Ch.202Descent (1)

No one except the Pope clearly understood what had just happened.

Even Ortes was the same. He felt time reversing and noticed the wheel turning in the opposite direction again.

The opposite of reversal. Time flowing forward. But time didn’t stop at the origin point; it rushed toward the future. In that moment, Ortes turned his head toward Carisia.

He thought that time might accelerate to the end of the universe, bringing everything to an equal end.

However, the frenzied dance of time came to an end at some point. The acceleration of time stopped. As the acceleration ceased, Ortes felt a chill.

He looked around. Those who had been frozen by the Pope’s time suppression, the ancient elders, remained unchanged. There was no trace of time having passed.

Despite three years having elapsed, nothing seemed to have changed. It was as if everything in the world had avoided the effects of the acceleration.

To be more precise, it should be expressed that all the effects of time acceleration were concentrated at one point.

Inside the Ten Commandments Verdant Tree.

Ortes turned his head toward the Verdant Tree.

Nothing was visible.

The flow of time streaming toward the Verdant Tree, and the Pope’s holy spirit wrapped around it. The Pope’s anger and bewilderment were visible in their raw form.

But looking at the Verdant Tree, no information came in except for the physical shape visible to the eye.

The “Eye” announced the time.

It is 2077.

Even though all objects outside the Ten Commandments Verdant Tree had escaped the flow of time acceleration that occurred over three years, the time of this world had been advanced by three years.

The moment he understood the meaning, Ortes swung his sword like he was having a seizure.

He had to do something. Though nothing was visible, he had to somehow interfere with the magical technique raging inside that Verdant Tree.

All attempts to connect with the magical technique returned futile. Approaching an invisible magical technique. It collapsed and failed, unable to find the place where the technique would connect.

“Boss.”

Ortes’s voice sank. Even he didn’t know what to say now.

‘Escape? Fight?’

What should he choose?

What could he do?

The holy rupture inflicted on the Pope was spreading from the vocal cords that had cried out the sacred hymn throughout the entire body of the tank.

Even in the midst of this, the Pope did not stop pouring out the power of reversal. But already, among the three elements of the temple, the altar and sacred objects had been seized.

The Pope believed there was no priest to replace him here. However, Arguirion’s entirety, which had consumed the Commander’s body, was the priest who worshipped the Demon King.

Thus, a temple fully serving the Demon King had been established. No matter how the Pope struggled, he could not reverse the determined fate.

While the two people born with divinity in their bodies from creation were bewildered, human Carisia, who had experienced countless deaths, finished her judgment.

If you can’t win, you die.

Then I should strike first.

She made eye contact with Ortes who had called her, then gathered magical power in her now empty hands.

It wasn’t a continuous bombardment-type attack. Such a level couldn’t break through the Ten Commandments. Carisia compressed the magical power meant for bombardment into a single point.

A sphere of light rose in her hand. Like a pitcher throwing a fastball, she threw the sphere of light.

The sphere scattered into pieces, emitting a flash of light.

It happened in empty space without even touching the Ten Commandments. Though the maximum firepower that could be prepared in a short time had gone to waste, Carisia smiled fiercely instead.

It was an encouraging result. The fact that the Ten Commandments, which hadn’t responded to Ortes’s overwriting or the Pope’s time reversal, had taken a “defensive” stance.

The attack had some effectiveness.

But it was already too late. The Verdant Tree, and also Arguirion and the Commander inside it, the Pope, the sacred object aggregate.

They began to scatter into pieces. It was different from “melting.” The essence that constituted their existence was identified and poured out.

Verdant Tree. Magical power. Wisdom. Records of ancient magic.

Arguirion. Self. Dough. Nastion. Haltos.

Sacred object aggregate. Mythical era. Priest. Soul. Oblivion.

It was an all too familiar sight for Ortes. Because it was how objects appeared to his “Eye.”

But what was astonishing was that this time, it appeared that way even to the physical eye.

The sight of objects’ components being replaced by thin letters. It didn’t feel real. Carisia murmured blankly.

“Is this what you’ve been seeing?”

He nodded. But to think that there would come a moment when others could see this. In that moment, Ortes understood the meaning of “seeing.”

