The Little Giant Stands
Centered on me, two of the Humanity Clones latched on like magnets, each taking one of my hands and settling in at my sides, while the rest of them formed a ring around us.
"You doing this, Main Body?"
"For real?"
Just do it already! I can't even open my mouth to answer!
I shrieked that inside my head, and only then did the two Humanity Clones who knew how to handle spiritual energy seize my hands and raise a surge of golden spiritual energy.
That finally let me pull a little free of the endlessly swelling Slaughter's weight — but in exchange, the Humanity Clones started getting crushed under it instead, the reverse of me.
"Kyaaaaaah! Main Body! Main Body! This is a terrible idea!!!"
"We're all gonna dieee?!"
"Ack! Aaaagh! My muscles! Full-body muscle cramps!!!"
I scowled at the ear-splitting screams and pain-wailing as they thrashed around like lunatics, but there wasn't a damn thing I could do for them.
Hell, I was the one who hadn't even absorbed the Yoke of Slaughter into my Mental World — I'd dumped a whole Great Sea of Slaughter into it instead, ballooning the Slaughter like an idiot, and I was already half-dead just trying not to get crushed. So yeah.
I had to turn this into a Sea of Slaughter now, and make sure the fourfold Seas of Slaughter could circulate. I was dead certain the Status Window could take it — the problem wasn't the Status Window. It was my body.
Even with a body that regenerated off Slaughter, reinforced by the Status Window and every mod I had, trying to hold this much Slaughter with flesh alone meant it was genuinely about to come apart.
If the Humanity Clones hadn't taken even a fraction of the load with their spiritual energy, I would've detonated on the spot — and instead of expanding the Great Sea of Slaughter in the Training Ground, I'd have lost a massive chunk of Slaughter and gotten yeeted clean out of here.
Even while my mind wandered like that, the scarecrows kept spawning and dying without pause, feeding more Slaughter into the chain, swelling it further and further.
The Humanity Clones, mouths growing too heavy to open, clamped their lips shut. Even if they were nothing more than Mortals, the bodies of the Humanity Clones manifested in the Mental World were made of Slaughter itself — and with their innate talents letting them use skills and the Status Window, they were basically other versions of me.
Stack an encyclopedia on a single egg and of course the egg cracks. But stack that book across a whole carton of eggs and it holds. If the Humanity Clones — whose actual souls were identical to mine — shared the weight of the Slaughter with spiritual energy on top of everything else…
"Ghk?!"
Ah. Limit.
One of the Humanity Clones couldn't hold, staggered, then collapsed outright — dissolving into Slaughter and getting forcibly recalled into my interior. The load spiked hard, and I clenched my teeth.
Still not enough.
If the first Sea and the second Sea differed by more than double, the second and third differed by more than four times. Without a gap that big, the Seas of Slaughter would never mix without colliding, never circulate, never regenerate Slaughter at all.
Which meant the fourth Sea of Slaughter, by simple math, needed to be at least eight times the third. Literally an ocean's worth of Slaughter — the kind of volume you could only fill in the Training Ground.
"Main Body! Are we there yet?!"
"I told you it's not enough! Kh! Can we even do this? The plan looked perfect!"
"In that case — what about this?!"
One Humanity Clone forced herself over to one of the two holding my hands and reached out. Whether she'd read the thought or not, the other clone managed a nod and passed over her spiritual energy.
Clutching that spiritual energy, the Humanity Clone forced her body to move — and as it crumbled, she drew even more Slaughter into herself, then got flung back into the interior. At the same instant—
Golden spiritual energy burst from the collapsing Slaughter-body of the Humanity Clone, flooding into the Yoke of Slaughter. For a single moment, the weight the Yoke was driving down on me dropped hard.
"That actually works?!"
"No — once it swells a little more, the weight'll come right back!"
"Then what do we do?"
"What do you mean what?! We've got a sure method now!"
The Humanity Clones' eyes lit up. Growing the Sea of Slaughter wasn't just about more Slaughter. Sure, every skill with a Slaughter-based coefficient would get stronger — but more importantly, the Humanity Clones could only have bodies of their own inside the Mental World.
