Chapter 190: Breakthrough

The moment the crown shattered, the hand I had reached toward the War Demon God was severed as well. Blood sprayed through the air.

I stopped time.

Fuck, what the hell is this...?

This doesn't work either?

When I tried to drag the War Demon God into the mental world, the item was destroyed instead.

- That's divinity. Petty tricks like those won't work against it.

...This was so absurd that I couldn't even be angry anymore.

The instant I released time, I used Teleportation to put some distance between us again.

Clutching the stump of my severed wrist, I glared at the War Demon God.

He still wasn't even looking at me. He simply stared into empty space.

Just like I did whenever I read messages from the Tower...

The War Demon God spoke again.

“Ah, yes. I remember everything now. This world is recreating the time of my resurrection.”

...!

That bastard... had his own consciousness?

The War Demon God's gaze shifted toward me.

“Yet there is something I do not understand.”

“...”

“Answer me this. Why do you think the Tower would make me such an offer? It says that if I kill you here and now, it will give me another chance to challenge it.”

What?

His words caught me completely off guard.

The Tower made him an offer too...? It told him to kill me?

‘Was the War Demon God a climber too?’

In an instant, the pieces fell into place.

The worlds inside the Tower were worlds the Tower had destroyed.

If history had originally played out as it should have, then the War Demon God of this world must really have been successfully resurrected. Just like now.

But had the Tower appeared sometime in the future and defeated even the War Demon God?

I had no idea why he was still able to retain his consciousness.

Maybe a god could preserve its sense of self even after being swallowed by the Tower.

The War Demon God tilted his head.

“To think it would go so far as to return my divinity merely to have me kill one insignificant insect...”

“...”

“Does that not mean the Tower considers you a greater threat than even me as I am now? How displeasing.”

A chill ran through my entire body.

I stopped time again.

The Demon King's power didn't work. Neither did the mental world.

Taking the God-Slaying Sword back from that monster was impossible too.

Sixth Sense and Supreme Combat Sense didn't function against him, and I couldn't even react to his attacks. Weakness Insight revealed no weakness whatsoever.

There was nothing else I could try.

Absolutely nothing.

[Special Item: Hourglass of Acceleration]

Choose one of the following effects to apply permanently. Once selected, the effect cannot be changed.

Reduce the cooldown of all skills you possess by 70%

Fix the cooldown of one random skill at 0 seconds

Then I remembered one item I still hadn't used.

[Would you like to use effect 2 of ‘Special Item: Hourglass of Acceleration’?]

I released time, pulled out the hourglass, and used it without hesitation.

The first effect would be completely useless in my current situation.

The only hope I had left to gamble on... was choosing the second option and praying that, by some miracle, it landed on Radiant Incarnation.

Fighting him head-on was impossible. My best chance was to run.

That monster might be able to chase me even if I fled at the speed of light, but if I could keep running until the clear time ran out, there was at least a chance I might survive.

But...

[The cooldown of ‘Skill: Elemental Arrow Barrage (Epic+)’ has been permanently fixed at 0 seconds.]

“...Ha.”

No miracle came.

It felt as though the Tower itself had pronounced my sentence.

As though it would no longer allow me even the faintest sliver of hope.

As though it were telling me I would die here, no matter what.

I unleashed Elemental Arrow Barrage at the War Demon God.

BOOOOOOOOM!!

An endless torrent of flaming arrows rained down and exploded.

I refilled my willpower again and again, continuously casting Elemental Arrow Barrage now that its cooldown had been fixed at zero.

When I finally stopped casting, the flames cleared, revealing the War Demon God standing exactly where he had been, without so much as a single scorch mark on him.

...Of course.

Even the Demon King's magic hadn't been able to hurt him. There was no way my skills would work no matter how many times I attacked.

What the hell... was I supposed to do now?

Just then, the War Demon God suddenly threw the God-Slaying Sword.

The sword glided through the air and came to a stop in front of me.

I caught it with a blank expression.

“You seemed awfully eager to have this back.”

“...”

“Come. Show me every last futile struggle you are capable of, insect.”

Gray-white energy gathered in the War Demon God's hand and took the shape of a sword.

My expression hardened as I raised the God-Slaying Sword.

There was no room in my mind for humiliation or insult.

I simply couldn't give up. I was desperate enough to grasp at any straw I could.

I spread the Cradle of Light around us, and the instant my severed hand regenerated, I activated Blood Frenzy and charged at the War Demon God.

BOOM!

The God-Slaying Sword collided with the blade formed from the War Demon God's divinity.

