Ch.112Ep.112: Betting Everything

“Cough!”

“…Fuck.”

Radios couldn’t help but curse as he watched Azathoth coughing up blood.

And for good reason—he currently had the Goblin Mask activated.

‘The neck… it won’t be cut no matter what I do.’

He should have aimed for the heart.

Striking with his sword with only the thought of killing instantly had led to the worst mistake.

However, Azathoth seemed to be in such shock that he couldn’t properly control his trembling body.

Radios recalled the voice he had heard.

-There is nothing in this world that the Sword of Destruction cannot cut.

Though he had never heard this voice before, Radios realized that the owner of this voice was the Sword God, the founder of the sword technique known as the Sword of Destruction.

There was another problem.

Why had Azathoth, who had been trying to collapse the world, suddenly stopped the collapse?

Given the circumstances, it was reasonable to assume someone had stopped him, but it couldn’t have been Chaos.

‘The Multiverse Management Bureau… was it?’

If they had intervened somehow, that could explain it.

Azathoth had said that the power of the Multiverse Management Bureau was so great that it couldn’t be defeated even if all universes combined their strength.

But it didn’t matter.

Whatever the Multiverse Management Bureau’s intentions were in stopping the world’s collapse, from Radios’s perspective, it was a thank you.

Because no matter how much he fought and won, there would be no reason to live if the world didn’t exist.

And having awakened to the Ascended Order, he couldn’t even commit suicide.

Beings with the Ascended Order gain immortal power, and both Azathoth and Chaos had started this massacre to alleviate the boredom of immortality.

“Stop whining and get up, will you?”

“Radios… Magnum… Cough!”

Azathoth repeatedly struck his trembling legs and barely managed to steady himself.

Even though his neck hadn’t been cut, he had clearly suffered severe internal injuries from taking the full brunt of the sword technique.

And those internal injuries wouldn’t heal even with the Goblin Mask.

In the Sword of Destruction – Annihilation, the “annihilation” refers to the sword principle that destroys everything.

Radios hadn’t even known there was such a principle as the Annihilation Sword in his mind.

But as if possessed, he suddenly thought about how to use the sword technique and struck.

As a result, Azathoth suffered an injury that couldn’t be healed.

The dramatic drop in his combat power was visible in his haggard appearance.

“As if you could fight in that state.”

“I, I have a proposal… Won’t you join me?”

“Huh?”

He must be desperate to save himself now that he’s losing.

Truly despicable behavior.

“What good would come… from prolonging your life like that?”

“Surely any living being would be skeptical about death… This is a principle–“

“Principle? What bullshit. You created and destroyed worlds because life was so boring, and now you’re talking about principles?”

“…”

Azathoth fell silent.

But his silence only made Radios angrier.

“Do you even know how many lives you’ve deceived until now?!”

“I don’t know about such things.”

“What?”

“Higher beings like you and me don’t need to know such things. We live our own way–“

SMACK!

Unable to contain himself any longer, Radios struck Azathoth’s cheekbone with the handle of Excalibur, breaking it.

“Kuk!”

“You crazy bastard! What makes you a higher being?!”

“W-wait a sec— ARGHHHH!”

Radios then used tremendous strength to tear off Azathoth’s left arm and stabbed Excalibur into the wound to prevent perfect regeneration.

Azathoth screamed in pain like never before.

“You’re noisy. Shut up.”

Radios ruptured his vocal cords to silence him.

[P-please spare me. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die..!]

But Azathoth tried to communicate with Radios through his thoughts.

Since he possessed a Divine Order that could read minds.

He thought Radios might respond if they communicated this way.

“You’ve committed many wrongs. Higher being?? That’s ridiculous! What makes anyone a higher being?!”

There are no higher beings in the world.

Everyone starts from zero and grows according to their capacity.

Radios too started from zero and reached the awakening of the Ascended Order.

Now he was torturing the nearly destroyed Azathoth.

“The pain of those you’ve killed so painfully until now… is worse than this.”

[I don’t need to know about that! Unlike beings like us, they’re just trash!]

“You’re making your own value into trash.”

