My friends, whoever has had experience of evils knows how whenever a flood of ills comes upon mortals, a man fears everything; but whenever a divine force cheers on our voyage, then we believe that the same fate will always blow fair.
Aeschylus:
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Then she saw it—identical copies of herself stepping forward from her own body.
Her breath hitched as the duplicates emerged, their pink eyes glowing faintly in the dim light.
Each one was a perfect reflection of her—every strand of hair, every flicketheatrics theatrics r of flame dancing around her fingertips, even the faintest quiver of her lips mirrored back at her with unnerving precision.
"What the hell is this?" she demanded, her voice breaking with a mix of fear and fury.
"It's my ability," Amel said calmly, his tone steady but laced with an unsettling darkness.
"Every version of me—and now you—is moving into the forests. Not to fight, not to conquer..." His voice deepened, each word sharper than the last. "But to overwhelm."
Yuno's chest tightened as her gaze shifted to the countless duplicates swarming the forest.
They moved with machine-like precision, spreading in every direction, a tide of bodies that seemed endless.
In the first forest, the shadows came alive.
Enormous gorillas lumbered out from the darkness, their claws gleaming like tempered steel.
Their guttural growls vibrated through the ground, primal and bone-chilling. Yuno's heart pounded as the creatures lunged forward, but the clones didn't flinch.
Amel's duplicates surged forward, swarming the beasts with relentless waves.
Their sheer numbers suffocated the gorillas, dragging them down under a tide of translucent forms.
The monsters fought back, but it didn't matter—there were always more clones waiting to fill the gaps.
Yuno's wide eyes caught another movement in the distance.
The glint of silken threads shimmered faintly through the trees of the second forest.
Her stomach twisted as monstrous spiders descended from their tangled webs, grotesque amalgamations of claws, legs, and grotesque animal features twisted into horrifying forms.
But the clones—her clones—moved past Amel's with precision, slipping through the sticky labyrinth like shadows, disappearing into the webbed expanse.
They moved as though driven by an unseen will, a purpose beyond her understanding.
"And that," Amel continued, his voice disturbingly steady, "is only the beginning."
He raised his hand toward the faint orange glow on the horizon. "The lava forest is empty, but it doesn't matter. The clones will march through it anyway, endlessly spreading, consuming everything in their path."
Yuno's voice dropped, her words barely above a whisper. "And the lizards?"
"They'll die," Amel said coldly, his expression unchanging. "And come back. It doesn't matter how many times they revive. The clones will be waiting, killing them forcing them to reset, again and again."
Her stomach churned. The magnitude of what was happening—the scale, the cold efficiency—it was too much. She tore her gaze away from the unfolding horror and looked at Amel.
He sat still, his expression eerily calm, his focus unbroken. His confidence, his playful arrogance—it had all vanished. What stood before her now was something else entirely.
For the first time, Yuno saw something in him she couldn't name. It wasn't just power. This was control—absolute, unrelenting control.
Yuno trembled slightly but forced herself to ask, "Why? What's the point of this?"
"To break the entity," Amil replied, his voice steady and his gaze unwavering.
"It controls this place—this cycle. If I keep creating, keep sending clones, it'll overload. It won't be able to handle the sheer scale of what's happening."
She stared at him, her expression caught between shock and awe. "You're insane."
"Nope," Amil said, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. "I'm awesome."
In her bewilderment, Yuno didn't notice it at first: none of Amil's clones were wielding a sword.
That blade—his blade—was forged from the very fabric of existence. It couldn't be replicated.
It was singular, unique, a weapon that defied duplication.
The hum around them grew louder, a deafening vibration that seemed to seep into her bones.
The clones multiplied endlessly, their sheer presence stretching across the forests, blotting out the land in a tide of translucent forms.
The air itself seemed to strain under the weight of their numbers, shimmering with an intensity that made her skin crawl.
Yuno's voice wavered as she shook her head, trying to comprehend the magnitude of what was happening. "You're going to destroy it just by... existing?"
"You're mistaken," Amil said, his tone calm but resolute. "Elder gods don't die that easily. What I'm going to do is force it to show itself."
Before she could respond, she wobbled and was about to drop to the ground, but he was already grabbing her.
His touch, warm and steady, grounded her amid the chaos erupting around them.