My hands trembled as I forced his sword back.

Our blades crashed together again and again as we exchanged attacks and parries.

The War Demon God could have attacked so quickly that I wouldn't even be able to react, yet he deliberately lowered his physical abilities to match mine.

“I have long since transcended the need for weapons, but there was a time when I too was fond of the sword.”

I tried to use the force behind the War Demon God's blade to deflect it sideways and strike at his flank, but he read me.

Instead, he used my own momentum against me, knocked the God-Slaying Sword aside, and slashed across my side.

Ignoring the pain, I kept fighting.

The moment his blade went for my chest, I teleported behind him.

At the same instant, I thrust the God-Slaying Sword toward his back.

He read that too.

Without even looking, the War Demon God changed the course of his blade behind him and pierced my wrist first.

As the sword slipped from my hand, I caught it with the other and immediately slashed at his foot.

He read it again. The War Demon God kicked the blade aside, then completely severed my wounded wrist.

...I fought with everything I had, pouring every bit of swordsmanship I had spent all this time honing into the battle.

Even after the training Seri and I had done together in the mental world, my skills had continued to improve, little by little. I had never neglected my training.

But.

“Remarkable swordsmanship, for such a lowly creature. However...”

The War Demon God's blade crossed mine once more.

Yet it was my chest that split open, blood spraying from the wound.

“I can see it all.”

Every technique, every trick, every shortcut.

Nothing worked against the being before me.

Even with our physical abilities perfectly equalized, the War Demon God still overwhelmingly surpassed me in pure swordsmanship.

Every desperate move I made was dismantled with a single effortless stroke of his blade.

He saw through everything. It was almost as if he could see the future.

“Have you ever failed to keep track of an ant crawling at your feet? That is what this is.”

My arms were cut, my legs pierced, my torso slashed again and again until it was in tatters.

The wounds all over my body kept multiplying.

The War Demon God deliberately avoided inflicting anything fatal, slowly carving helplessness into me.

“There exists a gulf between our existences that you could never cross, even if you lived a hundred million lives.”

I ground my teeth.

Fwoooooosh...!

I spread mist with the Mist Beast King's Pearl.

I summoned Plli and the knights from Kalundi Empire 2nd Class Citizenship as well. I brought out everything I had.

Destruction Ray, Hellfire Eruption, Plasma Shot, and Elemental Arrow Barrage. Once again, I concentrated every magic skill I had on the War Demon God.

Swoosh!

The War Demon God swung his sword once, and every attack vanished without a trace.

Before I knew it, he was standing directly in front of me, his hand wrapped around my throat as he lifted me into the air.

“Ghk...!”

I tried to raise the God-Slaying Sword and stab him through the heart, but...

Some unknown force seemed to paralyze my body. I couldn't move so much as a finger.

The War Demon God muttered with a bored look in his eyes.

“I still do not understand.”

His grip tightened around my throat.

The pressure felt as though he might twist my neck apart at any moment.

Fwooooosh...!

I activated the Armor of Karma.

But the instant the War Demon God tightened his hand, even the armor shattered like glass.

‘Fuck...’

I could feel death right in front of me.

‘I'm really going to die.

I'm going to...’

FWOOOOOOOSH!

Suddenly, my vision turned black.

Diul burst out from the bracelet, swelling to the size of a giant before enveloping the War Demon God's body in darkness and constricting around him.

‘Ruuuuuuuun...!!’

I realized that Diul had unleashed his power far beyond his limits.

Desperate to pry the War Demon God's hand from my throat, Diul wrung out every last bit of strength he had.

The War Demon God let go.

My body dropped downward.

...It wasn't because Diul's attack had worked.

It seemed more like the War Demon God had simply taken pity on my desperate struggle and let me go for the moment.

Still clutching the God-Slaying Sword, I tumbled through the void before using Phantom Shift to put some distance between us.

Coughing, I forced my upper body upright.

‘Diul...!’

With a gesture from the War Demon God, Diul's form began to disappear.

At the same time, Bandiul's Bracelet around my wrist shattered.

“Well, enough. Whatever that bastard is scheming...”

The War Demon God's voice echoed around me.

“If you have nothing else left to show me, then I shall end this. I will kill you and challenge the Tower once more.”

The War Demon God came toward me.

I stopped time.

...It was over.

Overcome by emptiness and despair, I finally understood.

The War Demon God had been right.

There was a gulf between our very levels of existence that could never be bridged, something greater than the distance between heaven and earth.

