Chapter 192: Proclamation

As I replenished the Divinity I had used up, I thought things over.

At the very least, Earth...

With enough Divinity, I might be able to save it from the Tower's clutches for good.

But that was beyond me for now.

Suppressing the Tower's power would take far more Divinity than I currently possessed.

So how could I increase my Divinity?

“Would it be possible to increase my Divinity through training or something, Demon King?”

The Demon King answered.

- I do not know. I have never been a god myself. How should I know? Besides, yours is hardly a normal case.

“Didn't you say there was no set way to gain Divinity in the first place? So does it matter whether my case is normal or not?”

- Tch. That is not what I mean.

The Demon King clicked his tongue and explained.

- Suppose a god attained Divinity by taking swordsmanship to its absolute limit. That god would have gained some enlightenment that led to Divinity. Could that not serve as a foundation for finding a path to an even higher realm?

“Right.”

- But that is not how it happened for you, is it? You did not even know you possessed Divinity. You have no enlightenment to build on, so what sort of training would increase it?

Hmm... is he right?

I had asked the Demon King because I didn't know the answer, but after hearing his explanation, it seemed obvious that he wouldn't know either.

Some of my Divinity had recovered by then.

I picked up the pen lying on the desk.

I was tossing it lightly into the air and catching it when I stopped time.

The pen stopped dead in midair.

Becoming a god had given me a clearer understanding of my ability...

I hadn't merely gained the ability to move while time was stopped.

The power also let me choose exactly where to stop time.

The pen was hanging in midair because I had stopped time only in the space around it.

Of course, limiting the affected area like this or moving around while time was stopped consumed a considerable amount of Divinity.

In fact, the two amounted to the same thing.

After all, moving while time was stopped simply meant excluding myself from the area where time was frozen.

On the other hand, stopping time and doing nothing but thinking, as I always had, used virtually no Divinity.

Even before I absorbed any Divinity, the tiny speck I possessed had been enough to keep time stopped indefinitely.

It was rather ironic, when I thought about it.

All I did was stop time and think.

That meant freezing time for the entire world.

Granted, I couldn't move either.

So why did stopping time in just one area consume far more Divinity than stopping it for the entire world?

I knew why.

The Divinity cost didn't simply increase with the size of the area affected.

Divinity was the power to twist Causality.

The more Causality was distorted, the more Divinity it took.

In other words, the cost depended on the extent of that distortion.

If I stopped time and did nothing but think, I wasn't actually defying the laws of the world all that much.

There was almost nothing I could do to affect the world.

But what about stopping time only in the space around the pen, like this?

That was an outright violation of those laws.

That was why it consumed so much Divinity.

That was more or less how it worked... After becoming a god and gaining the ability to see the flow of Causality, I had come to understand it naturally, without anyone having to explain it to me.

I let time resume and caught the falling pen.

Anyway, that brought me back to increasing my Divinity through training.

As the Demon King had said, it probably wouldn't be easy.

I hadn't gained my Time Stop Ability through some profound insight...

Even if I practiced, all I would gain was greater proficiency with the ability.

‘Another way...’

There was another method: Faith.

That meant strengthening people's Faith in me.

I instinctively knew that doing so would affect my Divinity.

It would increase both my total Divinity and the speed at which it recovered.

But that approach had its limits too.

Faith was only an indirect way of increasing Divinity to begin with.

And humanity already had considerable Faith in me.

Even if I went further and turned all eight billion people on Earth into my fanatical followers, it would never give me enough Divinity to catch up to the Tower.

- Then there is only one method left, is there not?

The Demon King spoke.

I nodded.

“I suppose so.”

It was the most reliable and efficient method.

After all, I had become a god by absorbing the God-Slaying Sword's Divinity.

In the same way, I could increase my Divinity by absorbing it from other gods or Divine Artifacts.

Normally, this method would have had its limits too.

Even the War Demon God had struggled to absorb the God-Slaying Sword's Divinity and had been unable to take it all in.

No one could absorb an amount of Divinity that vastly exceeded their own level.

But...

‘I don't think that's a problem for me.’

Just as the Demon King had said, my Divinity was of an abnormally high order.

I could feel it myself.

Even after absorbing the Divinity of the God-Slaying Sword and the War Demon God, I was nowhere near my limit.

So if I absorbed far more Divinity than I had now...

I might even be able to become a complete god.

A complete god.

To be honest, I didn't really know what that meant.

I had only a vague sense that, since I was still incomplete, there had to be a complete form of godhood.

The Demon King spoke.

- As I recall, a complete god is said to be eternal and infinite in and of itself.

“Have you ever seen one yourself?”

- No. I have only heard the legends.

Eternal and infinite in and of itself, huh.

Was the Tower a complete god too?

I couldn't yet see through to its true nature, so I had no way of knowing.

Well, either way.

For now, absorbing Divinity from other sources seemed to be the only way to substantially increase my own.

And to do that...

‘So I just have to keep climbing after all.’

There was no guarantee.

But if I kept clearing floors and making my way up the Tower, I might come across another god or Divine Artifact.

The worlds inside the Tower were only imitations of worlds that had already been destroyed, but perhaps Divinity couldn't be faked that way. After all, the Divinity of the God-Slaying Sword and the War Demon God had been real.

