The True God of Wisdom Awakens
Pyew!
“Kuh!”
Another beam pierced straight through my body.
A single streak of light erased half of me.
The guy's power was growing more refined and potent by the second.
He was getting used to wielding a god's strength.
Wooong.
I regenerated my body once more.
My left half, incinerated by the lab director's beam, restored itself perfectly.
“You're one tough bastard.”
Perched above, he looked down at me with haughty arrogance.
“Told ya. I'm immortal.”
“Hmph. For someone like that, your regen speed seems slower than at the start.”
Is this dude delusional or what?
“Just as I thought. Even if you can't die, regeneration is a different story. Restoring your full body consumes your divine power. And the more you use, the slower it gets.”
He twisted his lips into a sneer.
“Once your regen hits its limit, I'll devour you whole.”
With that, he unleashed a barrage of beams.
Kaboom! Kaboom!
I threw up a ton of barriers to block the lab director's beams.
“Trying to stall for time? Fat chance!”
Kwarung! Kwarung! Kwarung!
Beams rained down like pillars of light.
Even the barriers I'd conjured with my imagination were starting to reach their breaking point.
“It takes more than a day to deplete the divinity inside me! Plenty of time to absorb you!”
Pyew!
In the end, a beam broke through my barriers and struck me.
His smile deepened.
This guy...
Doesn't he realize I could just destabilize this dream world and bail?
If I dip out, you're the one who ends up dog meat.
Fleeing would mean no absorption for him. But if I did, the Goddess of Wisdom could never shed her past and awaken. This was our last shot.
Constellation... hurry up.
Get it done already.
How long is this gonna take? Don't tell me it failed?
Then—
Ku-gu-gu-gu-gung!
A massive explosion rocked the ground far below.
...Yes!
“......Impossible.”
His face froze solid.
He'd absorbed all of the God of Wisdom's authorities, so he had to know.
What had just happened down there.
“No way. That bitch didn't have a shred of divinity left.”
He denied reality harder than ever.
“Ahh, yeah. There wasn't a speck of divinity left in her.”
A mass of divinity rocketed up from the ground toward us.
“But awakening to godhood on her own? That's a whole different story.”
Shock locked his features.
He'd only ascended by sacrificing countless lives—a cheat because true self-ascension was impossible for him.
So he couldn't accept it.
“No way in hell! That worthless slut pulling off what even I couldn't?! Impossible!”
This contradictory mess of superiority and inferiority complex.
“I am the God of Wisdom! The pinnacle of true intellect, leagues above vermin like you!”
Enraged, he raised both hands skyward.
Thousands of beams, born solely for destruction, materialized in the air.
His previous clashes with me had been fuel-efficient skirmishes to conserve divinity. Now, he burned it freely for an attack on another level entirely.
But—
“Wrong.”
Wooong.
All those beams vanished in an instant.
“You're no God of Wisdom.”
A girl shining in brilliant violet light stepped between us.
“Wisdom is understanding all things through knowledge and aligning your thoughts and actions accordingly. Forcing the world to bend to your whims? You'll never be the God of Wisdom.”
“......You've reclaimed it, Princess.”
The girl who'd endured centuries of torment in captivity had achieved self-awakening.
Accepting her inner everything, reborn as the true God of Wisdom.
“Prince. Thank you.”
She glanced my way with a greeting.
“Dying for me over and over... must've hurt like hell.”
It was a dream, so no pain.
“Can I take this as a love confession? You're the one who crossed the line first, Prince. Get ready later—I'll show you every one of the God of Wisdom's special hundreds of skills.”
......Huh?
Her words short-circuited my brain from overload.
That's when—
“You! You bitch!!!!!”
Fwoosh!
The lab director, engulfed in flames of divinity, bellowed.
“I refuse to accept it! A lowly, stupid whore like you ascending on your own?! It has to be some trick!!”
He knew godhood formation better than anyone—yet he denied it.
