Ch.994Space-Time Freeze

Freeing himself from the constraints that had suppressed his true power and reclaiming his demigod status, Varnir was engulfed in pure white flames the next moment.

As if it had been waiting for him to release his demigod status, Elpinel’s murderous intent bared its teeth with a sensation like ecstasy.

Heaven’s Wall.

The divine veil created by six gods including Elpinel.

It was a barrier that blocked everyone’s growth, a net that prevented gods from descending, and a curse that burned exceptional beings without exception.

– Whoosh…!

That curse began to burn the fairy demigod. Fiercely and violently. Divinely yet cruelly.

“Urrrgh…!”

Varnir groaned as he burned in the sacred fire. Contorted eyes, cracking molars. Grief and agony were clearly visible on his face as flames flickered across it.

…He hadn’t made such an expression even when his lower body had been completely severed.

Apparently, the pain inflicted by Heaven’s Wall’s white flames far exceeded ordinary burning sensations.

However.

“Not yet…! To burn me… it’s still not enough! You’re still far from it, El-pine-eeel!!”

Yet he was still alive.

With his power of absorption strengthened after awakening his demigod status, he was turning the heart of the great forest into a vast desert.

His body regenerated immediately even as it turned to ashes and scattered. Like that, he endured Heaven’s Wall’s constraints through repeated regeneration and destruction.

Even though there was no way to avoid death, and this would only prolong his suffering.

“I cannot end it. I will not end it! Not like this, not yet…!”

That futile resistance contained a very clear will.

“Our utopia, forged with the blood of my fallen kin. The sanctuary created through Lasil’s sacrifice. Until I destroy all enemies who dare violate it…!”

His determination to kill all enemies of the World Tree and Alvheim before his body completely burned away.

It was a magnificent display of resolve.

“Utopia? Sanctuary? Ha, you must mean living hell.”

…Of course, to me, it was just worthless and meaningless nonsense.

The great forest of Alvheim I had seen was too ugly to be called a utopia.

A literal hell where all races except fairies had even their souls violated.

According to Perneisia, even fairies could fall to a position worse than slaves the moment they defied the Council of Elders?

Even the werebeasts living in the permanent frost with nothing but fur to rely on wouldn’t call such a place a utopia or sanctuary.

“All enemies of Alvheim… I will destroy them…!”

“That’s quite ambitious. The whole world is your enemy, you know? It’s the karma you’ve created yourselves.”

I lowered my stance, dropping Durandal’s blade downward. The transcendent power dwelling in my legs pulsed, waiting to be released.

“Until then, even death itself will not consume me!”

“Then I’ll crush your entire country!”

The ground exploded, raising a cloud of sand. A leap like reverse thunder. A white flame comet and a blue-white morning star collided, burning with murderous intent.

I flew hundreds of meters and was buried deep in the ground.

—-

Varnir had called me an incomplete demigod.

He said I was merely a half-formed vessel with divinity awakened to avoid Heaven’s Wall’s constraints.

At the time, it didn’t particularly matter. A battle between an incomplete demigod and someone who wasn’t even that could only flow in my overwhelming favor.

However, now.

“Ugh…”

I pulled my body out from where it had been driven into the ground, groaning between my teeth.

Having been thrown back and buried after losing in a pure contest of strength.

My head was spinning as if drunk, and my back that had absorbed the impact ached as if it would break. My right arm was even bent in an unnatural direction.

It was a blow that would have killed the old me instantly.

“Haaah…”

I sighed with blood mixed in and supported my broken, dangling right arm with my left hand.

– Crack!

Bones reconnected with strange noises, and ruptured, torn muscles naturally rejoined.

The next moment, my arm was perfectly restored to normal, with only traces that it had been broken.

Regenerative recovery faster than miraculous healing.

It was the result of using Ausrine’s divinity, which enhanced the potential of things belonging to me, to maximize my arm’s natural healing ability.

It was like compressing treatment and recovery that would take an ordinary person about two months into just a few seconds.

I couldn’t regenerate lost body parts like werebeasts yet, but I could recover from simple fractures in an instant.

It was truly fortunate.

Thanks to that, I was able to block Varnir’s sword as he teleported right next to me.

– Rumble…!

Varnir, engulfed in white flames that melted the earth, burst through the reddened magma.

“Graaaah!”

He swung a mass of green light he was gripping while letting out a scream or roar.

“Kyaaak!”

I blocked it by layering Frosting over Durandal’s blade,

– Boom!

