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Last Embryo Volume 6 Chapter 5 Part 1

CHAPTER 5

In the meantime. . . . . Kasukabe You continued to push forward on her way through the lower levels of the underground Labyrinth.

(. . . .  It is getting hot in here. I have been going for a while now, but could it be that I am getting closer to the volcano?)

Now that she was in the lower levels of the Labyrinth, the heat really began to rise as she continued to walk through corridor after corridor that became a straight road at one point, just a single path forward without any branching ones deviating off of it to the sides. Apparently this must have been where the true Labyrinth was starting, and everything before must have been treated as the entrance. Right now, with each passing step the air around You was getting more and more dry and soothed, making it really painful to simply breathe, and since this was a point where it was basically impossible to maintain the roads as well as it was done on the upper floors, the only thing that remained from this point onward was the Labyrinth made from the natural walls of the caverns around You. Also, no one on nothing tried to stop her from proceeding further down the path, but it was exactly that peace, quiet and tranquility in a place such as this one that made it all the more ominous and terrifying.

If the monster that was supposed to be down at the lowest level of the Labyrinth is anywhere near, then it means that You has to remain cautious and alerted at all time if she does not want to find herself at the receiving end of a surprise attack. As she proceeded further down the road while sharpening all of her five senses to their absolute maximum, she could gradually hear the sounds of battle and explosions coming from further ahead of her. It was pretty obvious that no matter who or what were there, they were fighting rather fiercely, to the point where the small cracks started to appear in the structure of the bedrock, making You worried about what would have happened if this place, located so deep underground were to collapse as well? Unless the Labyrinth itself has been secured with some kind of Gift that would prevent something like that from happening of course. You thought to herself that it would have been really nice if that turned out to actually be the case, because then she could have gone and battle at her full power without needlessly holding herself back due to the risk of collateral damage to the surrounding area being too big.

(Uwaaaah. . . . the further down I go, the stronger the tremors are getting. Just who is fighting over there, and how strong do they have to be for the shockwaves to be traveling so far away and with such intensity?)

In the place where she was now, the whole Labyrinth was swaying and moving as if it was a living being and lava was flowing so fast through the veins in the walls that it almost looked like blood travelling through the arteries of the bloodstream. According to the words spoken by Krishna and 「The King of the Murderous Species」, the entirety of the Lost Continent of Atlantis was once a living, breathing organism. Under any normal circumstances words like that could have been easily dismissed as little more than the ramblings of a madman. . . . .  but not this time. After all, this is Little Garden we are talking about, a gathering place of various Gods, Demons and Buddhas where pretty much everything is possible just as long as all of the right conditions were met, and to be honest, a part of You has been anticipating such a possibility, because if it turned out to indeed be true. . . . . . . . . . . then would that not be pretty exciting in its own right? Normally such an enemy would have probably been impossibly difficult to challenge while being alone, but as long as it is a living, breathing organism, then the story would be altogether different. That is because the Gift in Kasukabe You’s possession, {Genome Tree} allows her to imitate and borrow the power of any living organism she comes into contact with and make their power her own, no matter how powerful that living organism might be.

(Our battle with 「The King of Murderous Species」yesterday. . . . the difference in our power and abilities was so great that if it was not for Izayoi’s intervention, I definitely would have died back there. And because of that, I did not even have the time to use my trump card.)

And besides, You’s trump card is not something that she could just whip out whenever she felt like it, because there is a fair amount of risk involved with using it. Although it can give her definite advantage is short encounters and battles that would quickly be over with, it would be different if the long-lasting battles where the enemy would not be defeated in the first few minutes were to be taken into consideration, so the best way to utilize it is to use it as a last resort measure to finish the enemy off in an instant after collecting enough information about them. . . . but in order to do that, the battle would have to be dragged long enough for her to actually collect the necessary information about the person or a monster she would be fighting with, and as we all know, a luxury like that is not always available on the battlefield.

(. . .  I think I am getting closer.)

After passing the lava tube, You found herself in a large open space filled with crystals that looked sturdy enough to withstand the heat of fierce battles, or perhaps it was the kind of crystals that has been planted here with the exact purpose of mitigating the impact of fierce battles in the first place? The more You thought about it, the more she was leaning towards the latter possibility. And once she got even further, she saw something that made her eyes go widely open when she hid herself behind one of the larger crystals so that she could freely observe the source of the loud battle noises that were now booming in her ears ever few seconds.

「Jump back, Jin Russel! ! !」

That shout was so loud that she thought that her eardrum were going to explode on the spot. And in response to that immensely loud shout, a small boy jumped backwards. Soon after that, a fist of the giant man who looked like he was the one whom the boy was fighting against struck the ground where he was standing just a moment ago, it pierced the bedrick and crystals all around it and covered them with a web of cracks that send tremors and shockwaves throughout the entire naturally eroded arena. The strength of that single blow, which was easily on par or even stronger than Izayoi’s caused various parts of the Labyrinth to break up from the walls and ceilings and collapse. While avoiding the pieces of the falling debris, the boy shouted orders to his companions, who were battling their enemy together with him.

「Marchosias, use your speed to keep the enemy distracted and support Heracles, but be sure to maintain the safe distance at all times! Pest, you cover the entire area around him with your wind Caramel, you stay ready and look for an opportunity to join in and attack together with the rest!」

The commands have been given, and the boy’s companions executed them all without a second of delay. Marchosias, the strange Demon with bird wings and the head of a wolf attacked their enemy by continuously moving back and forward between the cavern’s ceiling and the ground at the speed that was truly unreasonable, even for a mythical creature born of magic, making it difficult to follow its movements even for someone like You, who has already seen and fought against her own fair share of monsters and humanoids whose abilities were based entirely on how fast they could move around the battlefield. Pest: The Black Percher and 「The Demon Lord of the Black Plague」summoned her black winds to rob their enemy of their sight by covering their field of vision in its entirety.