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Volume 5 Chapter 1 Part 7

「Oh, trust me it was delicious alright, no two way about it. But I have to say, you have much more spices here than I have initially expected. To be honest, I thought that the dishes that you were going to prepare would be much more primitive and simplistic.」

Izayoi meant that as a joke, but Lalah’s face became more sullen after that comment of his, almost as if she took that very personally. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to retaliate against that statement in some way, but she closed it and kept it firmly shut, most likely because she just realized that if she had pursued that subject any further she might have involuntarily given him a hint about some of the Game’s contents, and while such an accidental hint would have been greatly appreciated, it was still admirable to see that there was actually someone with a will strong enough not to talk back at Izayoi’s quips, even though this particular one was malicious at all.

On the other hand, after she licked all of her fingers clean, You summed up Izayoi’s tale with a:

「In other words, you had it pretty rough, huh? The rampage of the 『Bull of Heaven』 in the Outer World would have been troublesome by itself, but to add the Minotaur and its Labyrinth on top of that?」

「I am not going to lie, it was tough, but thankfully not as much as you seem to be thinking it was. Minotaur has been dealt with by Homura and his crew, and as for the 『Bull of Heaven』 . . . . . I honestly did not hear what happened to it.」

「Huh? You really did not hear anything about it, Izayoi? This 「『Bull of Heaven』 Incident」got quite famous here in Little Garden.」

「Oh really?」

Izayoi asked with an intrigued expression, because he was not aware that You knew about 「『Bull of Heaven』 Incident」at all. However, You frowned her brows pretty hard, as if she could not believe what she just heard and then said:

「Yes, really. I wrote about it in a latter where I informed you that the 『No Name』 have been appointed as the 「Floor Master」of the East Side, so you should have know about it if you have read it properly, assuming that you even read it at all. Did you really thought that such a big incident would have gone unnoticed and that we would not investigate it as the freshly appointed 「Floor Masters」?」

「Ahh, so that is what you meant. So, what happened with the 『Bull of Heaven』 after it disappeared form the Labyrinth? Did it continue its rampage elsewhere?」

「It was not rampaging, but no matter how many time it has been defeated, it only kept growing in size. I heard that he eventually grew to about one hundred times its original size, turning an area as large as an entire continent to a desert wasteland in an instant.」

Izayoi’s eyes became widely opened while he was in the middle of drinking a cup of tea that Lalah the Assistant Priestess served to him. Why did You not mention that sooner? Did she thought that it was not all that important of an information even though it definitely became quite a serious crisis?!

「According to the report form Mr. Kouryuu, who was the first to arrive on the scene when 『The Bull of Heaven』 reappeared, is that 「it is a monster whose primary method of attack, or maybe it would be more accurate to call that its feature, is that it is capable of decomposing water into its base components, hydrogen and oxygen in order to produce infinite amounts of energy」. Also, according to him, the land around him continues to get dried up and desertified even now as we speak.」

「I knew that much already, because the original 『Bull of Heaven』 from 「The Epic of Gilgamesh」is a monster associated primarily with drought and famine.」

In its original mythological story, 「The Epic of Gilgamesh」, 『The Bull of Heaven』 was a monster whose mere presence was turning the earth into a desolate wasteland as it caused a famine that lasted for about seven years. The reason why he has manifested itself during the 2^nd War for the Sun’s Authority was probably because his attribute of being a famine-causing incarnation of the drought mist have been closely related to the sun itself. However, the ability to call forth Storms and the attribute of being made from a mass of cumulonimbus storm clouds would never apply to that mythological interpretation of 『The Bull of Heaven』, so for it to manifest with a with a trait and an element that was the exact opposite of what it was in mythological tradition, it must mean that it had to have been a result of some other force or possibly even another kind of Divinity getting intertwined with it. And the most likely culprit here were the particles that have now been confirmed to have the ability reproduce, improve and then ultimately mass produce even mythological monsters: Star Particle Bodies. And as a result of a fusion of 『The Bull of Heaven』, which held the properties of both an etheric body, astral body and the tachyon particles at the same time with those 「Astral Nanomachines」, a monster that transcended its mythological counterpart was born. Just by existing it weathers down the material world, erodes it to death, and continues to grow, expand and proliferate without stopping thanks to the energy that it has stolen from its surroundings.

Such a creature, capable of dominating both the earth below and the heavens above with its ravaging sandstorms and thundering cumulonimbus clouds. . . . . . . . . . . .  must be a truly mythological sight. Horrifying in its effects on the world around it, yet still divine in the magnificence of its towering form.

(It would have been troublesome enough with just the ability to spread its disease around, but those storm clouds it is now made of just upped the ante to a whole another degree. As long as it will be able to suck out the energy from all of the sources of water around it, it is literally going to grow infinitely.  . . . and yet, even though it possesses such terrifying abilities and would most definitely be capable of killing all that would dare to oppose it if only it became serious enough to pull it off. . . . . . . . . . . . . . it just did not do it, even when it had not one, but two separate occasions to do so.)

When it was in the Outer World, it caused immense destruction simply by going forward and spreading its virus around, but other than that, it was not directly attacking anything that crossed its path, and even when it appeared in the Underwood during Homura & Co.’s Gift Game with Shirayuki-hime, the only thing that it limited itself to doing was chasing after the Giant Spirit Train. That was probably because during both of those times there was no need for it to start taking things seriously.

「I feel like I should not even be asking about this, but 「The Saurian Demon Lord」tried to fight it, right? If so, then I can only imagine how big of a massacre it was for him since this guy and 『The Bull of Heaven』 seem to be the worst possible matchup under the sun.」

「And you would imagine the correct thing, because this was not even close to a battle, it was a one-sided bloodbath. When I finally arrived on the scene myself and rushed in to grab him and make a run for it, he was so bloodied and tattered that I had difficulties discerning which side of him was the upper and which was the lower one.」

Saurian Demon King, otherwise known as Kouryuu and Fuhai Dasheng, 「The Great Sage of the Sea」 is a young Demon Lord capable of manipulating the ocean water and a possessor of a body of steel which he has obtained as a result of a thousand-years long training in a submarine volcano, who has also been granted the sovereignty over the moon.