The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 653: Echidna vs Eryndriel & Elowen Part 1

"So it looks like you two are going to be my opponents, huh? Eryndriel and Elowen. Pretty bold, two goddesses who aren’t even combatants trying to take me on," I say to the pair as I snap my fingers, but I don’t underestimate them.

"Echidna... it won’t be that easy for you to win this fight," Eryndriel says, activating an instant spell. The entire setting transforms into a forest with trees thousands of meters tall.

She seems to have Elowen’s support in this spell, but that coward looks terrified to meet my gaze.

Soon the largest of all the trees emerges — its structure so immense and complex that the trunk alone is like a small universe made of condensed Mana. I look at my hands, noticing my defense has dropped to 5% of its total.

’An extremely efficient debuff...’ Meaning every single point of damage has become significantly dangerous, to the point where these two, who are support fighters, can actually kill me now.

"Is that your big play?" I grab my clothes and tear them off, stripping myself bare. Then my body begins to shift partially — my legs and arms get cloaked in darkness and expand.

My hands grow much larger, with massive claws, and just one of my hands is already bigger than my head. My legs also sprout sharp claws and their structure changes into something more efficient for running.

As my fangs grow longer and black markings spread across my body, covering certain parts, my defense remains reduced, but other attributes have spiked drastically.

"You’re not going to fully transform?" Eryndriel questions, leaping far back to gain support using the trees.

"Why would I turn myself into an even bigger target?" In a single leap, I’m already right in front of Eryndriel, throwing a punch that slams her into the ground with extreme violence. The ground explodes, creating an immense crater and cracking the nearby trees.

Eryndriel fires arrows at me while vines try to hold me in the air, but I kick the air with such force that it generates an atmospheric explosion, launching me straight toward Eryndriel’s arrows. They pierce my body easily, but I keep pushing forward, delivering a downward punch that Eryndriel barely dodges.

"..." She fires an arrow that goes straight through my eye, but I ignore the damage completely, advancing on her and landing a punch that sends her crashing into one of the trees, sinking her deep into the trunk.

"D-Don’t touch Eryndriel..." Elowen speaks from a short distance away, firing a spell at me. The attack lands, blowing a hole through my stomach. The flesh pulses and twists grotesquely, rebuilding everything — though at a much slower pace than Pandora’s.

I charge at Elowen while arrows strike my back, but I keep running toward her as she panics and tries to flee. Eryndriel begins firing more and more arrows, trying to stop me, until I reach Elowen.

I grab her leg and swing her, slamming her against a tree. I do it again and again, smashing her against anything hard while she screams in pain. I slam her against the ground and stomp down hard on her shin, crushing and shattering her bones.

She screams and cries in agony as I pull and dislocate, followed by the sound of tearing flesh. Her leg is ripped off as my jaw opens in a disturbing way and I devour her entire leg in a single bite.

"!!!" A powerful shot is fired, blowing my head apart, but my body, with its multiple automatic attack systems I created by modifying it to the limit, reacts — aiming in Eryndriel’s direction and firing a beam of chaos magic so immense that all the nearby trees are ripped from the ground.

And the great central tree is pierced with a hole that goes clean through from one side to the other. Eryndriel, who took the hit, suffers considerable damage.

"Y-You freak!! W-What do you think you’re doing!" Eryndriel screams at me as my head regenerates.

"Isn’t it obvious? I’m crushing the arrogant whores who think they can beat me. I’m going to love hearing your bones turn to dust beneath my hands. I don’t need a divine weapon against two pathetic goddesses like you."

’Damage at 12%... more damage than they caused me back at the start of the fight... this debuff is absurdly strong.’ The two of them seem deeply uncomfortable with my way of fighting.

But the reality is that they’re pulling it off. The damage is genuinely dangerous for me. The difference is, since I have no defense, I’m putting everything into close combat and saving magic for regeneration.

And since I have no defense, fighting passively is stupid, so it’s easier to just charge straight through the attacks, letting myself get hit to close the distance.

"Freak," she mutters, preparing a stronger arrow. I glance behind me and see that only roots remain where Elowen’s body was — she seems to have hidden herself to recover.