[You and I are higher beings! We’re qualitatively different from others!]

“…”

Radios’s gaze grew increasingly cold.

His initial impression of Azathoth when they first met had completely changed.

From the position of a betrayed absolute being to dust in a garbage dump not worth killing.

“Let’s say others are trash as you claim. Then you’re just the king of trash.”

[What?]

“Think I’m using sophistry? You consider yourself a higher being but think of others as trash. If you exclude the trash, only you remain.”

Can a being that stands alone call itself a higher being?

Whatever it does, doesn’t it just create the ‘average’ for living beings?

“And this nonsense you’re spouting isn’t the thinking of a higher being—it’s just the pathetic self-satisfaction of someone wallowing among trash.”

“..!”

“Now that you understand, let’s continue the beating.”

He had already lost the Goblin Mask and was in a state where he could no longer regenerate.

Radios, with no change in expression, opened his mouth and grabbed his lower jaw.

RIIIIIP!

“Mmmmmmph!!”

“So you can still make noise without vocal cords.”

He tore it off mercilessly.

Azathoth writhed in pain and shed tears, but Radios paid no attention.

Because he knew people who had suffered even worse pain.

If possible, he wanted to regenerate him and tear him apart again, regenerate and tear, repeating until he couldn’t function as a person anymore.

But at that moment.

“Kuhak!”

Chaos appeared, throwing Veichel, in a completely battered state.

She seemed to have almost no strength left to fight as the effect of her spell had nearly worn off.

Radios, distracted by Veichel, failed to pay attention to Azathoth.

Chaos pulled him close and glared at him with contemptuous eyes.

“You idiot. You couldn’t even handle one human and now this mess–“

SQUELCH!

But Chaos couldn’t finish his sentence.

The seemingly insane Azathoth had grabbed his heart.

Grin.

Though his mouth wasn’t clearly visible, his raised cheekbones suggested Azathoth was smiling.

As if he had been waiting for this moment.

“Azatho… thhhhh!!”

The enraged Chaos tried to use the Void’s Ascended Order to annihilate his existence, but.

BOOM!

Before he could, Azathoth’s hand burst his heart and began to absorb everything with the power of devouring.

“You bastard! This is how you betray me?! I am..! I aaaammm!!”

With Chaos’s dying scream, Azathoth regained his complete form and curled up one corner of his mouth.

His expression seemed to celebrate that his plan had worked perfectly.

“Sigh, I knew that bastard would do something like this.”

Radios merely shook his head as if he had expected this all along.

Could a betrayer ever change his nature?

He had anticipated that if either Azathoth or Chaos were cornered, one would devour the other.

Seeing him devour Chaos and look so triumphant made Radios want to beat him up.

“King of trash, was it?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you still… say such things after seeing me now?”

As Azathoth activated his Ascended Order, an aura of a completely different dimension erupted from him.

Radios frowned as he felt it—clearly, when one Ascended Order being devoured another, their presence became truly overwhelming.

But Radios already had a plan.

“Veichel. Are you… really okay?”

“Of course. If you knew what I did for you… Sigh…”

Veichel sighed as she looked at her body slowly turning to dust.

Perhaps because she was so battered, borrowing the power of Hwagwangbanjoh, she looked directly at Radios.

Azathoth watched them, thinking what could they possibly do now.

“W-wait..!”

He felt a chill run down his spine as he sensed Chaos’s energy from Veichel.

Right, she was Chaos’s apostle and had once used Spirit Eating.

What if she spirit-ate part of Chaos and passed it to Radios?

“No!!”

He had just managed to create a gap in their abilities, but if Radios not only became his equal but surpassed him, he wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Azathoth threw the Destruction God Light Sword at Radios at faster-than-light speed, but.

“It’s already too late.”

CLANG!

Having received all the power from Veichel, Radios deflected the Destruction God Light Sword with his bare hand.

Looking at Veichel, who had completely disappeared leaving only ashes, he said:

“Well done, Veichel. Now… truly rest.”

Hoping she would find eternal peace without any more suffering.

Radios once again drew Excalibur.