Chapter 164

Fragments of a God

The god of time's conjecture had been proven to be true in front of me.

'The god of mind!'

The seal on Mercadius' forehead was definitely the Mind's.

A forgotten god whose real name hadn't even passed on to the current generation.

Since no believer served him, no altar existed as well, and there were no statues modeled after its appearance either. Due to that, it was interpreted that it didn't have a material form.

No incarnation had been discovered that followed its path in the early days, too.

Most of the deities in the present era were exiled into the void. However, only the god of mind went missing.

Even the gods didn't know where it was.

'There was a reason for him to do so!'

I remember what "Rom," the god of life, told me.

It once mentioned the situations that the gods had come to face in the present day.

'Life,' the one who said so, lost its offspring, and... all other gods lost important things or couldn't exist in a normal state.

'Magic' lost its most powerful leg.

'Luck' was banished from the valley of convergence.

'Time' was nailed to a repetitive loop.

The blade of the 'sword' rusted and broke.

'Space' split into numerous debris and scattered.

'Mind' had lost the foundation to prove itself.

The last among them.

The god that lost the foundation to prove itself.

'The foundation for the existence to prove itself is...!'

That time, I recalled the knowledge of the dragons Euclid taught me.

What I heard during our climb through the Tower resonated like an auditory hallucination.

'The divine beings lost most of their essence and memory when they were exiled. Since the essence is broken, there is an issue on the ability to accumulate new memories as well.'

The one that existed solely as a cognition.

The one who had no other essence to prove itself.

Such a god had lost its memory.

The loss was even more fatal for it than the other deities, and in the end, the 'mind' lost its ego and was scattered.

And the numerous pieces of the deity... wandered around the material world instead of remaining in the void.

It could no longer be regarded as the true body of a god.

Its class had decreased, lowered, and fallen... to the level of "incarnation" at the very best.

The result was in front of me.

'So that's what had happened!'

However, one question remained unsolved.

'Why would a god's fragment try to destroy the world?'

Their movements were consistent with the monster's behavior coming out from the void.

Monsters from the Red Gate physically destroyed the world. They directly got involved in the apocalypse.

Mercadius, on the other hand, brainwashed an important figure in the world and led them to be destroyed eventually. His involvement in the destruction was indirect.

'One way or another, a god needs a mortal, and if all mortals die, the god loses itself as well. In such a situation, Mercadius's behavior is... incomprehensible.'

Extremely self-destructive behavior.

It was unlikely that the already-divided deity would be pieced back together by destroying all mortals.

What the hell did it want?

Driiiip!

Mercadius's face was covered in blood.

The fresh blood flowing from the forehead painted his skin, drawing a bizarre form.

"?!"

The drenched eyebrows became distorted.

He was looking at the back of my hand, too.

Four kinds of seals.

With it in his sight, his lips curved into a strange smile.

"I see you've got all sorts of worthless traces in your body."

He bared his fangs.

"I don't like it. A mortal who is nothing but a feed for my descendants to eat..."

Feed?!

"How come you've got so much unpleasant power in your body..."

He extended his hand towards me. Rampant hostility flashed in his eyes.

"Without knowing your place?!"

The moment he said those words, the scar carved on Mercadius's forehead noticeably broke open.

His skin cracked, and the red flesh underneath it was revealed.

Mana that resembled the color of the fresh blood poured out.

It was a unique skill.

Swoosh!

After Awakening, I had seen many Awakened beings, and I had observed the Mana they bore and unleashed.

In particular, the red Mana that appeared when using a unique skill was completely different from person to person, reflecting the user's nature.

However, I had never seen a Mana as ugly and disgusting as the one in front of me.

The red Mana that Mercadius conjured and fired into the atmosphere seemed to convey the malice wriggling inside it to my body.

A torrent of blood rushed in, shifting its form dozens of times per second.

My eyes, under extreme tension, perceived it as if it was moving in slow-motion.

The wave that the red Mana sculpted was like a human being in distress or even a crying animal.

At the same time, it was an unknown being with a melting body, and it became an unpleasant bubble that wasn't exactly a living thing or an inanimate object.

It was difficult to find similarities in each shape's aspect, but I managed to find one commonality within it.

The entire thing was expressing terrible despair and horror.

- [The Successor's Eyes (Rank: EX)] has resisted against [Mercadius's Seed (Rank: SSS)]!

A static fight began.

Both of us stood facing each other motionlessly, but a fierce battle continued inside.

Direct confrontation with his skills was different from fighting the seed hidden in my Core.

Like a greedy animal trying to bite off its prey, his skill rushed to take over my mind.

It was much more intense than the seed that tried to take over my brain.

However, [The Successor's Eyes] would never succumb to such attempts.

It was the skill that blocked off the attempt of the 'magic god' to forcibly fuse with my mind without letting other deities know during the first time that we met.

All the more, if it's a deity that had fragmented to such a minuscule extent.

"...!"

Swoosh!

More blood flowed from Mercadius's forehead.

"You, how the hell-! How dare you defy me when you're nothing but a feed?!"

He had an expression that told me he couldn't grasp the situation.

He ground his teeth as if he realized something belatedly.

"Oh, my days! I see. In the meantime, my seed... had been trapped in your body and left to starve!"

Ridiculously, he was expressing his anger while looking at me.

"I had been relieved since it seemed like it had eaten the seed that was arranged as a food..."

I thought he meant the seeds of the people around me who were brainwashed.

"It had not dug up and eaten the mind of the most important host after all!"

As if to give up, the blood-like Mana disappeared.