"..." I leap toward a tree. When my feet touch it, I jump to another with such force that the first tree cracks. I repeat this, keeping myself in constant motion to make it harder for Eryndriel to aim while I close in extremely fast.

She uses magic, causing millions of arrows to fire forward, but I keep pushing ahead as the arrows pierce my body. Every place that gets pierced darkens and takes on a black hue — traces of my true form.

I manage to get close before Eryndriel retreats and throw a punch that she blocks with her arms in an X shape. The punch is so strong it sends her flying while I hear the cracking of her bones crumbling.

Barriers rise up around me, trying to trap me — Elowen’s magic — but by doing so, she reveals her position. I look in the direction she’s in, stomp the ground so hard the dimension trembles from sheer physical force, and throw a punch in her direction.

The shockwave of my punch is as destructive as a high-level spell, tearing up the ground, the trees, and everything else in that direction, hurling it all away as the trees are shattered into fragments.

I turn my attention back to Eryndriel, who has retreated far away. I see countless fast flashes coming toward me — arrows moving far above the speed of light. I crack my knuckles and throw a punch in the direction of the arrows, destroying all of them.

Eryndriel uses her strongest spell, the same one I’ve seen her use in the past — it forms multiple magical circles that endlessly fire arrows passively. A troublesome spell for someone with almost no defense.

Rather than try to attack or dodge, I advance directly into the arrows’ path, because this spell has a weakness: it only fires in a specific line. When the first arrow hits and pierces through my body, most of the others pass through the same hole without touching me, or barely grazing me.

Eryndriel grows furious seeing my aggressive attack that doesn’t care about getting hit. She creates several more magical circles of this kind, with a variety of different spells on each arrow.

This change in the number of magical circles and varied elements forces me to accelerate, finally managing to close in. But now that I’m close, arrows pierce my body from all sides as I grab Eryndriel’s hand.

A dark green beam hits me from behind — Elowen’s magic, causing severe damage — but I don’t let go of Eryndriel. I move my hand, slicing hers off with a swift strike, hearing her scream.

I touch her belly, firing a beam of the Doom element that I learned from watching my daughters use it. The attack hits point-blank, blowing a hole through Eryndriel’s stomach as I throw her into her own arrows.

My body grows slightly. The black markings expand and my horns grow longer, while my tail expands and my wounds are replaced by a black mass.

"[GHAAARRRRRRKKK]" I unleash a Mana-infused roar that destroys all the magical circles. The violent Mana wave of the roar obliterates everything around as my body begins to transform. The shockwave knocked Eryndriel far back.

My body expands to a height of thirty meters. All my skin turns black while the sclera of my eyes become golden. My horns take on a golden and black tone forming spirals, while the shape vaguely resembles a humanoid.

A structure of black flesh like a transparent, translucent dress. My hair expands, growing to nearly twice the length of my body.

My hands stretch out in a distorted way. This is the second stage of my true transformation — different from Pandora’s and Azraelith’s forms.

In the past, my true form resembled a quadrupedal monster, a mix between a wolf and a bull along with a humanoid. A form I couldn’t control, one that was absurdly savage.

But after so much time in the abyss, I evolved that form into this fully humanoid shape, completely different from the bestial form before. So this is something new that no one knew I had. A few tentacles grow from the "dress," extending like extra "arms" made of darkness.

On my abdomen, an immense mouth appears, with twenty-seven rows of teeth that form a spiral to grind up anything I put inside it. Meanwhile, my face has no real face, only two eyes, eyelashes, and eyebrows — the rest of the face doesn’t exist.

My legs are, more precisely, a completely straight structure like a pillar with few natural curves, while the foot portion has very large claws.

Despite the distorted and immense form, my speed hasn’t dropped at all. I’ve become even faster, appearing almost instantly in front of Elowen, who looks at me as if she’s staring at death itself.

"You’ve gotten a lot stronger than in the past, little brat. So as a reward, I’ll give you a very painful death for that attack you landed on me." Even though I know this true form makes me a bigger target and raises the risk of dying, it became a necessity because of the absurd defense debuff I didn’t expect to suffer.