SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 68: Mad Hiroshi vs.Three Gods

The dust hadn’t even settled before Kenji moved.

As the Avatar of Vermis, his speed was no longer biological. He didn’t run; he blurred across the crater, his rusted sword-wings snapping shut behind him to provide a jet-like burst of momentum. The jagged executioner’s blade came down in a vertical arc, trailing a wake of red mist that hissed as it touched the air.

Hiroshi didn’t move his feet. He raised his right arm, and the shadows coating his skin thickened into a jagged, black buckler.

The collision sounded like two tectonic plates grinding together. A shockwave rippled outward, flattening the rubble within thirty feet. The floor beneath Hiroshi’s boots cracked, spider-webbing deep into the bedrock, but he didn’t buckle. He twisted his wrist, and the shadow buckler grew teeth, snapping shut on Kenji’s red blade.

From Hiroshi’s left, a flash of gold signaled Marcus’s arrival.

The Avatar of Soleth was a mountain of radiant muscle. Two of his golden arms grabbed Hiroshi’s shoulders, the heat from his palms melting the shadow-skin and searing the flesh beneath. His other two arms pulled back, fists glowing like miniature stars, and delivered a synchronized punch to Hiroshi’s ribs.

The impact sent a boom through the chamber that shattered everything remaining.

Hiroshi’s body flew backward, trailing black smoke. He hit a stone pillar with enough force to turn the granite into powder. He didn’t fall. He rebounded off the wall, flipping in mid-air as a high-pressure jet of water sliced through the space where his head had been a millisecond before.

Aria had arrived. She stood in the center of the room, her liquid form swirling. She raised both hands, and the clear water spiraling around her feet turned into a hundred vibrating needles. With a flick of her wrists, the needles launched. They moved at Mach 2, leaving vapor trails in the air.

Hiroshi landed on the ceiling. He clung to the stone like an insect, his shadow tendrils digging into the cracks. He spun his body, creating a centrifugal vortex of darkness to deflect the needles.

Marcus didn’t give him a chance to recover. He looked up at the ceiling, his sun-eyes burning. He pointed a finger. A pillar of solid white light erupted from the floor, punching through the ceiling and into the upper floors of the palace.

Hiroshi dropped before the light hit him, but Kenji intercepted him in mid-air. The Avatar of War was a blur of violence. His wings unfolded, the rusted blades spinning like buzzsaws. He and Hiroshi collided in a flurry of strikes. Hiroshi’s shadow-blades clashed against Kenji’s jagged iron, sparks of red and purple energy raining down.

Kenji was faster. He allowed a shadow-tendril to pierce his shoulder just to get close enough to grab Hiroshi’s throat. He channeled a burst of corrosive red energy directly into Hiroshi’s chest. Hiroshi screamed—the first human sound he had made—and unleashed a shockwave of darkness to push Kenji away.

As Hiroshi fell toward the floor, Aria moved. She had liquified the very stone of the chamber, turning the floor into a churning whirlpool of grey slush. Hiroshi hit the liquid and began to sink. He tried to use "Shadow Corruption" to turn the slush against her, but Marcus intervened.

Marcus descended from above, his four arms joined together to form a massive golden hammer of light. He slammed the hammer into the whirlpool. The holy heat was so intense it didn’t just boil the water; it vaporized the shadows Hiroshi was trying to manifest.

The resulting steam explosion blinded the room.

Through the mist, Aria moved like a shark. She formed a blade of hyper-compressed water on her forearm and lunged. Hiroshi swerved, the water-blade carving a deep furrow through his shadow-skin and into the muscle of his thigh. He tried to grab her, but her liquid body simply flowed around his fingers.

She reformed behind him and slammed her palm into his back. A surge of high-pressure water was injected directly into his nervous system. Hiroshi’s body locked up, his muscles seizing.

"Now!" Aria’s voice rang out, distorted by the water in her throat.

The three Avatars converged for a coordinated execution.

Aria froze the liquid stone around Hiroshi’s legs, locking him in a block of absolute-zero ice that reached his waist. Kenji landed in front of him, his executioner’s blade glowing with a sickly, dark-red light. He drove the sword through Hiroshi’s stomach, pinning him to the spot.

Hiroshi coughed up a glob of black, oily fluid. He struggled, his shadow tendrils lashing out in a desperate, chaotic swarm, but Marcus was already standing over him.

The Avatar of Soleth raised all four arms toward the ceiling. He began to draw all the ambient light and mana in the room into a single point above his head. The shadows in the corners of the room were physically pushed back as the radiance became absolute.

