I lifted my arm high above me.

“Ode, it’ll be fine if I blast a hole above me, right?”

I started charging the mana around me, I was standing in the dead center of the tree’s top platform. Sparks of white and gold moving around my hand, combining into this small superheated ball in my palm. Magic sigils glistened around my wrist.

<Hm… Well, there is a possibility it might->

||FIRE BEAM; MODIFICATION, HEAVENLY FLAME||

A beam of pure white and gold fire shot up directly upward, the leaves above us turning molten within seconds. A relatively large hole opening up in the World tree’s metal canopy.

<Why did you ask if you weren’t going to wait for an answer?>

“I mean, it’ll all be gone anyway.”

<Seriously man… you know what you’re doing, right?>

“Yeah. I’m all set here~”

I reached into my inner coat pocket and pulled out the ominous black orb I got from the Elven Queen. It had this purple aura around it, and the orb’s surface almost seemed to be shifting ever so slightly. There was this rough scratchy feeling against my palm, like something was indented in the orb.

I squeezed it slightly and started dousing it in mana. The purple glow grew stronger, it sucked nearly five thousand mana out of me.

“Alright. Let’s do this.”

As the mana focused on the small palm sized orb in my hand, the air around us started blowing slightly heavier. It was similar to when there was an overload of mana in Noyade. The world itself and mana were linked and because of that, mana could cause immense changes.

I returned my left hand to slime and started spinning it around immediately, it stretched out into what was comparable to a lasso. I whipped it upward toward the searing hole in the canopy. It curved to the right and then changed to the left before latching onto a metallic leaf. The rope line became firm since I reabsorbed all of the slack. 

It started rapidly pulling us up before I swung our body around. My feet landed lightly against one of the leaf’s edges, I cut the slime rope and boosted us up higher. We jumped between a bunch of the World tree’s leaves, and within seconds we breached the top of the tree. I reset my hand and clenched it a few times to make sure it felt right. With the orb still held firm in my hand, I started wrapping it in a coat of mana before doing one final leap with all the power I could put into my legs. We went flying into the sky, I spun around before throwing the orb at full capacity straight up… or so I thought.

I watched as the orb started curving with the wind.

Which for what I was doing, was really really bad.

“Ah... shit-”

A sudden blast shot from the edge of the continent. It wrapped around the black orb and shot it straight up, correcting the mistake I had made when I threw it.

Wha-

I looked in the direction of the blast.

||GLIMPSE||

I glanced at where the sudden wave of mana came from. I saw Esther holding a light-blue sniper rifle shaped weapon, small particles of mana surrounding it. Risible looked straight at me and put up a peace sign while smiling…

How the fuck could he even see me?

“Six, we gotta go now.”

“How do we get back?”

“I left a spare body back at Laviel’s place, we both need to simultaneously swap into it.”

We started falling down toward the hole we made in the World tree.

“On three!”

In unison we spoke.

“One!”

“Two!”

“Three!”

We swapped our consciousnesses out, for some reason it wasn’t instant. Maybe it was because this was my first time doing a body swap from half a continent away… or maybe it was because there were two minds going to the same place.

Colored lights flickered in my eyes, a slip stream of red and black formed. They whipped around and looped through one another.

My vision went white, streaming the colors of reality into my vision. My body was split into a black half and a red half. We disconnected and reshaped back to our human-like forms.

“There we go~”

I stretched.

“Ah-”

“What?”

“We don’t have time to waste, we have to go. Now.”

I walked over to one of Laviel’s concrete walls before slamming my fist into it, the wall crumbled and the debris fell down. I jumped up and grabbed the top of the broken wall before swinging my lower body up. I landed on the roof, Six climbed up after me. To our pleasant surprise, the roof everyone was teleported to was Laviel’s roof.

“We have to go now, so I’m going to be a little rough.”

“Huh-?”

“Rough?”

