Chapter 361: Ascension to Immortality (17)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 361: Ascension to Immortality (17)
Despite having lost an arm, the bastard’s composure hadn’t wavered in the slightest.
He seemed a bit surprised, but he acted as if he still held the upper hand.
Holding a sickening illusion in each of his three remaining arms, he toyed with me provocatively.
“Are you mad? You’re mad, aren’t you!”
“You can still laugh after losing a hand? Ah, is it because you still have three left? Don’t worry. I’ll rip the rest of them off for you soon enough.”
“What a waste! With enough time, I can recover from something like this whenever I want! Besides, I can’t even feel pain! So what if a bit of my body gets blown away? It doesn’t even hurt!”
Resurrection tried to trigger from the recoil of using Reinforcement without medicine, but I quickly swallowed the pill.
Even if it was a bit late, it was better than not taking it at all.
“Being able to read minds is so convenient. I can see all your weaknesses clear as day! What can you possibly do when you can only use that power for five minutes? Hmm? What do you think he can do?”
I felt a surge of nausea watching the bastard speak while tightly clutching the illusion of Professor Cathy in his hand.
“Oh! I see! It might even be shorter than five minutes? That’s such a shame!”
It was pathetic watching him act as if he were hearing something from the illusion he’d created, so I threw a punch.
“It won’t work! I could dodge a linear attack like that with my eyes closed!”
However, the bastard dodged my attack with speed far greater than when we first met.
“Did you know? Your negative emotions taste delicious. I haven’t even eaten any flesh, yet I feel so full of energy. I wonder what kind of incredible power I’d get if I actually ate you!?”
As if trying to provoke me, the bastard grinned and swallowed the illusion that looked like Cathy Noona whole.
“Don’t act like it’s nothing! You want to beat me to death right this second, don’t you? Get angrier! Otherwise, I might just gobble up the remaining two! No, what if I eat your real comrades instead of these illusions? Come on, show me some more strength!”
His body had grown noticeably larger than before, and his strength and speed had increased. It seemed he really was growing stronger by feeding on my negative emotions.
Getting angry was unavoidable—it was a sore spot he was intentionally poking—but there was nothing I could do about that.
“Hey.”
“…Huh?”
When I called out to the bastard who had been rambling on, he tilted his head in confusion.
“You can’t actually read minds, can you?”
“…Whaaat?”
“Or maybe you can’t read them perfectly, and it only works in specific situations? Either way, if you could actually see into my heart right now, there’s no way you wouldn’t be running for your life.”
“I don’t know what kind of nonsense you’re suddenly spouting, but I can see your next move perfectly. You’re just planning to move faster than me by mindlessly stacking that Reinforcement of yours, aren’t you?”
“Ah, so you do know. But then why aren’t you running? Have you given up?”
“You moron. Why would I run when I can read all your movements in advance! It’s only five minutes—no, if I just hold out for about four more minutes, you’ll be completely defenseless!”
“Ah, yeah. Is that so?”
The intense light of Reinforcement wrapped around my body several times.
“Yes! You’re going to tear off all my arms and legs? Do you think you can?! The angrier you get, the stronger I become! That Reinforcement of yours, no matter how…!”
“You’re funny.”
“…Huh?”
“Do you really think you can stay alive for another four minutes? Honestly?”
Before he knew it, the bastard saw his own arm in my hand. Realizing something had gone horribly wrong, he tried to create distance, but his movements were pathetically slow.
One more.
I arrived at the spot where he was trying to flee before he did and ripped off one of his two remaining arms.
“What, huh? No, I can see everything. Why…?”
“So what if you can see it?”
By the time I finally tore off his last remaining arm, the bastard turned around and began to run.
Fine. I left your legs intact just to see that, so go ahead and try your hardest to escape.
“You’re so damn slow.”
When I kicked his leg from behind, it exploded, and his massive body toppled over.
“You moron, you can’t even run away properly. What are you going to do even if you can see into my mind?”
As I stepped on his giant head, the countless eyes all over his body began to roll around frantically.
Well, there was no special trick to it.
I just overwhelmed him with pure power.
Whether he was truly predicting my next move or using some other trick, it didn’t matter. If I moved so fast that he couldn’t even react, it was all meaningless.
“What did you say to me earlier? Did you tell me to beg? How about it? Do you want to try begging too?”
“Do you even have any intention of sparing me~? You don’t. Since you won’t let me live anyway, why should I beg~? Ah, I admit it. You were more of a monster than I thought~ You weren’t meat I should have coveted.”
