Ch.143143. Divine Position

I couldn’t understand it.

Rex. When Elturas first saw him, he didn’t think Rex would become an obstacle to his plans.

Now—credit where credit is due. In just two short weeks, that man had transcended his limits and risen to the rank of apostle. And that wasn’t all. It was as if that living catastrophe Kaiserion had returned. No, the current Rex was clearly more powerful than Kaiserion in his prime.

Even so, compared to himself, Rex was nothing but an insect. A being who couldn’t overcome human limitations, who couldn’t shake off death—an utterly inferior life form. I am a god who has completely transcended the mortal frame. An ant’s bite doesn’t kill a human. That’s how it is. Unless Rex ascended to godhood, he could never stand in the way of his plans. An impossible thing, something that should never happen. That’s what he thought.

—And that impossible thing occurred. Something he couldn’t even imagine. Crack! That’s why Elturas couldn’t understand the situation. The sound reaching his ears. His consciousness flying away. He felt pain. Me, I who stole the divinity of the Life God… feeling pain?

His thoughts couldn’t continue. Red blood gushed forth, and his waist bent roughly. A sharp pain awakened his dazed mind. Only then did Elturas realize what had happened. —He’d been hit. When? His fragmented thoughts tried to connect. Beyond his blurry vision, a blade wrapped in blazing flames fell.

Elturas kicked the ground in panic. He couldn’t dodge. A thin line scratched his cheek. This time, he saw what happened. Rex’s sword had cut him. Though he saw it, he still couldn’t comprehend it.

“Kuhk!”

The wound slicing his cheek stung. White bone was exposed beneath the torn flesh. But only for a moment—instantly, vast life force healed the wound. The bleeding stopped and new flesh grew. Yet Elturas stepped back with an expression of shock.

Even if it had been an ordinary Sanctifier instead of Elturas, it wouldn’t have been a serious injury. But Elturas’s pounding heart wouldn’t calm. Pain. How long had it been since he’d felt this sensation? Since becoming the king of Albheim, Elturas had lived a life disconnected from battle for thousands of years. He was certain he would never be injured again. Who would dare confront a god and raise a blade against a divine body? How dare they! Elturas twisted his lips and let out a roar.

“You!”

He wanted to kill Rex immediately. He wanted to cut off that insolent human’s limbs, stuff them, and then bring Elin to show her his death. He wouldn’t kill him easily. Slowly, he would absorb him into the World Tree. That would deepen his despair.

Though he wanted to act on these thoughts immediately, Elturas suppressed his anger. More precisely, the sun rising above Rex’s head made him regain his reason. The beam of concentrated life force from the World Tree dissipated, consumed by the light of that sun. It wasn’t the real sun. The sun illuminating the world from the blue sky hadn’t disappeared. This was a fake—a kind of illusion created with divine power. But the light it emitted was hotter and more intense than the real sun.

Beyond simply radiating heat, it was distorting the flow of divine power itself. From the moment the sun appeared, Elturas couldn’t properly maintain his soul-return technique. The life force that should be guided from the World Tree was diminishing. Interfering with my power? If that was possible, why hadn’t he manifested this ability until now?

Whatever the reason, he couldn’t leave that sun alone. Until just now, Rex had been a mere insect to Elturas. But now he had become an enemy to be wary of. Elturas instinctively realized this and moved immediately.

—Bang! Elturas’s leg struck the ground. Even with the support of his soul-return technique cut off, the divine power of the Life God he had already absorbed remained. He hadn’t lost his qualification for divinity. Blue-green light enveloped Elturas’s fist. This wasn’t enough. Branches of the World Tree became sharp spears targeting Rex. Until just before, Rex couldn’t read Elturas’s attacks. Compared to then, the speed hadn’t decreased at all. If anything, it had become faster.

And yet.

Their gazes met. Was it an illusion? Those pupils seemed to be clearly following him… His thought was cut off. Light flashed from the sun. Despite the bright flash, Elturas didn’t close his eyes and extended his fist forward. Tap. A light footstep. Before the sound reached him, a burning pain shot up from his fist. Elturas groaned and unconsciously retreated. Immediately after, his fist neatly split and crumbled.

“Kwaak!”

His fist—no, his arm—was sliced in two by the blade. Elturas tried to retreat in panic, but Rex didn’t let him go. Of course he wouldn’t. A tearing metallic sound rang out from the Sword of Destruction, Surtr. Divine power of overwhelming density made the sword vibrate.

Slash! The severed arm immediately reattached. He had expected this. Elturas’s mental image was immortality (不死), imperishability (不滅)—he had achieved his own form of immortality. It was incomparable to Elandir, the Apostle of Regeneration. Elandir’s regeneration took a long time, but Elturas recovered all wounds in the blink of an eye.

So he kept cutting. Rex gritted his teeth and shouted. The first ability he had realized—Solar Corona strengthened his body while suppressing the enemy’s energy. Its range extended as far as the sun’s light reached. The light covered the entire top of the World Tree. That’s why Elturas’s soul-return technique had been stripped of power. He couldn’t maintain it for long. The divine power that had never felt insufficient was now being consumed at an uncontrollable rate.

Before the sun disappeared.

He had to kill Elturas first. Blood spurted from Elturas’s shoulder. He had cut off the left arm. The moment he cut it, the Sword of Destruction was already moving to the next target. Right arm. Blood splashed into his eyes. His wide-open eyes didn’t close.

Stabbing and striking. Ignoring the spraying blood. His sharply positioned fingers pierced Elturas’s eyes. Something caught on his fingers as they dug into the eyeballs. The skull? Without thinking deeply, he pulled at whatever was caught. Snap, the sound of the cervical spine breaking. Elturas let out a scream. Rex ignored it. This much wouldn’t kill him. He would recover soon anyway. Rex withdrew his fingers and roughly scratched his face. His hand, covered in radiance, tore at the facial skin. Meanwhile, the sword was steadily cutting him into pieces. He cut off the arms that had already regenerated.

