Chapitre 22: Way Big

"Tch, nothing but bones. All that hard work and for what, nothing but a few bones. Maybe those glowing eyes might have been worth something if only we didn't have to deal with these beams."

"Haha, you surely have your priorities straight." Selena said, falling to ground at the greed she had heard from once soft friend. "Most people in this story would be happy to be alive after that ordeal."

"Sigh, honestly I wonder how your brain works." Looking at her while smiling since he was happy for a bit of the old times since in this hell even that wasn't an option normally.

Yue silently came up and started to hit Hajime with hands balled up. "You big fat meanie, how could you do that to me? I could have died if you hit any lower."

Scratching his head he looked down to her other complaint and was at loss since she was not wrong per say but he honed his skill to shoot small marks a long time ago. With the grace of jackhammer he said, "it's okay it will just grow back no need to worry about it."

As she heard those lines Selena got up, and asked Yue "what had happened?"

"Hajime here shot me" patting her scalp where the bullet had passed through. "I think he burned the top of my head with that bullet."

"Jeez you two. Who needs an enemy when I have such wonderful allies." Hajime says in the most sarcastic tone he could muster seeing his two shameless friends roast him.

"Come here Yue, I will protect you from evil Hajime." Not missing a beat, Yue left Hajime and hugged Selena. "There, there. He can't help it at times Hajime is as dense as black hole. It's alright." Yue and Hajime both look at her shameless ness due to the fact that she was the real black hole in the party in their eyes.

"The two of you are going to give me nothing but migraines." Seeing that, for the moment, they were safe, Hajime went around collecting meat from t-rex and ugly ass dryad for both of them to eat.

Yue hugged just a bit tighter as soon as Hajime turned to do his thing. "Thanks, I know you just try to keep our spirits up. Though Hajime will pay" she says with the grin of a predator hiding in between Selena cleavage. 'I will be sucking you dry tonight Hajime.'

"Hey guys, I found something here." Both looked towards Hajime who broke down what looked to be a fake wall. What could be seen was beyond them. They saw what looked to be another deity different from Ehit, but they saw seven dried up blood puddles of blood that were around this statue.

"It looks like a summon ritual." Yue saw what looked to be faded magic circles around them. "I'm not familiar with this branch of magic, since even in my time summoning magic was already a rarely practiced art. It looks very barbaric though since it took seven to summon that thing," looking back where the body would have been only to see dust now since the magic holding them together scattered to the wind.

"Well since these crazy nut jobs made this fast I guess they made it to the end of hell. We have to be on guard since we don't know what else they did here." He destroyed the altar, erasing the deed that had been done here.

Click went off and the middle of the room started sinking down showing stairs going further down.

"Let's stay here so I can recover our spent equipment." Making a bonfire add warmth to a cold cave mellowing the atmosphere. He made two spikes of earth and set two big chunks of meat to cook slowly while he sat down, made more bullets and checked over his equipment.

After everything was said and done, Hajime ended up getting sucked nearly dry once again and Selena was laughing her butt off. The three slept together to keep the warm close. Yue sandwich hugging Hajime.

After a few hours the party got up. Going down to floor one hundred. It turned out it was just one huge maze, with no monster to be sensed. The group set up camp in front of two tower doors with a snake logo in between them.

"Well, it looks like the final boss is here," dropping his pack to the ground only to grab things he would need for the fight.

"Do you sense any fake wall like the last boss floor?"

"Mmm use his senses around him. I can feel past the door but while we were walking I was on full alert and never felt any fake walls. But does it really matter" he said with a smile "we kill our enemies, it is as simple as that."

"Ya with my meat shield here I'll cover you with my magic."

"Haha your two wild animals." Selena says.

Both Hajime and Yue replied in an exasperated tone, "You have no right to speak of that." Recalling the eight fifth floor and what could be called a war zone.

"Ready girls?" Hajime says, smirking with his stuff equipped. This feels like Chrono trigger when I double check before a big boss fight.

"After this I want a nice long shower. I miss being able to laze around hot tub water" Selena looked at her tied hair and wanted to fix it so much.

"Ah, yeah, I miss having nice long showers too," Hajime says while looking the other way.

Yue looking in between them lost once again. "But you always made a bath for us most of the time we rested."

"It's not the same when we are in the middle of the floor where we could be attacked." Hajime and Selena said without missing a beat. "Hahaha"

"It's a cultural thing, Yue" Hajime pats her head "you will see when we get back home to japan" he says with a smile.

"Ya glad to be included in the conversation."

Selena was at the door pushing it open.