And shot into the sky with an explosion like an artillery shell.

It was tremendous power. Somewhat superior even to my current state.

“Ha, really…”

It must be difficult for him to exert proper strength when his muscles and bones were all burning, yet he still had such power in that state.

How strong must he have been at full capacity?

“You must have been furious to the point of madness!”

Using the air as a foothold to regain my posture, I turned my body while swinging the golden sword with both hands with all my might. Toward Varnir who had teleported behind me to strike down with his divine sword.

– Crack!

The atmosphere shattered into pieces. The golden arc and green lightning collided, destroying space.

“Ugh, hnn…!”

I immediately regenerated my muscles that had burst from the impact and endured the power in his right arm with gritted teeth.

“Ha…! How pitiful. Having such power, yet forced to hold back because using it makes you terminally ill.”

Power that could dominate the current world alone.

But I wasn’t envious at all. Because in exchange for that power, he was now in a fiery hell.

A hell that suited him well.

“If you weren’t a fairy, I might have felt some sympathy!”

My counterattack followed the taunt.

I twisted my body to deflect the connected swords and struck his head with my elbow. It was blocked, caught by his left hand.

“I don’t need it…! You will meet death first, right here!”

“Faster than someone burning to death?!”

I swung my sword as if shaking him off.

My soul finally stabilized.

As the testament of the path I had walked, the narrative of my achievements was about to envelop and stop the world—

“Státŭo éntĭtas!”

Varnir shouted fiercely and urgently. His divinely imbued horns shining brilliantly.

His divinity unfolded in the form of authority.

【 Defying Fate 】

【 Entity Fixation 】

The ability to infinitely compress time to stop it and the authority to fix the existence of all things unfolded simultaneously, binding each other.

The world stopped, and I stopped too.

In a silently quiet gray world. Everything except my consciousness had frozen as if solidified. Like a scene in a black and white photograph.

And before several seconds had passed, it all shattered into pieces.

Time began to flow again, and my body began to move again.

The moment when everything stopped was extremely brief. Both time stop and entity fixation were abilities with extremely short durations.

Two techniques that only consumed energy and were meaninglessly offset.

As a result, what followed immediately after was a pure contest of strength against strength, just as before.

My sword and his sword collided again, and they were thrown in opposite directions with their owners amid a roaring sound.

“I swore…!”

The next moment, Varnir approached through spatial transfer and swung his sword with a growling shout. A slash wrapped in green lightning. I blocked it and fell to the ground with him.

“To protect Lasil and my kin from the greed and barbarism of you humans…! To live only for that purpose!”

A roar cried out with a burning face. A passionate cry.

It was ridiculous nonsense.

“Who’s talking about barbarism…!”

I glared back at him, grinding my teeth.

Igniting the starlight within me more fiercely, blocking the green divine sword that was pressing against Durandal and trying to dig into my body.

“You trash who run human farms and slaughter children’s souls for use, how dare you say such things!”

– Creak!

Power growing stronger in response to my will. The connected blades creaked as if groaning, and slowly began to push back his sword.

Varnir’s face contorted even more.

“I did not order those atrocities! The elders ran amok while I was asleep!”

What bullshit.

“That’s your problem!”

Human farms and fetal spirits were the work of the elders, not him? Not my concern.

Such excuses won’t make this go away.

Even if he massacred their elders and shut down the human farms, it wouldn’t undo the atrocities committed over the past hundreds of years.

“All of you must pay the price. The price for sins and karma that may have accumulated over hundreds, perhaps thousands of years!”

The starlight within me grew stronger. Varnir’s divine sword, which had been wavering against the opposing force, began to be pushed back clearly.

I was becoming more accustomed to the demigod power dwelling within me, while Varnir was growing weaker from Elpinel’s flames.

“Tsk…!”

Varnir clicked his tongue and retreated greatly backward with a flap of his wings. Then he shouted like thunder.

“The price for sins and karma? You ignorant young girl…! Then what about the past sins your race committed four thousand years ago, what about the price for that karma!”

“Go ask those responsible! That’s from four thousand years ago, not now!”

I continued fighting endlessly in that manner.

Every time his wings fluttered, a shower of thorns swept across the sky, and golden arcs carved canyon-like wounds on the desertified land.

A giant tree golem roared loudly as it raised its fist to strike the earth, then froze in the netherworld’s cold and shattered into pieces.

Magma erupted to burn the great trees, and thunderbolts raged in the thick rain clouds.

The anger of two demigods spread like a calamity.