Couldn't admit a mere test subject he'd scorned had done what he couldn't.
It would invalidate his entire path over those long years.
“How dare you disrupt my millennium-spanning grand design! I'll incinerate you both in divine fire!”
He thrust both hands upward.
Flames converged, forming a sun.
He held a colossal solar orb aloft in his palms.
“Burning even his divinity core out of rage. He's lost his reason entirely.”
Godhood could persist by absorbing others, even at divinity's expense.
But the core was his very concept of existence.
Burn that, and his oblivion was sealed.
“Doesn't matter! Burn you both here and devour what's left!”
Even if he won and absorbed us, he'd still fade.
He'd crossed the point of no return.
“Nngh.”
The God of Wisdom focused, reaching for the lab director's sun—but it didn't vanish.
“......Too strong.”
A final attack staked on his own annihilation.
Even she, fully awakened as a god, couldn't block that immense power.
Then—
“Princess. Mind lending me a hand?”
“W-Wah, Prince?”
I took her hand and hooked our pinkies.
“H-H-Hoo! In a d-dangerous moment like this, such a s-sweet, sugary scene is r-romantic, but it's kinda risky too, no time for this... B-But if it's with you, Prince, dying wouldn't be so bad... A-And I never imagined your hand would be this warm and soft, so inside me there's this...
She started rambling incoherently.
Makes sense—locked in a room for ages, no real talk. Especially now, fresh off ascending through all that adversity.
“Sorry, Princess. No time right now.”
Constellation. Please.
[Dream Storyteller puffs her cheeks sulkily, saying she doesn't like it.]
[Dream Storyteller says she'll do it anyway, since it's for our precious apostle.]
Woooong.
The constellation's remaining authority gathered inside me.
[Exhausted of divinity, Dream Storyteller falls into a temporary slumber.]
Thanks as always.
I bowed to the sleeping constellation and turned to the God of Wisdom.
“Princess.”
“H-Hoo!”
Why's she so overreactive?
She'd ascended, gotten all cool and godly, but her behavior was still a bit off.
“Let's blow this guy away together.”
“Huh?”
“My imagination plus your wisdom—fused as one.”
“W-Wah, becoming one with Prince...! Haaah...”
She seemed a little off, but she was all I had to trust right now.
Kuoooooo!
A fierce power swirled around us, hands clasped.
“Last gasp, huh?! Useless! My sun blocks nothing! I alone am the pinnacle!”
The orb of annihilation hurtled toward us.
“No.”
My imagination has limits.
Fragmentary at best—mere concepts without blueprints or principles.
But fused with the God of Wisdom's authority, it changes.
She manifests it fully, down to the core.
That power takes form.
“Higher.”
I pointed upward with a finger.
“......What?!”
Above the sky.
Beyond the atmosphere.
A colossal force condensed.
“Prince's grand imagination! It's too amazing!”
“......Focus, Princess. Save the praise for later.”
My conception.
Perfected by the God of Wisdom.
A weapon of destruction blaspheming even gods.
Our ultimate collaboration.
Satellite Cannon
Ἴκαρος
“N-No way! An attack higher than my sun?!”
“Go! The fruit of love born from Prince and me!!!”
Kwaaaaaang!
From an altitude surpassing even the lab director's sun.
Our lance of light fired from the cosmos.
“Impossible... impossible!!!!”
It crumbled his tower of hubris.
* * *
“Ah, found it!”
The Goddess of Wisdom, sifting through building rubble, picked up a charred, twitching lump.
“Good thing you're still alive.”
Still kicking? This guy's insanely tough.
She beamed innocently, thrilled the lab director clung to life.
“What're you planning to do with him?”
I'd witnessed her entire life, all his atrocities.
Her suffering was beyond measure.
Weekly boss fodder might not cut it.
“Prince.”
“Yeah.”
“Ever heard of personality jelly?”
......Personality what now?