I shot out slime tentacles that wrapped around everyone’s waist. Risible, Laviel, Esther, and Six.

Now out to sea!

||TELEPORT||

||TELEPORT||

||TELEPORT||

||TELEPORT||

||TELEPORT||

||TELEPORT||

||TELEPORT||

||TELEPORT-||

I rapidly started warping us out to sea, my remaining mana being drained at an insane rate. I only had around ten thousand remaining, and I was using short bursts of teleportation.

<Cyn, do a large teleport straight ahead.>

“How far-”

<Eighteen miles.>

“You’re fucking insane-”

||TELEPORT||

I tried teleporting us that far without running out of mana, but I hit my limit as soon as we warped. I looked down to see this massive fishing trawler, we were falling from the sky down toward the deck. I quickly lifted everyone above me, taking the full brunt of the force as I slammed into the hard metal deck. 

I slowly lowered the tentacles and released everyone, Laviel and Esther seemed sick and immediately ran to the ship's railings. Risible fell back and laid down on the deck with me, while Six stood there. I sat up quickly and shook my head before quickly looking around the deck.

“Hm…? I feel like we’re missing someone…”

“Who though?” Six scratched the back of his head.

I stood up and stared out toward the Elven Continent,I saw a small quick light-blue flash.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

A bolt of pure light-blue and white energy zipped across the ocean, it was heading straight for us. The water ripped and teared behind it, with the tiniest little sparks making the entire thing almost appear as a blur.

Sonic booms were rupturing off of the bolt, it started zigzagging back and forth. Within a moment the trawler was suddenly surrounded by a vortex of light-blue and white lightning before a tap was made on the deck behind us. I turned around-

“How the fuck could you leave me?!”

“Oh- Six. I remembered who we forgot.”

“Ah. I remember, too.”

“But seriously! H-how could you… how could you leave me behind?!”

“I mean… you caught up, right?”

“That’s not the point!”

Laviel suddenly ran in and embraced Levin, his attention being completely changed from arguing with me to being flustered by Laviel.

She started tugging at his arm before she quickly gave me a wink.

Somehow she already had Levin wrapped around her finger…

Risible sat back up.

“This ship hasn’t changed a bit~”

“Yeah, you’re right. Still the same.”

I looked at them slightly confused.

<Oh- I keep forgetting this since you’re new Cyn, but there’s someone brand new we’d like you to meet->

<Well, I say ‘new’ but he’s currently the oldest among us.>

Heh? But the mech guy… was ‘541’... right?

I heard footsteps echoing from a dark corridor near the center of the ship.

A man emerged from the darkness; he wore an old pirate captain’s coat that was a dark blue and black color, he had a captain’s hat of the same. The man's eyes were a pure oceanic blue color, one of his legs was a wooden prosthetic, and there was a small streak of ocean blue hair sticking out that fell down his face. In his left eye was a yellow-gold number, ‘727’.

<Our next variant, variant seven hundred twenty-seven, Atlas.>

“Atlas…”

He smiled toward me.

“You must be One. Nice to meetcha~”

Atlas stuck his hand out in a greeting manner.

“Huh-? Oh, nice to meet you, too.”

I shook his hand, his grip was firm so I tried to match him a bit. Though I fell a little short.

He stepped back a little, I then started walking over to the front of the ship. Everyone stared at me in confusion when abruptly all of the variant’s eyes went wide for a second.

“Alright~ here we go~”

I smiled as I reached the front of the ship.

“I have a very special introduction for everyone, well, the variants seem to have already caught on~...”

I turned around as a purple gleam shone high above Cyconis.

“Everyone~... our new friend~”

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

The black orb slowly stopped up in the sky, it twisted slightly revealing an extremely rigid and carved out text. In a bloody purple, was the number ‘999’.

A nanotech type of noise started churning inside of the orb, it transformed slightly, the orb opening partially with neon purple lights inside of its core. These small strands of black liquid started leaking out in a parasitic way, suddenly a rush of black slime exploded outward, the size was…

Too large.

