Chapter 143
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 143
Chapter Title: The Broken Vessel
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Rimon wore a dumbfounded expression.
He'd heard some bizarre racket echoing through the air, and suddenly, an absurd scene unfolded before him.
But the culprit who left Rimon utterly baffled?
Yuna Kyung couldn't care less.
She simply gripped a metal rod-like hidden weapon in her beak—no, her mouth—just as before, swinging her head with all her might.
Clang, clink clank!
The swung rod struck a throwing star on the floor, sending a piercing metallic ring reverberating through the air.
And it wasn't just one throwing star.
Daggers, diamond crushers, meteor hammers, and more.
Weaving between the scattered metal weapons on the ground, Yuna Kyung hammered away at them with fervor.
"Is she insane?"
It was all so ridiculous.
Rimon, who had nearly been struck by the hammer swinging right in front of his face, dodged it while hooking his sword onto the hammer's head. With a clever yank, he drove it into the ground.
He tried to ignore Yuna Kyung's madness for now and focus solely on dealing with Bellos.
But the next moment...
Rimon lost his composure again.
Clang, thud, boom, smack!
Striking swords, clashing chakrams, slamming demon-slaying blades, clapping hands, and more.
Watching the Mokryong squad members earnestly perform all sorts of grotesque antics from afar made it impossible for him to concentrate on the fight.
Youin was even there among them, stomping his feet.
'Did they all take some kind of drug as a group?'
Had they suddenly lost their minds?
Or fallen victim to some skill?
As he watched them warily with a bewildered gaze...
Rimon's eyebrow twitched.
It wasn't just the oddly familiar feeling from their rhythm- and beat-ignoring cacophony of a performance.
The moment that dissonance rang out...
Bellos, who had been about to swing his hammer at Rimon again, began to stutter jerkily. This happened almost simultaneously with the melody of the Heartblack Violin, which had been playing itself from his hand until now, faltering for the first time.
'...No way?'
Rimon narrowed his eyes.
The cacophony produced by Yuna Kyung and the Mokryong squad.
He realized it was disrupting the violin's melody and even shaking Bellos's divinity.
Rimon hadn't thought of interfering with the performance like this—he'd figured smashing the violin was the way to go. It was impressive.
But in this very moment...
What filled Rimon's chest after severing Bellos's neck was astonishment of an entirely different kind.
'This isn't just random noise thrown together...'
A Sword Master with hyper senses.
And one well-versed in music, who had even performed a cacophony himself before. That's why Rimon could tell.
How exquisitely crafted this seemingly chaotic noise truly was.
Sometimes shaking with the same rhythm.
Sometimes leading with clever harmonies.
Sometimes sowing confusion with discordant tones.
Just like a master swordsman toying with a child swinging a real blade using only chopsticks.
The myriad noises were meticulously tailored to the violin's performance, producing counter-sounds that dismantled the melody itself.
Even more astonishing was that they never ruined the music outright amid it all.
The collapsed performance blended into noise and harmony.
Forcing the violin's curse—which sought perfect rendition—to undermine itself.
'Who? How?'
Rimon wondered.
No matter how versatile the Seven Dragon Society's experts were, this wasn't a feat they could pull off lightly.
But the moment he glanced toward the back, at Yuna Kyung...
He understood everything.
Yujin, faintly smiling with a gaping hole in her chest.
And beside her, Li Chingwei gazing intently at him. Those sights told him the whole story.
'Those two...?'
Yujin composing counter-melodies instinctively attuned to the violin's performance.
Li Chingwei directing Yuna Kyung and the Mokryong squad via psychic link, like conductors following the score.
Weapons standing in for instruments in a pinch.
Warriors turned performers for the day.
No rehearsals, not even for conducting.
This hastily assembled, messy orchestra was, in this instant, producing perfect harmony through a psyonic and one genius.
'Well, damn. I was gearing up for a proper sword swing for once.'
A brief chuckle escaped him.
Rimon gripped his sword one-handed again.
Then charged at Bellos with far lighter movements than before.
Instinctively sensing the threat?
Even as his body jerked amid the scattering violin melody, Bellos swung his hammer to smash Rimon.
But that was merely his wish.
Rimon dodged the now-dulled attack—slowed compared to when his divinity was intact—with a mere tilt of his head.
He slipped into Bellos's guard, drawing his sword short and slashing the side.
Clang!
The blade, not fully powered due to the shortened grip, merely grazed the armor and bounced off.
But Rimon wasn't disappointed.
He spun past the hammer shaft, back-to-back with Bellos, then thrust his sword between the giant's own side gaps.
Kaang!
The sword bounced again.
A scratch marred the armor.
Metallic echoes rang through the air.
A cold smile on his lips amid the utter mess of a triplet rhythm, Rimon kept chipping away at Bellos.
And as the scratches Rimon carved multiplied one by one, Bellos's movements grew ever duller.
[■, you pathetic ■■ dare■!]
Hearing that roar—which would drive a normal human mad just to listen to—Rimon curled his lips.
