but changing history?
Altering the historical fact that one was attacked? What kind of nonsense was this? How was anyone supposed to fight against that?
"If you can't completely destroy Icarus in an instant, so fast that its consciousness doesn't even have time to trigger a time reversal, then—"
Then what? It didn't need to be said aloud. Emilia already knew. This was basically a different kind of immortality.
How were they supposed to fight something like this?
What kind of cheat-level monster was this?
Her pupils shrank as Emilia saw a scene that made her skin crawl: the dragons and angel legions from the initial vanguard that had been shot down were now fully restored.
Under the eerie light formations in Icarus's eyes, they were covered by a magical array, and those shattered like broken puppets or toys instantly returned to pristine condition.
As for the lightning giant summoned by the Thunder Empress, it had already been drained and now vanished like a burst bubble.
"No way—!"
Her voice came out hoarse, nearly dry.
"Relax, it's not rewriting the history of destruction, just pure regeneration. As long as the damage is complete enough—say, about seventy percent of its body ground down to dust-sized particles—then it can't regenerate,"
the dragon girl said lightly, though Emilia still found it terrifying.
Even if they somehow managed to pull that off, if Icarus rewound its awareness to a point further back in time, it could undo even that outcome. So what was the point?
This was practically an unstoppable natural disaster army.
"Tampering with history? Isn't that similar to your ability, Lucoa?"
A sudden voice broke in, startling Emilia.
A new dragon girl appeared—one who'd recently been used as a weapon and beaten up by a demon lord, if Emilia recalled correctly.
Wait, did that new dragon girl just say the massive, world-class-bust Lucoa also had a history-altering ability? And that the apocalyptic beast-dragon Icarus's power was similar to hers?
Could there be a connection between the two?
Apparently so—Emilia noticed Lucoa's face cloud over with a mix of gloom and sorrow.
"Hey, Lucoa, then how do we destroy Icarus!?"
Tohru, the other dragon girl, clearly realized something too but didn't press further. Everyone had things they didn't want to talk about.
"Just evaporate Icarus in an instant. To do that, the force must be strong enough to shake the very star beneath our feet. At the very least, it has to be felt clearly across the planet."
Lucoa's answer stunned Emilia. Her red eyes opened wide.
What kind of sick joke was that? That level of power was beyond imagination.
Since coming to this world, Emilia had gained broader knowledge and now understood that the world humans lived on was a planet.
For a force to be strong enough to shake the entire planet to the point where it could be felt globally—what kind of scale was that?
If humans can feel a clear tremor, it's at least a magnitude 3 earthquake. But that's usually near the epicenter. For such tremors to reach the opposite side of the globe, the origin point must be cataclysmic.
The oceans would likely boil, tidal waves would sweep the continents.
Basically, it was like the asteroid impact theory from the surface world that allegedly wiped out the dinosaurs.
"That's basically world-ending!"
Even though this was the inner world, there were still tens of millions of intelligent beings living here.
"Exactly. What's needed is a single strike capable of ending surface-level civilization—no, the power to destroy it outright."
Destroying the world and destroying surface civilization were two very different things.
"But how can we possibly—"
"It's coming!"
Coming? Emilia's body reacted before her mind did. An overwhelming sense of crisis welled up inside her.
The source? Icarus, cloaked in dark flames.
Its enormous, gaping maw widened. Black particles of light gathered and compressed, forming something like a black hole. It drew in all the ambient energy from the air—light, space—everything was being sucked in.
An icy dread crawled up Emilia's spine into her brain. Her instincts screamed at her to run, that she couldn't withstand this.
But as a hero, a champion of justice, she could not flee.
Then, beams of blue light erupted all around them, like someone shining flashlights into the night sky.
One of the blue beams closest to Emilia made her expression change—wasn't that the gateway between the surface world and the inner world?
What was going on?
"Sigh... so they really did something that stupid after all!"
Lucoa's voice was filled with pain, disappointment, and anger.
"This is bad! Someone intentionally destroyed the disguise on the gateway to the surface world—it's been fully exposed!"
"Damn it! Didn't the auto-destruction spell activate?"
"No! The spell failed—someone's interfering. Suspected members of the [Twilight] organization spotted!"
(T/N: Author be throwin out organizations left and right to the point I don't know whos who.)
Various panicked voices came from the communication device the hero academy had given them, making Emilia's expression turn stone cold.
Meanwhile, in the sky, Icarus seemed to have noticed the beams as well. In the next moment, the compressed black energy ball exploded like a cluster bomb, firing off multiple smaller spheres toward the blue light columns.
"Tohru!!!"
"On it!!!"
Tohru didn't need Emilia to say it.
If those hit the surface world, the peaceful world where Kobayashi lived would be wiped out.
In an instant, Tohru transformed into a giant dragon, bared her fangs, and unleashed a devastating breath attack.
She wasn't alone. Many other dragonfolk who had crossed over also acted immediately to intercept the incoming doom. On the human side, the heroes too scrambled to defend the pillars of light.
But the truly powerful individuals—the top-tier heroes—most of them still hadn't made a move. It was unclear where they were, but Tohru could sense them watching from nearby.
Damn cowards.
Crack, snap, rumble—ominous sounds rang out. One of the black energy spheres had evaded interception—not stopped, but deflected—and landed at the base of a light pillar.
It twisted and devoured everything in its radius—ground, space, and light—like a true black hole.
When the swirling void finally dissipated, it left behind an unspeakable scene.
Everything within a kilometer was just gone. The ground had been vaporized, leaving behind a perfect hemispherical crater.
At its center appeared a hundred-meter-wide hole, surrounded by floating shards of glass?
No—those weren't glass shards. They were pieces of space itself. The world had been punched open. And on the other side of the hole—
—was the surface world.