If another layer of Sea of Slaughter stacked onto the Mental World, it wouldn't just expand the interior. It could become an environment they could move around in inside the Mental World itself. That was where the motivation came from.
"I'm going first!"
She took golden spiritual energy from the one who could handle it, then collapsed her own Slaughter-body and spread the spiritual energy through it, mixing it into the still-swelling Yoke of Slaughter and cutting the weight.
More precisely, it was closer to breaking the Slaughter's instinct and will to kill living things — like watering down a shot of thick espresso into an Americano — by blending spiritual energy into it.
But inside the temporary Mental World, scarecrows kept spawning and dying into Slaughter at the same time, the Slaughter ballooning exponentially again and ramping the weight right back up. The remaining Humanity Clones snapped to, each cradling golden spiritual energy in their bodies, and one by one they started self-destructing.
Even as they poured out spiritual energy until the light radiating from the Golden Core weakened to almost nothing — until the Mental World looked lit by nothing but the dark glow of Slaughter — it still wasn't enough.
The idea of the Humanity Clones packing spiritual energy, detonating their Slaughter-bodies, and mixing that energy straight into the Yoke to cut the weight was genuinely brilliant.
But compared to how many Humanity Clones there were, the amount of Slaughter needed to build the fourth Sea was just too damn much.
Stopping now, converting Slaughter into stats, and building the Sea later — I'd already gotten too greedy for that. Simply put, it was too late to pivot.
Which meant this was the moment to go all-in.
"Block it. Protect it!"
I left the Golden Core with the last two Humanity Clones who hadn't self-destructed, let go of their hands, and at the same time hauled up the power of the Laws and opened my mouth.
TRANS—FORM!!
A little giant made of Slaughter heaved itself upright.
The temporary Mental World couldn't handle the little giant and shook violently — but the vast Slaughter already rolling on and on flipped the script, forcibly pinning the Mental World in place so it wouldn't collapse.
A wheel sat above my head and turned, casting a savage red light across the temporary Mental World, while a halo of 1,024 Chopsticks floating at my back backed that wheel up.
But the Yoke of Slaughter — swollen nearly eightfold — crushed down on me. The giant dropped to one knee on its own, short arms shoved up over its head, trying to hold somehow. Even then the Slaughter kept swelling, and the arms were slowly being forced down.
"Haaaaaaah!!!"
I stacked Slaughter. The Chopsticks were already supporting the wheel, so obviously the only thing I had left to use was the Spoon.
So I stacked a tower with Spoons.
The way I used bomb skills — stacking Spoons like Tetris, piece by piece into a tower — until a colossal Spoon became a pillar trying to brace the swelling weight of the Slaughter. The instant it made contact, the weight shattered the Spoons back into Slaughter.
But rebuilding the tower was faster than letting it fully collapse.
Of course it was. I was just copy-pasting along the tower I'd already built in the Mental World, swapping the material from Chopsticks to Spoons. Naturally it was fast.
The moment it clicked, the Spoon tower that had been collapsing over and over started rising not as one tower, but three at once.
And the instant those towers went up, with a crack, more arms of Slaughter burst from both shoulders of the Slaughter giant and moved to catch the crushing Yoke.
But the newly grown Slaughter arms crumpled the second the Yoke added even a little more weight, and the towers that had just been stacked shattered with them.
Watching that, I stacked Spoon towers again.
No matter how many times the towers fell, as long as the temporary Mental World held, I could raise them again with my eyes closed by now.
At some point, four giant arms were bracing the Yoke of Slaughter.
The little giant straightened the bent leg, slowly shouldering the Yoke of Slaughter, red radiance of Slaughter pouring from both eyes as it began to rise.
At the little giant's feet, the two Humanity Clones still shielding the Golden Core from the Slaughter with spiritual energy flinched — and in that instant an aurora bloomed from the Golden Core, shot out like a single white meteor, and punched clean through the entire Yoke of Slaughter the giant had been lifting.
In the same breath, the little giant didn't miss the opening. It heaved the Yoke of Slaughter up and fully straightened its body — and the wheel that had been spinning without rest, and the halo of Chopsticks, both stopped dead.