The Limits of Power
The help from this thing is fucking useless, huh?
KWAAAAAANG—!
The collision of fist against fist unleashed a cataclysmic roar that threatened to collapse the entire earth. The majestic essence I had gained from devouring the demon’s heart was transforming my body in real time. Its transcendent speed was now being perfectly read by my razor-sharp supersenses.
The demon’s claws, ripping violently through the air, brushed past me as if in a frozen frame of slow motion. I twisted my upper body by a hair’s breadth, effortlessly deflecting its lethal strike. At the same time, I reversed my grip on the dagger in my left hand and slashed mercilessly across the scaled flank of the beast.
Shhhk— Crack!
[GUAAAAAAAH—!]
The heavy mana shockwave embedded in the dagger completely tore through the demon’s black hide and shattered its internal skeleton into pieces. The creature screamed and tried to retreat in a hurry, but I had no intention of letting it go.
I clamped down on its wrist like a steel vise, holding it in place. Then I compressed the boiling heat surging inside me to its absolute limit and began mercilessly hammering its face with my right fist.
Thud—! Crack! Thuuud—!
With every punch, the demon’s tough scales shattered into fragments that flew wildly in every direction. From its completely crushed nose, dark crimson blood gushed out like a fountain, soaking my face and cloak pitch black.
The purple mana it had boasted about writhed madly to regenerate the wounds, but my attack speed had already far surpassed its regeneration rate. For every spot that healed, I tore open ten more. Whenever a bone tried to mend, I immediately crushed the entire joint, turning it into rags.
The monster that had arrogantly barked about being immortal was now, for the first time in its existence, facing the horrific terror of its own body being physically erased. Its red eyes were miserably stained with shock and fear it had never felt before.
KWAAAAAANG—!
The final punch slammed straight into the demon’s chest, smashing its massive body violently into the rock wall. Enormous boulders crumbled like straw and poured down onto its body. It could no longer maintain the arrogance of a Lord. Its limbs twisted grotesquely as it vomited rotten blood and simply trembled violently.
Even the ominous purple pattern glowing on its forehead began to crack finely, losing its light completely. It was the miserable sight of a primordial being beaten until it was literally reduced to dust.
I roughly grabbed the creature by the collar from within the pile of rubble and lifted it into the air. The moment I tried to forcibly absorb the dense mana essence rising from its torn wounds once again—
Fwoosh— Thud.
'……Huh?'
My brows narrowed sharply. The moment the purple current flowing from its wound touched my palm, it failed to be absorbed and simply dissipated into the air like smoke. It was a strange sensation—my heart’s mana was already filled to its absolute limit, pushing away any more of the demon’s essence.
There was no status window, but my body was instinctively screaming. This was the limit of the essence I could take from this horned monster bastard. Once I reached a certain critical point, the seemingly inexhaustible well of its power could no longer be absorbed as my own.
I roughly wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth and clicked my tongue. I had thought I could squeeze it dry indefinitely and become a god, but it seemed the world wasn’t that easy. Still, there was no time to feel disappointed or sit around.
If I couldn’t absorb any more essence, there was clearly another important value left to rip from this tattered monster bastard.
Thud.
I violently threw the now completely drained demon onto the ground. Unlike me, who had had my bones shattered and rolled across the floor thousands of times, this being that had reigned as the strong since the dawn of time had its soul completely broken.
It sat on the cold dirt floor, clutching its utterly destroyed face, trembling all over at just the sound of my approaching footsteps as it tried to crawl backward.
I grabbed a fistful of its black hair and forcibly yanked its head up. The razor-sharp blade of my pitch-black dagger stopped dead right in front of its remaining eye. The transparent shockwave swirling around the blade stung its eyelid, maximizing its terror.
[Kk… hrk… khak… What… what the hell are you doing…….]
My cold question shattered the heavy silence of the rocky wasteland. My eyes had never been more serious, blazing with a desperate longing for escape. I was ready to do anything if it meant breaking free from this moss-covered prison of darkness.
The demon stared at me blankly with bloodshot eyes after hearing my question. What flashed across its face wasn’t shock or rage. It was pure bewilderment and genuine confusion.
A strange, rasping murmur mixed with odd clicking sounds flowed from its maw.
[Escape…? Leave…? This world……?]
I pressed the dagger even closer to its eye. The heat condensed at the blade’s tip scorched its scales with terrible pain. Yet even as the demon groaned in agony, it answered in a hollow voice, as if it truly could not comprehend.
[Something like that… I do not know. Something that does not even exist in the first place—how could asking me yield an answer?]
My brows furrowed so deeply they felt like they might crack. What the hell was this bastard saying?
[This darkness, this space of nothingness, is both the beginning and the end of the world. From the dawn of time, everything has existed here. The very concept of any space beyond this place has never existed. So where exactly are you trying to escape to, you ignorant worm?]
There was no lie in its voice. It was the pure confession of ignorance from a being whose soul had been utterly broken. Even the entity that had reigned as a Lord in this world had never even conceived of the fact that another world existed beyond this terrible darkness.
To them, this fucking hell was the entirety of existence.
A profound sense of futility surged up from deep within my chest. The weight of the disappointment was as heavy as my expectations had been great. If even the boss of this area didn’t know the way out, it meant I had no choice but to carve a path with my own power, without anyone’s help.
Simply leaving this bastard alive like this left a bad taste in my mouth.
I took another step closer to the panting, slumped demon. Before it could even react, I hooked my fingers like claws and gouged out one of its eyes.
Splurt—!
[Aaaaaaaaagh! Have you truly gone mad!!]
The demon shuddered violently, clutching the ruined eye socket as it let out a bloodcurdling scream. A grotesque mixture of spinal fluid and purple ichor poured from the empty hole like a waterfall. Every time it thrashed, the rocky ground became slick with blood.
The red eye resting in my palm continued to writhe and twist the air with ominous life even after being completely torn from its body. While I could no longer absorb its power essence into my flesh, this bizarrely tough eyeball would never regenerate and remained fully intact in my hand.
It might be useful someday. Probably. It had better be.
I stuffed the demon’s red eye deep into the inner pocket of my leather cloak. Then I looked up at the vibrating, pitch-black sky.
The colossal dark ceiling. The writhing mass of flesh belonging to an immeasurably gigantic monster still loomed massively in place. In the end, the answer was up there.
The only clue that could lead me back home.
If the intelligent beings of this world didn’t know of an exit, then I had no choice but to kill the owner of that enormous sky covering the entire world, grab it by the collar, and rip it open.
If I tore out that thing’s heart, the door back to the world I came from would open.
I was definitely going back. I couldn’t live like this in this shitty world.
I clenched my fist tightly. The mana that had reached its critical point and was boiling as if ready to explode shook the earth threateningly throughout my body.
If any grandiose bastards tried to stand in my way, I would crush them all.
Solely to create an exit back to my original world, I twisted my grip on the pitch-black dagger once more and began walking resolutely into the darkness.