Chapter 72
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 72
Chapter Title: Flames of Greed
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A thrilling sense of omnipotence brushed past his brain.
It was a sensation he'd felt before in the Black Forest, but unlike back then when it was only 13%, now it was at 30%.
Jun ground his teeth, wrestling his emotions under control.
'You're not my master.'
He growled inwardly at [Demon God Body].
True to its legendary skill status, it was trying to hijack his emotions on its own whim, and Jun refused.
Instead, he regarded his magic power with cold detachment.
Pushing [Demon God Body] to its limits had dramatically boosted his affinity with magic power.
But in exchange, his mind was shaken just as intensely.
Jun barely held on using [Unyielding Will] and [Steadfast Heart], his two skills.
'These two skills alone are starting to fall short.'
This was a problem to solve later. Jun turned his mind back to the unstable magic power.
The magic power was still trembling unsteadily.
It looked like some kind of error had occurred due to an existence from beyond the cosmos, something not of this world.
'How do I make that magic power move?'
First, he needed to understand it.
Jun thought that magic power had qualities remarkably similar to humans.
It could become anything.
And like humans, it feared the unknown.
Jun sought to become the focal point for that magic power.
'Gather together.'
Just as humans feel fear when alone, so did the magic power.
He first gathered the scattered magic power, disrupted by the outer god's energy.
At his command, the magic power stirred.
It wasn't solely due to the power of [Demon God Body].
It was like a terrified person obeying an order on instinct.
The magic power knew intuitively that banding together was the only way to resist that foreign energy.
It was almost an instinctive act.
'What is this? What are you doing now?!'
The ghoul crone cried out from the sky upon sensing the ominous energy swirling around Jun.
Jun paid her no mind whatsoever.
He issued commands solely to the magic power beginning to coalesce.
'Follow me.'
The gathering magic power realized it wasn't alone and grew even larger.
He naturally guided it.
The magic power followed him—the one who had brought them together—like ducklings trailing their mother.
'What...'
The ghoul crone watched in astonishment.
This was a space created by her sorcery.
She realized that an enormous amount of energy was coalescing wildly, centering on that mage.
Unease surged once more.
She couldn't predict what that unpredictable variable would do next.
'Grrrr, servant of the outer god!'
The ghoul crone called to the Outer God's Servant, but it was preoccupied.
As soon as the magic power around Jun regained its freedom, the golem absorbed it too, growing even stronger.
If it had merely hardened, dodging its attacks would suffice.
But whoosh!
This golem wasn't just following orders mechanically.
Generated by the artifact [Teya's Tear] after absorbing Jun's magic power, it made autonomous judgments.
It knew it couldn't hold the Outer God's Servant like this.
Thus, it forcibly ignited the fire attribute within the magic power flowing from Jun's circle, imbuing its body with elemental power.
Boom!
Its fist, blazing with fierce flames, was no joke.
Taking a solid hit would rack up damage.
But the Outer God's Servant instinctively sensed the danger too.
Leaving that mage unchecked spelled peril.
Ding!
It rang the bell again, disrupting the surrounding magic power.
But the coalesced magic power didn't scatter easily.
On the contrary, it swelled further to counter the energy the Outer God's Servant unleashed.
'Embrace the world-shattering calamity.'
Doooong!
At this rate, it couldn't kill the mage.
Judging thus, the Outer God's Servant began reabsorbing the energy it had spread out.
'You bastard?!'
The ghoul crone roared as she watched the energy flock to the Outer God's Servant.
She realized what it was doing.
The deathly thoughts within her long-nurtured Forest of Demise were being forcibly absorbed by it.
Energy that should have been under her control was being used up like consumables.
Gathering the deathly thoughts like that could cause the entire Forest of Demise to vanish.
Yet the ghoul crone didn't stop it.
'Damn it, that chewable mage bastard!'
In her eyes, the mage's momentum was far from ordinary.
Soon, the Outer God's Servant channeled half its bell's energy into its sword.
No need to expend it all. It lacked the capacity to unleash everything at once in its current state.
Instead, it manifested a portion of the remaining deathly thoughts here.
Clatter!
Undead emerged from the black-water-tainted earth below.
Dozens, hundreds of them.
Disposable fodder, but perfect for restricting the mage's movements.
The remaining half of its energy went into the sword.
The horrific deathly thoughts converged, unleashing a wail of anguish.
A normal human's soul would vanish upon contact; even seasoned warriors would have their brains pierced by evil energy the moment they blocked it.
No mere golem could withstand it.
With that conviction, the Outer God's Servant pointed its sword forward.
Jun inscribed a magic pattern onto the coalesced magic power and imbued it with imagery.
'Something's different.'
The magic power's movements were far more precise.
It seemed minor, but Jun, wielding it directly, pinpointed the source of the change.
'It's resonating with me.'
Until now, magic power had merely followed his designs like a machine.
No emotion, purely mechanical.
It became something because it could, then reverted to magic power. An eternal Möbius strip.
Repeating that act across infinite ages.
But this time was different.
They moved with their own will.
Empathizing with Jun's imagery.