Seeing him still smiling was incredibly irritating.
“It’s not bad to have this high-quality malice as my last meal. Why don’t you just kill me already~? What if I end up becoming as strong as you like this?”
It was annoying how he even relaxed his body as if telling me to just get it over with.
I couldn’t just let him die like this. He had to pay the price for mocking what he should never have touched before he kicked the bucket, right?
“It’s true I have no intention of sparing you, but who says you have no reason to beg?”
“Huh? What the hell are you thinking…”
“You have to decide whether you’ll die painfully or a little less painfully. You don’t want to die in agony, do you? Then you should beg.”
“You idiot. Did you already forget that I said I can’t feel pain~? No matter how much of an expert you are at making others suffer, what’s the point if I can’t feel it!”
Seeing his confident display made me even more certain.
“You really can’t read a person’s entire mind.”
If he could truly read everything, he would have been groveling for forgiveness immediately.
“You weren’t born without the ability to feel pain. Judging by how you try to run away or block attacks, you probably lost your sense of touch after becoming a monster stitched together from various things.”
“I don’t even remember what I used to be, so what does it matter what I was in the past?”
“It matters. It’s hard to explain pain to someone who has never known it, but it’s not that difficult to explain it to someone who has felt it at least once.”
“So you’re saying you’re going to torment me with words or something…”
“I’ll teach you soon enough, so shut your damn mouth.”
I increased the pressure on his head and drew out my demonic energy.
Even without Lucifer’s help, I could at least mimic the abilities I used frequently.
As I opened the Succubus’s Magic Eye and began to cast a hypnosis on him, the bastard’s expression began to contort.
Had he finally realized what I was trying to do?
“Are you trying to use brainwashing to hear me repent? It doesn’t seem very effective, does it?”
…Never mind, he’s an idiot.
“Right, what meaning is there in an apology heard through brainwashing? An apology only has meaning when it comes from the heart, or when it’s soaked in fear and humiliation.”
Intending to give him the answer, I kicked one of the eyes near his neck. The bastard, who was about to mock me, let out a scream.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? Since you’ve lived a long time without feeling pain, it’ll probably hurt a bit more than what a normal person feels.”
“What, what is this…! How…!”
“I told you. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t know pain, but simple for someone who does.”
“I’m asking what that means…!”
“I placed the hypnosis directly on your brain. Even if you can’t actually feel physical pain, I’ve planted it in your head to perceive my attacks as pain—selecting only the most horrific agonies I’ve experienced so far.”
“Th-that kind of thing…”
“Is it possible? It seems it is. Looking at you now, I’d say it was a success.”
When I ripped off another of his remaining legs as he tried to flee, he screamed again, and blood-tears began to flow from various eyes on his body.
“Now your limbs… wait, you had six, so they weren’t exactly limbs. Anyway, it doesn’t matter since none of them are left.”
“I’m sorry…! I’m sorry! I’m truly sorry…!”
He certainly changed his tune quickly.
“No. From what I can see, you don’t seem very sorry to me at all. We need to talk a bit more so you can properly understand how wretched your actions were.”
“Guaaaaaagh…!?”
When I stepped on and burst an eyeball, he screamed once more.
“You need to be quiet. From the looks of it, you’ve been acting quite high and mighty around here. Are you planning to advertise that you’re in a dangerous state? What if the monsters who hold a grudge against you hear?”
Whenever he tried to transform his body to escape, I waited a moment and then tore it away. When he tried to crawl away, I kicked him back to his original position.
“Why are you squirming like that? It makes me want to stomp you to death like a bug.”
“I’m sorry…! I said I’m sorry…! You said you’d kill me without pain if I apologized…!”
“When did I say that? I said I’d choose whether to kill you less painfully or more painfully. I never said I’d kill you without pain.”
“Shit…! Do you think I’ll surrender just because of this! Not a chance! You seem desperate to see me apologize to those things, but in the end, you’ll lose to me! I’ve never given a sincere apology in my life!”
“Right, I’m sure. That’s why, rather than a sincere apology, I’d rather just watch you suffer…”
The pain he felt when I destroyed one of his eyes was, without exaggeration, selected from the very worst I had ever felt in my life. But for a monster of hell, that still felt a bit lacking.
“Did you know Succubi are more talented demons than you’d think?”
“…What?”
“You know, that kind of thing. I don’t know if you’d know, but things like ‘sensitivity increased a hundredfold!’ or, conversely, creating sensory blocking traps. Do you know about those?”
He didn’t seem to understand my words exactly, but whether it was due to his own instincts or if he’d guessed the gist of it, he looked terrified.