As Hajime and co walk into the boss room everyone took a moment to look around and saw pillars all around them seem to be holding this room.

'It is likely that the skeletal party might have made it this far since they clearly set up a trap on the last floor. I wouldn't put it past them to do something for Ehit.' Selena already prepared two ice blades that she has perfected in hand, both in the form of a short bastard blade. She didn't want to throw her main weapon if she didn't have to.

"It looks like we have plenty of places to use for cover at least" Hajime said, having Donner at the ready.

"Ya."

"You know I think this is the first flag you raised" Selena says. Hajime sighs, seeing how annoying it could be on the other side.

"Tch, fuck me."

Soon they stepped past the first third of the room a magic circle appeared. It appeared red like all the others but part way through its activation the circle turned pitch black and it kept expanding and the boss room was shaking at the same time. The once football stadium room turned into a whole city and pillars once held the room together shook and fell due to the trembling and expansion of the current room they were in.

"Sigh, I hate it when you are right Selena." Hajime says, falling back so that he would not be close to the circle that was now five times bigger than it originally was, in terms of diameter.

With a flash of light, what stood before them was a towering 30 meter tall dragon. However, unlike most normal dragons that people would think of, this one had five different styled heads on it. From left to right, there was a head completely made of fire, one that looked like a sea serpent, a brown one with a spiked crown, a nearly pitch black head with red eyes, and finally a sleek metallic head with green eyes.

Standing before the trio, was a total rip off of a monster that Selena played in her past life, the Five-Headed Dragon.

The sleek looking head starts to shine more as wind picks up around its body helping its wings get the monster airborne.

"I'm not even sure who to blame for this. Clearly this wasn't in the script." Hajime says, shooting at the wings, trying to make it stay on the ground. Selena follows suit by throwing her duo blades aiming for its right wings while using gale claw and lighting field on her two ice blades.

Soon after launching their attacks they felt themselves getting slower, looking at the darkest looking head with eyes glowing an ominous red as clearly casting a debuff on the party. The only elemental looking head used a flame breath on the two ice blades melting the two swords and magic dissipated well before it reached its target. At the same time the middle dragon head used its own magic to make an earth wall slow down the incoming attack. Luckily Hajime shot all six rounds in a row and four of them had fallen off due to being blocked. But two manage to make it through the heavy defense. It managed to slow down its lift off and the dragon roared in pain since its scales weren't all that strong due to two rounds that still made their way through its defense. The last head turned to its wing and sprayed it with water and wound healed at a visible rate in front of the party.

Not to be out done, Yue had finished casting one of her strongest spells, Azure Blaze right on top of the dragon to bring it down in a last attempt to stop its take off. But the fire head seems to be stretching itself to take the attack head on. The Azure Blaze started to unravel like a ball of yarn and get absorbed into the head, turning it blue.

'It looks like the heads are immune to their respective elements.' Yue thinks, as she sees the dragon head glowing with power.

Hajime was done reloading at the end of Yue's casting of the spell, slowed down due to the debuff. Once the dragon was stabilized in the air, the metallic head opened its mouth and launched a mass of wind blades at them.

Hajime shot down the ones targeting him, while Yue dashed behind Hajime not wanting to waste mana. Selena pulled out her black blade casting diamond skin on her whole body and gale claw on her blade, then proceeded to slash at the wind blades, weakening them to make the damage superficial.

Soon they could see the dragon fling high up in the makeshift cave while casting earth bullets, letting gravity help it with extra force. As well as launching more wind blades to rain down, although not as strong it was still enough to cause as much damage as possible at a distance.

With a big sigh Hajime just looked at their final enemy with exasperation. "Man those goons from the last floor clearly fucked with this floor too. I could sense the original magic being forced to change all of this," seeing nothing but a lot of flat lands with all of the pillars on the floor around them after the room changed. "So we need to get that thing to stop moving so much so I can try to take it out with Schlagen here," as he moved his sniper rifle a little, bringing his two companions attention to it.

"Yeah also that water head seems to be its healer. Its size doesn't seem to be helping it though since that attack made way though its scales. Which is odd since it's a dragon of all things and their defenses are supposed to be legendary from the story I heard." Yue added in.

'God damn it! Someone is ripping off Yu-Gi-Oh now for this trash.' Gritting her teeth Selena wanted to end this farce more than her allies, especially since she recalled using a dragon deck when she used to play the game in her past life. Letting her emotion guide her, she used body strength on herself with her sharingan active and charged at the monster.

"Something is bugging her," Hajime said as he saw Selena charge while cutting down any attack that would have hit her like she cut weed from the sky. "Sigh, you ready, Yue," feeling her hugging his neck as Hajime was activating the same skill to catch up and help their front liner. All he heard was a hum in affirmation.

