"Who's the strongest being to ever exist in this world?"
Yue furrowed her brow, the question catching her completely off guard. Across the table, Noir swirled the dark liquid in his mug, his face unreadable beneath the dim lighting. It was such an odd turn of conversation, completely out of place during their usual, quiet coffee dates.
"Strongest being," Yue muttered, the words tasting foreign on her tongue. She took a long sip of her own latte, the warmth a grounding sensation amidst the sudden philosophical shift. "That's a tough one. But..." her voice trailed off, searching her memory. Finally, her eyes, usually a pool of stoicism, flickered with a spark of something akin to respect.
"Satoru Gojo," she declared, the name rolling off her tongue with a strange reminiscence. "The immortal emperor of the Heian Empire, rumored to have walked the earth for millennia."
A flicker of surprise crossed Noir's face; a subtle change barely noticeable to anyone else. Yue continued, her voice taking on a strange lilt, a stark contrast to her usual monotone. "They say his power is unparalleled. A force so overwhelming, he's considered to be the closest thing there is to god. Though," she chuckled, a dry, humorless sound, "Gojo himself scoffs at that title, denying it. Instead, he claims to be god outright, the arrogant fool."
The corner of Noir's mouth twitched, a hint of a smile threatening to break through his usual stoicism. "Arrogant, huh? Sounds like someone I might get along with."
Yue snorted, a sound devoid of amusement. "He's strong, really strong, unparalleled both in history and today. The Holy Church considers him a heretic, a blasphemer for challenging their divine authority. The Heian Empire is the only human nation untouched by Church's influence, a fortress built on Gojo's immense power."
She leaned back in her chair, the playful banter momentarily forgotten. "But who knows," she mused, her voice dropping to a whisper, "maybe there's some truth to the rumors. Maybe he really is a god walking amongst mortals..." she trailed off, her gaze locking with Noir's, "Like you, Noir."
The air crackled with unspoken tension, a stark contrast to the peaceful cafe setting just moments before. Noir took a long pull from his mug, his gaze fixed on some unseen point beyond the window.
The world of Tortus is home to beings of unimaginable power and might beyond mortal comprehension. Among the human race, no one stands taller than the Honored One himself, the strongest of all sorcerers, Satoru Gojo, whose very birth altered the entire balance of the world. His mastery over combat is so absolute that his very existence is seen as a feat of the universe's design. Alongside him, there's Thomas Andre, an adventurer whose legendary strength and actions have become the stuff of legend—a shadow cast by the figure of the One True Enlightened.
Yet humans are not the dominant force of Tortus, and is merely a vertex of the trinity. You have the demons, a less-populated yet generally stronger race who bow to none other than Ryomen Sukuna himself, the dreaded Demon King and an Imaginary Fierce God. Freid Bagwa and Uraume, Sukuna's supreme generals, are terrifying beings in their own rights. The beastmen, too, have an immortal champion by the name of Serie, an ageless elf goddess whose origin predates even Satoru's era of birth by millennia. Her knowledge and power are said to be boundless.
Then there are the titans, a whole different breed. They are colossal superspecies beasts, walking personifications of raw power. Their very bodies are a potent embodiment of magical and physical radiation. These titans are not mere brutes, though their strength is undeniable. They operate within a fascinating telepathic hierarchy, a complex web of thoughts that guides their movements and actions. The most powerful among them is Titanus Godzilla, the Alpha Titan, the undisputed King of the Monsters.
These beings of godlike power that border on divinity effectively rule as deities over their domains. Their very existences' overwhelming forces are something the world itself struggle to contain. Even among their Special-S Classification, however, one name stands apart--Ehitruje, hailed by the humans as the one true deity of Tortus. Little is known of this supposed primordial entity, yet its influence is felt in every corner of the world through the preachings of the church.
The sheer power of these supreme powers shapes the destinies of all who dwell in Tortus. Whether human, demon, beastmen or other, their fates are fundamentally tied to the ambitions of these beings.
•••
The advancement of civilization in Tortus is not consistent. That is understandable for a planet considerably larger than what should be possible for life. This world's unique property of mana is the reason why humans can even live in this world, after all. It caused some form of terraforming to the fundamental genetics of lifeforms.
Some regions in Tortus are as advanced as modern Earth, and some countries' civilization level can be found similar to Earth's 16th century. Despite the humans' territory only occupying the northern hemisphere of Tortus, the land in it is greater than all of Earth's landmasses combined.
