Ch.1103Give What You’re Going to Give

Without going insane, there’s no way they would come to the surface.

Most gathered on this battlefield half-believed this deep down, despite their doubts.

If Haschal, their sage incarnate, hadn’t firmly declared that the evil god would emerge, they would have been certain—not just doubtful—that it wouldn’t appear at all.

Meanwhile, the demigods who hadn’t set foot on the battlefield knew better than anyone the dangers of Heaven’s Wall, and firmly believed that no being in divine form would ever ascend to the mortal realm.

Yet Invidius proved just how deranged a god he was by unhesitatingly executing what everyone considered an act of madness.

What exactly did he do?

It was simple.

【 U҉̡̩͕͙̀̋̇̎̚͡nf҉̨̛͈̑̉̚ͅold. 】

While transcendent beings touched by Heaven’s Wall’s gaze cannot escape the celestial flames, there’s nothing to fear if you block the gaze itself.

Just as one shields summer sunlight with a parasol, all he needed was to cast a veil over his head to block heaven’s wrath.

A simple concept, an uncomplicated solution.

Even demigods other than Invidius had known this method all along.

They knew the method but never dared attempt it.

To oppose Heaven’s Wall’s power with their own strength would require consuming a truly enormous amount of divinity.

Single-handedly blocking, even momentarily, the combined power of six or more ascended gods—an impossible feat with mere demigod-level divinity.

Even for Invidius, a being one dimension higher than demigods, it was something he could do at most twice in his lifetime.

Invidius used that one chance here.

“Gooooooo…!”

Vast dark mana slowly swirled, rising to envelop the evil god’s body.

The power that could be called the source of evil, abundant in the void, bubbled up to wrap around his entire body and surge upward.

…Or rather, “entire body” might not be quite accurate.

“Kugugugugung…!”

Until recently, only Invidius’s knees and below had been submerged in the tidal wave of dark mana.

Now, however, his divine form was submerged below the waist.

Not because the dark mana’s sea level had risen, but because his physical form had sunk that much lower.

The divine form’s body was made of divinity.

To cast the veil that would block Heaven’s Wall’s flames, Invidius unhesitatingly consumed half of his own divinity.

It was a mad act no one else would attempt.

Most of the divinity granted to a divine form could be recovered when its time in the mortal realm ended, but divinity consumed in this manner would never return.

Divinity was equivalent to a god’s lifespan.

In other words, this was essentially self-harm—sacrificing most of his lifespan for a brief excursion.

However.

【 Re҉̡̖̱̦̮̫͗̾́̕ach. 】

Invidius willingly sacrificed half of his nearly eternal, vast lifespan for the brief freedom needed to capture and kill his enemy.

Despite such a sacrifice meaning that even victory would leave him worse off than if he’d never descended at all, Invidius didn’t hesitate.

For the evil god of jealousy, such cost-benefit calculations were never even considerations.

Jealousy and desire, anger and grudges are extremely irrational emotions.

The god of malice, unable to tolerate what was taken from him, flew toward the mortal realm, recklessly discarding what remained of himself.

Darkness covered the sky.

—-

“Begin bombardment! Fire! Pour everything we have at it!”

Surprisingly, the first attack order came not from Haschal but from the captain aboard the airship.

It was a command instinctively shouted in terror.

When the ground collapsed and the sky was shrouded in darkness, the sensation like a thousand needles piercing his eyeballs completely shattered his reason.

A terror unbearable for a mere captain, not a superhuman.

With bloodshot eyes and spittle flying from his gaping lips.

The airship captain ordered a full barrage in a voice so passionate it seemed his neck veins might burst.

“F-fire! Begin bombardment!”

The mages controlling the mana cannons were equally terrified.

Yet, as skilled gunners of the Imperial Magic Tower, they aimed precisely at their target and pulled the triggers despite their convulsively trembling hands.

Thunderous cannon fire erupted.

Simultaneous artillery fire from three airships.

Dozens of dragon-bone shells, accelerated by explosion magic, struck like lightning at the source of darkness extending toward the world.

With a deafening boom, the darkness rippled, and a massive howl that far surpassed even a dragon’s roar shook the earth.

“Fire! Keep firing!”

“Tower Master bitch! Tower Master bitch! Tower Master biiitch!”

The mages felt crushing pain as if their hearts were being pulverized by the continuous barrage, yet they didn’t stop, frantically loading shells and firing repeatedly.

