Yuki suddenly appeared between the two of them. She caught Claudia's right fist with her left palm. She froze Claudia's right hand solid, as well as the giant magma hand behind and above her. Her appearances now clearly show signs of damage. The most obvious one is that she no longer wears her blue cardigan. Her white shirt, black skirt, and her pair of white leggings have holes in them.

  "Kouhai?!"

  "You?! How did you--?!"

  Before Claudia even finished her sentence, she looked towards where Yuki's giant ice ball was. The giant ice ball was gone, and so were the tens of thousands of her magma fists that were supposed to be still raining down on Yuki for more than two hours. All she saw were millions of broken pieces of ice on the frozen sea. She also realized that her entire magma pool had vanished and turned into piles of snow. It has also started snowing again.

  Her facial expression clearly shows signs of disbelief.

  "I've been hiding under the ice below the whole time. That giant ice ball was empty for a while, so I've been listening to your conversation with my senpai. Are you telling the truth?"

  "I have no obligation to tell you anything!!"

  Claudia tries to break her frozen arms free by creating magma from her hands. Yuki, who's still holding Claudia's hands, freezes Claudia's entire body as well, but she leaves Claudia's head free.

  "DAMN IT!! LET ME GO!!"

  "No, it's over, 9th Strongest-san. You can't beat me."

  Yuki announces her victory over Claudia with the same neutral facial expression and neutral voice tone. Yuki has told Claudia over and over again that those expressionless faces were just how she is, yet it still pisses Claudia to no end.

  "Heh. . . Hahah! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

  Claudia starts laughing crazily like a maniac. And then her body temperature rises so extremely high that the ice freezing her body solid evaporates in a matter of seconds. But then the ice under her feet also starts melting away, and she slowly sinks into the bottom. The heat emitted from her body also melts the entire surface of the frozen sea.

  "Senpai, take my hand."

  "Right!"

  Yuki grabs Neo's hand and creates a giant bird of ice. She and Neo jump onto the giant ice bird, and the bird flies away from the spot because the bird has also started vaporizing a bit. The bird flew about 150 meters above the sea to escape the heat. Yuki and Neo took a few seconds to catch their breath.

  "She melted your frozen sea just now, even though when she covered it with her magma, it didn't even affect it. Seems like we're about to see why she was titled the 9th Strongest Believer in the entire world."

  "Senpai, I'm gonna fight her again head-on. This time, I'll make the bird fly higher. Please don't jump off of it, senpai, okay?"

  Yuki was about to jump off when Neo suddenly grabbed Yuki's arm.

  "Yuki, tell me you don't plan on doing anything crazy, like say. . . sacrificial things?"

  Yuki turns around as she places her other hand above Neo's hand.

  "How many times have I gotta tell you, that I will always be by your side, senpai?!"

  Yuki, although it seemed forced and half-assed, smiled towards Neo. That forced smile looks very nostalgic to her facial expression from back when they were in high school. Neo almost shed tears, but he held them back.

  "Senpai, I'm going to win."

  "Go get her, my dear Kouhai!"

  Yuki turns around and finally jumps off. When she fell below, she was a bit surprised by what she saw.

  Claudia has summoned a giant humanoid made of magma, but upon further inspection, the lower part is that of a slime. It has the same similar body proportion to her human-slime hybrid creature from before. This time, however, her human-slime magma was 200 meters tall and about 40 meters in width. Its hands were 120 meters in length each, and the lower part of the body, which was slime-like, was wider than the rest at 100 meters wide. The creature also has a pair of eyeballs, a mouth, and a pair of horns. And then from the back of the creature, a pair of wings sprout. The wings were gigantic, and each wing was 350 meters from one end to the other. The wings were like branches of a tree, but made of flowing lava where lava drips from each end of the branch. Claudia herself was located right at the centre of the chest of the gigantic creature. However, given how tall this creature is, it's still lacking in height compared to the thousands of Yuki's gigantic ice towers standing in every direction the human eye can see.

  "How do you like my child, Yuki-san!! LET'S KEEP GOING UNTIL ONE OF US FALLS!!"

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  Claudia has melted away a chunk of the frozen sea near where her gigantic creature stands, along with a few of the towers nearby. The bottom part of her creature reaches the floor of the sea below. The area surrounding where Claudia's creature stands has no snow clouds due to its massive heat affecting the sky itself.

  Yuki grows a pair of draconic wings on her back. She flies stably in midair, trying to observe the sheer massive size of Claudia's human-slime creature.

  "She really does hold the title of the 9th Strongest, seeing this size."

  "YOU'VE SEEN NOTHING YUKI-SAN!!"

  Claudia summons a massive mountain half the height of her creatures in front, melting away another chunk of the frozen sea below. The mountain is entirely made of magma, and it erupts, spouting lava everywhere in a 1-kilometer radius.

  "That again, huh?"

  Yuki holds out her left hand diagonally backward.

  *GRRRKKKK*

  Then she swings her arm forwards, and one of the cloud-reaching towers near her moves and slides on the frozen sea. The tower moves to Yuki's front and blocks any incoming lava spouts towards her.

  "Not gonna block directly like last time, huh? Well then!!"

  Claudia raises her right hand, and the gigantic human-slime creature follows her motion. Claudia swings her arm forward, and the gigantic creatures move accordingly. Most of the lava spouts that were going everywhere with no clear direction suddenly change their course, and they all fly towards Yuki.

  *GRRRKK*

  *BRAAAASSHHH*

  Yuki pushes forward her ice tower, and it slides and collides with the magma mountain in front, and the clash breaks both the tower and the mountain into smaller pieces, yet still in a size bigger than a human being.

