Ch.1282There’s No Solution to This.

Fighting one-on-one thousands of times in succession versus facing an army of tens of thousands alone are challenges of completely different dimensions.

The former is merely repetitive work, but the latter requires withstanding concentrated fire from thousands upon thousands coming relentlessly from all directions.

– Slash!

The wraith’s spear-sword was sharp enough to pierce my skin and inflict minor wounds, and with each cut, a deathly energy invaded my body like venom.

The wounds themselves were merely superficial scratches that would heal within seconds given my extremely enhanced natural healing abilities, but…

‘Damn it, my head is killing me…!’

The accumulating deathly energy with each cut was a different matter. It was quite bothersome even to me.

As if my body was being drawn toward death, I could feel my overall condition gradually deteriorating with each cut.

The headache intensified while my senses grew duller in contrast.

My reflexes, once sharp enough to catch bullets, became sluggish, and my blood flow, which should have been spreading warmth throughout my body, grew increasingly cold.

It was an indescribably unpleasant sensation, like slowly sinking into a swamp filled with rotting corpses.

“Haa, haa…! Really, this is utterly petty. What a pathetic way to fight…!”

Meanwhile, Garmerlic, truly despicably, would rush in like a ghost to interfere whenever I attempted a major attack or tried to catch my breath after cutting through the wraiths.

His sticky, defensive fighting style avoided direct confrontation, focusing solely on disrupting me and stalling for time.

His strategy was clear. He knew he couldn’t become stronger than me, but weakening me was achievable.

In gaming terms, it was like stacking various debuffs to defeat an otherwise unbeatable opponent.

A filthy, vile, and contemptible tactic that only human scum would employ. Yet I couldn’t deny its effectiveness.

– Crack!

“Ugh…!”

“You’ve slowed down. A few minutes ago, you would have dodged this.”

“Blocking is enough!”

I reacted a beat too late to the dragon’s attack that I could have easily avoided earlier, and instead of dodging, I forcibly blocked it, resulting in a fracture.

“Can you call that blocking? Your right arm is half crushed.”

“This much will heal quickly. I’m young. Unlike you.”

– Crunch, crack, crackle.

The broken bones were slowly mending themselves, so it wasn’t a debilitating injury, but the fact that I took a hit I could have avoided was the real problem.

It was evidence that I was gradually weakening since being trapped in this sea of wraiths.

‘Hmm… how many have I killed so far?’

[Well, perhaps one-fifth…? That seems about right.]

Ha, there’s disgustingly many of them. I’ve killed so many, and that’s only 20% of the total?

‘…This approach isn’t working.’

Even with my throbbing headache, I could be certain that if this situation continued, I’d remain at a disadvantage even if I managed to slaughter all these wraiths.

I needed a strategy. One grand enough to completely overturn this sticky situation.

[You’re struggling needlessly. Why not simply burn everything to ashes?]

‘What are you saying? You saw it too. Setting fire to these things is useless—’

[You fool. Have you forgotten what you possess? Leviathan, a flame technique modeled after the essence of god-slaying fire. You have flames that burn the soul!]

‘Ah.’

Right, I did have that technique.

Unlike Leviathan, which consumes all my power, this is a destructive flame that sacrifices divine annihilation capability and stability, unleashed using only the runes carved on both hands.

Though it can’t burn gods, it’s a flame sword that incinerates even the souls of those without divinity—what I casually named “Pseudo-Leviathan.”

I had completely forgotten about it since I hadn’t needed to use it for a while. Perhaps the headache was affecting my memory.

Anyway, that technique would certainly work against these wraiths, since they are ultimately souls.

However…

‘But even so, it just means changing from one sword to dual swords, and only temporarily at that. I don’t see how that would make a meaningful difference.’

The current situation wasn’t simple enough to be resolved by that alone.

Having two swords doesn’t make me twice as strong, and Pseudo-Leviathan, like the original, is an extremely short-duration technique.

If I have to recreate the flame every time it disappears after just a couple of swings, I might as well just swing Durandal a few more times.

