THE CURSED GAMER

Chapter 441: An Unending Battle

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Neji's arrival on the battlefield sent tremors rippling through space. He landed before the colossal Trihexa, the ground quaked beneath him, and a cloud of dust and debris billowed around his imposing figure.

“What are you doing here?!”

“Get out of here, or you’ll get caught in the crossfire.”

Odinson Thor, the Asgardian God of Thunder, yelled in shock at Neji’s appearance, who dismissed the Asgardian without sparing a glance.

Trihexa's multiple heads were focused on this old yet unexpected threat. Each of its dozen eyes burned with crimson rage as it ignored Thor completely.

Thor hesitated for a moment, his warrior’s pride clouding his mind. Then his blonde hair flickered as he turned to the figure of his dead father. Not all of Asgard had fallen, if he retreated now and helped the others flee, Asgard could survive somewhere else. 

“...”

With a frustrated grunt, he turned around and picked up his father’s dead body. The bodies of his comrades remained in the vicinity, but he knew there was no time to pick them up now. He took Odin and scattered out of the battlefield at lightning speed.

That left Neji and Trihexa alone, facing one another as they circled each other in slow movements. For a mindless beast, it sure took its time observing the enemy.

This Apocalypse Beast had a history with Neji – or rather, his Divine Predecessor – where the Biblical God sealed up the beast for hundreds of years. The imprisonment had filled the mindless beast with a burning desire for revenge, but sadly, the culprit for its suffering had died while sealing it. So to find the man alive and more powerful than before, was perplexing. 

The beast was not smart enough to question the changed appearance Neji had, but it didn’t need to. It could smell the Biblical God from Neji, and when it registered its rage, it stopped wasting time.

“Groaagghrr!”

The beast let out a deafening roar, its seven heads unleashed a barrage of destructive beams in Neji's direction. Fiery breath and venomous projectiles streaked through the air, consuming Neji in seven multicolored beams.

“Enuma Elish.”

Within the beam, Neji moved with extraordinary speed and thrust Ea forward. The signature technique of Ea clashed with the combustion of the seven beams, and since Neji charged up the attack quite a bit, it didn’t lose against the seven beams.

Trihexa was ‘The World’s End’ embodiment. Apocalypse in Flesh. However, so was Ea. The Sword of Rapture, too, was an ‘Anti-World’ Sword. Apocalypse in a Blade.

The two Apocalyptic beams clashed. If this was the Rating Game dimension, it’d have crumbled right away, but Asgard was a much more stable dimension. It managed to withstand the clash of the beams, sending cracks across the space that quickly fixed themselves. The world screamed in pain as End met End.

Normally, Neji would never pick a fight with a being so high in the Tier spectrum. He knew he was no match, moreover when the creature was Anti Faith. However, he had similar powers to the beast, he was a good match. So he was trying his luck.

Ah, and. He had a hidden card up his sleeve. “Boost.” All of Neji’s attacks grew twice as strong. Every ten seconds, it grew stronger.

But Trihexa managed to match it every time as if it had been toying with him all this time. Every time Neji threw a stronger attack, even erupting into all of his buffs and transformations, the beast matched him on equal grounds. “

The ground trembled, and the skies crackled with energy as Neji deflected the seven onslaught. Once the beam subsided, leaving no clear winner in terms of energy output, Trihexa began to shoot single bullet beams. Neji had to counter with precise strikes, sending beams of black-red energy hurtling toward Trihexa's monstrous form.

“Omnipresence.” Neji chanted, multiplying himself into a dozen copies. Trihexa seemed to be caught off guard for a split second, and the copies used that moment to unleash a relentless assault on the colossal creature. Thanks to the omnipotent power of God, even Ea was copied, as the multiple Nejis inflicted damage and caused the Beast 666 to roar in agony.

“Gra… Agghrr!”

Meanwhile, the girls—Ryukyu, Rumi, and Momo—watched in awe from a distance. The Valkyrie Rossweisse was long gone, busy evacuating the civilians. All who lived in Asgard were minor Gods, much tougher than humans, but caught between a fight of this caliber, they had no choice but to flee or else they’d die from a stray attack.

The three girls in the sky had worried scowls on their faces as they saw no clear winner in this battle. The battle of energy beams ended soon and they began to clash with their bodies. A beam or two were sent every now and then, especially from Neji since Ea’s main power was shooting beams, which Trihexa countered with beams of its own. Otherwise, their bodies clashed. 

Trihexa let out a frustrated roar, its seven tails whipping through the air, crushing multiple copies at once. These were not mere Shadow Clones; they were Omnipresent copies, and if they died with just that, it meant that the real Neji would die too from a direct attack from the beast. It was a deadly game of cat and mouse, where Neji had to be cautious not to get caught.

The copies managed damage as well, all of them used Hakai and Enuma Elish. In the canon timeline, the Power of Destruction didn’t work on Trihexa, and even Shiva, the epitome God of Destruction of this world, wasn’t confident against Trihexa. Neji gained Hakai just a few weeks ago, he wasn’t good enough at it that he could match Shiva, let alone Trihexa.

