Chapter 128 - Episode 19. War of the Six Gods (1)
Chapter 128: Episode 19. War of the Six Gods (1)
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“Lord Slayer ‘Jaehwan’? Of course he was remarkable. The ‘Solo Clear of the 99th Floor,’ the ‘Grand Unification of Chaos,’ and that famous ‘Lord Slaying’ everyone knows about. But the time his name truly became famous came a little later. You know, that incident that drew the attention of every god in the 《Abyss》.”
From an interview with the God of Flames ‘Ignis.’
* * *
The God of Assassination ‘Rakers’ was one of those so-called old fossils, a ranker who had been living in 〈Metaverse〉 for 542 years.
“God, please bring in some new Parts this time. Please?”
“How much longer are you going to make us keep using suffocating Settings like these?”
“If you keep this up, I’m switching to another Worldview.”
The place they had fled to escape Followers who never did a damn thing yet kept piling on demands was 〈Metaverse〉.
To survive there, Rakers sold out the Followers who had followed them, sold out their convictions, and sold out even the gods who had trusted them enough to invest alongside them.
They became a member of the Alliance.
And after 542 years, they became one of the Metaverse Six Gods.
They had seen the Great Revolution five hundred years ago, and they had held their seat by beating back powerful Six Gods Candidates that appeared about once every ten years.
Whenever a new Skin was released, they would occasionally run gacha draw broadcasts to land promotions, then steadily increased their World Force by reinvesting the trust the Alliance earned.
They had already spent centuries reigning as one of the strongest Six Gods.
By now, Rakers was sick of 〈Metaverse〉.
[So you’re that ‘Naked Stab.’]
That was why an event like this was so welcome.
The smart gods no longer challenged 〈Metaverse〉. They knew that even if they did, all they would do was fatten the Alliance’s pockets. The only challengers who came now were idle drifters from the 《Abyss》 with trust to burn. Even among them, most left after growing disgusted with 〈Metaverse〉’s monetization policies.
And then a bastard like this showed up.
Tzzzt.
Rakers smiled as they healed the Doll’s wounds with the 「Superhuman Regeneration」 Setting.
The rumored Naked Stab was standing right in front of them.
They had thought the most fun the Sixth Floor had to offer would be someone like the ‘King of Crows.’
[You’ll be delicious.]
The unprecedented strength Rakers felt from Jaehwan thrilled them.
How strong would this challenger be? And how much amusement would he provide before his exit?
[Many gods are interested in this match!]
How much trust would this fight bring them?
[‘Anonymous God94’ wishes for your victory.]
[‘Anonymous God88’ looks forward to your grotesque feast.]
And just how delicious would that bastard’s soul be?
[I’ll face you properly. You’ve earned that much.]
As Rakers spread both arms wide, the weapons pouring out from their entire body shot up into the sky all at once.
Swords, daggers, whips, shuriken, throwing stars.... Tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.
The instant their myriad weapons blotted out the light of the sky, the entire area around them went dark.
Sanctuary Manifestation.
「Shadow of All Weapons」.
Rakers’s Sanctuary unfolded for the first time in decades. A world full of sticky darkness smothered all five of Jaehwan’s senses.
Blinking slowly, Jaehwan activated 「Doubt」 and examined the scene around him. No matter where he looked, all he saw was the same pitch-black landscape. It felt as though he had been trapped inside dense shadows.
Fsssh!
A sharp sensation tore across him, and a long slash opened along Jaehwan’s side. A spear had flown in from somewhere and sliced across his flank as it passed.
Fsst! Fissst!
Next came daggers and throwing stars that grazed his elbow and shin. He moved his body on instinct and avoided them, but they were attacks he could barely notice until the very last instant.
There was no sign whatsoever of Rakers hidden within the darkness.
Attacks that came without omen or warning.
[You’ve got quick reflexes.]
Jaehwan had fought enemies who used this sort of technique a few times before. But this was the first time he had faced one who used such a vast area as their personal concealment zone.
「Doubt」
Against a god on this level, it was not easy to break through to their essence with 「Doubt」, a First Awakening ability.
Jaehwan stabbed his sword toward a place where he faintly sensed World Force stirring. With a wet thud, the pitch-black space wrapped around Dokbul and stretched, thick and sticky.
As if they had been waiting for it, seventeen weapons came flying in from different angles.
[It’s useless. You cannot find me.]
