High above the world, the phantom of the antique clock spanning the heavens appeared once again within the darkness radiating from the Seated Angel. Its single hand had already passed the previous "3" mark and was now approaching "4."
Across the earth, the sinful desires hidden within the hearts of all living beings were awakened. The savagery buried deep in their bloodlines, long restrained by modern education and morality, began to seize control once more, whether human or god...
Arson, murder, robbery, looting. In barely a dozen seconds, people consumed by their desires and blinded to reality began indulging themselves. Under the Devil's temptation, they committed all manner of acts they had always wanted to do but never dared to.
Some people who happened to be in exactly the right positions, whether they had always hidden themselves well or harbored deeply suppressed negative emotions, began to act. Flames unlike either the Heavenly Fire or the flames from beneath the earth erupted across the land. Concealed beneath the Heavenly Fire above and the sulfur rising from below, they were mistaken for nothing more than slight differences in the timing of the Day of Destruction.
If everything continued like this, then by the time the Heavenly Fire burned everything away and the sulfur dragged the human world into Hell, the deeds committed by those driven mad by desire before the apocalypse would probably be buried along with them.
"Tick!"
A crisp click rang out.
The miracle people had witnessed only minutes earlier happened again.
"Tick! Tick! Tick!"
A slender white finger once more pressed against the hand of the antique clock. Four crisp clicks of turning gears and jumping hands sounded in succession, and the hand that had already reached "4" was forced all the way back to "0 (12)."
"Hum..."
In that instant, the strange vibration returned.
A white wave visible to the naked eye spread outward, sweeping across the world at a speed that seemed both impossibly slow and impossibly fast, erasing the darkness that covered heaven and earth wherever it passed.
Heavenly Fire, sulfur, and floodwaters vanished without a trace before they could even descend upon the world.
The enormous clock stretched across the planet, heralding the arrival of the Day of Destruction, also faded away as its hand returned to "0."
"Am I... dreaming? Or was that an illusion?"
Two apocalypses had come and gone within just a few minutes.
Yet now the weather was bright, the sea was calm, and everything that had happened felt like a movie, some sudden hallucination.
But when people lowered their heads, the devastated world left behind by the disasters told them clearly that it had not been a dream.
Those had been genuine world-destroying catastrophes.
High in the sky, before the enormous yellow-green Seated Angel that radiated an eerie aura and sought to destroy the world, yet remained tightly restrained by several Magic Circles, stood a figure dressed in a white tuxedo.
In one hand, Cid held a clock divided into forty sections. His index finger rested against its hand, firmly keeping it at "0."
His lips pursed slightly as he examined the clock with a strange expression. Then he glanced down at the blue ocean below, where the darkness had only just receded.
After hesitating for a moment, he moved the finger holding the hand back ever so slightly.
The hand moved from "0" to "1."
Below him, the gigantic clock appeared again.
Boundless darkness instantly blanketed the skies of the entire world. Invisible Heavenly Fire began to gather, the Sea of Blood that would engulf humanity started forming, and the smell of sulfur spread through the air.
The apocalypse appearing again without warning completely shattered the nerves of people who had only just recovered from surviving two of them.
They scattered in every direction, fleeing while crying and cursing the world. Quite a few simply lay down on the ground and waited to die.
The phenomenon did not just break the people below.
Even Cid was startled.
He hurriedly pushed the hand back to "0" with his index finger.
"So this thing isn't just decoration?!"
Cid stared at the clock in mild astonishment.
Even he had not expected the clock he had picked up from the Angel and Devil to actually work like this. He had always assumed it was merely some kind of projector or signal transmitter they used when destroying the world.
No.
Those two things were not the same.
Or rather, the being in front of him was merely a symbol.
The true source of the clock's power was this world itself.
Cid carefully examined the clock in his hand, then looked at the struggling Seated Angel.
He was beginning to understand.
On the surface, the power of the clock came from the Seated Angel before him, but that was not entirely true.
The Seated Angel was merely an erroneous fusion of two natural laws of the world. Because of that, it possessed the full power of both laws, but it was not their true body.
The true bodies of those two apocalypse programs were the Cores that existed throughout every corner of this world.
Honestly, until now, Cid had attributed every disaster afflicting the world to the two colossal beings from earlier.
But what he had just discovered told him that the Seated Angel was merely a switch used to activate those disasters.