Marcus held a sphere of golden fire that looked like a collapsing star.

"Soleth’s Gavel!"

He brought the sphere down directly onto Hiroshi’s head.

The world went white. It wasn’t just an explosion; it was a sustained crushing force of ten thousand tons of holy pressure. The heat turned the stone floor into red-hot glass. The shockwave leveled the entire west wing of the palace above, sending tons of masonry crashing down into the pit.

For thirty seconds, the light didn’t fade. The Avatars poured every ounce of their stolen divine power into the strike. They were burning their own life force as fuel. Marcus’s golden skin began to crack, showing the charred human flesh beneath. Aria’s liquid form started to evaporate. Kenji was vomiting iron-scented blood.

Finally, the light died.

The chamber was gone. In its place was a massive, smooth-walled crater of molten glass, fifty feet deep.

At the bottom lay Hiroshi.

He was mangled. He wasn’t a monster anymore; he looked like a broken doll. His left arm was twisted at an impossible angle, the white bone protruding from the elbow. His chest was caved in, his breathing a wet, ragged rattle. The shadow-armor had been burned away, leaving only charred rags and a body covered in deep, jagged lacerations. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and dark fluid leaked from his nose and ears.

Marcus took a heavy, metallic step back. His golden hands were shaking so violently they blurred. "It’s... finished."

Aria drifted toward the edge of the pit, her translucent blue body flickering. She looked at Hiroshi’s motionless form. "The mana signature... it’s almost gone. He’s dying."

Kenji stood over the pit, his third eye flickering like a dying candle. He was the only one with the strength left to move. He raised his broken executioner’s blade, preparing for a final, decapitating strike. "I’ll make sure."

Kenji slid down into the crater. He stood over Hiroshi’s broken body and raised the sword.

Then, a sound broke the silence.

It wasn’t a groan of pain. It wasn’t a plea for mercy.

It was a laugh.

It started as a low, wet gurgle in Hiroshi’s throat. Then it grew, becoming a jagged, rhythmic sound that didn’t sound like it was coming from a human chest. It sounded like two sheets of rusted metal being rubbed together.

Hiroshi’s broken body began to twitch.

"Is he... laughing?" Kenji whispered, his sword trembling.

Hiroshi’s head lolled to the side. His one open eye, the violet pupil now glowing with a light that made the gold and red of the Avatars look dim, fixed on Kenji.

The laugh grew louder, more frantic, and more inhuman. Hiroshi’s jaw unhinged further than a human’s should, his mouth stretching into a wide, dark abyss.

"Is that... all?" the voice said. It was a thousand voices speaking at once, layered over each other in a discordant harmony.

Suddenly, the shadows didn’t come from the room. They erupted from Hiroshi’s wounds.

The black blood leaking from his chest didn’t fall to the ground. It floated upward, forming jagged, crystalline shapes in the air. The broken bone in his arm didn’t heal; it grew, splitting the skin and lengthening into a black, obsidian-like claw.

The ground around the crater began to groan.

"Get back!" Marcus roared, but he was too slow.

The shadows from Hiroshi’s body didn’t just form armor this time. They formed a cocoon of writhing, oily blackness that expanded outward with the force of a bomb. Kenji was thrown back, his sword-wings snapping as he hit the ceiling. Marcus and Aria were pushed to the edges of the room.

Inside the cocoon, the sound of breaking bones and tearing flesh was constant. It sounded like something huge was trying to fit into a space too small for it.

The blackness began to solidify. It wasn’t shadow anymore. It was something physical, something ancient and foul.

The cocoon split open.

What stepped out was no longer Hiroshi. It was a nightmare given physical form.

He was taller now, his body elongated and skeletal. His skin was the color of a crimson sky, covered in shifting, runic tattoos that bled purple light. From his back, six spindly, insect-like legs made of hardened void arched over his head like a crown of thorns. His face was a smooth, featureless mask of black glass, save for a single, massive vertical slit in the center that pulsed with the light of a dying star.

The air in the room didn’t just get cold; it became unbreathable. The divine light of Marcus’s body began to dim, suppressed by the sheer presence of the thing in the crater.

The creature raised a long, multi-jointed arm. The fingers ended in needles of pure void. It tilted its head, the black glass mask reflecting the terrified faces of the three "gods."

The laughter stopped.

"So much fun," the voices whispered, vibrating in their very marrow.

The creature’s foot hit the floor, and the entire space above them began to tilt into the earth. The real fight had only just begun.