The slime expanded to be larger than Chroterr… It rushed upward in thick strands that intertwined and merged as one, creating a massive body. There was a large tail, and these fins formed along the top and sides into an almost shark-like appearance. The colors filled in, silver and black flushing out across its body. It also had these cybernetic arteries that were purple and white that ran up its body, sharp jagged metal teeth… rows of them flooding its mouth. On the side of it there was a giant purple ‘999’ scratched into its metallic skin. Its eyes were pure black and in its left eye there was a giant purple ‘999’, just like its side. It appeared to be scratched on, carved in messily and roughly.

A large shadow overcast the continent, the cyborg elves looked up to see the horrific monster above them. Metallic gleams sparkled in the sky, its mouth gaped wide open. The World tree almost felt small by comparison…

“Huh? What’s…” A young elf glanced up.

“No way… th-the Kontinent Kaiju…?” Muttered an elf with glasses.

“It’s… been a thousand years… I-it’s still alive…?” An older elf spoke with wide eyes.

“A monster…” Another elf muttered.

“That’s- the legend-” An elf spoke as he fell to his knees.

They knew within that instant. They were dead.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

“Now~ meet ‘999’; the Continent Crusher, Zenith~!”

I threw my arms out to my sides, everyone except Atlas and Six were jaw dropped.

The Continent Crusher slowly fell through the air, plummeting toward Chroterr. The sides of the monster burned slightly, very small sparks of flames on parts of its body formed from the air pressure. Its jaw spring locked shut, the entire continent being obliterated within milliseconds. The metallic teeth crunched into the earth, digging instantly through the mixture of metal, rock, dirt, and sea. The booming noise of its jaw echoed across the sea, shockwaves erupting across the ocean, the water started pouring in toward the variant. Almost like a whirlpool around its teeth. The gust slammed into the trawler, pushing it back a couple dozen feet.

A purple ray went up through its body before it returned to slime and warped down. The small black orb sealing off once more, metallic clicks locking in place with steam shooting out, but before it could fall I pointed my hand toward it like a finger gun. I dragged my arm far out to the right, spinning along with it, causing the orb to come flying toward us at a giant arc. 

The orb spun rapidly, I looped my hand back. It bolted inward toward me, I grasped the orb. It hit my hand with a loud impact sound, I held it so it was visible to everyone on the ship.

The black palm sized orb with the scratched purple ‘999’ on it.

My slime surrounded it and absorbed it back into the system.

The Elven Continent was now a giant crater, massive scratched up teeth marks left behind that slowly filled in with the ocean’s water.

“Atlas, want me to absorb you as well?”

“D’ya want to swim to shore?”

“Uh-... no.”

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

|Somewhere that wasn’t the Elven Continent|

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

A prestigious robotic elf sat on the balcony of a manor.

The elf had silver-black hair and was delicately sipping some sort of tea. Next to him was a human. He had a medium sized beard, and he wore this rich looking mantle. The human appeared to be on the younger side, he sat across from the cyber elf.

“We managed to retrieve a piece of the ‘Impenetrable Knight’ through quick paced teleportation magic… though it was only his head.”

“What are you going to do with a mere head?”

“Either cryo-freeze using magic, or put it into a sanitation chamber to keep it from rotting.”

The cyborg elf sighed, resting his head on his hand.

His right eye lit up blue, and he started reading what appeared to be a log of some sort playing back in his head.

“Hm… it appears I lost contact with my stand-in.”

“That woman, right? What was her name again?”

“She was irrelevant. It seems I must head back earlier than I anticipated.”

“Such a shame, your highness.”

“Please, no need for formalities. King of Dynanimus.”

The elven man stood up and began walking away, his movements sounded full of mechanics. His face lined with cybernetic tattoos.

“So someone dares get in my way, huh~?”