As she got closer to the dragon by four miles the other head started to use their own magics as well try to shoot her down. A flame breath was coming at her and instead of dodging she charged her blade with more mana, overcharging next attack so that instead of the normal gale claw it was the triple claws coming with each swing cutting right through the flames.

Selena was able to cut through the flames, but didn't account for the wind blades and earth bullets that were following behind them. Right as they were about to hit, she was protected by Yue with a timely wind barrier.

As the flames die down, the Fiery head slowly returns back to its normal red hew.

"You got to calm down Selena, you're lucky we made it in time to save your sorry ass." Hajime chastised her.

From what the trio could tell it seemed that the five heads were not in agreement since three were turned away while two tried to run at the group. All the while they are still casting wind blades and earth bullets.

"Umm it's running like a chicken."

"Okay Yue, we are pretty much at the high point possible for this lizard to fly up. Selena and I will come at it from two different directions, when you see open try to shoot it down." Hajime orders. Yue nods and starts casting wind magic around her person to maintain her altitude.

Hajime went to the left and Selena went to the right. Selena seemed to have some bad luck since four of the heads turned and fired a water jet with wind blast propelling it faster. Not far behind them were earth bullets. Due to being in range once again, Selena felt a bit sluggish. Pull out Abraxos unloading all the rounds in a bid to disrupt the income attacks. It failed spectacularly causing her to be shot down from the sky to the ground making a huge crater. Yue notice that was Selena knockout and start fly down to help her up leaving Hajime to solo the dragon.

Seeing his opening since most of the heads were forced on Selena, Hajime stopped dashing and lined up his Schlagen and shot at the five head dragon break right through the flame attack directed at him and shooting off its water head clean off. The four other heads screamed and turned to look at Hajime as if he killed their dog as they torpedo at him launching 3 attacks, a flame breath with wind amplifying its speed with earth needles once again. He managed to dodge the majority of the attacks but was caught on the edge of it causing him to spin away, just barely missing the speeding dragon from taking a bite out of him. Unfortunately the grip on sniper rifles was lost, dropping it to the ground and breaking it due to the force.

Yue during this time was next to Selena trying to shake her awake to no avail. Not wanting to be away from the fight for too long, she begins to slap the shit out of Selena with the use of body strengthening to wake her up. "Wake up stupid! We are missing the fight!" Yue says while hearing the loud roar in the sky.

"Oww," rubbing her cheeks, Selena took out a healing vial and downs it to recover from the beating she took. With a second to look at herself she was glad that the water blast did not destroy any of her clothes. "Phew, I can't imagine running around naked." Selena says with a grin before turning to Yue, "Hey Yue, can you make a water storm near the dragon?"

"Hmph, of course. Who do you think I am?"

With a smirk, Selena says "A loli vampire"

Yue narrows her eyes and then turns around with a humph, "I'll get you back for that one day."

Selena quickly reapplies her body strengthening again and starts her mad dash up towards the dragon once more. Yue casts wind magic around herself to follow behind her, but stops half way. Once she stops, she raised her hands and begins to gather a large amount of water magic above the dragon.

The dragon was in the middle of attacking, sending a tornado at Hajime causing him to run around so as to not get caught up in it.

Right on the very top of the ceiling, clouds started congregating together.

Hajime, seeing the ominous clouds above the dragon forming, fires Donner at the dragon to distract it. Without the water head, the Dragon didn't notice the gathering of water mana above and redoubled its focus on Hajime.

As Selena closed in on the dragon, she noticed the missing head on it, and noticed that the area where the head was, was glitching for lack of better terms. It seemed like the neck was trying to look where she was, but then a Hydra head would occasionally show up, right before disappearing once more.

Yue, after gathering enough mana, brings her hands down turning the clouds above into a torrential downpour. Engulfing the dragon in a heavy crash of water, slowly pushing it down. The flame head slowly lost its brilliance, becoming more like an ember of its former self.

Selena gets closer to the dragon and starts to weave her hand signs and gathers her chakra. Her chakra starts to build up more and starts to make an aura around her. An odd pressure starts to make itself known to everyone, turning their attention to the source.

Yue looks up towards Selena when she felt the pressure and notices that she has a dark azure aura around her. The next thing she saw was as if Selena burned a lot of that aura as she heard ice prison. Yue's eyes open wide since up till now she never showed off a wide scale area of effects skill till now. The dragon was completely at the mercy as ice creeped over its body, covering its wings and slowly encroaching on the body also. The fire head-like construct couldn't handle being frozen just after taking a water attack directly and turned to steam. The other three heads moved to try to break its wings free from the ice, but just before they could a bright light went off right in front of them, blinding them for a while.