Jaehwan drew a light breath, then stabbed seventeen times in an instant and knocked the weapons away.
But a few still grazed his forearm and waist. The places they touched were turning pitch black.
It was poison.
Jaehwan lightly laid a hand over the wounds.
「Understanding」
The Second Awakening ability instantly grasped the poison’s principle and drove it out of his body.
Seeing that, Rakers muttered in surprise.
[Immune to all poisons? Are you from the martial world?]
Instead of answering, Jaehwan aimed his sword into empty air.
His way of fighting enemies like this was simple.
If he could not see the enemy, then all he had to do was stab every direction he could see.
「World Stab」, nine consecutive strikes.
The waves of World Stab he unleashed without restraint tore through the Sanctuary. Everywhere those stabs struck, the Sanctuary began to convulse violently, as though it could actually feel pain.
Crackle.
Some parts of the Sanctuary even shattered the moment his stabs touched them. Fortunately, the damage quickly repaired itself through World Force, but Rakers was still shaken.
They had never heard of such a brutish attack anywhere in the 《Abyss》.
Jaehwan, however, looked dissatisfied.
As though he had grasped everything about this world from that one attack, Jaehwan’s gaze turned toward a single point in the Sanctuary. Whether it was coincidence or not, the place where his eyes stopped was exactly where Rakers was hiding.
[Impudent bastard.]
At Rakers’s gesture, weapons with ominous auras rose all throughout the shadow world. Every one of them was a weapon that had once dominated an era in 〈Metaverse〉.
「Divine Spear of the Evil God」
「Sky Splitter」
「Ten-Thousand-Year Grasp」
「God’s Shackles」
「Holy Sword Marpen」
......
They were Parts released through gacha draws with atrocious odds, or Parts obtained by defeating legendary boss monsters. Here in 〈Metaverse〉, they were priceless collections that could not be bought for any amount of money.
Those weapons all turned toward Jaehwan at once like bullets poised to fire.
Yet even as he looked at that scene, Jaehwan was neither flustered nor surprised.
He only murmured quietly.
“So, around ‘General’ level.”
[How dare you.]
The weapons fired. Their speed and destructive power were beyond comparison with anything before. If something like that pierced him, even Jaehwan could not come away unscathed.
「Selflessness」
The Third Awakening ability of Selflessness manifested.
Jaehwan’s soul accelerated as it resisted the opposing Sanctuary. In that stolen instant of time, Jaehwan’s left hand stabbed into a crack in the air. Through the split in empty space, he pulled out a single pitch-black sword.
「Fall」
Jaehwan’s law-type Setting, 「Fall」, forged through the power of 「Hypothesis」.
It was the first time he had drawn this sword since fighting the Generals in 《Chaos》.
Craaash!
With a casual swing of 「Fall」, three famed blades flying at him corroded and vanished.
Rakers’s eyes widened in shock.
But Jaehwan’s counterattack had only just begun.
「Fall」 in his left hand overlapped with Dokbul in his right, and before long the aura of 「Fall」 covered Dokbul’s blade.
「Fall Sword」
The custom mode of Dokbul and 「Fall」. It was Jaehwan’s unique combat style, the same one he had used in the clash against the Samyeong Great Family.
This time, however, one more thing had been added to it.
It was Jaehwan’s own newly mastered 「Setting」, attained through all his training.
「Fall Sword, Second Form.」
Jaehwan shifted his stance in an instant and stabbed forward with his sword.
At the same time, Dokbul’s blade split wide in two, then began devouring every weapon flying toward it.
Crunch, craaack!
「Fall」 was a Setting that destroyed worlds. As that Setting settled into Dokbul’s fangs, everything in the world touched by Jaehwan’s sword was being ripped apart.
Dokbul mercilessly tore through and swallowed the incoming weapons, giving a cry that sounded almost satisfied.
[You bastard! My weapons!]
They were weapons Rakers had gathered over hundreds of years. Their fortress of fangs, built from nothing but armaments, one that would not so much as budge no matter who in 〈Metaverse〉 they faced.
And that fortress was collapsing before a single sword.
[I’ll kill you!]
Enraged, Rakers began controlling their World Force, accepting even the risk of exposing their true body.
Thunder rumbled from somewhere, and above Jaehwan’s head appeared a giant cloud made entirely of weapons.
The main Setting that had made Rakers one of the Metaverse Six Gods.
「All-Weapon Storm Cloud」
The gods of 〈Metaverse〉 said this.
