Behemoth was undaunted. It could feel the change in the battle and the atmosphere, and it didn't like it.
The weaker superheroes began to retreat, some falling back enough to help with the evacuation, while the rest waited just far enough away.
More streaks of lightning shot out, aiming at the bold few that remained, but more of the same translucent barriers shot up, spreading out in strategic areas, halting the death blows from doing what they should.
New eyes roved, searching for the source of the barriers, and their glances shot up to him, where the whelp stood beside him. Multiple strikes, and the barriers held which was no surprise to him.
The barriers, formed from the bakudo Danku, were powerful enough to stop any attack short of Hado's on the same level and up to Hado 89. This was why, after multiple strikes, there weren't the slightest cracks on the barriers.
Noting the ineffectiveness of its focused lightning strikes, the colossal creature changed its tactics.
The Endbringer began to lumber forward once more, its every step shaking the ground. But this was more than its regular slow walk; it picked up speed with every few seconds.
"Behemoth is charging!"
The whelp spoke into his earpiece while Yamamoto continued to watch it curiously. It had gotten a few steps away from the first barrier he created when it closed its stony, leathery hand into a fist and lashed out with a heavy blow that tore through the air and smashed into the barrier like a meteor strike.
The whole momentum it had gathered was focused on that single blow, on that single spot. The momentum, coupled with its immense physical strength, crashed into it, and finally, spiderweb cracks spread. But the creature was not finished, for it didn't stop.
Its body slammed into the already weakened and cracked barrier, obliterating it completely, and forcing the barrier to dissolve into reishi sparkles.
"Fuck, Behemoth has broken through!"
More mundane and brightly colored barriers sprang up, trying to halt the creature's charge, but it had already begun to pick up more speed, and considering how quickly it crushed his more powerful barrier, their rapidly set-up barriers simply crumpled from Its aura.
"Hmm, so it is physically stronger," Yamamoto mused aloud.
"Behemoth is the strongest of his siblings physically, although we hardly get to witness it. His death aura does most of the job and his radiation, fire and lighting mops up after it." The still present whelp admitted.
A sickly green beam of disintegrating light shot at its kneecap, and even if the creature was not human, it used enough of a human physiology that the blow staggered it, and it dropped to a knee, its momentum finally slowed, yet the beast slowly struggled back to Its feet.
Yamamoto allowed his attention to drift to the floating green-robed figure. He had been right—that was the strongest of the superpowered ilk.
"It's not going to last for long," The green-robed cape called out, which led to a response from the most physically imposing of their group. The black-clad woman shot down from the skies, dropping on the Endbringer with a hammer blow so powerful it was forced down to both knees, putting a stop to the charge once and for all.
But despite how powerful the beam seemed to be, it slowly began to peter out, spluttering and losing cohesion with every breath. The moment it finally did, Behemoth slammed its two monstrous hands to the ground. The force was enough to let out an earthquake as the colossal beast shot up. A particularly concentrated bolt of lightning lashed out at the black-clad woman, sending her away while the beast began to build up its momentum again.
This time Its lumbering was more pronounced, an after-effect of having a massive hole in Its kneecap.
"We've recorded an unprecedented 80% evacuation. We need a few more minutes!" someone shouted.
"Why is he changing his attack pattern?" the still-whelp beside him questioned as Yamamoto continued to stare intently at the relentless Endbringer. "Behemoth never charges, unless there is a new variable, but wha—" The whelp turned to him in realization, but Yamamoto was already acting.
The air around him hummed with gathering energy, the spiritual pressure thickening to an almost unbearable weight. The heroes below—the few who were not aware—looked up in confusion as the pressure pressed into them. The weakest of them all were forced to move farther, unable to withstand the sheer force of Yamamoto's power even this high up. It was as though the very atmosphere had descended to ground level.
The person who seemed the least affected proved to be the whelp beside him. A device on his chest hummed, which barely allowed the whelp to stay in his presence, yet Yamamoto noticed the sparking of electronics and the smell of burnt wires. Whatever the whelp had come up with over the past few hours barely seemed to work.
"Depriving it of such easy kills was the first step. The second is to finally bring its lumbering steps to a stop."
Yamamoto raised his hand again, letting his cane hover beside him, his voice like the cracking of ancient stone. He stretched forth his palm—this particular technique required two hands, but Yamamoto was forced to make do with a single one by falling back on the chant.
