Chapter 395: Karmic Fire (Part 5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 395: Karmic Fire (Part 5)
Amidst the howling wind and scattered petals, Muen’s figure accelerated instantly.
Without the boost of the alchemy core, his speed was no longer as elusive as a shadow; it became slightly more traceable.
Yet, under the cold moonlight, his movements were incredibly agile and far more powerful.
"Shadow Step!"
The long-unused footwork was triggered. The ground caved in as Muen lunged toward Ellag in a flash—as light as a predatory leopard, yet as heavy as a cannonball fresh from the barrel!
"So what! So what!"
Ellag’s eyes were bloodshot, and the pupils on his cheeks were filled with ferocity. Facing the oncoming beast, he shrieked instinctively and frantically:
"The Great God is with me... The Great God is... You’re just an ordinary person! What can you do? What can you possibly do!"
Squelch.
The only response he received was the sound of flesh parting.
Two perfect crescent moons rose simultaneously—one high above, reflecting the light of the heavens; the other below, cold and deathly silent.
The two pure white blades gave Ellag no chance to react. The flashes of steel swept across his neck and waist at the same time. Flesh was sliced through with ease, and blood sprayed out, more vivid than the flowers beneath their feet.
"...You."
Ellag’s gaze went blank for a split second. As a pure mage, it was impossible for him to react to Muen’s assault at such close range.
But soon, the blankness turned back into savagery.
His face contorted, Ellag opened his blood-stained mouth, and a hoarse low growl escaped his throat:
"Ant! You’re an ant! You can’t kill me!"
The severed flesh writhed rapidly. Countless threads of blood extended from deep within Ellag’s body, stitching his three-piece torso back together.
Perhaps because the recovery time was too short, the wounds didn't align perfectly. The restored form looked hideously bizarre, resembling a grotesque worm.
But Ellag was oblivious, laughing maniacally. "See? See! The power of the Great God is beyond your comprehension—urgh!"
"Shut up!"
A cold blade plunged into Ellag’s mouth and twisted, shredding the noisy vocal organs into a bloody pulp.
"I know exactly what kind of pathetic piece of shit your 'Great God' is better than you do! If He truly had some incomprehensible power right now, He would have come to kill me Himself long ago. Why would He leave a piece of trash like you here to bark?"
Muen’s eyes were cold. Without hesitation, he swung his blades again. And again! And again!
Countless flashes of light erupted across Ellag’s body. Blood splattered like a torrential downpour.
The twisted chunks of flesh were repeatedly severed, healed, severed, and healed again. Ellag was looking less and less like a "human."
Yet the madness in his eyes only intensified. Though the mouth on his head had been shredded, a hideous set of mandibles sprouted from his chest, letting out a piercing screech!
"Muen Campbell, die!"
Muen felt a momentary daze. The scene before him remained the same—Ellag struggling and screaming, seemingly defenseless.
But in reality, hundreds of pieces of distorted flesh were spreading out from Ellag like a predatory sea anemone. Thick, tentacle-like masses of meat used sheer numbers to momentarily engulf Muen’s blade-light, while several sharp bone spikes lunged violently toward his chest.
Death was closing in.
But at that exact moment, the small iron shard Muen had kept pressed against his palm suddenly pulsed with a jolt of cold. Muen snapped awake, his eyes narrowing as he twisted his body mid-air.
The item Liya had left behind had played a crucial role.
The bone spikes missed his vitals, but they still left a massive gash along his side.
At the same time, Muen stumbled.
He slowly looked down to see a golden spear of light protruding from his chest. Blood and dense Holy Light leaked from the wound.
It was Fei'er.
Under Ellag’s manipulation, she had struck again.
In a close-quarters melee, large-scale magic was unusable. However, weapons condensed from Holy Light were still effective—deadly so.
The Holy Light came into contact with the Crimson Flame inside his body. Like cold water splashed into boiling oil, it triggered a violent reaction.
It nearly shattered the balance Muen had worked so hard to maintain.
Even if the balance held, with the Crimson Flame temporarily unusable, his current injuries were enough to be fatal.
"Heh... Hehehe..."
Ellag, now a malformed mass of flesh cut by countless blades, writhed again. An eye on the upper left of his head and another on his shoulder both cast looks of malicious delight at Muen.
The mandibles at his crotch twisted into a sneer:
"In the end... you are just human."
So what if his strength and speed were temporarily superior? Humans were such fragile, pitiful creatures. A single wound was enough to put their lives at risk. In contrast, he, who had received Divine Grace, had already transcended the human realm to be forever with his beloved. This was—
"Too slow."
Muen, looking down at the wound in his chest, suddenly muttered a low lament.
Confusion flickered in Ellag’s eyes. Then, he saw Muen let go, allowing the pure white twin blades to fall to the ground.
"You..."
Ellag froze for a second before letting out a shrill laugh:
"Muen Campbell, have you finally realized your own insignificance? Do you want to—"
"I said... it’s too slow."
Muen looked up, his cold gaze cutting Ellag off.
"This method is too slow."
The Love God’s power was strange.
Ellag’s regenerative abilities as an evil believer were also unnaturally terrifying.
Once, the monster Eluka had become also possessed incredible recovery, but that was because she had merged with the life force of hundreds of villagers.
But where did Ellag’s life force come from?