The two sat in silence, surrounded by an infinite tide of their own reflections, as the forests groaned and trembled under the crushing weight of the clones.
Trees cracked and splintered, the ground itself seemed to ripple, and the air hung heavy with tension, as though reality itself was on the verge of breaking.
Yuno's wide eyes darted across the endless tide. Her breath hitched, shallow and unsteady, as realization struck her like a thunderclap.
Amil's ability wasn't just powerful—it was horrifying. It wasn't brute strength or raw destruction.
It was inevitability, suffocating and absolute. A relentless, unstoppable tide that even an elder god—a being of incomprehensible power—would be forced to kneel before.
And somehow, amidst all the chaos and devastation, Amil still managed to smirk, his expression dripping with confidence. It wasn't arrogance—it was something darker.
As if this entire ordeal was a twisted game, one only he truly understood.
The forest seemed to breathe, the air thick with a suffocating tension as Amil sat cross-legged on the mossy ground.
The fragmented sunlight piercing through the dense canopy made his brown-white skin glow faintly, casting an almost ethereal aura around him.
The hum of his power grew louder, deeper, resonating like a drumbeat from another world.
His clones multiplied with dizzying speed, surging outward like an endless tide.
Yuno's gaze followed the flood, and her breath caught when she saw her own duplicates among them—pink hair ablaze, fiery eyes burning with the same determined intensity.
Together, the countless versions of them swept through the forest like a living wildfire, unstoppable and all-consuming.
The earth beneath them began to tremble, first with a subtle vibration, then escalating to violent quakes.
The trees groaned, their roots straining as if the very forest itself were alive—and enraged.
Yuno stumbled, her balance wavering as she instinctively clutched his hands for support. Her pink eyes darted to Amil, who stood maddeningly composed amidst the chaos.
His grip remained firm and steady, an unyielding anchor in a world unraveling around them.
His calm was almost infuriating, as if none of this—the quaking earth, the multiplying clones, the groaning forest—was enough to faze him.
"What's going on now?" she demanded, her voice sharp, slicing through the oppressive hum.
"It's reacting," Amil replied, his tone infuriatingly calm. "The entity. It doesn't like what I'm doing."
The air shifted, a sudden chill creeping in.
The hum of Amil's power was joined by a low, guttural rumble that seemed to rise from the depths of the earth itself.
The ground beneath them cracked and split, jagged fissures tearing through the moss like shattered glass.
Yuno stumbled again, her pink hair falling into her face, but before she could fall, Amil's grip tightened, steadying her.
"Amil!" she shouted, panic bleeding into her voice. "What is that?"
Before he could respond, the ground erupted in a deafening explosion.
Massive roots shot skyward, their gnarled forms twisting like living snakes, accompanied by enormous chunks of earth that rained down in a chaotic storm.
The air was filled with the deafening roar of destruction, and from the upheaval, something began to rise—something monstrous and impossible.
It was grotesque, a creature of nightmares.
Its body was a writhing mass of tendrils, each one pulsating with an unnatural, almost sentient life.
Jagged spikes jutted from its flesh, glowing veins of molten energy coursing through its ever-shifting form.
It defied the rules of reality, flickering between solid and liquid, between the physical and the ethereal.
Its "head," if such a word could even describe the horror before her, was an amalgamation of agony.
Twisted faces melded together in a grotesque patchwork, their mouths frozen in eternal, silent screams.
Eyes—dozens of them—stared out, unblinking and full of ancient hatred, each gaze piercing through Yuno and Amil with a malice that felt primordial and all-consuming.
This was the first time Yuno had seen him in his full form.
Though she had a contract with that thing before, the sight of it now filled her with an overwhelming dread.
The entity's presence was suffocating, its psychic scream reverberating through the air like an unrelenting storm, threatening to shatter her mind with raw, primal fury.
Yet, she stood unbroken—shielded by the invisible barrier of Amil's power.
"What is that thing?" she managed to whisper, her voice trembling as her wide pink eyes locked onto the abomination towering before her.
"The one who controls this place," Amil replied, his voice steady despite the chaos swirling around them.
His clones continued to pour forth like an unstoppable river, vanishing into the horizon.
His brown eyes, glinting with determination, met the entity's chaotic gaze without flinching. "It's the entity. And it knows it's losing control."