And it was not even the only switch.
The difference was roughly like placing an electrofishing machine beside a pond versus covering the entire bottom of the pond with electrical circuitry.
Now this was getting interesting...
Cid stared intently at the uppermost division of the clock.
He suddenly became extremely curious.
Just what kind of world was insane enough to install an apocalypse program inside itself?
For an ordinary person, this would be equivalent to deciding to commit suicide first and ask questions later. It was so ridiculous that Cid almost wanted to turn the hand all the way around just to see what happened after the world killed itself.
What could possibly justify the world going to so much trouble to create something like this?
"Aah..."
While Cid was thinking, a shrill scream erupted from the enormous Seated Angel in front of him. It sounded like a banshee, yet carried an unsettling hint of allure.
Visible sound waves exploded outward along with terrifying currents powerful enough to overturn a continent.
The Magic Circles restraining the Seated Angel shattered like glass under the impact.
Above the world, thick darkness and the enormous phantom clock appeared for the fourth time.
After watching the phenomenon appear and disappear three times already, Claire had discussed it with Aurora and reached a conclusion.
The one responsible for the apocalypse was fighting another powerhouse of the same general level, and the one preventing the apocalypse currently had the upper hand.
So Claire had already started treating this fourth apocalypse rather casually.
She stretched lazily.
This disaster would probably end just like the previous three. It would disappear halfway through and accomplish noth...
Standing atop a high-rise building, Claire leisurely watched the descending Heavenly Fire and smelled the sulfur that had suddenly filled the air.
By now, she was treating the apocalypse like a limited-time spectacle, something along the lines of a meteor shower.
Then she caught a flash of white at the edge of her vision.
Claire froze and tried to see what it was.
She blinked.
In that instant, the sound wave swept over her position, sending visible ripples through the air.
Then came the overwhelming pain.
It felt as though the scream had shattered her eardrums.
Huge sheets of glass exploded around her.
For a moment, Claire completely lost control of her body. Her internal organs felt as though they had been struck by a tremendous impact.
Instinctively, she raised her hands to cover her ears.
Instead, her fingers touched something wet and slick.
Blood.
"Fuck..."
Claire dropped weakly to her knees.
Through vision already blurred with blood, she saw the disasters vanish midway through, exactly as she and Aurora had predicted.
From the streets below came the cries of people who had only just begun getting used to the repeated disasters, only to have that fragile calm shattered again.
But Claire no longer had the leisure to treat it all as entertainment.
Because just before the clock in the sky disappeared, its hand had already reached "5."
"BOOM!!!"
Alongside the agony of her shattered eardrums came the pressure from within the darkness.
It had appeared for only an instant, yet that overwhelming presence suppressed every powerful being in the world, making them tremble in fear and fall to their knees.
Fear, madness, savagery.
Countless negative emotions were crushed before they could even fully arise, leaving everyone motionless.
Despite the desperate danger they were in, despite that presence appearing and vanishing in only an instant, the entire world fell silent.
It was so quiet that people felt like ants standing before giants.
No.
They did not even need to look up.
Simply closing their eyes was enough to sense the two terrifying existences standing upon this planet, completely distinct from everything else in the world.
Once felt even a single time, that presence would be engraved deep within one's bloodline.
It was absolute suppression in the truest sense.
The presence of beings standing unquestionably at the very top of the food chain.
...
High in the sky, Cid had been blown away by the blast and was now tumbling downward through the darkness.
He looked at the Seated Angel, which had already resumed carrying out its duty, then at the returning disasters.
Almost instinctively, he glanced at the clock in his hand.
Hmm...
His finger had not moved at all.
There had not even been any possibility of it slipping from friction.
Yet the hand beneath his index finger was now pointing at "5."
Had his strength not been enough?
Had the hand pushed his finger aside without him even noticing?
No.
The dial itself had moved.
"Sigh..."
Cid let out a sigh.
He casually turned the hand back to "0," suppressing the disasters that were once again preparing to destroy the world, then looked toward the Seated Angel.
His body continued falling.
A gentle breeze blew from the Seated Angel and brushed across his face.
Cid extended an open hand toward it.
From his perspective, the terrifying, grotesque yet strangely beautiful Seated Angel floated beneath the blue sky.
Its bronze-like armor emitted faint ripples of darkness, while its corpse-white eyes mechanically carried out its apocalypse program without emotion.