"For sure, you didn't have the strength to do that when I planted the seed. I did expect it to take quite a while, but... I thought you wouldn't be able to stop the erosion completely."

Eerie darkness lingered in his eyes.

"Now I understand why. The divine beings had intervened. All right, then I'll make you... clean again!"

As soon as he finished talking, sixteen magic circles came up at the same time behind Mercadius's back.

That made me immediately feel the illusion that the surrounding space was shrinking and contracting.

Vast energy filled the surroundings.

He gave up the brainwashing and was creating spells by concentrating blue Mana.

He conjured magic that consumed such enormous Mana that no common species could attempt.

It was the type that only those who had more than five million active Mana like him could even conceptualize.

Rumbleeee!

I prepared to attack with everything I had as well.

The way to materialize the 'support' that the Union headquarters decided did not stop at only tossing me a few items.

Compared to the Core that I had saved up alone on Earth for a year that only amounted to 500,000, the Core that Union headquarters supported me in a few days was indeed a phenomenal amount.

And I had transformed much of it into a non-specific divine power.

'God of magic!'

The transparent energy met with the seal on the back of my hand. I then turned to the power of "Igras-Sho."

God had answered my prayers and changed the divine power into a miracle of intervention in reality.

Paht!

In front of the authority's power of the master of magic, all magic was sealed. It disregarded skill rank or Mana consumption.

The magic circle, which was blazing behind Mercadius's back, disappeared like a lie.

"... You!"

The enraged opponent once again gathered up his strength.

There was no such thing as a weapon in his grasp.

The Mana was compressed, and the turbulent flow lingered in both of his hands.

There weren't many options to choose from in a situation where the mental attacks and magic weren't working against the god's fragment.

He gathered and fired a blow of pure Mana like a thunderbolt.

The fierce heat burst the air.

Rumbleeee!

I charged in, having unleashed a sword veil.

The [Resistance Field] that wandered around me like a satellite faithfully defended the attack.

Leaving it in charge of defense, I dove into Mercadius's body while my sword was sharply ringing.

A fierce attack and defense followed.

Sword and fist collided once more.

The offensive from both sides intertwined and sparked like lightning.

Our Mana entangled in the air and bit down at each other.

Meanwhile, intense light covered the surroundings and soon turned into a tornado.

It turned into a storm sweeping everything around.

In that state, I prayed to another deity.

'God of life!'

The deity that temporarily turned Iponia into an adult worked miracles on my body in a different way at that time.

The power of pure life overwhelmed my entire body. I felt like I had a furnace burning under my skin.

My body, which already had the optimal form for combat as an Awakened, began to evolve beyond my species' limitations.

Every inch of my body was changed to a distorted form that broke physics.

I gained a physique that could unleash even more potent power.

I didn't stop there.

'God of swords!'

sword movements locked in my unconscious memory surfaced.

And the deity pushed my back so that I could take a step further from there.

All kinds of tricks came together, and enlightenment penetrated my mind.

I gained a high level of concentration that blurred out everything other than the opponent and me. The expansion of my senses allowed me to naturally deliver my attacks in accordance with the flow of things around me.

Gradually, a golden mist enveloped my body.

Flashes fluttered, and flames sparked.

At that point, I could see Mercadius's face being distorted.

The tide of the war was clearly leaning to my side.

I needed a bit more push.

'God of luck!'

I called upon another divine power dwelling in my body.

All probabilities and coincidences began to work amicably with me.

In the midst of a very small fork on the road that differed the results even when the same conditions were met, I naturally extended my sword, kicked my feet, and tossed my body along the optimal flow.

And the force that was leading Mercadius in the exact opposite direction was affecting him as well.

It was something impossible to happen if the god's power had collided on an equal scale.

Mercadius cried out in dismay.

"No way! This is not a force that an incarnation should have...!"

I harnessed each and every power of the gods in my body.

In terms of the superiority of divine power, Mercadius was being crushed.

I couldn't guess how many fragments the god of mind was broken into. Perhaps even the god of time wouldn't know.

Mercadius, having borne the source of a god, couldn't be considered an ordinary incarnation either, but each individual had to be a very finely divided crumb.

And I, who was fighting him, wasn't in the level of an ordinary incarnation either.

"Oh, my!"

C-crack!

It was a strange phenomenon.

Despite his body being an organic matter dominated by the seed of Mercadius after it bloomed...

Like a rock that had been battered for a long time, his arms and chest began to crack.

With shining eyes, I dug in that gap.

He screamed.

"How can such a powerful force... in a mortal vessel...!"

I could see the end.

I rushed in with a radiance covering my body. The sword and body became a stream of flash and sliced the air.

Time slowed down even slower, and at that moment, I felt as if it finally had stopped.

The moment my vision turned white and my consciousness became as sharp as it could be, space distorted, and the atmosphere burst out in every direction.

I felt the path of the sword I had thrown penetrating Mercadius' heart.

Awareness came first, and action followed it.

A flash soon broke out that sharply penetrated my opponent.

It thrust through.

The blade had pierced through the heart!

"This is... ridiculous...!"

A rough storm soaked in.

On the body of the frozen Mercadius, there was the devil's sword stuck in his chest.

Mercadius, who was looking at me devastatingly in that state...

"!"

Almost like a surprise attack, the last struggle, he pulled up his strength again.

"?!"

Even if the host's life energy was flickering, Mana still swarmed within it.

'What?!'

At that moment...

Ch-wak!

On the forehead of the host, which had been reduced to almost that of a corpse...

From that specific wound, Mana stretched out like thousands of red threads!