Only Two Remained
Only two left, huh?
The primordial darkness was filled in every direction with screams deeper than silence and dark crimson blood. After I smashed the demon bastard’s skull to a pulp and claimed its immortal eye as a trophy, tucking it deep inside my cloak, the years grew even more merciless and cruel. The pinnacles of this world that blocked my path—the ancient transcendent beings who claimed weak rules like death held no sway over them—were nothing more than solid prey for wringing every last drop of mana from my body in the face of my ferocious longing to escape.
I walked. I hunted. I tore their bodies apart without mercy. My law of survival was simple: if it wouldn’t die, I would separate every bone and strip of flesh until it couldn’t even dream of fighting back, crushing its soul completely. That same law applied to the other lords. In the crushing solitude, whatever weakness had once lingered inside me had long since been ground to nothing by the flames of mana. Everywhere my feet fell, the rotten blood of monsters squelched wetly beneath them in the dark.
The second offering was the Lord of Sloth, who lay sprawled out, lazily fouling the surrounding darkness with his presence. Unlike the other grotesque monsters, he took the form of a strangely beautiful young man with black hair. As if everything in existence bored him, he floated crookedly in the air, not even bothering to glance at the sound of my approaching footsteps. Only when my dagger drove through the pale flesh of his throat did he finally release a bizarre scream.
The spatial distortion power he wielded was heavier and more stubborn than I had expected, but my dogged obsession with returning to my original world proved far faster. Every time he twisted the air to crush my body without mercy, explosive agony ripped through me as capillaries burst and joints crunched—but I detonated black mana and drove forward, smashing his face to ruin. Each time the black mana enveloping me exploded, his beautiful black hair became drenched in rotten blood and whipped wildly in every direction. With every punch, the once-white face caved in beyond recognition.
“You said you don’t die, right? Then since you won’t die, I’ll make you relive this horrific pain every single day until you’re on the brink of death. Again and again. Forever.”
—Guaaaak!
In the end, the beautiful young man of Sloth—his soul utterly broken before the helplessness of a mere weakling—lay flat on the cold dirt, trembling pathetically as if begging for his life. As he miserably lowered his head, I seized his delicate white right index finger and ripped it out by the root. Flesh tore with a wet ripping sound, nerves snapped with a crunch, and purple fluid gushed out like a fountain. It was a hard, bizarre bone that would prove very useful one day.
Of course, I also squeezed every last drop of the immortal mana he possessed and mercilessly engraved it into my own bloodstream as a new power source. The third was the ruler of Greed, the one who sought to monopolize every precious essence and energy in this world. Its lower body was disturbingly human, but above the neck it bore the grotesque head of a giant black dragon. True to its nature, the pressure of the mana radiating from its entire form was heavy and murderous enough to physically crush the entire land.
Whenever its bizarre maw opened, rocks shattered and brain-piercing explosions filled the air. The monstrous mana waves it emitted sent a vicious shock through me, making my ribcage creak and grind from the inside, yet my eyes only burned brighter. My shattered flesh and cells drank in its essence and grotesquely reassembled themselves in real time.
Kwaaaaaang—!
While it lusted after a world it could never possess, I held only one purpose—escape—and drove my right fist straight into that dragon head. The mana shockwave that mercilessly twisted space shattered its steel-like scales like a watermelon, exploding violently in every direction. It spread its massive wings in rage, baring its teeth and charging, but after a grotesque, desperate brawl in which I traded flesh to grind its bones, I forced its jaws apart. Crushing its entire jaw joint, I tore out the largest black fang with all my strength.
The vivid sound of tearing flesh and wrenching bone accompanied the fang’s extraction. The creature clutched at one eye and thrashed across the ground, shrieking, while the heavy fang pulsed with weight in my grip before slipping naturally beneath my cloak. Dark red blood erupted from its maw like a fountain, drenching me from head to toe.
The fourth, the Lord of Gluttony, who devoured every monster in sight to swell his mountain-sized body, also fell as a pitiful victim of my dagger. That repulsive creature, rolling its colossal mass of fat and greedily sucking in even the surrounding darkness, could not withstand the boiling heat of mana surging inside me. When it opened its enormous maw to swallow me whole, I did not dodge. Instead I ripped open its belly and walked straight into the grotesque interior.
The sticky gastric juices and poison burned my skin and flesh at the cellular level, bringing unbearable agony, but I endured with stubborn tenacity. From the very center of its organs, I detonated a mana shockwave and burst the creature apart from within. Under the devastating impact that crushed and melted everything inside, Gluttony’s massive body released a wretched scream. I stomped mercilessly on the face of the thrashing, dismembered monster, then gouged out the blunt, grotesque nose protruding from the center of its face with my dagger and shoved it deep into my cloak.
The densely condensed nose bone resonated unpleasantly with the other fragments inside my cloak. Every time the essence of gluttony seeped into my heart, my mana swelled enormously.
The last was the incarnation of Wrath, who painted the entire space with the stench of blood and rampaged in merciless frenzy. It was the most violent, lethal dogfight imaginable. Its reason completely paralyzed, it swung murderous claws that shredded my bones and organs. Even as my body was torn to rags and dark crimson blood sprayed everywhere, my eyes blazed with even greater mad fighting spirit. No matter how fast it regenerated, my vicious survival instinct was far more precise and lethal when it sank its teeth into that thick neck. Trading flesh to carve its chest with my dagger was a transaction I knew well.
“Scream louder, you son of a bitch!”
Crack—!
I pinned its jaw to the ground with my dagger, then thrust my left hand into the shrieking maw without hesitation. Grabbing the tongue of the howling Lord of Wrath, I ripped it cleanly in half and claimed it. Spinal fluid and rotten blood ran thickly down my forearm. The final death throes of its trembling soul transmitted through my fingertips and stimulated every inch of my body.
Looking down at Wrath as it crawled across the floor, vomiting red blood with the purple pattern on its forehead completely shattered, I tucked the blood-dripping half-tongue deep into my cloak.
Pride, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Wrath.
The five transcendent beings said to have ruled this world from its very beginning as the great lords now sat miserably at my feet, limbs grotesquely severed, trembling in agony. The immortal essences and fragments of their unique bodies resonated strangely inside my cloak, stored away one by one as mighty trump cards for the future.
My heart, having squeezed and absorbed every drop of the five lords’ essences, had evolved into a colossal power source beyond the core of a volcano—an unimaginable engine of power. Simply by standing still, transparent waves of distorted force dozens of meters wide poured from my body, mercilessly twisting the space around me. My very flesh was becoming a living myth that shook the laws of this world. The earth itself screamed, unable to bear the weight.
Thud. Thud.
My footsteps after trampling the five lords were unwavering. There was no longer any wall in this world that could stop me. To create an exit back to my original world, I tightened my grip on the blood-soaked dagger once more and began walking toward the end of this grotesque hell. With every step, the ground let out a precarious scream. Now, only two remained.