Chapter 564: God and Devil, and the Human Between Them (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 564: God and Devil, and the Human Between Them (3)
If the Body of Ultimate Effort is the extreme of effort, then the Body of Extreme Refinement is the extreme of refinement.
The effort I had built up until now.
By devouring the traits gained from surpassing human limits, I had reached another extreme.
Was that why?
My body felt incredibly light.
So light that I wondered if this was what it felt like to be a soul, free from the shackles of the flesh.
Structurally, a physical body is inherently bound by limitations.
Limitations in its actions, in its reach.
The moment it reaches a certain threshold, it begins to wear down the body.
This body was no different.
But it felt as if that limit had been pushed back a step—no, more than two steps—further than anyone else's.
It would be faster to count the things I couldn't do with this body than the things I could.
That power was conveyed directly to my opponent.
Shnk!
“This…!”
I cut him.
It was only a shallow cut, but the blood of a great devil beaded on the tip of my sword.
The color was red.
Unexpected.
“So a great devil's blood isn't much different from a human's.”
I thought it'd be green or black, or something.
He was bleeding, but it was a trivial wound.
A mere scratch that might sting a little but wouldn't hinder his ability to fight.
Yet Dantalion was horrified by what could only be called a minor injury.
“Impossible… How could a mere human…!”
It didn't seem to be because of the pain.
It seemed he found it humiliating to be wounded by a human he considered so insignificant.
Dozens of pairs of venomous eyes glared at me at once.
With so many faces, the pressure is pretty intense.
The fiend asked.
“You… Just what are you?”
What am I?
Why is he asking me?
“Ask that precious book of yours.”
I was constantly testing him.
Testing his limits.
Testing just how ridiculously overpowered the Book of Dantalion was.
Finally, having reached the end of his patience, the fiend snarled with a menacing face.
“You must be an Apostle of the Seven Deadly Sins. There is no other way my book could be wrong.”
It seemed the Book of Dantalion did have information on me as a human.
Judging by his attitude, it only covered Kim Do-jin, the human.
It was clear from the fact that he hadn't realized I was the Apostle of Greed.
I smiled at him.
“Took you long enough to figure that out. Seems you and your book are both pretty useless, huh?”
You can never miss a chance to get under your opponent's skin.
But he was no longer angry or humiliated.
Instead, he seemed almost relieved that I wasn't a mere human.
“What rotten luck. To think an Apostle of the Seven Deadly Sins would be involved.”
He wasn't wrong.
He was only dealing with a single family in South Korea. He probably never dreamed that one of its members would have deep ties to an Apostle of the Seven Deadly Sins.
“Who is your master?”
“Take a guess.”
“Hmph… It's obvious. Judging by your attitude, you must be the Apostle of Pride, that arrogant bitch.”
Dantalion, missing the mark completely with a wonderfully dramatic expression and tone.
What am I going to do with this guy?
This must be why he keeps losing to the Seven Deadly Sins.
He's so drunk on the sweet nectar of his book that he's completely neglected to train his own mind.
I get the gist of it now.
Why he aims for a seat among the Seven Deadly Sins, yet poses no real threat.
His ability itself is exceptionally suited for dealing with a multitude of weaker opponents.
Conversely, he's incredibly weak against the strong.
A classic case of someone who's strong against the weak and weak against the strong.
To overcome this, he'd need to possess a status surpassing the Sins, but how could that be easy?
Even he himself has grown far too accustomed to fighting the weak.
As a result, his responses against the strong are not sharp, but feel incredibly dull.
“Heheheh… That arrogant bitch must have told you something. Did she say that I, Dantalion, am nothing special?”
“Well… she said something similar.”
It wasn't Pride.
But Gula did say that.
And it seemed to be true.
The fiend's mind whirred.
The face that spoke was that of a ferocious old man with bloodshot eyes and his white hair flowing like a lion's mane.
“Kekeke…! As that bitch said, I am a loser. But not to you.”
Ruuuumble…!
The temple, which hadn't shaken in the slightest even from the massive spell, began to tremble violently.
“There is only one reason I lost to the Seven Deadly Sins. It is because I did not possess a domain of my own.”
That… is certainly a huge difference.
Isn't there an old saying?
Even a mutt has the home-field advantage.
A domain is a place where its owner's power is maximized.
Conversely, it restricts the opponent's power—a force that can instantly overturn even the most disadvantageous situation.
“For hundreds of years, I have ruminated on my past defeats. And now, I have finally obtained it. The power to turn the tide of battle in an instant!”
Grrrnd.
The stone statues in the temple changed their orientation.
The heads of the old man, the child, the man, and the woman all began to stare this way.
It was quite eerie, and the thread of tension pulled taut.
He declared.
“Domain of Omniscience.”
I felt a strange gaze.
It felt as if every object in this world was staring at me.
“Become the first sacrifice of my domain.”
A single dwarf dropped into a land of giants.
A single speck of dust in a pristine white room.
That's what it felt like to be in the domain of someone who was clearly hostile to me.
To exaggerate a little, it felt like I was fighting the entire world.
Let's think of this as a good opportunity.
A chance to more clearly understand my enemy's domain, and my own.
I took a step.
I swung my sword toward him, engraving a spell formula with the movement.
