Chapter 2391: value

"...Eat."

HOOOOOM

"Wha—?!" Sakar shot to his feet the instant the object fully appeared, immediately taking two rapid steps backward. BAM His entire body tensed on instinct as his battle readiness surged to its peak, every part of him reacting to the danger before his mind could even properly process what he was seeing.

What the Lord had taken out was something small enough to be held comfortably in both hands, yet an overwhelmingly powerful scent erupted from that tiny object and seemed to spread across heaven and earth in an instant. The scent wasn’t foul or disgusting so much as it was impossibly strong, intimidating, and majestic, carrying the oppressive presence of an old, starving lion prowling through its territory in search of anything that moved so it could immediately pounce upon it and tear it apart.

Whatever the Lord was holding, Sakar couldn’t regard it as a mere severed object no matter how small it looked. To his instincts, it felt more like a terrifying weapon capable of destroying the entire planet at any moment, and if that happened, he had absolutely no doubt that it could destroy him along with it!

Compared to the immense confidence with which he had arrived here, and compared to the strength he had accumulated throughout all those years of conquest and feeding, suddenly finding himself overwhelmed by this kind of pressure and mortal danger again wasn’t pleasant in the slightest. It reminded his body far too clearly that there were still things capable of making every instinct he possessed scream at him to retreat!

"Stop using your nose, Sakar." Robin advised calmly after watching his reaction. "Use only your soul sense to examine it."

"...?" Sakar immediately obeyed and completely closed his nostrils, and in doing so it was almost as though he had suddenly gone completely blind. The overwhelming aura that had covered heaven and earth like an enormous sheet vanished together with the scent, and what his spiritual sense managed to pick up afterward was something far simpler and considerably less terrifying... It was merely an arm.

"All right, I won’t leave you drowning in questions for too long. This is the arm of something called an Executioner. The Executioner is the creature that controls all space beasts, including the adult space beasts." Robin then raised the severed arm slightly and pointed it toward Sakar as he continued, "That creature may also be known to you by another name: the Ancestor of the Space Beasts."

".....?" Sakar’s attention immediately snapped back toward the black arm, examining it with an entirely different perspective now that he knew what it supposedly belonged to. "The arm of the Ancestor of the Space Beasts... the same Ancestor who wreaked havoc throughout the universe all those years ago?" Then he quickly turned his face toward Robin again and asked, "Did the Cosmic Elder give this to you?"

"No." Robin raised his chin slightly as though there were nothing particularly remarkable about his answer. "I cut it off myself."

"..."

"What?" Robin smiled when Sakar remained completely silent and simply stared at him. "You don’t believe me?"

"Your entire life is unbelievable, My Lord." Sakar finally returned his gaze toward the severed arm, seemingly deciding there was little point in questioning the matter any further. "One more unbelievable detail added to everything else won’t make much difference."

"Haha, I’ll accept that answer for now." Robin laughed lightly, then casually tossed the arm toward Sakar as though what he was throwing wasn’t a limb belonging to the Ancestor of the Space Beasts. "Now eat."

Poof Sakar caught the arm with both hands, holding it with obvious apprehension for a moment before immediately beginning to examine it carefully from every possible angle, trying to determine how he was even supposed to carry out such an unusual order.

Naturally, he didn’t try using his nose again. He had already done that once, and the result had been more than enough to convince him never to repeat the experiment unnecessarily. This time, he extended his claws and used them to test the hardness of the arm at several points, searching for the most suitable section where he might actually be able to sink his fangs into the flesh and begin eating.

But—

"..?" After several attempts, Sakar slowly turned toward Robin again while still holding the arm between his hands. "How exactly am I supposed to eat this?"

Robin merely raised his shoulders in a casual shrug, showing no intention whatsoever of providing instructions. "Am I supposed to teach the master now? Figure it out yourself."