The southern hemisphere is occupied by the demons, ruled by Ryomen Sukuna and the monarchs, and the center of the equator is a massive forest that acts like a boundary between man and demon. The east is the domain of beastmen, while the far west is a gigantic desert.
To many, especially to magicians, the Reisen Gorge was a veritable hell. Not only was it home to many powerful monsters and was a source of irresistible heat, but it was also the domain of a great anti-magic system. In the gorge, all magic seemingly disperses. This is because the entire gorge is encased in an anti-magic field that deforms mana and prevents it from clustering.
Numerous scars can be seen in the gorge's steep walls. The scars looked as if they've been carved out by the claws of a gigantic beasts, but they were nothing more than Noir's slashes. The ground is also littered with blood and monster corpses.
The two, after staying a few nights in Brooke, had come back to the Gorge to check out the rumors of a hidden labyrinth. And it was right. Down below a small caving, was a small sign that just denies all prudence.
Welcome one and all! Welcome to Miledi Reisen's heart pounding dungeon! Is what the text written in a stone vertical platform says.
"Wha..." Noir unconsciously muttered.
"..." Yue was just as perplexed. They both thought, yeah, ain't no way. The damn thing was a bit too lighthearted for a title like Great Labyrinth.
"Nah, it's true. I think it's over... here?" Noir told Yue as he pressed a little rock bulging on the caving's wall. Then, like a secret passage, the wall flipped open, allowing for entrance.
.........
......
...
I and Yue took a moment to look at each other first before stepping in. Immediately after, we were shot with a countless barrage of arrows, each with different properties. Some were flaming, some were oozing out some poison, and others were made of ice. They numbered thousands upon thousands. How brutal it would've been for anyone other than us.
In front of my barrier, they all simply turned to mist and vanished into thin air without a trace. We continued on. And let's just say, it was the most annoying journey I've ever had in an untold number of years.
Not only were the traps so incredibly irksome and annoying, but the pestering voice that kept echoing throughout the labyrinth was annoying as fuck. I had to swear there just to show how annoying it was. The traps weren't that dangerous at all. They can hardly do damage. But they were annoying certainly, and following that annoyance is an even more annoying voice trying to get to your head.
Are you scared? So afraid you want to cry? Gehehehe. A little girl's voice could be heard. This labyrinth could have taken an awfully long time had it not been for my World Eyes. Yue was reaching her breaking point as well, and she looked ready to snap at any moment. After that, we went through more traps similar to the one before and that voice always irritated us. I can still maintain my cool headedness but Yue has already taken the voice as her mortal enemy.
We arrived at a notably distinguished room, incomparable to the ones before. The room was spacious and empty, but it was built with incredibly sturdy and expensive-looking materials. The only thing occupying this room was a neatly organized group of well-equipped knight statues. They were gigantic, probably comparable to the size of the Cyclops that guarded Yue's sealed room.
I and Yue looked at one another. "That couldn't be..." We both spoke at the same time. The end of the vast room was a door. A door similar to the door that led to Orcus' final boss room. We were on our way to that room ourselves in order to finish this dungeon for good, but a hindrance interrupted us.
"These things... are controlled with a special type of material. They aren't conscious nor are they alive, they're like remote-controlled dolls. Stay on your guard." I spoke out the details that my analysis gave me. I am confident enough that nothing can pass through my barrier, but one can never be too careful inside a Great Labyrinth.
On cue, the knight statues—golems—began moving. They aimed to attack us, and they possessed inhuman speed and strength. But Yue took care of them herself, launching some incredibly destructive flame magics that rendered them to cinders. This gorge's special effects of dissipating mana do not affect both I and Yue, after all. So, we can use magic as much as we want.
The golems had fallen, burnt to the ground. Then something unexpected happened. They had risen once again, regenerating at an astonishingly fast pace.
"So, we need to obliterate them entirely? If so—" Yue coldly declared as she used a magic I've once taught her.
"Disintegration."
A multi-layered magic circle emerged on the floor where I've telekinetically gathered all the golems, and a large and powerful beam of light destroyed everything in the magic circle.
"Easy." Yue proudly declared as she looked at me.
"The controller's still somewhere." As per response, the door at the end of the room finally opened. Entering it, we find darkness, as well as a few floating platforms. The room was so vast and so lacking of light that you can't actually see the boundaries with human eyes.
The platforms occupying the room were floating and had a fixed y-position, while they slowly glide horizontally throughout the room.