“Aaaaaaah…!”

Elturas’s scream was cut short because his head fell off. Yet it was monstrous how he wouldn’t die. Rex took a deep breath and raised the Sword of Destruction. He was about to thrust it down to pierce the head when—in an instant, a chilling pressure spread from Elturas’s head.

“How dare, how dare, how dare you! Me, one who has ascended to godhood…!”

Elturas’s head floated up. Where the eyes should have been was empty, but Rex felt Elturas’s gaze. He couldn’t understand the muttering. Rex smirked and sneered at the incoherent curses.

“You look pathetic.”

“I will kill you without fail!”

The tentacles scattered on the ground attached to Elturas’s head. The body… wasn’t regenerating? He dismissed the thought that had just occurred to him. It wasn’t that it couldn’t regenerate—there was no need to regenerate. The World Tree itself had become Elturas’s body. With dozens of tentacles hanging from it, the lone head presented a grotesque and hideous sight. Elturas didn’t think so. The World Tree was the divine body of the Life God. Becoming one with it meant Elturas was becoming closer to divinity.

“I was foolish. If I had resolved to ascend to godhood, I should have discarded this mortal body long ago.”

The flow of the Life God’s power, which had been cut off by the sun, returned. A rising sense of omnipotence, and no more physical pain. Elturas glared at Rex with a face stained with madness.

“…Now I won’t be careless.”

“What an ugly form. Do you want immortality that badly? What meaning is there in a life gained by stealing your race’s lifespan, by killing your mother, your own blood?”

“A lowly human couldn’t possibly understand my longing. Die!”

Elturas’s mouth opened. A blue-green light gradually gathered inside his mouth. Before, he at least pretended to use the branches of the World Tree, but now wasn’t he truly a monster?

This wasn’t the time for such amusing jokes. Rex knew his condition. Solar Corona. Could he erase that beam again this time? He wasn’t certain. The sun’s light hadn’t gone out, but Rex’s flame was dying. Elturas had recovered from injuries that should have killed him many times over. Rex couldn’t recover. Accumulated fatigue and injuries were eating away at him from within.

Just as the beam was about to burst forth—

—Rumble! The sky opened wide. The blue sky remained unchanged, but somehow Rex felt someone’s “gaze.” Countless beings were sending their gazes from somewhere beyond the sky. Elturas felt it too. Widening his already split mouth even further, Elturas spewed out a monstrous cry.

“Gods of the heavens, you cannot interfere with the earthly realm!”

[You, who tried to usurp divinity through trickery, dare to speak of celestial law?]

A massive voice echoed throughout the world. Rex looked up at the sky with wide eyes. It wasn’t a… familiar voice. Cold as ice and frigid. Despite not containing even a hint of warmth, Rex felt like he knew the voice’s owner.

[But. I do not break the law.]

“What does that…!”

[What problem is there in me giving power to my servant?]

Thump. The mark engraved on his chest pulsed violently. His body was hot. This is. Rex clutched his chest. A fierce energy that seemed like it would burn his entire body heated his heart. It felt like his body would burst if he didn’t release it somewhere.

If he needed to release it…

The answer had been determined from the beginning. A dazzling light dawned in Rex’s pupils. Hahaha! Kaordix let out a hearty laugh.

[I am War! My warrior, War desires your victory!]

I know.

Rex dragged his feet toward Elturas. His steps were slow, but Elturas saw death in that figure. The fear of death. The ominous future he thought he would never face had arrived right before him. Why? Nothing had changed. Rex was still human, and the divine power of the Life God he possessed hadn’t disappeared. Whatever trick the celestial god had played on that human, there was no way he could be defeated.

Yet he was afraid. He didn’t know why. To erase that fear, he had to kill Rex. Now Elturas couldn’t afford to show composure. I will not die here. I will surely grasp immortality! Elturas, convulsing as he shouted, raised his power. Boom! The tentacles attached to his head split into dozens, hundreds of branches. The tentacles, curved like whips, swept wildly in all directions.

Rex…

Didn’t care about the tentacles. The beam bursting from Elandir’s mouth, the explosions of spheres filling the empty space. Everything looked slow, so he saw no reason to pay attention.

Sun. Corona, stars rose around it. Stellar. A cluster of stars connected by countless stars overlaid around the sun. Solar Corona. The sun is myself, and the star cluster is the souls of heroes. The star cluster emitted light according to the sun’s will. The army of stars obeyed the command of their sovereign.

Block it.

The moment he softly murmured, the starlight became weapons. Axes, spears, swords—every armament that existed in the world took form. The armaments moved on their own to block Elturas’s offensive. When they blocked and were destroyed, new armaments filled the empty spaces. Shields intercepted the beams, and various weapons deflected the bombardment of spheres.

Rex walked forward. Slowly, without stopping. Elturas swung his tentacles with a pale blue face. It didn’t work. The star-lit armaments kept coming as if endless. Spheres condensed with life force were shattered. Tentacles burned and fell as ash. The heat of the blazing flames drew closer.

—Thud. The footsteps stopped. Elturas looked at the young man standing before him. Indifferent eyes. In them, he saw his own reflection. A body with only a head remaining, hanging all sorts of tentacles. Hideous… he had said?

Death was frightening. The longer he lived, the stronger his obsession with eternal life became. That’s why he tried to survive by killing his race and the life that bore him. And the daughter he had borne.

But.

“Is death something that pursues more tenaciously the more you fear it?”

Elturas blurted out.

A brilliant golden light flashed.

Rex looked down with an expressionless face. The severed head did not regenerate this time.

Elturas was dead.