"Ye who seek to disturb the flow of souls, bones of the earth, chains of the heavens, heed my command. Thread sown by the hands of gods, descend from the stars, and bind thy form. Restrict, restrain, seal away, that none may escape. The sky shall bear witness, and the earth shall tremble beneath the weight of my will. Come forth —Bakudo 99, Part 1: Kin!"
His reiatsu flexed, manifesting black spiritual fabrics that scaled up to the Endbringer's size. They wrapped around the giant's limbs—its colossal arms, its trunk-like legs—before falling to the floor.
Sensing what was coming, Behemoth tried to break free, but like the black-clad woman a few seconds ago, it was just too slow.
Iron shafts manifested from the sky and shot down with monumental force, binding the black spiritual fabrics to the ground and permanently halting Behemoth.
The Endbringer let out a monstrous, mind-shattering roar in response. The force of sound and pressure let out was like a physical blow, destroying everything in its range and forcing the costumed whelps who were still close by away. It struggled, flexing its inhuman strength against its bindings, but its efforts were futile.
In frustration, it sent out more lightning strikes—lightning bolts the size of buildings. Beams of energy with enough power to render everything they touched to nothing were simply rejected by the multiple barriers Yamamoto had set up.
More roars were let out, directed and focused, aimed at the closest superpowered whelps. But the weakest had already moved too far for it to do any more than be a weakened shout, while those too close clamped their hands over their ears and grounded themselves.
"Oh my god, he's increasing his output! Retreat further away."
Behemoth continued to struggle, his roars shockwaves of destruction. His lightning bolts turned and deflected, where it could harm it focused on destroying the buildings in Its range. The Endbringers power surged, strengthening his death aura as Its range rapidly increased causing everything to simultaneously combust. The houses nearby were blasted away and rendered into glass in response to the energy, power, and radiation the monster was blasting out—but it was all for naught.
All the devastation and destruction it created was contained in a perfect circle, miles wide around it.
"Did we just contain Behemoth?"
A voice called out as it drifted towards them slowly. The black-clad woman who remained untouched and unburnt despite facing the brunt of the endbringer attack. Even behind her visor, Yamamoto could feel her gaze on him as he rested his eyes, closing them shut.
"Who is he?" another voice called out. Yamamoto noted the hidden petulant whine in the voice, and he cracked his eyes open, staring at the new arrival—the green-robed figure, the one he had judged as the strongest.
Was the man put off by being outshone? Yamamoto was forced to revise his rating of the cape back down to whelp-hood. Not even power was enough to signify maturity.
"Our savior, it seems," a fourth and final voice called out as the beam of light that had been traveling toward them came to a stop, gathering to form a person. A blonde-haired man.
The man stretched forth his hand and gave a smile, one that was a drastically toned-down version of the golden whelp's own.
"I'm Legend." Seeing that Yamamoto didn't deign to clasp the offered arm, he smoothly recovered without looking the slightest bit disgruntled, stretching out his hands to point at the other whelps, starting from the black-clad woman.
"This is Alexandria and Eidolon, and you must be the old man Hero spoke of." The hero in question was busy furiously tapping on his forearm as he muttered rapidly to himself.
The introductions were made against the backdrop of Behemoth's roars and devastation, making it hard to forget the leashed monster.
Alexandria tilted her head to the side to put the Endbringer in her field of view. "I still can't believe we truly halted its advance. This has been the first time we were given this kind of breather against an endbringer."
"How're the evacuations going?" Legend asked the still-distracted Hero, and the whelp replied rapidly before returning to his muttering and tapping.
"99.56% done. The best we've ever registered."
The whelps shot themselves strange looks.
"Speak, or leave," Yamamoto finally said, tired of their attempts at being discreet. The act was a waste, considering they were in his range.
"You're not a cape," Hero stated, his greater familiarity giving him a firm voice as he finally put away his distractions and paid attention to the group.
Yamamoto cracked his eyes open once more, taking in the four whelps before replying.
"I'm a Shinigami," He acknowledged easily. There was a brief silence where they tested the weight of his words and claim.
"A death god?" Alexandria asked, her voice carrying an edge of disbelief as she interpreted the word. Yet she wasn't the one who reacted the most.
Eidolon smirked, his earlier disgruntlement shifting into something more comfortable on his barely visible features hidden behind the glass helm as he stared at the stooped old man. "Heh. So he's one of those delusional cap—"
He never finished the sentence.