"How big is the room? I can't see the bottom of it." Yue said as she was looking down from a platform we've landed on. From there, two gigantic dots of red suddenly lit up. It rose, and rose, until we can see its true form. It was an enormous golem, easily hundreds of meters tall, and even bigger than the hydra that we've encountered back at Orcus Labyrinth.
"That's..." I muttered with a tone of slight disbelief. "What is it?" Yue followed up. "It's a massive hunk of azantium..."
Azantium was akin to adamantite or even dragotite back in the Cardinal World, and here was a whole golem of it. It was covered by a thick layer of stone, but inside it is where those chunks were. Yue just hummed in annoyance. Color me surprised. Azantium's the hardest ore in Tortus. And there's a whole ass giant golem made of it here. It truly looked like an incomprehensibly powerful boss monster, until it let out its voice. Its god-forsaken twistedly annoying voice.
"Heyaa! Nice to meet you! It's me! Everybody's favorite Miledi Reisen!"
It was the same voice that tormented them throughout this labyrinth since the start. The voice that Yue had taken on as mortal enemy. For the first time, someone can actually read our expressions and true emotions. The cutesy voice coming out of the heavily armed and armored golem was so utterly incongruous that we couldn't help it. The giant golem frowned in displeasure as it looked down. Judging from its voice, I kind of guessed it was a she.
"Hello? Aren't you going to say anything? It's proper manners to return a greeting, you know? Sheesh, kids these days... no respect, I tell you."
"Just unbelievable." I and Yue both muttered exactly at the same time, unable to prevent ourselves from scratching the back of our heads.
The golem with a burning knuckle in one hand and a flail in the other shrugged her shoulders in a very human-like fashion. Irritated expressions flitted across our faces. She talked just like the messages we'd seen. Since she'd called herself Miledi Reisen, it was possible it was the Liberator herself, but she was supposedly long dead and a human. I decided to try that angle of questioning first.
"Aren't the liberators supposed to be longggg dead? What's up with you? Are you even the real one?" Noir had an idea of what was going on, but he still questioned it.
"You're quite forward, aren't you?"
"I am. Now, is it ancient magic? One that interferes with the soul?"
"Huh? Wai—"
"I guess you used it to transfer your consciousness. Am I right? So that you can have a presence in the surface, you transferred your soul into the body of that golem, thus possessing it. Am I right?" In a way, she was like spiritual lifeforms.
"Hey, hey, hey, what? How do you even know tha—"
I zipped her up by putting my finger in my lips. There were things written about her from Orcus' dungeon. We'd soon be killing her anyways, so the questions are just to be certain.
"You are very much alike how Oscar Orcus described you in his own pit." I opened up the topic of Orcus Dungeon to her, revealing a n arrogant smile.
"At least let me finish! Wait, did you just say Oscar? Are you two perhaps the ones who cleared O-chan's labyrinth?"
"Yeah, we've already beat Oscar Orcus' dungeon. But I'm the one asking the questions here. If you don't want to answer, that's fine too. We'll just move straight to the part where we crush you to pieces." I removed my hand from my pockets and began to crack them up.
"If you want the ancient magic, does that mean you're going to kill the gods? Are you going to take out those conniving little bastards for us? If you got to the end of O-chan's labyrinth, then you must know what's going on, right?"
"Not necessarily. It depends, actually. But clashing with them isn't exactly on my to-do list." I realized this conversation was dragging on. "Alright, let's get this over with."
The playful facade vanished in an instant. Her voice morphed into something sinister, sending shivers down Yue's spine. The air crackled with a different kind of energy. This, I realized, was the real Miledi. Centuries of waiting for someone worthy to claim her magic must have instilled immense patience and a heavy burden. The isolation likely hadn't helped either.
That explained the ease with which she swung her massive knuckle around like a toy. I danced across the platform-strewn battlefield, dodging her earth-shattering blows. Yue provided support, peppering the colossus with destructive spells that were little more than a gentle breeze against Miledi's immense form.
"Gravity magic, is that it!?" I roared, a mischievous grin plastered on my face. It seemed my unwavering amusement was getting under her skin. I could sense her frustration, a tremor in her otherwise imposing presence.
She remained silent, unleashing a relentless barrage of attacks, even flinging the floating platforms at us like deadly projectiles. Each platform, the size of a football field, hurtled towards us at supersonic speeds. Dozens, maybe hundreds, littered the vast space, and she'd already hurled a considerable amount our way.
