Chapter 34: Beginning the Transformation
Borrowing the old man's wolves was not because someone wanted to slack off; it was because he needed to concentrate fully to accomplish such a large-scale reversal of transformation.
The sight of over a thousand giant wolves running was visually striking.
On a medieval battlefield, an equal number of well-trained armored cavalry could decide the outcome of a battle involving tens of thousands.
However, Voban's giant wolves were far more terrifying than medieval heavy cavalry.
If someone threw this pack of giant wolves into the Battle of Kursk during World War II, they could trample those one million-plus pale-faced enemies into crippled wrecks.
Now, Hikigaya was riding on the back of one of these giant wolves.
These creatures were roughly the size of horses, but riding them was very different — it felt like sitting on a wild pirate ship.
These wolves seemed to have no concept of normal running. At the slightest provocation, they would leap dozens of meters high, and if not forced to take a detour, they would only run in a straight line.
When Hikigaya saw the edge buildings of the town of Nikko, he finally saw the ape-like divine beasts.
As Hikigaya had suspected, these giant gorilla-like creatures were the grassroots commanders of the Flower-Fruit Mountain Monkey Army.
The Great Sage Equal to Heaven wouldn't bother issuing orders to every single monkey; instead, he directed his ground forces through these ape-like divine beasts.
When the wolf pack appeared at a corner outside the town, dozens of these ape divine beasts leapt out from the jungle of buildings.
Behind them, tens of thousands of monkeys surged out like a tidal wave from the gaps between buildings, gathering under the leadership of these divine beasts to meet the approaching wolf pack.
With the ape divine beasts roaring, dazzling multicolored rainbow lights rose among the monkey army.
Amid the shimmering glow, their bodies grew stronger and metallic.
Dozens of ape divine beasts transformed into iron warriors, looking like giant monsters from a fantasy movie, standing at the forefront of the monkey army, glaring fiercely at the approaching wolf pack.
As a bystander, Hikigaya found this hard to comprehend.
Divine beasts fighting in groups shouldn't literally mean hugging each other to death on sight, right? Why did these monkeys seem to be preparing for battle formations just like humans?
While Hikigaya was thinking this, Voban's wolf pack reacted as well. The giant wolves began to close ranks and gradually formed tight, orderly formations. Apparently, not only the monkeys but the big dogs had learned to get crafty.
At the same time, their bodies further enlarged. If they were like prairie horses moments ago, now their sizes rivaled wild buffalo.
This really made Hikigaya want to light their tails on fire just to see what would happen.
But despite his curiosity, he wasn't willing to let the two sides tear each other apart right away. If everything was reduced to fragments all over the ground, Hikigaya would be forced to "refresh his face" at the cemetery just to avoid exhaustion.
By the way, the mount Hikigaya had chosen was very enthusiastic, running at the very front. This meant that whenever he looked up, he could see the fierce face of the iron warrior.
However, this time, the iron warrior's roar was just an old breath of bad smell and nothing more. Its life light became nourishment for Hikigaya, nurturing the first radiant halo of the coming world sun.
"Buddha says, 'When talking about chickens, don't speak of civilization, you, me, him. More shaving, less heh-heh, that's a good monk,'" Hikigaya said, watching the iron warrior turn to dust before him, then loudly proclaimed to the monkey army ahead, "I have less hair than you, and I can still ride dogs, so you have to listen to me first."
Then he began to speak: "I'm about to show off, come on, everyone line up, raise your hands and don't move around."
Unfortunately, no one... oh no, no monkeys listened to him.
Actually, no wolves listened either. Everyone was doing their own thing.
After all, they were just monkeys and dogs with a weird human making strange noises; why should they listen?
The giant wolf carrying Hikigaya was running wildly, having locked onto the dense monkey group ahead, preparing to charge. The giant wolves had already started accelerating.
Before Hikigaya could object, the first batch of giant wolves formed three or four rows of horizontal lines and charged into the monkey formation.
The monkeys in front were knocked down without resistance, then trampled under the hairy paws of the giant wolves, screaming in agony.
The iron warriors seemed to want to save them, but they were too few in number. Those who stayed standing, roaring beast cries instead of fleeing, were immediately overwhelmed and torn to pieces by the wolf pack.
Of course, in the process, more than a hundred giant wolves turned to dust from the furious iron warriors' tearing and trampling.
The only group with zero casualties was Hikigaya's wolf pack — he eliminated every iron warrior blocking the way in an instant.
After knocking down about a dozen rows of monkeys, Hikigaya finally felt the wolf pack's momentum slow down, which made him happy and ready to perform a "rescue."
But just then, the giant wolves suddenly scattered and ran to the sides of the monkey group, while another batch of giant wolves lined up and charged again along the original route.
Hikigaya thought these wolves' tactics resembled medieval heavy cavalry launching a group charge, definitely trained by Voban.
But hadn't he said he was supposed to show off? If this kept up, wouldn't it just be a battle of wits between dogs and monkeys?
Realizing this, Hikigaya jumped down from the wolf's back.
The wolf pack's assault was efficient. After only three charges back and forth, the monkey group gathered outside the town was completely defeated. Once all the iron warriors were eliminated, the remaining monkeys basically lost all ability to regroup.
This gave Hikigaya a great opportunity.
In ancient times, when the Mesopotamians were still complaining about the unpredictable Tigris and Euphrates rivers and lamenting the hardships of life without hope for the afterlife, the Egyptians along the Nile had already begun imagining a wonderful afterlife, dreaming of becoming immortal gods like Osiris after death.
Although the passing years had laid these people to eternal rest beneath the desert sands, Osiris' resurrection power never disappeared from this world.
Even if no pharaoh still believed in this power, there would always be a god-slayer who possessed it.
Hikigaya looked around. In front of him were monkeys in chaotic disarray, running wildly in all directions. Behind and on both sides were the giant wolves continuously dispersing the monkey troops, preventing them from regrouping.
These creatures had not yet started true slaughter, which was good.
In his eyes, there were no longer monkeys.
Every monkey appeared as a form of light to him.
Some lights were humanoid, but others looked like plants or trees.
The Great Sage Equal to Heaven's transformation art was related to primitive human totem worship. Not only animals and plants but even natural phenomena could become forms of
transformation. But judging from what he saw now, the Great Sage hadn't gone that far yet — only playing with animals, plants, and humans.
Even so, this was already extremely overpowered...
"Luckily, I have some cheats too..."
Hikigaya comforted himself, then unabashedly unleashed the long-awaited Coming World Sun.
Unlike at the Tobu World Plaza, this time Hikigaya used full power and opened up the entire map.
Like setting off fireworks, starting from him at the center, the monkeys exploded layer by layer. The dense life lights became so substantial that they rolled across the ground like a tidal wave. Each sweep blew up a large group of monkeys who couldn't dodge in time.
As more and more monkeys were caught in the blast, this sea of life became increasingly fierce and dangerous.
Within this sea, more and more entities began to appear.
Most were humans, but there were also animals and plants, with the latter slightly outnumbering the former.
There were common street-side trees, various grasses, even potted plants — all things the Great Sage had once turned into monkeys.
This made Hikigaya realize that the scale of the Great Sage's monkey army was definitely beyond what he and Voban had anticipated. However, at this moment, it would not hinder him from transforming this already defeated monkey army back into their original forms.
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