No one who stood beneath that storm cloud survived.
[Strike.]
At Rakers’s signal, light flashed from within the storm cloud.
「All-Weapon Lightning」
Rakers was certain.
Even among the current Six Gods, none but the Alliance’s Leader could withstand this attack.
[Strike!]
At the signal, lightning crashed down from the sky. More precisely, weapons engraved with the lightning 「Setting」 were falling as bolts.
[Strike! Strike! Strike!]
The lightning of all weapons fell without pause. Hundreds, thousands of strikes every second. It was an electric assault that would reduce any soul to dust. A deafening roar rang out, and Rakers laughed.
And then.
Swish.
What in the world was that?
Swish, swish, swish, swish.
With that bizarre sound, something like a lightning rod kept springing up and dropping back down where the lightning struck.
Looking closer, Jaehwan’s sword was moving in rhythm with the falling bolts.
Stab, stab, stab, and stab again.
The man was “stabbing” the lightning at a speed too fast to see.
Every time the lightning crashed down, his whole body would appear and disappear again.
A body flashing brilliantly in the light. A face wearing a chilling smile each time he struck the lightning from the sky.
[N-no.]
The unceasing barrage of lightning faltered for a moment, and Dokbul in Jaehwan’s hand began to shine with an ominous light. Jaehwan’s arm, drawn back with all its force, released toward the sky in time with the falling bolt as though loosing a bowstring.
A stab bearing the power of 「Fall」, now carrying the electricity he had absorbed until then, ripped through the Sanctuary. The black storm cloud split cleanly in two, and Rakers’s Sanctuary began to tear apart around the rift.
[Kuhuhk!]
The moment the Sanctuary collapsed, the backlash of reversed World Force drove Rakers to their knees, and they vomited silver.
[‘Anonymous God94’ cannot believe their eyes.]
It was impossible.
This was not even a clash of Sanctuary against Sanctuary, yet a mere 「Setting」 had shattered a Sanctuary.
[The God of Flash ‘Rayray’ gapes in a daze.]
[Some gods are aghast, asking what in the world just happened.]
One of the Metaverse Six Gods was losing in real time.
《Little Brother》 was in absolute uproar.
[This broadcast has been selected for 《Little Brother》’s ‘Real-Time Popular LIVE’!]
[Many gods are watching this broadcast through ‘ReneTV’.]
[‘Anonymous God99’ asks what will happen to the ‘Metaverse Six Gods’ now.]
Amid the chaos, an uneasy atmosphere began to spread.
Gods were shouting that the Metaverse Six Gods were nothing special after all.
The Alliance’s stronghold, built up over so long, was beginning to crack.
[‘Anonymous God158’ says the ‘Alliance’ is nothing special either.]
[‘Anonymous God32’ finds the ‘God of Assassination’ pathetic.]
[The name of ‘Naked Stab’ echoes through every floor of 〈Metaverse〉.]
[The ‘Driver’ of 〈Metaverse〉 is paying attention to the outcome of this battle.]
Rakers bit their lip hard and pushed themselves back to their feet as they drew up their World Force.
The fight was not over yet. The years they had built up could not possibly amount to only this.
Once more, they spread both arms and activated their Sanctuary.
Then they were stunned.
The Sanctuary did not manifest.
As if it had become frightened of the being before it, their Sanctuary was refusing to manifest.
And very slowly, Rakers felt a strange sensation climbing up from the ground beneath their feet.
[W-what are you?]
It was fear.
Only then did Rakers finally realize who the opponent before them really was.
That man was not one of those ‘Six Gods Candidates’ who appeared once every few decades.
Rakers staggered backward.
The story they had heard from the previous generation of Six Gods flashed through their mind a moment too late.
“Once every few hundred years, a monster appears, something beyond all standards that shakes all of 〈Metaverse〉.”
The legendary Dream Demon said to have seen the final floor of 〈Metaverse〉 nine hundred years ago.
The “monster” of the Rupture that had smashed the Ninth Floor of 〈Metaverse〉 and exterminated all Six Gods seven hundred years ago.
The current ‘Leader’ of the Alliance, who had appeared six hundred years ago under the protection of the Seven Divine Thrones and unified the Alliance of 〈Metaverse〉.
Three times in a thousand years, monsters beyond all common sense had appeared, so Rakers had thought none would appear in their own era.
And yet now.
“Nothing else left to stab?”
Before their eyes stood a naked monster.
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