Chapter 77
Chapter 77
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 77
Chapter Title: S2. Resentment Brushing the Stars -8
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Bennett flew about ten meters through the air before regaining his posture mid-flight and landing on the ground. Isaac staggered forward unscathed, only to vomit up a gush of blood.
"Urk, uweeeek...!"
His eyes were bright red and bloodshot, blood trickling from his nose and ears. He appeared to have taken severe damage, but he wasn't dead. Isaac looked up at the sky and laughed.
"Heh, haha..."
[I clearly saw the Bear...!]
"He crossed through space, dodged, and came back. The price was trembling in terror for ages in some horribly scary, pitch-black void... But because of it, I feel like I've gotten even closer to Him..."
Isaac, who had pushed himself to evade Bennett's attack, clutched his body and shuddered in agony. Yet the fanatic gleam in his eyes burned even deeper.
"More, more...! My God, take everything I have—it's fine! Haha, ahahahahaha!"
Crack, split.
More fissures tore through space, and two additional bubbles forced their way out through the gaps. Now five bubbles in total swirled around Isaac.
They moved in utterly unpredictable directions, grinding away and obliterating everything around Isaac. It resembled a storm ravaging space itself—a force akin to a natural disaster.
"...Two more popped up here, huh."
[I'll... I'll handle it somehow.]
"Niore...?"
[I'll draw their eyes.]
Flutter, flutter.
The pages of the grimoire clutched in Niore's hand began flipping on their own. Red light seeped from it, triggering grotesque phenomena all around.
Eyeballs sprouted in mid-air, horrific laughter echoed from unseen sources, and mouths appeared on the ground, gnashing their teeth. Like Isaac, Niore seemed to be drawing even greater power from the outer god.
"Niore, why aren't you using the Goddess's crystal...?"
[We can save the world, right?]
Niore smiled faintly despite the blood streaming from her nose. She mouthed the words laboriously. Bennett understood.
[Thanks to Tara, we can save people without killing too many. The ones already gone... it aches my heart. But... once this ends, I think I can finally sleep soundly.]
So.
[This is the last time... using this vile power... So the crystal... for Bennett.]
She had learned Bennett was a black mage, that his spells shaved away at his own soul. She wanted to yield it to him.
Niore finished her silent incantation.
『Swallow』.
Snap.
Crunch. Gnash. Rip.
Enormous mouths materialized in the air, chomping and bursting Isaac's bubbles. Some mouths shredded apart or exploded from within. But new ones always appeared, swarming the remnants like hyenas on a carcass.
In the end, after the outer gods' magics clashed, only one bubble remained around Isaac.
[The last one's for you all.]
"...Leave it to me."
Bennett charged. He poured mana into his longsword, making it blaze with radiant light, then slammed his foot into the ground for explosive acceleration. Each step boomed like thunder.
"Isaac—!"
"Die, you meddlers—!!"
Isaac hurled his remaining bubble straight at Bennett.
Bennett grinned. The exaggerated flair, the light show, the shouts—all to draw eyes. They were a trio, after all.
Bennett locked eyes with Tara. While the magical duel distracted everyone, she had circled behind Isaac.
"....!"
By the time Isaac sensed her presence and whirled around, it was too late.
Tara clenched her fist. She gathered every last dreg of divine power at her core, stepped forward, twisted her hips, and unleashed the punch.
"Abraham's revenge—!!"
Boom—!
The glowing fist smashed into Isaac's face. Her full-body strike launched him airborne before slamming him into the dirt. He convulsed a few times, then went limp.
The sinister power coiling around Isaac, the space-rending bubbles—they fizzled out like they'd never existed.
Tara sank to her knees right there.
Bennett busied himself mopping up the remaining fanatics. With plenty of time left on Succession Apotheosis, he could hold the line until the battlefield was secured.
It was over.
She'd burned through every ounce of her saintess power. Now it was time to brace for life as a broke girl with nothing to her name. She'd rarely done proper saintess work, but saving the world? That had to make her the most efficient holy girl ever with her divine power usage.
Such thoughts in mind.
She pictured her future while waiting for Bennett.
After the battle wrapped up, Tara drew her sealed magic sword. She needed a blade for the finishing blow.