A cruel smile spread across the lips of my opponent as he raised his sword to block my strike.
“Kekeke… I was wondering where the magic was coming from. So you were engraving spell formulas like this.”
“……!”
He read me.
Not just the sword strike, but the groundwork laid behind it.
The fiend marveled.
“Amazing. Truly, truly amazing…! How could you even conceive of such an idea?!”
It was the highest of praise.
But it only made me feel worse.
Because the depth of his admiration made me feel as if he had peered deep inside me.
“It's not just the idea. How is this even possible?”
A sense of crisis crept in.
I felt like if this continued, all my secrets would be laid bare.
“Ooh, I see…! The sword strike alone isn't enough. So you supplement it with your steady footwork!”
No matter where I went, his gaze followed.
His insightful eye, which saw not just the exterior but the interior, stripped me bare, one layer at a time.
It wasn't hard to deduce the origin of that gaze.
The statues that had turned their heads toward me the moment the domain was activated.
“Hup…!”
I unleashed a torrent of Sword Aura at their heads.
At that, the fiend let out a mocking laugh.
“Kekekeke…! A meaningless act. They are nothing more than the background of my domain.”
He was right.
Even though the statues' heads were destroyed, the persistent gaze didn't change.
It felt as if this entire domain served as his eyes and ears.
I was impressed.
“It really is incredible.”
Experiencing it firsthand made me realize it more keenly.
The Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Heavenly Virtues.
Just how overpowered the power of their domains was.
And that these domains would be the deciding factor in the battles to come.
How efficiently you can push back your opponent's domain.
And destroy it.
And thus, how far you can expand your own.
My opponent's madness reached the heavens.
“Kekekeke…! Pride, watch me! I will kill your bitch of an Apostle and prove that I am not the same man I once was!”
The goddess Pride's ears must be burning today.
I've got a rough understanding of domains now.
What it feels like to be on the receiving end, and how to fight back.
So now, it's time to correct his misconceptions.
I held up two fingers toward him.
“You've got two things wrong.”
“…What?”
“First, I'm not the Apostle of Pride.”
Into my Domain of the Ruler, which had shriveled under the pressure of the Domain of Omniscience, I mixed Gluttony.
The apex predator that greedily devours everything it touches.
Always starving and incomparably ferocious, the creature licked its lips and opened its mouth.
Slurp!
The shrunken domain expanded.
Unhesitatingly swallowing the energy lingering in the opponent's domain.
“Th-this is…!”
Dantalion was flustered as my domain rapidly spread from the center of his own.
No, that shocked expression wasn't just because of that.
The fear in his eyes.
That was….
“G-Greed…!”
I'm sure of it. He's been hit by Gula before.
There's no other way he'd make a face like that.
“How can that crazy bitch's Apostle…?”
How can I what?
The fiend, steeped in horror, continued.
“How are you still sane? With this much power, you should have gone mad long ago…!”
“What are you talking about?”
Why are you calling a perfectly sane person crazy?
The fiend shook his head frantically.
“I don't know, I just don't know. What in the world are you… No, are you even human?”
“Who knows.”
I don't know either.
I've never met the parents who gave birth to me.
For all I know, one of them could have been an angel or a devil.
“But still, even so…! How can my domain be so easily…?”
“That's the second thing.”
The Domain of Omniscience.
The concept is great.
It contains the ideal he wishes to reach, and the ability itself is magnificent.
But here's the thing.
“I've used a domain hundreds, no, thousands of times more than you have, you bastard.”
The first sacrifice?
It was laughable.
Doesn't that mean he's been practicing with his domain all by himself until now?
And this is the first time he's ever shown it to anyone.
In contrast, I've overcome numerous near-death experiences with my domain.
On top of that, haven't I even created a new domain just for Gluttony?
No matter how much a domain can overturn a disadvantage, it can't bridge an overwhelming gap in experience.
Just like right now.
Chomp!
CRUNCH!
My Gluttony might not be good at much else, but it's the best at tearing, ripping, and eating.
It's such a simple action that there's nothing to analyze.
What's going to change just by watching the act of putting something in a mouth and chewing for a long time?
The height of simplicity.
And the overwhelming violence that results from it.
“N-no… My domain, which I spent hundreds of years perfecting…!”
Before it, hundreds of years of effort were trampled and vanished.
His aura deflated.
I approached the fiend, who stood there with a dumbfounded expression.
The eyes on each of his heads spun around and around.
“That damn bitch Gula…! She did this hundreds of years ago, and now she's blocking my path again.”
So he really was beaten by her in the past.
I was about to take his head in one blow when my gaze landed on the area near his armpit.
More precisely, on the book tucked there: the Book of Dantalion.
I reached out lightly.
The book came into my hands with ease.
What the.
“You said it was important, so why'd you let me take it so easily?”
At that, the fiend curled one side of his lip and muttered.
“Because the Book of Dantalion can only be opened by me.”
That's strange.
A book that recognizes its owner?
It doesn't look like it has a lock or anything on the outside.
“In the past, not even that bitch of a goddess you serve could peek inside it—!”
Can't I just… open it?
Thwump!
Like this.
“…It's open?”
Without any one of them being first, the mouths on his many heads fell open.
“H-how on earth…?”
How, you ask?
“I just… did it well?”