“I’m going to make use of that from now on. Increasing sensitivity isn’t strictly limited to pleasure. To be precise, it’s closer to amplifying all senses and then castrating every sensation except pleasure. There’s a reason why those who fall into a Succubus’s trap die before their life force is even fully drained.”
“You crazy… you crazy bastard! Even if you do that, I…!”
“Ah, if you don’t want to apologize, then don’t. If you can endure even that, I’ll have to give you credit.”
“Don’t do it…!”
“From now on, you’re going to resent your own stubborn tenacity and the mental strength you’ve built up in hell. Every time you’re about to break, I’ll give you a little breathing room, making sure you absolutely cannot endure it.”
After cranking his sensitivity to the maximum, I stepped on him very lightly. He erupted into a scream.
“Save me…! Save me…! Please, don’t…!”
“Oh, I see you still have a survival instinct left. Don’t worry.”
As I applied pressure and burst another eyeball, he finally couldn’t even scream. Blood-tears began to pour from all his other eyes, except for the one that had been crushed and vanished.
“Soon, those pleas for your life will turn into pleas for death. It’s far too light a price for daring to insult those precious to me, but I’ll have to be satisfied with this for now.”
He wheezed and wept blood, but I deliberately stepped even deeper into the socket where his eye had already burst.
This time, he couldn’t even manage a sound.
“You should listen when someone is talking. If you wheeze like that just because it hurts a little, what does that make the person explaining? Hmm? You have to listen. I told you to listen properly.”
He shook his head, begging for forgiveness, but I didn’t feel moved at all.
“Stop, stop. I said I was wrong. Save me…!”
“You still don’t understand.”
Where are the remaining eyes on his body… Ah, there are still plenty.
“I’m saying I’m going to make it so those words ‘save me’ never come out of your mouth again. You monster with zero learning capacity.”
I felt like laughing as I watched the monster tremble just because I lifted my leg.
I should have felt disgusted by the slimy substance on my foot, but I only felt good. It was strange.
Just enjoying myself.
As I kicked him and stepped on him, bursting the remaining eyes one by one, quite a bit of time passed.
“Ki… me.”
“I can’t hear you.”
When there were no eyes left and his body was filthy with slime and blood, a desperate plea was already flowing from his mouth.
“Ple… ase, I’m sorry… just… ki… ll me.”
Hmm, seeing him beg so desperately…
“I don’t want to.”
I didn’t really feel like killing him.
“…Huh?”
“You have great regenerative powers and your mental strength seems strong. It made me want to give you a reward. I didn’t think you’d actually endure all of this.”
His eyes… oh, he didn’t have any left. There was no light of hope on his face.
He probably wondered how else this madman was going to torture him, but I really did intend to let him live.
Using Divine Power created by forcibly draining the energy from the surrounding area, I forcibly sealed his wounds.
Well, it wasn’t a proper treatment, but…
“Wh-what are you doing…”
Oh, he’s using polite speech now.
“When healing wounds with Divine Power, if you slow down the regeneration rate of the missing parts and use the power in a specific way, only the wound gets sealed, and the original body part won’t regenerate.”
It was really wretched when I was on the receiving end of that from heroes in the past.
“…No way.”
The bastard began to struggle again.
“I’m going to let you live. Without arms, legs, or eyes, try to survive at the bottom of this place with that incredible regeneration and mental strength of yours.”
I could already feel the monster bastards who had smelled his blood slowly returning.
He probably knew it too.
“Ju-just kill me! Please kill me! Please…!”
“Why should I? You were begging me to save you earlier. Your earnest plea moved my heart, so it hurts my feelings when you say that.”
Well, since the treatment was over, it really wasn’t my business anymore.
Since I’d sealed his eye sockets and his limbs, he probably wouldn’t be able to return to his original state.
“You-you’re not really leaving, are you? It’s a joke, right?! Look how much I insulted your people! You have to kill me! You can’t just leave like this!”
“Cut the crap. Again. Don’t worry. If you’re lucky, a strong monster will come along and kill you. Try to hold out until then. While imagining how long it will take. And how painful it will be.”
I mocked the monster who was foolishly apologizing.
“This is the price for touching what you should never have touched, so endure it. You monster.”
“Who… who are you calling a monster?! You’re the monster here, you bastard!!!!”
“It’s always guys like you who strike first and then act like pathetic losers when they get beaten.”
Leaving behind the voice begging me not to go, I walked away. I had never felt so refreshed.
The scream that echoed a moment later wasn’t bad either.