She'd swung to kill, but Isaac clung to shallow breaths. So Tara leveled the sword at his throat.
That instant, he twitched. Isaac's eyes fluttered open.
Bennett scooped Tara into his arms and leaped back. Niore wiped her nosebleed and flipped open her grimoire once more. Fearing a sacrificial suicide blast—everyone cranked their guard to maximum.
Isaac mumbled through glassy eyes.
"Daddy, daddy, let's go watch the stars together. You and me..."
"...?"
"The stars are talking to me, daddy. Amazing, right? Daddy's so busy, so I'll play with the stars..."
"...This."
[He looks insane. Overdid the magic.]
The words of an evil god's own saintess. Tara tightened her grip on the magic sword as Isaac babbled nonsense.
"I'll kill him."
"...Hold on."
"Why."
Bennett recalled Abraham's dying words, entrusting his daughter. The evil-tainted Isaac was one thing—this helpless idiot? Maybe sparing her wasn't so bad.
"She's Abraham's last blood kin. If she goes too, nothing proves he ever existed."
"So we keep her alive? No way. Outta my way, Bennett."
"Letting her live might punish her worse than death. Don't want your hands bloody anyway."
"...Enough—move! Hey, let go. Not budging? Damn, you're stupid strong...! My divine power's gone and you're manhandling me?! Niore, back me up here..."
Tara, wrist pinned by Bennett, twisted toward Niore to rope her in. But Niore stared vacantly at the sky.
Tara followed her gaze to the night sky.
"........."
The heavens remained grotesque and foreboding, warping into ever more nightmarish shapes by the second. They'd disrupted the ritual clean, though.
"...Why, why?! We stopped it...! Bennett, what the hell?!"
"We wrecked the magic circle's core. Ritual failed, for sure!"
"Then why's the sky still freaking out?!"
Panic gripped Tara as she seized Isaac's collar and shook violently.
"Hey, wake up! Snap to it—explain what happened, now! Spill and die!"
"Daddy, ugh... Daddyyy..."
[Bennett. Did we... miss something...?]
"Miss something...?"
Chaos. Ritual stopped, yet the evil god drew nearer. Any clues to this mess? Bennett's mind, sifting the past, snagged on Abraham's research.
"Now that I think about it, why'd the Silver Twilight Church erase Abraham's work...?"
[Alpha repels outer gods...]
"Flip side—could summon too, right? They torched the mansion, killed Abraham. Plenty of time to snag his notes and use 'em."
[But nah. They just blindly wiped it. No thought to exploit...]
Chasing safe stability works when holding steady gets results. So then.
"...No ritual needed—the evil god just descends over time? How?"
Plus, those blood-scrawled words where Abraham burned.
'You gave us a flawed female goat, and we offer due thanks in sacrifice.'
The meteor crater picked for the rite. Niore's talk of the 'Black Goat'—consort to the Vice-King, she'd said.
"It was backwards."
Something summoning the evil god had crash-landed on Earth from the start. Before Silver Twilight even called.
It kept beckoning the space-swimming Vice-King. That's why the bubble-shrouded horror closed in on Earth relentlessly.
Backwards.
Their target was backwards.
"We shouldn't have blocked the ritual... Should've studied Alpha to banish the evil god. We played defense—we needed to attack...!"
[.........]
Krrrrrgggggiiiii—!
The sky shrieked and twisted. Look up—the moon doubled. Stars gleamed sickly.
Life sensed the shift and wailed in terror. Dogs barked madly, birds beat wings in frantic flight. Frogs croaked, bugs burrowed deep.
Cosmic horrors rode moonlight to the surface.
Too many to bear. The future loomed vivid: humanity clawing for survival. Cities' civility, laws, order—meaningless before brute force, voids filled by agony and hate.
But too late to halt it all.
If only more focus on Abraham's research.
If only they'd shielded him from Isaac.
If only a sliver of time on Alpha.
Could they have ended it before the cities crumbled?
The stars laughed. Tara shuddered in the hollow void of vanished divine power. Niore clamped hands over her ears and crumpled.
And Bennett muttered, cursing his past complacency.
"Maybe we buttoned the first one wrong from the start..."