In Jun's eyes, the magic power seemed to weep sorrowfully.
Ridiculous. Magic power had no emotions.
Yet in this moment, it clearly empathized with his heart, grieved alongside it, and channeled the same rage as his past self toward something.
Jun peered into the imagery he'd crafted.
A child stared blankly into the void, as if its soul had fled.
No. Those eyes held something.
'Fire.'
A colossal inferno devouring everything.
The lifelong home engulfed in flames.
To some, just a passing news blurb.
To one person, an unforgettable lifelong terror.
'That day, I lost everything.'
Fire is greedy.
That day, a child lost it all to flames.
Beloved toys.
Family drawings from school.
The space of family memories.
And even...
The most precious parents in the world.
To the child stripped of everything, fire became an object of terror, and later, as an adult, of hatred.
The magic power empathized and resonated.
With the greedy flames in the child's gaze.
With the child's fear.
With the grown youth's hatred.
It embodied it all.
And manifested it into reality.
[Flame Rage]
A fireball like one harboring the sun formed.
But it wasn't ordinary flame.
'What...?'
The ghoul crone stared blankly at the fireball unfurling before her.
Not the color of normal flames.
A blood-red fireball spiraled in rotation.
But she wasn't just seeing its external form.
She felt the energy within.
'No... it can't be...'
The energy was being devoured.
Not just her own spread across the area—the outer god's energy burned too.
As if greed itself had manifested.
Even if she stopped the mage here, the Forest of Demise would be unusable.
She sensed it instinctively.
Soon.
"Go."
At the mage Jun's command, the blood-red fireball slowly advanced forward.
Hundreds of undead summoned by the Outer God's Servant moved to surround him.
But flames poured from the fireball's core, spiraling toward the surrounding undead.
Roarrrrr!
The undead infused with outer god energy resisted the flames.
But the fireball's blaze incinerated even that outer god energy.
'How?!'
The ghoul crone cried out in shock.
What was the outer god's energy?
Energy directly ruled by an outer universe god.
No mere 5th-circle mage could handle it.
"It's suffering because it's an outer god to begin with."
Jun's words as he watched the scene.
'What?'
"Outer gods are rejected by this world. They shouldn't exist here, so their power can't be whole from the start."
Like white blood cells annihilating bacteria in a human body.
Jun's magic power was playing that role.
The reason the Outer God's Servant maintained its form at all was thanks to the ghoul crone's sorcery, the Forest of Demise.
But even that space couldn't withstand [Flame Rage]'s heat.
'What have you done to my Forest of Demise?!'
The Forest of Demise was collapsing.
Crack!
Cracks spread from the black walls. The rotten dead trees leaking black energy lost their forms.
The ghoul crone screamed near-hysterically.
At first, she thought it was due to the Outer God's Servant devouring the deathly thoughts.
But no.
Centered on the mage—no, on the fireball he unleashed—it was melting the space itself.
—Fooled.
The Outer God's Servant felt the same.
'Embrace the world-shattering...'
For the first time, the characters it emitted faltered.
As the Forest of Demise sustaining it shook, its own existence grew precarious.
A little more time, and it would vanish.
Sensing this, the Outer God's Servant raised its sword, blasting purple light.
It aimed to pierce the spiraling fireball and kill Jun.
The moment it kicked off the air—
'What.'
Golden particles flowed from the cracked black wall.
The light struck the gray-tainted Forest of Demise.
Trouble outside too.
That was the last of the ghoul crone's awareness.
Her grotesque face vanished from the sky.
Left alone, the Outer God's Servant burned pathetically, like a moth flying into flame.
'World-shattering...'
Vanish like smoke in the blood-red flames, the Outer God's Servant couldn't finish its words.
The Forest of Demise crumbled.
The corrupted monk, Slaughter Monk, frowned for the first time.
Holy power burst from the woman fallen to his sorcery, Two Peaches and Three Soldiers.
"What did you do?"
Slaughter Monk muttered, tinged with faint bewilderment.
The Ariclothos Church's holy power was inherently weak in destructive aspects.
Their god, Ariclothos, was a god of healing.
But the energy unfolding before him wasn't gentle.
Though clearly Ariclothos holy power, it wasn't warm.
Not soothing sunlight, but the scorching sun burning the earth, the deathly light over a desert.
"Eleanor?"
Bern noticed the change too, despite not averting his gaze from the enemy.
But he was a veteran holy knight.
He spotted Slaughter Monk's energy waning against such a formidable foe.
Only then did Bern realize what Eleanor had done.
"You're purifying it!"
Slaughter Monk's skill [Blood Mountain Reincarnation] was a buff skill, but also a curse.
The longer it was maintained, the stronger it grew, the more his mind became corrupted.
Eleanor's holy power was purifying even that.
Impossible under normal circumstances.
Slaughter Monk knew his skill's weakness and gripped it tightly.
Eleanor's holy power alone couldn't do it.
Then how?
Slaughter Monk's thoughts didn't go further.
His eyebrows twitched again.
Eleanor's explosively surging holy power was affecting Jun and the ghoul crone too.