Yamamoto let loose the full, unrestrained might of his spiritual pressure. For a moment, the universe itself paused, holding its breath in unfamiliarity and in anticipation of the chaos to follow. Then, the world shattered.
Where his earlier release had been like a tidal wave—slow, yet formidable—this time, it was a spontaneous hurricane of reiatsu, tearing through the skies. The air thickened instantly, crushing everything in its path with a weight beyond comprehension. The sky dimmed, even as the sun paradoxically shone even brighter from the sheer force of his presence.
His spiritual pressure twisted the atmosphere, stilling the natural world to the point that not even the wind was free from his grasp as it was forced to bow to his will.
The ground meters beneath him cracked and splintered as if the earth itself couldn't bear the burden of his unleashed power.
Reishi saturated the air, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Time itself seemed to slow, bending under the immense gravity of Yamamoto's presence.
The three whelps, who had dared express disbelief, bore the full brunt of his spiritual might. The black-clad woman was slammed into the ground, disappearing beneath the surface as if the earth had swallowed her whole. The blonde-haired man, Legend, turned into a beam of light and shot out of the storm of reiatsu, fleeing from the epicenter of Yamamoto's presence.
Hero, despite the device on his chest, jerked back, his armor sparking violently as it struggled to regulate the immense spiritual force. The smell of burning electronics filled the air as his suit's systems began to fry under the strain. He gasped, clutching his chest, as though trying to hold himself together in the face of something far beyond his comprehension.
The green-robed whelp, Eidolon, the one who had drawn Yamamoto's ire most, fared slightly better. He spread his hand, forming a perfectly gold circular forcefield that dampened the impact of Yamamoto's reiatsu. But even so, his breath came in ragged gasps, and his movements were sluggish, his flight faltering as all his focus went into simply surviving.
Yet, he survived nonetheless. Whatever exotic abilities the whelp possessed, they only served to slow the crushing weight of Yamamoto's power, forcing him to drift slowly to the ground. From that low vantage, he had to look up, barely able to catch a glimpse of Yamamoto towering over him.
Yamamoto caressed the head of his staff, the wooden binding slowly unraveling to reveal the hilt of his blade. If his presence had been immense before, the mere exposure of his sword magnified it tenfold.
Reality distorted. Buildings groaned, their frames creaking under the invisible pressure. The very fabric of the world seemed to waver, warping under the strain of Yamamoto's true power.
Even Behemoth, bound and restrained, ceased its thrashing. The Endbringer, a creature that had laid waste to this world for years with no true fear of reprisal, was momentarily frozen by the overwhelming presence that dominated the city.
"Please!" Hero gasped, his voice strangled, as he tried to plead.
Yamamoto's eyes, cold and indifferent, locked onto Eidolon. The hero's earlier smirk had long since vanished, replaced with wide-eyed terror—terror that was rapidly devolving into mania as he raised a trembling hand toward Yamamoto. He was prepared to unleash something, no doubt believing it could harm him.
But Yamamoto had already made his point.
"I'll take your head next time," Yamamoto said, his voice deep, carrying the weight of finality, as though his words had been etched into the very air itself.
And just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. His masterful control of his reiatsu came into effect as he withdrew most of it in a single breath, yet not all. He had not finished what he had come here to do, the whelps had simply been a distraction.
Yamamoto turned his attention back to the struggling Endbringer, as the kido binding his sword, shaped like a wooden cane, finally unraveled completely, revealing the full form of his old, withered blade.
His gaze fixed on the beast, kilometers away, its struggles had briefly been halted by the sheer force of his presence. But with the absence of It, Its struggle had renewed. Every flex of Behemoth's immense body seemed to pull at the earth in a desperate attempt to break free, but the kido bindings were metaphysical, far beyond mere physical constraints.
He had done what he had set out to do—bought them time. Now with no civilian in the city, he could do more.
Yamamoto raised his old and aged sword and pointed the tip toward the creature. His voice, infused with power, resonated through the air, as the very fabric of the world groaned in response.
"All things in the universe, turn to ashes."
And Behemoth screamed.
Yes, I pulled that chant from my ass, the official chant was never really stated. Which made those four lines alone harder to write than the full chapter. This should also be the last Cliffhanger-y chapter in a while, so enjoy.