The Chimera healed every single damage. In a matter of milliseconds, all of its wounds vanished and it remained in full power. This was not good. In the canon timeline, Sirzechs theorized it’d take a thousand years of constant fighting for a group of Gods and Super Satans to defeat Trihexa, and Neji wasn’t sure he could go on for that long.

“Boost.” Neji cheated. He boosted his END stat, thereby doubling his HP. It didn’t make his lost HP heal any faster, but he just had a larger pool to waste from. But it also meant he wasted ten seconds boosting his health instead of his attack power, and ten seconds was a lot in a battle of this caliber. If only Neji could boost his Level as a whole, this wouldn’t have been a problem.

The power being displayed in the battle was on a whole class entirely. Asgardians fled, and the kingdom of Asgard began to turn into dust. The entire place became their battlefield as they flew across the sky, streaking past skyscrapers and exchanging blows.

The girls in the sky understood Neji's warning not to meddle in the fight, for it was evident that the battle against Trihexa was a perilous one. The battle raged on, and Neji shrugged in his head when he realized half of the Asgard had already vanished; at least, he’d try to make sure the same didn’t happen to the entire Norse realm.

The battleground shifted as Asgard crumbled; the kingdom's once-grand structures turned to dust. The very fabric of the dimension seemed to unravel as the God King and the Apocalypse Beast clashed with transcendental powers.

“Boost.”

Neji's mind raced as he grumbled internally about the battle's lack of progress. His Omnipresence was formidable, but it had its drawbacks, and he was paying that price as the battle dragged on. The Neji Main absorbed a portion of his Copies’ damage, and with dozens of copies vanishing in the heat of battle, the real Neji was feeling the strain as his HP lowered in real time. His personal regenerative power was nowhere close to Trihexa, and his HP even healed much slower than usual. 

Against a being who had the Concept of End, it was hard to shrug off the damage he took. Unlike Trihexa who could shrug off Ea's beams in seconds, a bit longer than the damage he did with Hakai, Neji took minutes to heal a mere hundred HP.

“Annoying little thing,” Neji grumbled to himself. He had to think of a way to prevail against the embodiment of destruction that was Trihexa. Ending met Ending, and the heavens and earth bore witness to a battle that would be remembered throughout the ages.

“Boost…!” 

The relentless barrage of attacks continued, and half of Asgard vanished into oblivion. The legacy of the Norse Gods and the very existence of the realms were at stake. Despite the odds, Neji remained resolute – he had to defeat this thing.

Tier 71 was no joke.

Boost was tiresome, too. It made him fatigued, and his Stamina and Mana decreased by a lot every time he used it; unless he increased his END or INT which focused on Stamina and Mana, that was a big drawback. As expected, such a power ought to have some limits even for the Gamer. Maybe specially for the gamer, because while he could Boost unlimited times, he couldn’t boost all his Stats at once, unlike the normal users of the Booster Gear. But Neji was managing for now.

Despite minutes passing, as he cast Boost that stacked up on top of one another, he seemed unable to close the gap between their power levels. While he was doing the attacks better now, and his speed was faster, but none of his damage amounted to anything since the beast could heal everything.

He supposed, for situations like this, the Divine Dividing was better than the Boosted Gear. He should get his hands on that too very soon. For now he focused on the battle, finally he was feeling closer to Trihexa in power, its attacks were feasible now.

“Boo-”

“Enough.”

A blur blasted out of nowhere. Neji’s eyes saw it all thanks to their magical nature, but Trihexa seemed to miss it, Rumi appeared out of nowhere in her Wild Form, and only then did Neji notice that Trihexa was morphing – each head separating itself into seven different bodies. 

At the same time, grotesque red-scaled dragons were coming out of its back. It was a version of the Red Dragon Emperor, and Neji could feel an odd version of Boost from the creatures. He remembered reading about this in the canon, but he didn’t expect the creature to have it in this world since he had taken the Boosted Gear for himself.

“Ah,” Neji grumbled. Rizevim must have done something with his weird usage of many Sacred Gears. Maybe he wished it with the Holy Grail?

All of this observation happened in a single second, as did Trihexa’s morphing. Rumi grabbed Neji by his torso and shot to the sky, leaving the battlefield.

“It’s finally getting serious; we need to leave. It can’t Boost itself, but the armored dragons can. And it’s seven now. I can’t let you endanger yourself.” Rumi explained as she dropped near the other two girls. They shot him a look as he grumbled; he was the one who told them to take him if things got dangerous. 

“Hey, I-” Neji was confident in going on for longer, but the girls wouldn’t let him. 

“Let's ruin Asgard a few more Pantheons. We can use the time. Gather some powers that can actually hurt the thing instead of merely tickling it. We’ll return in a few days.” Momo said.

“She’s right,” even Ryukyu agreed. “It was a good fight, but the monster was finally getting serious. Let’s leave for now.”

Neji sighed and nodded with his eyes closed. Quickly opening a portal, he and the girls stepped out of Asgard. The beast tried one last attack towards him, but he waved it off with a beam of Ea. He wasn’t running because he was weak if the beast thought that. This was simply a tactical retreat.

The portal closed behind that. Asgard, or at least what remained of it, fell that day. The rest of the Norse fell too, on the same day. Luckily, not as many people died since Thor and his companions managed to make the population flee.

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