"Take that you overgrown wanna be dragon!" Hajime yells, seeing the stun dragon's last struggle to stay airborne, just before a crash could be heard.

Boooom!

The now three headed dragon landed on the ground, creating a crater on the floor. Hajime dispelled his air hike¹, and dive bombs towards the dragon grabbing his shotgun while channeling his Steel Legs skill. Hajime lands on the sleek head, denting it, and levels the shotgun to it. Just as he was about to fire, the dark head quickly moved in front of him and the eyes glowed red.

To Hajime, the world turned dark and the only things that he could see were Selena and Yue in front of him, looking at him, just before they turned around and walked away from him.

Hajime felt his rage build up at the sight and cries out, "BULLSHIT!" and flares his magic, breaking the illusion. When the world finally reasserts itself, he finds himself in the mouth of the dark dragon, just as it starts to close it. Hajime raises Berthold to the roof of the mouth, and fires, creating a hole in its head. When Hajime got out from the hole he made, he saw that the dead head seemed to be covered in static for a bit. The look changed from a dragon-like head to a hydra-like head, just before it came back to a dragon head.

'What is going on?' Hajime thinks, confused. He didn't have much time to think about what was going on before he had to jump away from an earth spike from under him. Trying to stay away from the floor, Hajime creates more Air Hike platforms to avoid the spikes.

Selena and Yue join back up with Hajime, with Yue latching onto Hajime to replenish her mana supply. Once she is done, all three of them turn to keep an eye on the now twin headed dragon as it rises back to its full height. As the dragon gets up, it grabs one of the spikes and breaks it off and tosses it at the trio. The trio scatter and avoid the spike, moving closer to it ready to finish it off. The Dragon rages, stomping its feet creating earth spikes all over the ground trying to hit the three, all the while the sleek head starts to create a tornado around it. The tips of the spikes closest to the tornado break off and start to spin around it like a shrapnel barrier.

"Damn annoying boss. Yue do you have a way to get past the fling shit. I got one more trick that could end this fight," grabbing a bandolier with a few grenades ready to go.

"I can make an air shield so you can pass through, I will be forced to stay still while casting it. Selena, can you destroy the incoming projectiles?"

"Dang Yue, you are such a slave driver" smiling while having her blade and gun at the ready.

Yue casts her defensive wind barrier around Hajime, surrounding him in a sphere of rotating wind. Once he has the barrier, Hajime dashes forward, ready to plow through the tornado knowing that Selena can cover him. Selena charges with Hajime before launching Gale Claws and bullets at the rocks, breaking them down to dirt.

Hajime would occasionally stop and use Diamond Skin to tough out the few rocks that got through. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the largest amount of rocks coming at him. He knew that Selena would not be able to cover him from this wave and that his Diamond Skin was on cooldown. He was not sure if he could take another wave and survive when all of a sudden, Hajime was surrounded with a red aura and everything started to slow down around him.

Hajime was able to see the movements of the rocks, and was able to dodge them with minimal movements. Yue and Selena gawked at him, surprised that he was able to dodge all of those rocks. Selena was not only surprised at his ability to dodge, but also was surprised by the skill evolving in this manner. 'It really shouldn't have awakened that way'

Hajime's shield crashed into the tornado and opened up an opening for him to get his chance to end this. He tosses his bandolier towards the dragon, and whipped out Donner aiming at it. With a smirk Hajime fires and says, "Jackpot". It was at this moment that Hajime's chuuni spirit truly manifested.

Selena sees Hajime aiming Donner sideways and felt her eye twitch, "The chuuni is strong with this one."

"Huh?"

The bullet flies through the air, streaming right towards the bandolier, right as it got near the base of the necks of the dragon. The bullet ignites the first grenade and causes a chain reaction, leading to a massive explosion and blowing both heads off the body from the neck.

Hajime turns around with a smirk and mutters to himself, "Cool guys don't look at explosions" before joining the two once more.

The body of the dragon falls to the ground and causes the room to shake. Hajime has a self-satisfied look on his face as he closes on the two girls, not noticing the black magic circle that appeared over the body.

Out of the circle another dragon started to rise out, the moment it formed out of the circle, its wings shot out to the side, with wings that were more streamlined for a quick body. The dragon was white in color with green accents on various parts of the body.

The girls widened their eyes seeing the phenomenon that was happening behind him and tried to warn Hajime. Seeing their reaction Hajime turns around, only to be surprised with a beam practically right in his face. The next second, an explosion occurred shrouding the three in a fog like smoke.