Completely unaware, it had already been enclosed within layer after layer of magnificent Magic Circles.
"Be still."
Two simple words.
The eerie, terrifying Seated Angel immediately stopped moving.
As though those words had turned it into an actual corpse perfectly matching the scale-covered, deathly skin across its body.
"It had to be an Undead Rule-type boss. The kind I hate most and find the most disgusting..."
Standing before the Seated Angel, Cid wore an expression of open disgust.
He could feel the clock in his hand becoming increasingly difficult to control. He was pressing down not only on its hand, but even on the dial itself, yet it still seemed ready to break free at any moment.
"I wonder what the trick to beating you is?"
Judging only from the apparent "Core" he could see and the clock in his hand that felt jammed and ready to explode, Cid had a strong feeling that the Seated Angel before him was exactly the kind of infuriating boss that would make players want to vomit if it appeared in a game.
"Forget it. I'll just kill you..."
Cid thought for several minutes.
After only a few exchanges, there simply was not enough information to determine the proper way to deal with it. Even the apparent "Core" seemed completely unrelated to what a Core should be.
Then he looked at the control Magic Circles, which the restrained Seated Angel was already close to shattering from within.
Cid decided to stop thinking for now.
He would kill it once and figure out the rest afterward.
Maybe he was simply overthinking things.
At that exact moment, the Magic Circles that had endured repeated attacks from the Seated Angel finally shattered.
The Seated Angel broke free.
Before it could resume its duty of destroying the world, it saw a tiny figure standing directly in front of it.
One finger touched its forehead.
"Aaaah... ah..."
The colossal being was large enough that merely breathing while standing in the middle of a city could destroy an entire continent.
Yet the shrill scream emerging from its open mouth abruptly stopped halfway through.
Its towering, deathly body froze motionless in midair.
Specks of golden light began appearing across the Seated Angel's bronze-colored, dry, corpse-like skin.
They pulsed as though following some invisible melody in the void.
The lights connected across the Seated Angel's body and gathered into countless threads.
Or rather, they illuminated the natural laws that had always been connected to the Seated Angel, but which ordinary people simply could not see.
What exactly was the Seated Angel before him?
Cid's answer was simple.
He did not know why it had been dragged down into physical form, but it was a vessel for part of the programs that constituted the laws of nature.
It unquestionably possessed the complete combined power of both the Angel and Devil.
Yet this body was merely the outward manifestation of that power.
It was a program governing the operation of the world.
A part of the laws of nature.
Just like apples falling toward the ground, boiling water producing steam, or air currents flowing, it existed throughout every corner of the planet.
The physical Seated Angel that had appeared in the world to fight Cid was the main body through which this program manifested.
At the same time, it was merely a puppet used to carry out that program.
Because the program itself was an intangible existence spread across every corner of the world, destroying the puppet accomplished nothing.
It would simply gather together and form again.
But did that really mean the program itself could not be killed?
Cid did not think so.
The golden threads extending from the Seated Angel grew longer.
And more numerous.
Dense strands of golden light crossed the sky, ocean, and land.
They wrapped themselves around every living being in the world, covered the surface of every building, and connected to the bodies of plants and animals.
For an instant, the entire planet seemed to be dyed gold, glittering brightly in space.
People stared at the threads around their bodies with tension, fear, or curiosity.
Then Cid, standing before the Seated Angel, moved.
In that single second, everyone in the world saw themselves and the people around them flicker several times like the black-and-white image of a malfunctioning old television.
It was as though the world's operational logs and source code had been exposed before their eyes.
"Ah..."
Cid withdrew his hand from the Seated Angel.
The golden threads connecting every living creature in the world disappeared.
Cid raised his face toward the sky, a bright and cheerful smile spreading across it as he sighed.
"It failed..."
"Aaaah!!!"
A scream even shriller and more terrifying than any before tore through the world.
Boundless darkness instantly engulfed the entire planet.
Heavenly Fire and infernal fire descended toward the human world.
A blood-red flood seemed to pour directly from the heavens.
An overwhelming heavenly might that crushed all virtue pressed down upon the deepest reaches of everyone's hearts.
"Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick!"
Six consecutive ticks rang out.
On the enormous clock looming over the world, the black hand reached "6."
The sixth disaster had descended.
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