“What are you doing?! Why are you stopping?!”

“We’re out of shells, sir!”

So fiercely had they fired that they’d exhausted their entire supply of shells—enough to reach the flight weight limit.

Stray shells pounded the earth, raising clouds of black dust that mixed with the evil god’s dark mana, spreading into an impenetrable black fog where one couldn’t see an inch ahead.

“…Did we get it?”

The imperial airship’s lookout muttered vacantly.

The captain glared at the lookout who had suddenly uttered such an inauspicious comment, as if ready to throw him overboard.

He barely restrained himself only because they’d brought minimal crew for the voyage; had there been replacement personnel, he truly would have thrown him off.

“Report! What do you see?!”

A fierce command filled with that anger.

The lookout hurriedly peered through his telescope, observing the “enemy’s” movements hidden in the black fog.

“It’s…!”

Seconds later. Just as the lookout turned around to speak after spotting something in the black fog.

Crack.

The consciousness of everyone gathered on the bridge vanished along with their bodies. Not just the crew, but the bridge itself.

“Gugugugugung…!”

The airship, suddenly reduced to half its size from the lower hull to the stern, echoed with what sounded like a death rattle as it helplessly began to fall.

—-

“Spatial collapse…? No, it’s different. Not destroyed, but devoured? Such a wide area, in an instant like that…”

Persiella, who had escaped the catastrophe by being on another ship, muttered with a hollow laugh.

The imperial airship falling like a bird with its upper body torn off in the blink of an eye.

Since it wasn’t an attack with a visible form, few could understand the meaning of the sight, but Persiella at least could understand clearly.

It was unmistakable. As someone who could also manipulate space, albeit in a limited way.

Space Predation.

The first divine power demonstrated by the evil god upon his descent was the ability to bite, devour, and annihilate space itself.

‘Since it stopped at just once, it must have restrictions on consecutive use? If so, how long until it can be used again?’

Persiella, prepared to abandon ship and fly away the moment things became dangerous, looked down at the ground with a sharper and keener gaze than ever before.

【 Ins҈̳̫̞̮͇̆̇̍̐͜͞ects. 】

“So that is the evil god Invidius…”

An oppressive pressure that reached even the distant sky.

Persiella bared her fangs as if denying the fear seeping into her heart, glaring at the creature.

Within the gradually clearing black fog.

A monster as large as a mountain was curled up like a white egg on a black sea so vast its edges couldn’t be seen.

An upper body with muscle fibers fully exposed as if all skin had been peeled away. Its hunched back was thin like an invalid’s, while its chest above was broad like a werebeast’s.

Its two arms extending from the shoulders were long and thin like a spider’s, with black blood vessels intricately tangled like vines over the pale white skin.

Unlike the left arm which looked somewhat smooth, the right arm was cracked in places as if about to shatter at any moment.

The center of its chest, where the lungs and heart should be, was split vertically and gaped like lips, with intestines protruding like a tongue, writhing and wrapping around its upper body like ropes.

The wing bones had completely pierced through its back, and behind the spread wing bones, human-like arms extended endlessly, intertwining to form fleshy wings resembling branches.

What appeared at first glance to be an egg was because it was protectively embracing its body with that pair of fleshy wings.

And above its shoulders.

Where the neck and head should have been was a horrific monstrosity one would fear to see even in nightmares.

Naked human upper bodies.

These hairless fleshy busts, as if praying to the sky with arms stretched upward, were fused together, half-melted and solidified.

At the end, these flesh clusters spread widely to the left and right, forming a pair of giant palms.

Some of the fleshy busts had partially detached and dangled like fruits beneath those giant palms, swaying.

This was its neck and head.

Above that, in the void above the head spread to the left and right, a massive halo floated, proving its divine status, just like Haschal’s.

A halo formed by the intertwined tongues of all kinds of creatures, forming a huge glistening circle.

Inside this fleshy circle spread the void’s darkness like a night sky, and in the center, a giant eyeball was suddenly fixed like the moon.

Slurp.

Each time the fleshy halo writhed and slowly rotated, black water poured like a waterfall from the darkness inside.

The black saliva that flowed down pooled in the giant palm atop its neck, forming a lake that constantly overflowed between the fingers.

Though only an upper body, it was a divine form that perfectly reflected its true self.

This was the true appearance of Invidius, the evil god of the void.