Ch.179179. Half Victory

“Try eating this.”

[Hey! Hey!]

I extend my left arm far back, like a shot-putter, and swing it toward Magan’s mouth.

Vellica’s soul shoots straight into Magan’s enormous mouth, hitting his throat and causing his face to contort hideously.

“Guh, grrrk!”

Magan’s lips twitch and struggle as he tries desperately to swallow Vellica who has entered his mouth. Then he notices the thin thread of mana placed on his lips.

“Grrrub!”

I pull the thread connected to my hand with all my might.

Though Magan clenched his teeth, determined not to open his mouth, something must have hit his uvula from inside, as his eyes widened and he finally opened his mouth with a pain-filled scream.

“Guureek!”

[Puhaaaa!]

Vellica shoots out of Magan’s mouth. I pull her back toward me, and her fist brushes past me.

[You’re doing something insane!]

“It was a strategy.”

[You do realize Stella was almost eaten just now too?]

“…I apologize for that.”

But if it weren’t a Greater Demon’s soul, it would have dissolved the moment it entered Magan’s mouth.

Just like Deus Verdi had nearly been obliterated after being briefly chewed.

“But now the advantage is ours.”

I recreate my right hand through Vellica and pull out the fork constricting my neck, throwing it to the floor.

Magan’s eyes, as he clutches his throat and spits up gastric fluid, dart confusedly between the fork and me.

Toward him, I declare firmly:

“Dinner time is over.”

* * *

“Dinner time is over.”

It was an absurd declaration.

The Greater Demon Magan.

For hundreds of years, humans had been merely his food, just one of many dishes laid out on his table to be eaten whenever he pleased.

And now someone was trying to pull him away from the table he had been sitting at for countless ages?

“I don’t need any of this anymore.”

As Magan reaches out, the Seeker of Delicacies wraps around his palm once more.

“I’ll make you immortal, so you can spend your entire life screaming in agony while stuck between my teeth.”

The rage he felt toward those who dared to provoke him—mere food that had audaciously escaped from his mouth—was a type of emotion that even Magan himself had never experienced before.

Magan swings his fork forward, filled with passion burning like an active volcano.

Enormous hands and mouths begin to stretch out from the floor like a flood. Compared to Deus Verdi’s small body, they possessed overwhelming mass and area, making it an unavoidable attack.

But the moment they touch Deus Verdi’s deformed spiral right hand, they twist and disappear without exerting any force.

Only now does Magan realize he made a meaningless attack driven by emotion, but it’s too late. Just as he had pressed forward at the slightest opening, Deus Verdi likewise rushed forward the moment he saw an opportunity.

Whoosh!

The spider legs on his back, seemingly out of energy to jump anymore, concentrate all their power into one point for a great leap.

Deus Verdi, shooting forward, clenches his right fist and swings it forward while Magan raises the Seeker of Delicacies to block it.

KWAAANG!

The entire banquet hall shakes from the collision of the two, with dust raining down from the ceiling. Magan, somehow losing strength, slides backward.

He soon feels his heels touch the pile of rubble blocking the entrance.

Grr.

Already at the breaking point of rage just from being pushed back by a human at his own banquet, Magan roars violently, releasing his emotions.

“KWAAAAA!”

His huge mouth stretches forward. His neck extends like rubber as he tries to swallow Deus Verdi standing before him.

But Deus Verdi skillfully withdraws his right hand and places it in front of Magan’s mouth.

Magan could have swallowed the right hand whole.

Stop.

He hesitates momentarily as memories of what happened earlier when he swallowed it flash through his mind.

I shouldn’t eat it carelessly.

The moment that thought crosses his mind.

“Yes.”

Deus Verdi’s eerie voice rings out, chillingly cold.

“You hesitated.”

“Ah.”

WHACK!

Deus Verdi’s right hand strikes Magan’s extended face sideways.

The impact was so great that Magan’s body flew into the wall, leaving only a few broken teeth pathetically scattered where he had been standing.

“Kuheuup!”

Magan hurriedly tries to get up and collect himself, but Deus Verdi’s right fist, having leaped forward again, was already before his eyes.

This is his banquet.

The humans arrayed before him are merely dishes prepared for his consumption.

These facts had made the Gluttonous Greater Demon Magan incredibly powerful, but.

‘Ah.’

