366. Asura Heaven-Annihilation
366. Asura Heaven-Annihilation
***
Thump!
Thump!
The heart of the demonic beast, seated at the center of its curled-up colossal body, pulsed heavily, reacting intensely to the blood newly seeping into it.
Slither... slither...
Mottled veins rose all across the beast's enormous body, circulating the new blood through its entire frame, and fresh vitality spread through the beast's heavily wounded body, healing it all.
The demonic beast, greedily infusing the blood that had entered through its gluttony throughout its body, felt new power surging forth.
By circulating blood that contained a colossal existence, it savored the very reason for its being, an incomparable joy.
The curled-up giant body of the beast hardened once more, entering a state where no harm could reach it.
Within that state, the beast endlessly savored the newly arrived blood and infused it through its body.
Without realizing it, the demonic beast had completely succumbed to this thing called "gluttony." At some point, it had even forgotten destruction, its original purpose, and now acted only with its eyes fixed on gluttony.
Within the beast, whose interior should have been consumed solely by the urge to destroy, something impossible had emerged—even an "intellect"—which constrained its actions and made even calculated use of gluttony possible.
Thus, it grew adept at distinguishing between beings with power and beings without.
When it judged it had no chance of victory, it never revealed itself, and it swiftly ambushed weaker beings to force its gluttony upon them.
In that way, the demonic beast grew its power with a secrecy and meticulousness that bordered on cunning.
Later, when its body became too massive to conceal any longer, Zervallua carried out its gluttony without hesitation, swelling its body ever larger.
So that no being could block its gluttony. So that it could carry out its gluttony with even more overwhelming power.
Zervallua swelled its power to an unprecedented degree, and even its intellect developed.
When the scale of the gluttony Zervallua had committed surpassed the thousands and reached the size of a city—then, Zervallua encountered an unexpected being.
—The first being to block its gluttony.
Even while using gluttony, it had always meticulously exploited the weaknesses of its targets, so it had never been stopped before. But now, when a being that blocked it appeared, its instincts screamed danger loudly enough to swallow reason.
It became conscious only of that being, as if that being had to be eliminated above all else.
Then, surrendering to instinct and simply unleashing its power, the demonic beast hurled its body at the being to annihilate it, again and again.
At the end of that, when even the move that sacrificed its own demonic energy was blocked, Zervallua felt the instincts encroaching upon it gradually subside.
With reason restored, Zervallua targeted other beings.
Toward the two most irritating beings among them, it carried out its gluttony at an unexpected moment, concealing a decisive move.
Another method of gluttony, one that a human could not help but fall for—one that gambled that a being with power would not avoid its gluttony precisely because they had power.
It did not reach its target, but the moment it devoured a being with sufficient power, Zervallua once again plunged into endless rapture.
Thump!
Along with the heart continuing to pulse heavily, it felt itself gradually changing, and for an instant, a strange sensation came over it, as if its mind were awakening.
Seized by the strange sensation of something gradually blooming, the demonic beast craved it beyond all else.
【Just a little more...】
***
As an overbearing presence began to surge forth from the silver-haired woman, Arianne and Yujeong's gazes shot toward her at once, filled with deep desolation and fury.
At the moment their gazes turned to her.
The overbearing presence condensed massively, and a peerless martial art unfolded.
—Heavenly Demon Flying Force.
A small step, no more than a single stride. Just as her foot was about to touch the ground lightly.
She was already gone.
———!!
With a massive gale raging, she was suddenly hurling herself through the air far in the distance.
As she crossed space like a black meteor, Belua and Arianne's faces changed drastically and they gave chase, and Yujeong also flung herself forward swiftly.
And so, once again, clusters of various lights began moving rapidly toward Zervallua, and at their head was the silver-haired woman.
Serin—no, Cheon Ryuhwa—flew through the air as if soaring through the sky, yet her brow furrowed faintly.
'The demonic energy is shifting violently.'
Even at this distance, the change in the demonic energy she had been sensing was now unmistakably clear.
The demonic energy within the beast was surging in a strange transformation, and as it appeared to keep swelling, she could not dismiss it.
—!
She kicked off a nearby building once more, and though her violently whipping silver hair obscured her vision, she coldly steadied her gaze and took in the rapidly closing form of the beast.
As the beast's dark-red fur dyed completely black, as if being wholly consumed by demonic energy, she swiftly raised her sword.
The difference in the magnitude of their power was too great to end this in a single stroke.
But even so.
'I'll have to give up half of its limbs.'