Perfect and absolute.

The pinnacle that a being could possibly reach.

‘My opponent is a god.’

The outcome had been decided from the very beginning.

No matter what I did, I could never win...

All I could do was stop time like this and postpone my death.

‘...’

Then a thought suddenly crossed my mind.

I stared blankly at the War Demon God, frozen within stopped time.

But... what exactly is this?

What is this Time Stop ability that works even on a being as extraordinary as him?

For the first time, the question truly struck me.

An ability that worked even on a god possessing divinity.

The conclusion was simple.

Maybe.

My ability too...

Almost entranced, I released the frozen time.

Fwoooosh...

Light was spilling from the hand gripping the God-Slaying Sword.

I raised my palm.

The Floor 7 hidden route.

The spot where the mysterious reward I had received from the Sage instead of the Book of Omniscience... had been absorbed into my palm.

The mark reappeared on my palm and began shining brilliantly.

*

Earth.

Person123 was currently in the middle of the clear after accepting the Tower's offer.

“...!”

People walking through the streets suddenly looked up at the sky.

“Huh?”

“D-Did you just...”

At the exact same instant, regardless of country or race, people across the world stopped where they stood and looked up at the sky in unison, creating an astonishing spectacle.

All of Earth's more than eight billion people felt it.

A strange mental connection, as though they had suddenly connected with something for a single instant.

The deeper someone's reverence for Person123 ran, the more strongly they felt that sensation.

Ye Tianwei, who had been working in his office, shot to his feet in shock.

His face filled with astonishment and overwhelming emotion.

“Ah...!”

It was the same for the followers of the Person123 Church praying at branches across the world.

Instinctively, they understood what that connection meant.

“I-It's him!”

“Person123-nim is calling us...!”

The believers began bowing over and over like mad.

To answer the call of their god.

*

The glowing mark.

At last, I understood what the Sage had given me.

This was... a vessel.

A vessel capable of holding divinity.

One of the conditions for becoming a god that the Demon King had told me about.

At that very moment, I felt a raging torrent pour into my mind.

Countless thin threads stretched outward, filling me with the sensation that I was connected to everything.

Their source was Earth, in the outside world.

The reverence of more than eight billion people.

Their faith in me.

- You... What is this?!

I heard the Demon King's shocked voice.

I looked down at the God-Slaying Sword.

Sssssss...

The divinity within the God-Slaying Sword began flowing naturally into me.

Something hidden deeper than my soul stirred as if stretching awake, making its presence known before greedily devouring the divinity and growing larger.

It had been with me since the day I was born.

At last, I understood the true nature of the ability that had always seemed inseparable from my very being.

The ability to stop time.

It was a fragment of some incomprehensibly exalted divinity.

I had no idea why something like that existed inside me...

But every condition had now been fulfilled.

An unprecedented power began drawing me into an entirely new realm.

“...!!”

Shock filled the War Demon God's eyes, which until now had shown nothing but boredom.

His figure blurred.

I stopped time.

The sword formed from the War Demon God's divinity had already reached the space directly in front of my throat.

And then...

Blink.

“...?”

Did I just... blink?

Inside stopped time.

Still holding the God-Slaying Sword, I rose to my feet.

I stepped back a little and looked at the frozen War Demon God.

Then I drove the sword straight into his heart.

Shnk.

The God-Slaying Sword pierced through the War Demon God's heart.

I released time again.

“Did you see that one too, War Demon God?”

The War Demon God stared down at the sword buried in his heart, disbelief filling his eyes.

“H... how...”

He reached toward me.

I stopped time again.

I pulled the God-Slaying Sword from his heart and swung it toward his neck.

The moment I released time, the War Demon God's head flew through the air.

His decapitated body began dissolving like smoke.

Before it disappeared completely, I absorbed as much of his divinity as I possibly could.

The War Demon God's corpse vanished entirely.

Then I absorbed every last trace of divinity remaining within the God-Slaying Sword.

#@*%$#%^@#$#%^$@#...

Characters crackled and flickered through the air as though an error had occurred.

A moment later, a proper message appeared.

[You have successfully cleared the Nightmare difficulty Floor 17 hidden route.]

[You have completely absorbed the power of the floor.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

[Your level has increased.]

.

.

.

With my senses expanded into an entirely new realm, things that had once been invisible to me began to reveal themselves.

A sense of freshness, of clarity.

Simple words like those couldn't begin to describe the overwhelming sense of liberation I felt...

And somehow, I understood.

Only now were we finally on something close to equal footing.

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