"Let's start... with a little taste, shall we Yue?" I transported myself behind Yue. We were locked in a deadly gaze with the golem, and we performed some preparatory exercises. The three of us had a stare down, our energies clashing in the midst of the dark space.
Yue sent some spells towards the golem, but they can hardly do a thing to something that huge and sturdy, especially since it's a whole golem made of azantium. Miledi swung her massive knuckles, and I teleported us out of the way. I sent a nuclear cannon on her way, and that blast of flame travelling a hundred times the speed of sound cracked her outer shell and it began to crumble. But the azantium lie beneath the shell, so it didn't really do much damage.
"Fufu, congratulations on landing the first strike. But I'm sure you can do better than that. Come on, I might have the spell you're looking for~ I'm pretty strong though, so try not to die."
With that, immediately after, she began to regenerate her shell. She's done it by crushing the nearby platforms, and using the debris and materials to recover her own body.
She then sent the flail attached to her other arm down to us. She didn't swing it, she fired it. How cool was that? There was no windup, so the flail attached to the end of an arm was just suddenly hurtling toward us. She must have been able to control the direction of her gravity like the other golems, so she made the flail "fall" at us.
But the flail glowed red and stopped right before my lifted palm. I was using my authority to perform telekinesis. And, I used my severance to send a cascade of slashes that dissolved the entire flail to dusts. I used my telekinesis again to control multiple platforms and sent them crashing to Miledi. It didn't do much damage, but its just a distraction.
"Disintegration," Yue's voice sounded cooly amidst the chaos and storms of debris. I distracted Miledi just so Yue could perform a targeted disintegration to the golem's core, which I shared to Yue via telepathy. Irrespective of the Azantium's hardness, the disintegration magic blew a clean hole right through the massive golem body, as the lights of its eyes flickered away and withered until nothing remained.
But it wasn't finished. I and Yue were suddenly attacked behind by a horde of smaller golems. They were big, several dozen feet tall, and they were relentless.
"I'd take care of the smaller golems, you finish her, Noir."
"Copy."
Yue turned around, and launched herself as a spiraling flame that stormed into the hordes of iron golems. As a response, they too lifted up their large respective weapons and tried to swing them down on Yue, but the heat that surrounded Yue was a scorching maelstrom that incinerated everything.
She had a delirious grin in her face as she decimated the horde of golems, something she probably took after me. Now, it's about time I wrap Miledi up too.
"So, do you think you can win?" I asked her. She didn't respond. The light in her eyes were gone, but I wasn't fooled.
"How long are you going to sulk like that? I know you aren't dead." Something's wrong... I thought, but she's already done what she's done.
"Tsk." I clicked my tongue as the entire ceiling of this vast dark room began to crack, and not long after, began to fall at immense speeds. The room rumbled. The ceilings got divided into large cubes of blocks and they all started falling down, attempting to crush everything below. Miledi was bringing the entire ceiling down on us. She had a helmet but she exuded a triumphant atmosphere. An endless shower of debris, and they were of considerable sizes too. Is this woman trying to bring us down with her? She's really gotten to her head if she thinks this is enough to stop me.
"Fufufu, here's my revenge. Aside from the knights, I can't give multiple objects orders at once, but I can make everything fall. Try dodging this. ~" Each of those falling cubes was easily a hundred tons, and they were falling as compactly as raindrops.
Yue flew to me as quickly as she could. In my hands, a black hole appeared. A singularity, cloaked by an event horizon. But this black hole was nothing more than image and it didn't contain the physical attributes of a real black hole. It was merely a medium—a medium of this world to the world of a timeless oblivion.
I threw the miniature black hole from my hands to the air, and it instantly expanded to encompass everything. All of the falling cubes were instantly consigned to that other realm on the other side of the singularity, not a single trace left behind.
The silence that followed was deafening. The miniature black hole pulsed before dissipating entirely. The only light came from Yue, hovering beside me, a mixture of awe and relief etched on her face.
"Wow," she breathed, "That was... something else."
I deactivated my skill. Turning towards the fallen giant, I saw that the remaining golems had crumbled to dust, seemingly deactivated by Miledi's demise. The colossal form of the Liberator herself stood frozen, a vacant shell.
"Looks like that's all," I said, a wry smile playing on my lips. "We did it, Yue."
Yue landed beside me, her eyes gleaming with shared accomplishment. "Indeed we did," she agreed, her voice laced with a hint of pride. "Now, the question is, what treasures await us?"