"DIE!" Shion shouted as she beheaded Viola, Clayman's two-bit puppet thing. Immediately, the puppet's body fell to the ground like its strings had been cut, its head falling in a different direction from its body.
Clayman's battle against Shion had been ongoing for the last half-hour at this point.
By now, Shion, Viola, and Clayman were the only ones inside Guy's barrier, and both sides had been fighting with everything they had for the entire time.
Clayman had long abandoned all forms of decorum, and now fought as a gigantic, four-armed freak in a mask. He'd tried summoning, but Shion had immediately and permanently destroyed his summons. He'd tried transforming and working with Viola, hiding behind her gigantic array of unique weapons.
You'd think that Risa, as the epitome of curiosity, would be interested in a homunculus capable of fighting side-by-side with a Demon Lord Seed, but she took one look at the thing, called it a 'Unique Weapon Storage Device,' and pulled a bucket of popcorn out of my Stomach to share with Milim.
Apparently, all of the doll's power came from the multitude of Unique-class weapons stored inside of it. In an 'engineering' sense, if Beretta was a 10, then Viola would be somewhere between a 0.5 and a 1.
Which was why, as time wore on, it got weaker and weaker with every weapon that Shion destroyed, until, finally, it fell.
By now, Clayman was at half-strength, maybe less, but since I'd been supplying Shion with excess magicules to fuel her Self-Regeneration, she was still at full power.
And the moment that his doll was beheaded, Clayman realized the same thing that everyone else in the room had known since the moment that he tried to punch Milim.
He was utterly screwed.
"Shion, stop." I teleported back into the barrier. With a word from me, Shion's blade stopped at Clayman's neck.
"That felt good, Lord Rimuru!" She beamed at me with a giant smile on her face.
"I'm glad. Felt good to watch, too. Let me handle it from here." As Shion backed off, sheathing her sword, Guy released his barrier, the room returning to normal.
"W-wait! Milim! What are you doing, kill him! Save me and kill this-"
"Yeah, I'm done with that. At first, Frey and I thought we could use the way you overestimate yourself to find out who's backing you, but now that Rimuru can rip that information right out of your soul…" Milim popped a kernel of popcorn into her mouth from her seat, trailing off as she hugged Risa, who'd taken a smaller version of her human form in the dragonoid's lap.
"You, too, Frey!? H-how dare-"
"You've pulled your last scheme, Clayman. Goodbye." Frey told him with a bewitching little smile.
Behind her, Carillon took off his mask. "Guess I won't be needing this anymore."
"Carillon… So, she really wasn't under my control… Why?! WHY, WHY, WHY?!!!! I used the Orb of Dominion he gave me! Why is this happening to me!?!" Clayman cried, tears streaming down his masked face, as he pounded the ground. "YOU'LL PAY! YOU'LL ALL PAY! I'LL-I'LL-!"
[Confirmed. Converting soul into energy. Successful. Demon Lord Seed Awakening… Disassembling and reassembling of physical body. Successful.]
I watched on with mild interest as Clayman's battered and beaten body exploded with magicules, instantly healing him and then some, like he'd just gotten an extra life in a video game, or and maybe some sort of Dragon Ball-type Zenkai boost to boot.
Regrowing his two extra arms, which Shion had long-since sliced off and halted the regeneration of, Clayman rose to his feet, his raw power suddenly shooting right past Shion's and continuing at a dizzying pace that Isis gave me real-time reports on.
Laughing maniacally, his EP stabilized at around 700,000, nearly 200,000 beyond where Shion was currently.
Due to the countless innocent souls he'd cruelly and mercilessly snuffed over the course of his life, Clayman had awakened his Demon Lord Seed, albeit sloppily.
Unfortunately for Clayman, that didn't change anything. The only skill that his awakening had granted him was a basic, all-around resistance that now included spiritual attacks. Alone, Shion could still pound his face in, if necessary.
"ThE WoRlD HasN'T AbanDONed Me yEt! DiE to MY EraSurE CANNON!" Laughing and drunk on his newfound power, Clayman gathered as much of it as he could into a ball.
Unfortunately, he didn't do it quick enough. Not that it'd have mattered.
Gulp.
With a glance, the energy vanished. You don't use those kinds of attacks against someone with Belzebuth, Lord of Gluttony. You just don't.
"Alright. Time for you to die at my hand, then. I suppose nobody has any objections?" Nobody spoke up. I'd already been given free reign to kill him. "Oh, and by the way, I'm eating you soul and all, so don't think that your little 'Deathman' racial boon's going to save you. You'll die in agony, and give me all the information I need on you and your allies, free of charge. Goodbye, pest."
With a smile, I activated… Horus. And Aether, and Isis, to force my way into his head. Then, I accelerated Clayman's thoughts as much as I possibly could. I didn't even know how fast that was, anymore. The five seconds after I forced that on him must've felt like an eternity in Clayman's eyes, literally. In a single blink of his eyes, his will had shattered, rebuilt itself, and shattered again, dozens, maybe hundreds of times, as he tried to utilize his magic, which could work at the speed of thought, only to realize that Horus was preventing it.
Then, and only then, did I finally activate Belzebuth to swallow him, the corrosive element eradicating his body first, down to the atomic level and beyond, before finally sucking his soul into the unyielding void in a process that probably felt like years, maybe decades, of pure agony.
But in real life, he was gone before he could even scream.