Whatever the Demon King was doing now, it could be stopped.

He rushed forward again. He identified the risk factors. The phenomenon itself that was occurring now. And the Pope. But the Pope was in a daze. He had neither reason nor will to stop Ortes’s charge.

Ortes thrust his blade into the scene where the Verdant Tree had been decomposed and its meaning extracted. To graft Carisia’s blade enhancement and those components.

It was the moment Ortes thrust his sword toward the radius of meaning extraction.

The high-frequency blade began to decompose into letters.

High-frequency blade. Cutting. Blade enhancement. 3 years, 2 months, 17 hours elapsed since creation.

Even in the midst of bewilderment, Ortes did not stop overwriting the magical technique. The letters pouring out from the decomposed high-frequency blade overlapped with the components extracted from the Verdant Tree.

Highbladenhan magicalpowerlaw recordcreation

The meaning was ruined in a mess. He was able to perform minimal sabotage.

But the next moment.

Blade enhancement. Creation

Records of ancient magic

The arrangement of words returned to normal. Not only that, the extracted words began to gather together to form the shape of a person.

Letters like Verdant Tree, mythical era, magical power gathered. Ortes instinctively knew that these were meaning elements expressing the “Demon King.”

Insufficient.

The Demon King declared. It wasn’t language. Pure will itself spread throughout the space.

Ortes retreated, holding the half-broken high-frequency blade. He grabbed the nape of the Pope, who was still staring blankly at the Demon King who had formed a human silhouette with letters.

He didn’t know what the Demon King meant by insufficient, but it was clear that he intended to use everything in this place as material to constitute himself.

The Pope was an existence that should never be handed over. Even now, the Demon King had already far transcended the limits of the “Eye,” and to add the holy path of time?

There would be no way to handle it.

“Damn it. Boss! Let’s retreat! I think there’s no answer except that method!”

That method.

Ten Commandments bomb. It was a plain statement of fact, not a joke or anything else. Carisia had proven that the Ten Commandments could be damaged by blowing up the Commander.

The Demon King was clearly something beyond the Ten Commandments. But the only hope that they might be able to reach it right now was the Ten Commandments bomb.

Regardless of the completeness of the Commander-Pantheon, the total amount of power concentrated as a pantheon was far below the Ten Commandments. However, wasn’t the unexpected firepower created by the explosion enough to destroy the Ten Commandments?

It was the moment when the joke-like plan of blowing up the Ten Commandments to attack the Demon King emerged as the only hope.

The Demon King took a step. As those feet made of letters stepped on the ground, even the earth slowly began to convert into letters. The Demon King walked slowly, heading somewhere. Ortes’s eyes followed that trajectory.

The ancient elders who were stopped by time suppression.

“Pope!”

Ortes barked at the Pope. Focus returned to his eyes.

“Release the time suppression now! Right now!”

“What are you saying!”

Urgency tinged the Pope’s voice. At last, emotion was projected into language.

“Are you thinking of releasing that into the outside world!”

“Do you think you can stop the Demon King! Even if time is stopped, it’s meaningless to the Demon King! Look over there!”

Following the trajectory where the Demon King had moved, the ground remained torn apart with its essence invaded. The dimensional wall of the earth trampled under his feet had collapsed.

The places where footprints were left were connected to an extra-dimensional space in that exact shape. The existence itself, each movement causing extra-dimensional collapse, a disaster.

“Don’t you think he could collapse this space in an instant if he wanted to? The reason that thing is moving slowly now is because there is ‘immovable’ prey scattered around! We need to let the ancient elders escape!”

The Pope gritted his teeth. To think that he had to help the enemies he had fought all his life survive in the face of a greater disaster.

But there was no choice.

The opponent was the Demon King.

The Pope withdrew his divine power. The wheel of time regained its proper speed. Although the ancient elders had their physical integrity damaged and their flesh stopped, their spirits had reached a level where they could observe the stopped world.

They were aware of all events from the Pope’s desperate struggle to the Demon King’s return. They shouted with seething hostility, a bit of fear, and added reverence.

“Fallen Lord, have you returned!”

The Demon King did not answer. He just took one more step.