She began pouring her energy into the raised sword.
CRACKLE!
Immediately, a colossal black light—one that could only be described as destructive—began raging over the blood-red blade, and she thrust it straight toward the distant beast in an instant.
As her slender hand thrust forward, the movement was utterly true, without a trace of hesitation.
—Asura Heaven-Annihilation.
The moment it cut through the empty air, a colossal black light that severed space itself and tore across it.
As the black light, as if denying existence itself, surged rapidly through space, parts of the ruined city simply vanished the instant they touched its aftermath.
At the end of that black light's path.
———!
From Zervallua's hardened body, a massive surge of demonic energy suddenly erupted.
The dark-red demonic energy that burst forth like an explosion immediately gathered before it and began forming a vivid, colossal barrier of blood.
It was an instinctive manifestation of demonic energy to counter the crisis, and thousands of the beast's eyes opened all at once, emitting a ghastly blood-red glow.
Then, the blood-red light began layering over the front, coat after coat, until it was completely painted in blood-red.
Soon, when the black light arrived,
—CRACKLE...!
The black light began shattering the countless layers of the blood-red barrier in an instant.
As if its power had not diminished in the slightest, the black light tore through the blood-red barrier, and at the moment it reached the final layer.
——!
Zervallua's fur, now completely black, bristled and stiffened, and it poured yet more demonic energy into the blood-red barrier.
The black light, unable to pierce through as before, began to push back fiercely.
As the black and blood-red lights scattered and clashed violently, Cheon Ryuhwa watched from afar. A clear sneer rose on her face.
"You dare try to block me with demonic energy before the Lord of Ten Thousand Demons."
The moment the words left her lips, she twisted the trajectory of the sword thrust forward in a strange manner. Following the motion of her slender hand weaving through the air, the black light far away underwent a strange transformation.
Suddenly, the black light condensed into a single point, drastically reducing the area in contact with the blood-red barrier.
Then, as if completely ignoring the visible distance, she lightly drew back her sword hand for only a moment before thrusting it forward like a flash of light.
—Asura Heaven-Annihilation - Break.
The black light, compressed into a single point, shattered the blood-red barrier without mercy as if concentrated, and pierced straight through the beast's colossal body.
***
"It pierced through."
"What absurd destructive power..."
As Belua and Arianne exchanged words in astonishment at the black light that had pierced completely through Zervallua.
Yujeong could not understand.
She had clearly seen it with her own eyes—the black light surging from the sword Rin had swung, piercing through Zervallua.
How Rin could use such a technique, how such a thing was possible, even the fact that she could possess a technique that would astonish even the Stars.
Even setting aside all the other questions she could not understand.
There was one hologram in her vision that she could not understand more than anything else...
Warning alerts for threatening patterns—she had long since disabled them so they wouldn't obstruct her view unnecessarily.
So no hologram should have been able to appear. No new hologram should have appeared during a raid.
And yet... a hologram had appeared.
*
————
The Ersia Continent is in desperate straits!
The Beast of Destruction, Zervallua, is attempting to evolve into a new form!
—【Evolution Rate: 52%】—
Zervallua's new evolution is tantamount to heralding the destruction of the current Ersia Continent. Zervallua must be subjugated before its evolution is complete!
[Reward: Ersia Continent. Creation of absolute favorability with the Grandelia Empire and acquisition of a 'Treasure']
[Penalty: Permanent sealing of the Zervallua Raid and permanent non-disclosure of the Ersia Continent]
*This is a raid progression selection notice.
(This quest can never be undertaken again.)
[Y / N]
————
*
Staring at the hologram once more, Yujeong was bewildered.
'A quest is being created inside a raid...?'
She had played Another World and completed countless raids, but she had never heard of such a thing.
She had felt something strange about the signs since Phase 3.
A quest of a scale beyond common sense, and beings that seemed to hint at something.
Then in Phase 4, the bizarre quest progression that required suddenly earning someone's trust.
And after entering Phase 5, the subjugation of Zervallua—now that she thought about it, beings who had reached the level of heroes helping with the raid made no sense either.
But she had dismissed all of it as incomprehensible difficulty, as bugs.
—4.
When she saw the quest decision timer, which allowed barely ten seconds, a confusion on an entirely different level seemed to overturn her mind.
After a brief hesitation, Yujeong had no choice but to select 'Y'.
Not far from her field of vision.
The silver-haired woman standing aloof with her sword in hand. Setting aside reward and penalty, before Rin's overwhelming divine presence, she had no choice but to accept.