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Last Embryo Volume 6 Chapter 4 Part 17

Literal moments after Homura hung up the call with Ayato, she could see that the Labyrinth in which they were all now also begun to shake and tremble, making it seem like the place was going to collapse under its own immense weight, and so she also needed to make an immediate decision.

「What are we going to do?! Should we go in deeper or run straight towards the exit?!」

「We absolutely cannot leave Miss Kasukabe down there! Even if the whole Labyrinth collapses, we should all be fine for as long as we are going to have Melun with us, so you and I should go to the lower levels so that we could rejoin with Miss Kasukabe, and Miss Uesugi should go back outside and secure the escape route for us!」

「All right! I am going to do that on the double, so you guys focus on running towards the stairs to the lower floors as soon as possible!」

「H-Hey! What about us, huh? You are not going to just leave us here to die, right?! Of all the possible ways to go, being buried alive is something that I do not want to go through ever again!」

『I am going to agree with her just this once, so please, we implore you, take us back with you!』

After an initial bit of hesitation, Uesugi finally decided to run back towards Atlantis’ surface together with Shen Gongbao and Byakko. And in the meantime, Izayoi and the others also begun to move, because the house in which they were in right now was also squeaking and cracking like all hell, indicating that it was also on the verge of collapsing. Not taking any chances in case that she would not make it in time, Suzuka pressed the Albino girl onto her chest tightly and then used her 『Apport & Asport』 to teleport them away from the house into the relative safety of the village’s open terrain. When he goy out of the house as well, Homura shouted towards Izayoi with his tensed-up voice:

「This is bad. . . . . . . Big Bro Iza! Go to the house where Miss Parashurama is, on the double! She should still be asleep in there, so she will not be able to get out of there in time!」

「Huh?! Oh you have got to be shitting me! Where exactly is she?!」

「In one of the huts located the closest to the entrance of the village! I think I heard the sounds of collapsing buildings from over there as well, so do go and hurry it up!」

At the same time as Izayoi broke into a sprint towards the location that Homura pointed him towards, a violent explosion that seemed to shake both heavens and earth roared throughout the village. Everyone looked around to try and locate the source of it, and then they saw it: the explosion was caused by the eruption of a giant volcano that was located far, far away into the distance, yet dye to the sheer size of it it probably could be seen from any place on The Lost Continent of Atlantis. And now, it was exactly that volcano that was spewing its pyroclastic fluids high into the air.

They reached the clouds in a matter of seconds, and as they were scorching the sky itself, they have quickly spread far and wide to an extent where they basically blocked out the light of then sun itself. Seeing that scene unfold before their very eyes, it would not be at all inappropriate to compare it to the breath of the planet itself leaking to the surface from its depths. Even though the village must have been hundreds of kilometers away from the volcano, the eruption was so strong and violet that the masses of burning rocks reached it either way, hitting the houses and other buildings, reducing them to the smoldering piles of rubble in an instant. When he confirmed that the house in which Parashurama was supposed to be sleeping was also hit by one of them, every hair on Izayoi’s body stood on end as he threw himself at the house’s remains and started to look through the rubble in search of the girl.

「Shit. . . . . . . . fuck. . . . . . . goddamn it!!! Parashurama! Are you here?! Say something if you can hear me, for fuck’s sake!」

「. . . . . . 」

Izayoi found Parashurama under the rubble soon after, but much to his frustration he discovered that she was completely unconscious. There were no visible grave injuries on her body, but she did look much weaker than before. Ever since Izayoi and Homura managed to stop her from melting down due to the Star Particle Bodies inside of her body going berserk she has been bedridden and did not have the chance to eat a proper meal as well, and it is more than likely that the current happenings only served to make her condition even worse.

「Oh come on now! Are you really unconscious or are you just taking a nap?!」

「.Ghhhh . . . . . . . . . . . . . ! ! !」

「All right, that is it! If you have the strength to be all 「Ghhhh . . . . . . . . . . . . . ! ! !」 then you definitely have enough strength to pick yourself back up, so stop napping and do it already!」

Izayoi shouted at Parashurama while smacking her upside the head. We really thought that it was awfully suspicious for her to be unconscious without any obvious signs of her sustaining any injuries, and what do you know, turns out that he was right after all and she was just pretending to be asleep! After receiving a strike to the head form Izayoi, Parashurama lifted herself off the floor in a slow, groggy manner and got back onto her feet while the waves of cold sweat continued to wash themselves down her entire body.

「Sorry about this, kid. Looks like I have really fainted just now when this whole mess started.」

「If that really is the case the make sure to give me an honest reply next time! Next time I will just straight up toss your ass into the sea if you pull another stunt like that!」

「Yeah, dully noted. By the way, kid, I have a question, if you do not mind me asking it that is. So, like. . . .what in the screaming fuck is that thing over there?」

「What?」

Izayoi raised his head to the sky to look at the same thing Parashurama was looking at. When they have been thrown out of the volcano and reached the earth, all of the rocks started to transform and crack as if they were the surface of an egg that was about to hatch, and soon after, monsters with red and black skins started coming out of them. Initially they laid on the ground right where they fell, but as soon as they opened their eyelids, they got themselves back to the standing position and begun to eat and absorb the rocks and soil from their immediate surroundings, increasing their mass and size as they did so, growing out to be five times Izayoi’s height. At the beginning they looked like little else than crude dolls made out of mud, but as they grew taller, their reddish-black skins begun to pulsate and bleed a lava like liquid from their heads to ultimately reveal a single eyeball right in the middle of their foreheads. Also, the look it those eyeballs was not of the feral beasts, but rather of something that was gradually gaining intelligence.

Giants with a singular eye in their foreheads. . .  when Izayoi saw them, he immediately understood what exactly these monsters were.

「Hee? So now we have to deal with Cyclopses out of nowhere, huh?」

「Cyclopses? The very same ones like the beings described in Greek Mythology? I have to say, they look totally different than the ones that I am familiar with.」

Parashurama muttered with an intrigued face while putting her hand on her chin.

Although Giants are present in pretty much every mythology from around the world, their exact looks and characteristics may differ greatly depending on the mythology you would currently investigate.