He sensed the agitation in the voice of the incarnation, who had only raged wildly until now.
And the reason was clear.
"How's it feel getting your divinity chipped away by that 'pathetic human'? Eh, god-boy?"
What Rimon was slashing with his sword now wasn't Bellos's flesh or armor.
It was the incarnation's divinity itself.
The divinity that swayed with the violin's melody.
Rimon was exploiting the exposed gaps from that sway, etching tiny scratches that severed the flows of providence forming its foundation.
Like drilling small holes in a ship's hull to sink it slowly.
The scratches on armor that withstood any attack proved the divinity was cracking.
Clang!
Rimon had another aim.
The faint metallic rings from each slash on the armor.
By weaving them in perfectly, he accelerated the violin's performance collapse.
Block, and divinity shakes, impairing the fight. Get hit by Rimon's sword, and providence snaps, divinity crumbling faster.
[Die■■!]
Sensing crisis in that endless vicious cycle?
Bellos thrashed wildly, swinging his hammer and invoking the miracle of causality distortion.
To crush the past where Rimon attacked him and forge a reality where his hammer pulverized Rimon's skull.
But right after...
It was Bellos's head that flew.
[?!?!?!]
He had erased the past where his armor was slashed, so why had his head flown, with even more scratches added?
And why was his hammer, meant to crush Rimon's head, futilely embedded in the ground?
Sneering at the confused incarnation, Rimon mocked him.
"You moronic bastard, how many times did you think the same trick would work?"
[■Insult■!]
Out of ignored rage?
Or disbelief that his miracle was nullified?
Bellos bellowed a roar fierce enough to swallow all melodies around, distorting causality once more.
But nothing changed.
No matter how he rewrote the past.
Or tried altering the present.
He couldn't land a hit on Rimon, while never once creating a past where Rimon's sword missed.
"Try as many times as you want. It's pointless."
Ignoring the futile struggles, Rimon continued lowly.
"Break causality or forge it—ultimately, if I predict and counter every cause and effect you can enact in past or present, that's that."
[……!]
The moment he heard Rimon's words,
Bellos's face twisted.
His causality distortion was a miracle rewriting past 'causes' to produce desired 'results.'
A power that partially reversed time, offering not mere tens of thousands but hundreds of millions of possibilities.
Yet Rimon pierced every single one, preemptively 'eliminating' all causes that could disadvantage him?
Updating predictions in real-time, every minute, every second, synced to his movements?
Impossible even for gods.
Thus, utterly impossible for a mere human.
Clinging to that perfectly logical conviction, Bellos tried attacking Rimon again.
He hesitated.
That's why he raged at his own instinctive step back.
The vessel's base fear was blunting his pure madness to fight.
Had it been the original vessel, meticulously refined over long years of effort, this wouldn't have happened.
This makeshift vessel, forcibly containing him via holy spirit relic and violin without a contract, had reached its limit.
Infusing that rage, he crushed the vessel's soul wholesale and forced the body to move.
A vessel not truly his anyway—whether it broke mattered not to him.
"What're you spacing out for, god-boy?"
But it was too late.
As he mustered his final strength to fight Rimon...
Rimon was already thrusting his sword like an arrow into the empty center of Bellos's armor.
The final scratch etched in.
That scratch spread into cracks.
The moment the armor shattered to pieces...
[■■■■■■■!]
Connections to providence severed, Bellos—or rather, the constellation inhabiting his body—lost his divinity, unleashing a horrific scream.
Not just from crumbling divinity.
The moment he lost incarnation status...
The world's providence, which had aided him under the constellation's authority until now, began warping his very existence in reverse.
An inevitable outcome.
With the holy spirit relic shattered...
The final barrier preserving his constellation existence—the vessel—had already been self-destroyed.
Thus, he writhed like a human cast into ocean depths without wetsuit or tank, under crushing pressure.
Krunch, grind!
Boundaries of existence collapsing too?
The vessel's flesh, exceeding its limits, began bursting everywhere.
Meat spilling from rents tried forming a giant's shape, only to collapse into mutation.
Legs engulfed in pitch-black tumors, dozens of tiny arms sprouting from burst giant limbs, tentacles bursting from torn eyeballs, and worse.
Flesh mutating into horror, mind twisting even more.
Yet the constellation—no, former constellation—desperately crawled across the floor.
He needed a new vessel.
Not this trash—a proper one.
Fortuitously, he still had one refined over a decade with his power and madness, fit to fully contain him.
[Kyaak!]
"Princess, danger!"
Now a massive lump of flesh, he reached for the vessel.
Just a bit more...
In that desperate bid, piercing the gnat-like interferences, the moment he nearly reclaimed the vessel...
"Enough already, just die, god-boy."
『Demon-Slaying Dragon Sword Secret Art』
斬魔龍殺劍 奧義
"Demons fall like dew from the sword's tip."
⟨ Demon-Slaying Dragon Sword Secret Art ⟩
The world split.
The twisted aberrant flesh crumbled.
The constellation power filling it scattered as starlight fragments, wetting Rimon's cheek.