It couldn't be from the Love God directly. If He could manifest that much power under the Church’s nose, He wouldn't have needed all these convoluted schemes.
The Love God was a bastard, but if He had the chance, He would certainly go for the kill personally without hesitation. Just like back at the Academy, when He didn't hesitate to use the former Saintess He controlled to try and kill Muen.
Furthermore, the power the Love God was using now—including the sneak attack just now—was fundamentally different from before.
Those flowers... that strange life force...
It felt more like...
"But now isn't the time to think about that."
Muen pulled the light spear out of his chest, inch by inch.
It was the pain of flesh being pierced and Holy Light searing his insides, yet his face remained expressionless. He didn't even blink.
"What I need to think about now is... hacking away with a blade is just too slow for a monster with inhuman regeneration."
Before his voice even faded, Ellag saw the two white short blades fly off, streaking toward Fei'er.
He wants to use those living alchemical weapons to pin down Fei'er? But he’s voluntarily giving up his weapons. Isn't that...
Ellag didn't have long to think.
In the next heartbeat, the answer was revealed.
Muen suddenly closed the distance, and a hard object the size of a mallet slammed into Ellag.
It was... a fist.
A clenched... fist!
There was nothing special about that fist. Muen didn't have a habit of wearing rings, nor did he have any other alchemical weapons on him.
But when that fist slammed into Ellag, he heard a thunderous explosion!
Thunder Roar!
The technique he had mastered to perfection erupted between his knuckles. Intense shockwaves, combined with long-suppressed fury, came crashing down!
If the blade was too slow, he would use his fists!
BOOM!
Ellag’s flesh disintegrated instantly. His entire body felt like a deep sea struck by a meteorite; ripples of flesh radiated outward from the point of impact.
"You—"
Ellag roared in agony. Several flesh tentacles shot out from behind him, carrying sharp bone spikes in a counterattack, desperate to force Muen back and buy time to recover.
But facing this attack, Muen didn't retreat, nor did he defend.
He merely shifted his vitals slightly, allowing the bone spikes to impale his body. Then, instead of backing away, he followed up with... another punch!
One punch.
Then another.
Countless fists, accompanied by the sound of thunder, fell incessantly like a torrential storm.
Cuts from a blade were easy to heal, but these punches turned Ellag’s flesh and bone into something resembling dough on a kneading board. Bones shattered, skin cracked, and flesh turned to pulp. Sinew and bone were hammered together indiscriminately. Even if he could heal, the window was so short that he could only reform into a limp, mushy mass.
"No... wait..."
After an unknown number of punches, Ellag finally felt terror.
At this moment, his immortal life force brought not absolute victory, but endless agony—a torture that surpassed the pain of a shattering soul.
He struggled to open an eye from the edge of his mangled flesh, looking at the golden-haired man who was covered in blood and wounds yet remained ferocious and relentless. An absurd feeling washed over him, and he gave voice to the question many others had asked before.
Is this... is this really the pampered son of a Duke?
"No... wait... Muen Campbell... let’s talk... we can—"
"Shut up!"
Mercilessly, Muen smashed the eyes and mouth Ellag had struggled to reform.
Begging for mercy?
Fine.
But not you.
You, Ellag, are nothing more than a pathetic puppet played and controlled from start to finish, a clown whose very soul has been eroded.
Therefore...
"Love God! Get the hell out here!"
Images flashed before his eyes, and parting voices echoed in his ears. Those memories transformed into a raging fire, and then into the continuous thunder booming from his fists.
"Love God! Don't you dare play dead!"
Punch.
Punch.
Another punch.
Muen frantically "tilled" every inch of Ellag’s flesh until a sudden, distinctly different sensation caused his movements to pause.
Ellag’s entire physical body had been completely punched through. Beneath his fist was the cratered earth. The mud-like flesh had splattered in a ring, no longer resembling a human form. Tiny buds of meat writhed atop the gore, but they no longer had the strength to recover.
Muen’s cold gaze swept over the mess and suddenly locked onto something.
"Found you!"
A writhing ball of meat burrowed out from the dead flesh, trying to flee at high speed.
But Muen, prepared, was faster. He snatched the meatball into his palm.
Sharp bone spikes on the meatball pierced through his hand, but Muen remained oblivious, staring coldly at the object.
An eye suddenly opened on the meatball—cold, aloof, yet burning with the fury of a god who had been repeatedly defied by an ant.
Muen took a deep breath.
"I know this is just a projection, maybe even just a sliver of your consciousness. Even if I destroy it now, it won't be a major loss for you."
"I also know that for someone like me, who just wanted to drift through life and stay alive, this is an incredibly unwise move."
"But... right now, I still want to say something very sincere to you, Love God."
Muen looked down at the eye in his palm, his blood-stained lips curling into a grin as he spoke each word with deadly seriousness:
"Don't let me catch another chance. Otherwise, I will not hesitate to flay your skin, tear your flesh, break your bones, and stomp your disgusting Authority into the dirt."
"And then, one day..."
"I will kill your very existence!"
With that, as the Love God’s control wavered, Muen was finally able to summon a spark of Crimson Flame in his palm. It instantly engulfed the meatball.
A furious, piercing screech—a sound that made the mind ache and the vision blur—rang out. Yet, it sounded so pleasant, so beautiful.
If those who had been tortured by the Love God yet died for love could hear this sound, they would surely feel the same.
...