[I-I was merely reminding you that such a method exists. You’ve developed the bad habit of trying to solve everything with brute force lately.]

Hersella replied with a slightly trembling voice.

Her tone alone revealed it was a poor excuse she came up with on the spot rather than something she had thought through… but let’s let it slide. I’m not in a position to tease her right now.

‘I suppose I have been doing that lately…’

It wasn’t entirely wrong.

‘Anyway, we’re back to square one… Wait a minute. Couldn’t your “Field of Mortality” break through this situation?’

While considering other options, a good idea suddenly popped into my mind.

Hersella’s heroic tale, Field of Mortality, is a heroic narrative specializing in instant-death curses for mass slaughter.

If I used that power, couldn’t I annihilate most of the hundreds of thousands of wraiths surrounding me in an instant?

[Well… I wonder.]

Or not.

[Would Field of Mortality even affect wraiths that are already dead? Since the powers are similar in nature, it might actually strengthen the enemy instead.]

Would Field of Mortality’s instant-death curse be effective against wraiths rather than the living? This was something even Hersella, the power’s owner, couldn’t know without trying.

For undead with physical bodies, she could tear them to pieces, but wraiths had no material form at all.

[Besides, to deploy Field of Mortality, I would need to come forward while you withdraw your divinity. If he seizes that opportunity, I would find it difficult to defend.]

Moreover, the very act of attempting to cast Field of Mortality would expose a fatal weakness from my perspective.

To deploy Field of Mortality, I would need to temporarily hand over this body to Hersella, which would make it impossible to maintain the divinity of stars and dawn.

That power is entirely mine and fundamentally opposed to Hersella’s karma of murder.

In other words, deploying Field of Mortality means that Hersella herself would have to face Garmerlic in my place, even if temporarily.

‘Yeah, that would be suicide.’

Even if I were in peak condition, her power alone would struggle to withstand him, let alone now when my condition is at its worst.

There’s no need to even consider it. If she allowed even a single hit, it wouldn’t be surprising to end up with a completely shattered skeleton.

Given that the nature of our powers is completely opposite and the difference in strength is considerable, the chance that Garmerlic wouldn’t notice was slim.

‘This is really giving me a headache…’

The discussion went in circles again. Even with both our minds working together, we couldn’t come up with a suitable solution.

Well, my IQ of 120 plus Hersella’s would only amount to about 150 at most, so it’s not surprising that we couldn’t come up with a genius idea.

This is why we needed Ophelia. The absence of an intelligent, incestuous archmage skilled in handling wraiths was painfully felt at this moment.

======[ Garmerlic ]======

Since battles are often shrouded in deception and bluster, the two sides’ impressions of the battle situation frequently diverge significantly.

‘I suspected it already, but… she’s become strong to an absurd degree.’

While Haschal was grinding her teeth and denouncing Garmerlic’s tactics as dirty and petty, Garmerlic himself wasn’t feeling satisfaction.

‘Is this truly human power?’

Quite the opposite. Though he didn’t show it, he was actually speechless with astonishment.

He already knew she had completed the vessel for divinity and devoured numerous divine powers, but how could she have become this powerful in such a short time?

Not only was she withstanding his attack and that of hundreds of thousands of wraiths single-handedly, but she had also managed to destroy about 20% of the wraiths in the process.

Considering she accomplished this with just one sword, it was a level of strength that Garmerlic doubted he could match even if he had the same conditions as her.

‘It’s not just her martial prowess. Her life force itself is already at a monstrous level.’

Moreover, it wasn’t just her strength that was extraordinary.

The concentration of death energy that the wraiths’ spear-swords had accumulated in her body would be enough to half-incapacitate an ordinary demigod or ancient dragon, making even breathing difficult.

Yet Haschal was not only still standing but continuing to rampage like a mad dog.

Though she couldn’t completely ignore the effects of the death energy and had clearly weakened compared to before, the very fact that she was enduring and fighting was already an incredible feat.

He had initially assumed that the negative torrent alone wouldn’t be enough, which gave him the luxury to feign composure, but Garmerlic’s honest feelings were approaching reverence beyond mere admiration.