So the plan was to find out whether any worlds besides the one on the seventeenth floor contained Divinity.

That was the only possibility worth pinning my hopes on.

With the Tower weakened as much as it was, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Given time, the Tower would recover its strength.

Before that happened, I needed to absorb as much Divinity as possible so I could completely overpower the Tower's Divinity that had taken hold of Earth.

“All right.”

The lifespan problem had finally been solved.

Yet I still had to keep clearing the Tower's floors without a break.

Even so, I finally felt as though I could breathe again.

Before, I had kept climbing with nothing but a vague hope to cling to. Now I had a much clearer, more concrete goal.

Now I could picture it.

A brighter future I had once thought would never come.

A world at peace.

“...I'll make it happen. No matter what.”

I murmured into the empty air, as though to reaffirm my resolve.

The Tower.

The root of all evil, responsible for tragedy in countless worlds.

No matter what it took, I would bring you down.

I opened the Communication Channel.

Everyone was in an uproar because the Tower's Time Limits had briefly stopped. It was all over the news too.

People were confused, so I was about to post in the Communication Channel when...

‘No.’

Why not try this instead?

From now on, I needed to gather as much Divinity as possible.

Absorbing Divinity was the main plan, but the more Faith people had in me, the more it would help.

So even though I wasn't particularly keen on the idea...

From now on, I would be better off encouraging more people to truly believe in me as a god.

And that meant actually acting like one.

‘I think I can pull this off.’

I drew upon my replenished Divinity once more.

*

All of humanity had experienced a strange sensation at exactly the same moment.

The whole world was buzzing about it.

Countless people made the same claim about the unexplained phenomenon.

“I definitely felt it! Person123-nim called out to us!”

“It was an Oracle! He has bestowed an Oracle upon humanity...!”

They believed Person123 was behind it.

The followers of the Person123 Church and those who held Person123 in especially deep reverence had felt the sensation most vividly. They were firmly convinced that he had exercised his Divine Authority as a god.

[Coconut: Yeah, I think Person123 really did send humanity a revelation]

[Pattu: Apparently Person123 Church believers felt it way more strongly than everyone else?]

[Baeksang: I'm in the Person123 Church and I'm not exaggerating, it's true. We were having our regular service today and all the other believers just lost it, bawling their eyes out. Me included, obviously]

[Rukibis: I'm not really a believer or anything, but it was so intense my whole body was shaking; didn't everyone else feel it like that?]

[First: I definitely felt Person123-nim's presence. Anyone who didn't just doesn't have enough Faith]

[Boekrik: Has Person123 really become a god...?]

[Cliff: I'm telling you, he was a god all along lol]

[Monster Tamer: But what happened with the Tower's proposal? Did Person123 get through that Hidden Route or whatever safely?]

[Hazelnut: If you're safe, please post something, Person123-nim!]

[White Night: He is finally ready to lead humanity. Those who believe shall be saved, while the faithless shall never know salvation]

No one was really disputing it.

Everyone had experienced that mysterious sense of connection firsthand. The only difference was how strongly they had felt it.

Besides, it had happened shortly after the Tower made Person123 a new proposal. Given the timing, there seemed little doubt that it had something to do with him.

Then something else happened.

Rrrrrumble-

“Whoa...!”

“W-What's going on?”

This time, earthquakes suddenly shook every continent.

The tremors were faint and lasted only a few dozen seconds, causing no casualties or property damage.

The Tower in the Pacific Ocean was soon identified as the epicenter of this unnatural earthquake. A similar phenomenon had occurred when the Tower first appeared.

But that wasn't the real issue.

[Stork: ?? What was that just now? The Tower's Time Limits stopped for a bit?]

[Hakari: What kind of bullshit is that]

[Pro Climber: I saw it too. Is this some kind of bug?]

[Waffle: Check the news. They're saying the Time Limits really did stop?]

The earthquakes had lasted a few dozen seconds.

Throughout that time, the Time Limit for every Difficulty had stopped counting down.

For the first time since the Tower's appearance, the clock counting down to humanity's destruction had briefly come to a halt.

The string of bizarre phenomena left people bewildered.

[Golden Lamp: What is it with today? Weird stuff just keeps happening]

[Siren: You think Person123 was the one who stopped the Tower's Time Limits?]

[Papipu: Maybe...? There was that strange feeling too]

[Ray: How could even Person123 stop the Tower's Time Limits; I don't think that was him]

[Black Coffee: What if the Tower's about to pull some more bullshit]

[Moldy: Person123 is okay, right? He still hasn't posted anything]

[Petal: This is making me fucking nervous... Nothing's happened to Person123, right?]

As speculation flew, more and more people began to worry that Person123 might be in danger.

He still hadn't posted anything in the Communication Channel since the message announcing that he had accepted the Tower's proposal.

By then, the world was gripped by confusion and anxiety.

“...!”

All of humanity felt it again.

It was an extraordinary sensation in their minds, as though they were connected to something on an unimaginably higher plane of existence.

And then, a voice sounded in their minds.

It was like a divine proclamation descending from the heavens...

【 The Tower will fall in the end 】

The Savior of Humanity was speaking to them all.

【 And we, humanity, will prevail 】

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