  *GRRRRRKKK*

  *CSSH CSSH CSSH CSSH CSSH*

  Yuki held out her right hand and swung it forward, and another ice tower moved to her front, but this time, the ice tower was fully floating in mid-air, and it was blocking any incoming lava spouts towards Yuki horizontally.

  *GRRRRRKK*

  *BRAAAASSSSHHHH*

  *THUUMMMPP*

  At the same time, Yuki swings her left hand sideways, and then an ice tower from the right slides fast and collides violently against Claudia's gigantic creature. The gigantic creature was affected violently by the collision. It stumbles the gigantic creature to take a step back to the left. The collision sends shockwaves of air and shakes the entire frozen sea as well.

  "URGH!! You little!!"

  Before Claudia can even react, Yuki moves her arms again, and this time, another ice tower slides fast towards Claudia's creature from behind her.

  *GRRRRRKKKK*

  *THUMP*

  "GUAH!!!"

  The creature stumbled yet again, and it took a step forward. Claudia was also shaken by the sudden impact coming from behind.

  "GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!"

  Claudia is pissed, and she raises her right arm and clenches it into a fist. The creature also clenches its fist, and its fist grows quickly in size.

  ". . . .That again, huh?"

  Yuki clenches her right hand into a fist as well. She creates a gigantic fist of ice rising from the frozen sea below.

  The creature's fist has grown so big that it has now reached 2 kilometers in diameter. Seeing this, Yuki also increased the size of her giant hands to a similar size.

  "GIVE ME YOUR BEST JUDGE-SAN!!!"

  "As you wish, 9th Strongest-san."

  Yuki and Claudia swing their fists forward, and their gigantic hands also swing forward.

  *BAAAAAMMM*

  *BWOOOSSSHHH*

  *GROOOOOOOOOOOOO*

  The two gigantic hands collided and caused a massive earthquake and also a giant turbulence of wind that pushes all of the snow clouds in the entire frozen sea away and clears the sky. The massive earthquake cracks the entire frozen sea, but it didn't reach any of the islands far out in the distance from the Sea of Japan.

  The pure impact of their punches destroys each of the hands and crumbles them into tiny pieces. Claudia's gigantic creature lost its right hand entirely.

  "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! THAT WAS EXHILIRATING YUKI-SAN!! LET'S DO IT AGAIN! WE'LL GO BIGGER THIS TIME!!"

  "No. Any bigger and the earthquake may reach either Russia, Korea, or Japan. It will involve innocent people in our fight."

  "HUUUUUUUUUH? YOU'RE CONCERNED WITH RANDOM PEOPLE AT THIS POINT? COME ON JUDGE-SAN!! LET'S GO HIGHER!!!"

  ". . . . I said no."

  *GRRRRRKKKKK*

  *BAAAAAAMMM*

  Yuki swings both of her arms and then 10 different ice towers move and slide towards Claudia's creature from 10 different directions. The collision shakes the entire cracked frozen sea again. The 10 ice towers crumble and topple towards Claudia's gigantic creature. Claudia's gigantic creature falls on its back with big chunks of the ice towers falling as well on its back. Claudia's gigantic creatures are now half buried under the 10 ten broken ice towers. Claudia emerges from the gigantic creature's head and stays on its forehead.

  "KH!! KHKHHKHKHK!! SCREW YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!"

  The pair of wings behind the gigantic creatures spreads upwards and melts away a bit of the broken ice towers. Each of the branch’s edges glows brightly, and then lava spouts out of every edge of the branches. There are more than thousands of flowing lava flying at jet stream speed all towards Yuki.

  *GRRRKKK*

  *WRRRRRRR*

  Yuki moves her arms, and five of the ice towers behind her move towards her front, but then the five ice towers spin and revolve around Yuki at high speed constantly.

  *SPLATS SPLATS SPLATS SPLATS SPLATS*

  The revolving ice towers block and deflect every incoming jet stream of lava, thousands of them. Yuki spins the 5 ice towers for five whole minutes, and then the thousands of lava jet streams are all successfully deflected.

  *!!*

  But after Yuki stops revolving her ice towers, from the space between each ice tower, she sees that Claudia's gigantic creature was already in front of her, crawling its gigantic body quickly. And then its left hand fully grabs the 5 ice towers and crushes them easily. Its left hand continues to grip further, and then Yuki was caught in its hand.

  "HAHAHAHAHA! IT'S OVER YUKI-SAN!! ANNOUNCE YOUR LOSS OR I'LL CRUSH YOU AND DROWN YOU IN MY MAGMA!!"

  Claudia caught Yuki in the gigantic creature's left hand. Yuki kept herself safe by making a thick layer of ice prison surrounding herself. The ice prison was also strong enough to handle the pressure and heat of the left hand of the gigantic human-slime creature.

  "Claudia-san, you were not the only one who was preparing a surprise attack."

  "Huh?"

  "Look up."

  Claudia slowly raised her head, and she was shocked when she looked up towards the sky.

  High above the sky, all of the remaining thousands of ice towers were floating with their tips of the top pointing towards one direction, and that is towards where Claudia is. The sky is filled entirely by thousands of Yuki's ice towers, whose heights top even Claudia's gigantic creatures. In every direction she looks, she still sees a lot more ice towers, even in the distance, where the ice towers look small compared to the ones that are closer to her.

  "Give it up, Claudia-san. You can't beat me."

  *!*

  "Again with the insulting words! DON'T UNDERESTIMATE ME, YOU ICE FREAK!!"

  "I see."

  Yuki points her right palm forward and grips it. And then all of the thousands of floating ice towers fall fast, directly towards Claudia at the same time.