The entity's grotesque form writhed and shifted, its amalgam of tortured faces twisting into expressions of pure rage.
Its tendrils, massive and pulsating with a sickly energy, slammed into the ground with earth-shattering force.
Ancient trees were uprooted and toppled like brittle matchsticks.
A single swing obliterated an entire wave of clones, their forms disintegrating into nothingness.
But for every clone it destroyed, a hundred more emerged, relentless and unyielding.
Amil's creations flooded the forest like an unstoppable tide, smothering the land in their advance.
Yuno stumbled back, her breath shallow, her heart racing as she took in the towering monstrosity before her. "You… you're provoking it!" she shouted, her voice a mix of fear and frustration.
"That's the point," Amil said calmly, his tone as steady as the flow of his endless army. "If it wants to stop me, it has to come here. It has to play by my rules."
The entity roared—a sound so loud, so primal, that it felt like the air itself was being torn apart. The ground quaked beneath them as its tendrils lashed out with terrifying speed, each strike obliterating vast sections of the forest.
Trees splintered, ash filled the air, and entire patches of the landscape were reduced to barren wastelands.
But still, the clones didn't falter. They surged forward in unimaginable numbers, pouring into every corner of the surreal landscape.
In the first forest, the colossal, clawed gorillas howled in rage and desperation as they were swarmed, buried beneath the unrelenting tide of Amil's duplicates.
Further beyond, in the webbed expanse of the second forest, the monstrous hybrid spiders screeched as their tangled silken labyrinths were ripped apart by the advancing wave.
Even the lava forest—its rivers of molten rock and searing heat thought to be impenetrable—soon succumbed.
The duplicates, both Amil's and Yuno's, marched across the glowing expanse without hesitation, unaffected by the blistering heat or the rivers of liquid fire.
Yuno's knees threatened to buckle as she absorbed the sheer scale of what was unfolding around her.
Her heart pounded in her chest, her mind reeling.
The entity's power was immense, terrifying in its magnitude.
And yet, Amil's resolve—his unrelenting assault of creation, his ability to overwhelm with sheer inevitability—was something beyond comprehension.
This wasn't just a fight. This was war, and Amil had turned the very concept of existence into his weapon.
"Amil, this thing is going to kill us!" Yuno shouted, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and fury.
"No," Amil said, his gaze never wavering from the writhing mass of the entity. "It's going to break."
The entity's tendrils struck the ground again, their force earth-shattering. This time, the ground didn't just crack—it collapsed entirely.
Rivers of fiery lava oozed from the fissures, bubbling and hissing as they pooled around the base of the monstrous form.
The creature roared, its molten veins pulsating in rhythm with its growing rage.
Yuno's head snapped toward Amil, her pink eyes ablaze with desperation. "What happens if it doesn't break? What happens if it kills us instead?"
Amil smirked, unfazed, his brown-black hair falling haphazardly into his eyes.
He turned to her, his confidence sharp enough to cut. "Don't worry," he said, his grin spreading into something almost maddening. "Because I'm here."
Then came the laugh—low, unsettling, and utterly unhinged. "Ha. Ha. Ha. HA!" The sound rippled through the chaos, cutting through the deafening destruction like a serrated edge.
Yuno's stomach churned at the sound. "You're insane!" she spat, her voice shaking as she tried to step back, only to realize he was still gripping her hands, anchoring her in place.
The clones continued to multiply, their numbers now stretching beyond comprehension, flooding every crevice of the distorted forest.
The entity began to falter, its grotesque form twitching and distorting, tendrils jerking erratically as if struggling to hold itself together.
The ground convulsed violently beneath their feet, ancient trees toppling like fragile dominos, their trunks splintering with thunderous cracks.
The entity unleashed another psychic scream, its sound raw and jagged, as if it were tearing itself apart.
"It's overloading," Amil said, his tone slipping back into eerie calm, as though the unhinged laughter from moments ago had been nothing more than theater. "It can't handle this many of me. It's fighting back, but there's too much."
Yuno stared at him, her pink eyes wide, her disbelief palpable. "You're… you're doing this on purpose?"
"Of course," Amil replied, his eyes locked on the crumbling, grotesque form of the entity. "This isn't a battle. It's a flood. And no matter how….
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