[GAHAHAHA! That's right! You are nothing compared to us, you puny mortals!] a voice like sound reverberated through the minds of those that might still be awake. [Hmm, what is this?] it questions as the smoke clears away revealing a semi-transparent orb that faintly has a leg or two visible in the more transparent parts. A little while later, the whole thing falls down, mostly like snow, as it starts to swirl around one of the girls.

"I am glad that I was able to use Avalanche Defense just before you got hit," Selena says, slightly panting. "We just had enough ice around to reduce the strain on me"

[Don't worry filthy humans. I have been ordered to catch you if you lay down and grovel, this magnanimous one will only beat you to within an inch of your life.] At that moment Hajime had already fired his remaining shot at the dragon in the hope to end this painfully long battle. From the edge of the dragon's wing, air shot out causing it to move up making the shot to just barely miss its target. [You, human, shall be the first I take down, per my master orders.] In no time flat it used the same magic coming off its wing to speed up.

Hajime with his infinite wisdom knew they could not all dodge it, so he grabbed Selena and threw her at Yue, making them avoid the incoming train rekt that was about to happen.

Using diamond skin on his whole body just before impact was the best thing he could do given he had no more time. All he felt was being clamped down on by a mouth that shook him back and forth, just before it threw him out with all the momentum it had; causing him to crash into the wall, breaking more bones and coughing out blood. Not being able to move Hajime broke his fake molar to drink his ambrosia to start the healing process.

[Well he wasn't much to write home about. I wonder if either of the two of you will do any better.]

Seeing that this fight was going very wrong Selena was growing more agitated. 'Yue, I'm going to slow it down for you. You will only have one shot to get rid of the piece of shit.' Selena sent to Yue with Telepathy, just before taunting the dragon, "Hey douchebag! You need to return those lines to the nearby Yakuza member you stole them from!" Realizing she didn't have enough chakra for the next ninjutsu, she started woven hand signs to cast Avatar of Winter Desire. She broke her new fake molar drink down the heal water to replenish the magic/chakra she needed to cast it.

[No need to worry brat I will be just as gentle as I was with you friend there.] Wind magic starts to gather behind it as it blurred once again. In Selena's desperation to see the incoming enemy, her last tomoe unlocked, finally allowing her to see clearly the dragon that was too fast for her to dodge. Selena decided on a plan of action and reached for her blade, just as she finished her last hand sign. Just as it was about to ram her just like Hajime, she drew her katana stabbing down early since she knew at any moment she would be hit. The dragon failed to notice anything amiss since it was traveling too fast at that moment to feel the temperature drop below zero in less than a few seconds. Yue at the moment was charging up her light hammer spell in order to call upon it at the moment the dragon slowed down. It was clear that in this form it gave up all of its defense for speed.

As the dragon tries to release its prey in order to move on to its last target he hears a scream coming from the side of its eye only to see that same girl screaming at the top of her lungs. As it was about to shake her off, he began to notice that his wings that shot out all the air were frozen over and it had to flap its wings in order to stay airborne.

[Oh no girl, I'm not falling for that again.] Using all of its focus, it whipped Selena off, but the damage had been done. All of its body had a thick layer of ice, making it unable to use its special wind magic boost to move anywhere near its top speed. It saw its death looming over as a crackling bolt of lightning was coming at him and he had no way to avoid it since its greatest strength had been sealed off.

[AAAAA I won't forget this, stupid girl! That's twice now you've frozen me to death! Next time we meet, it will be for keeps!] Soon after that magic circle that had been holding the construct together dissipated, showing a chunk of meat falling to the ground.

At that moment the room they were in started to shrink and return back to how they first saw it, only that all the support pillars were broken. Yue knew that Selena needed to be checked on first and saw a very disturbing sight. Her whole body was blue as if she was dying of frostbite and her left arm looked like one more good pull and she would lose that arm forever. She quickly pop her heal water over her arm while casting a fire to warm up Selena.

"Honestly, we could have found another way" Yue grumbled at her, seeing her wound visibly heal, but where arm was almost torn off there was a new scar as a stark reminder that they need to treat the dragon with more care if ever saw him again. After the color returns to her and she looks to be breathing normally, Yue drags her to Hajime to see his condition. When the small room finally settled down, the other door they had not come from started to open. Yue got ready for another fight just in case, but nothing came from it and she saw it was safe. Both Hajime and Selena end up getting a lot of scrapes since Yue was also running low on mana, so she could only keep up her own body strengthening.