He couldn’t carelessly bare his teeth at the being before him. To Magan, this man was already…

Not food anymore.

WHACK!

Deus Verdi’s right hand smashes into Magan’s face. Upon contact, it begins to rotate abnormally, grinding the skin, while the Greater Demon’s blood drips down, wetting both hand and floor.

“Vellica!”

As he calls her name while pulling his right hand back, the spider legs that had been providing Deus Verdi’s mobility disappear, and his feet touch the ground.

But his right hand grows even larger.

A blow concentrating all his power strikes Magan’s already mangled face once more.

KUUUNG!

One wall of the banquet hall shatters as Magan’s body flies through it.

“KWAAAAAAAAAAK!”

The cool night air entering the banquet hall, accompanied by the Greater Demon’s scream…

Announced the successful subjugation of the Greater Demon.

“Huff, uuuu.”

Deus Verdi exhales a dusty deep breath, forcing himself to stand on shaky legs. Pain begins to rise from deep within his body due to the rough movements.

It was an expected result, given that his body was already weak from an unhealthy lifestyle, yet he had engaged in close combat.

“Are you okay?!”

“Deus!”

Deia and Elenoa Luden Griffin approach me urgently.

Darius Verdi and the secretary were dealing with the Kingdom of Zerman and the Duchy of Valestan, who had sided with the opposition.

Fortunately, Saintess Lucia Saint, having regained consciousness, was supporting the two, gradually turning the situation in our favor.

As Deus Verdi forced himself to walk out, quite a commotion could be heard from inside the building.

‘Are Findenai, Aria Rius, and Erika Bright running wild?’

Seeing the collapsed banquet hall, it seemed the three outside were also causing quite a disturbance.

“You did well.”

“Sniff, thank goodness.”

Deia sighs in relief while Elenoa wipes away tears.

The floor must have been high up, as Magan was barely clinging to life, leaning against the balcony railing after breaking through the wall.

In truth, he was so damaged that anyone could finish him off now.

It was clearly a victory, but…

“Kl, klklklkl.”

A foul laugh emerges from Magan’s grotesquely twisted mouth.

[Um… something doesn’t feel right.]

The Dark Spiritmaster beside me frowns as she looks at the distant night sky. She crosses her arms as if trying to control her trembling body from the overwhelming pressure approaching.

And she wasn’t the only one feeling it.

Myself, Deia, and even Elenoa…

We were all experiencing an unprecedented pressure as we watched the massive group flying toward us with the moon at their backs.

“Did you truly think… I established this republic alone?”

Magan continued to chuckle while spitting blood.

“Three… that’s the number of Greater Demons who formed an alliance with me to maintain the republic.”

Someone at the forefront of the approaching figures in the distance flapped their wings.

In that instant.

“Hmm.”

A woman with red skin and angel wings, holding a spear, stood before us.

The same sensation I felt from Magan.

She too was a being bearing the title of Greater Demon.

“You look terrible.”

Her gaze turns toward the fallen Magan. The pressure of her mere presence was crushing.

But that wasn’t the end.

“Aigo! If not for our alliance, I would have eaten him myself.”

A small boy with ten tails suddenly squatting in front of Magan, mocking him. Each tail was of a different kind, and the five horns on the boy’s head were all different in shape.

“…”

Finally, a huge man standing before me, looking down impassively.

He had ram’s legs, three eyes, and thick muscles like steel with protruding veins and hair.

[Valkyria, the Greater Demon of Struggle; Feiren, the Greater Demon of Worship; Dune, the Greater Demon of Pride.]

Vellica tells me their names with a gloomy tone.

“…”

Most of my strength was already depleted from just defeating Magan.

And now three Greater Demons appear before us.

“Can we… still fight?”

I ask Vellica hopefully, but she snorts with a bitter laugh and snaps:

[It’s not about whether we can, but whether we must. Those demons will never let you live.]

I know that. The intense killing intent from the Greater Demons was already pouring toward me.

‘What if Aria Rius were here?’

Even that would be impossible. Even for Aria in her second cycle, victory in a one-on-one battle with these beings would be difficult to guarantee. And now three such enemies have appeared.

It’s truly a desperate situation, but…

“Deia, Elenoa.”

I clench my fist and straighten my back once more.

“Find the others.”

A path toward the victory we haven’t yet reached begins to calmly form in my mind.