"....." Sakar returned his attention to the arm with obvious confusion, continuing to inspect it for a short while before finally raising it slightly and directing the severed portion at the elbow toward his mouth. Although even that exposed section was still harder than ordinary metals, it nevertheless remained the part containing the greatest amount of accessible flesh, making it the most reasonable place to begin.

Then, "Haaa—" Sakar opened part of his mask to reveal his mouth packed with rows of sharp, pointed teeth, positioned the severed elbow between his jaws, and CHOMP bit down on the arm with tremendous force.

Creeeak

The result felt no different from trying to bite directly through solid iron. Sakar’s teeth began producing harsh grinding noises as they scraped violently across the surface of the arm, but no matter how much force he applied or how desperately he tried to sink his fangs deeper into the flesh, he couldn’t make any meaningful progress at all.

"GRAAAH!!" Refusing to stop there, Sakar immediately activated Blood Devouring. An enormous amount of highly compressed crimson blood surged out from his body and rapidly coiled around the severed arm, completely surrounding it as the technique attempted to digest the flesh directly where it was. Under ordinary circumstances, Sakar could use this technique to completely digest a small goat without even needing to open his mouth.

But despite the tremendous amount of crimson blood wrapped around the arm, there was absolutely no visible effect—

When Sakar realized that even Blood Devouring had failed to accomplish anything, he finally decided to abandon that approach and begin using the—

Gulp

At that exact moment, before he could proceed any further, Sakar suddenly felt something descending into his throat from the severed section at the elbow.

Something incredibly heavy abruptly filled his throat and began sliding downward with agonizing slowness, carrying such an oppressive weight that it felt as though he had somehow swallowed an entire rock dragged straight out of hell.

BADOOOM

All three of Sakar’s hearts pounded violently at the exact same instant, the force of that single beat reverberating through his entire chest, before they suddenly contracted together and fell completely silent as though something had forcibly seized them from within.

BAM The severed arm slipped from Sakar’s grasp and crashed onto the ground, while the crimson blood that had been wrapped around it immediately abandoned the limb and rapidly withdrew back toward him. Sakar himself began staggering backward at the same time, clutching his chest tightly with one hand while strange, strangled sounds forced their way out of his throat. "Aghh... Kghhh...!!" He looked exactly like a human who had swallowed a heavy stone only for it to become firmly lodged halfway down his throat, refusing either to descend any farther or come back out no matter what he did.

After taking one more unsteady step backward, Sakar finally lost his balance and collapsed heavily onto the ground, his entire body releasing increasingly thick smoke while violently convulsing and twitching as though something inside him had begun roasting him alive from within.

Then he suddenly fell silent—

His body stopped moving completely, every violent convulsion disappearing at once, and he ceased making even the slightest sound. Only the smoke continued pouring from him, growing thicker instead of fading away, while the temperature of his body kept rising at a clearly noticeable and steady rate.

"....." Robin remained where he was and stared at Sakar’s motionless, smoking body for several moments, carefully watching the changes occurring to him before eventually raising a hand and scratching his head. "He’ll be fine." Then, with complete calmness and without showing any urgency, he stood up, lifted Sakar from the ground, and placed him back onto his chair once again.

Afterward, Robin casually returned to his own seat and settled down before letting out a quiet chuckle...

The sight in front of him was undoubtedly amusing. Jabba and Sakar were now sitting unconscious directly beside one another, both leaning helplessly in their chairs with their mouths hanging open, as though the two had somehow agreed to lose consciousness together.

After enjoying the ridiculous sight for a moment, Robin opened Jabba’s thick book again and began reading through its contents once more, this time with an entirely different perspective...

If he now took into consideration that all the percentages, figures, and pieces of evidence recorded throughout the book were actually accurate, since Jabba was a genuine user of the Master Law of Identity rather than merely an ordinary Truth Chosen relying on observation and deduction, then that single fact changed a great deal about everything Robin had just read.

It elevated the value of the book in his hands to a level that was practically unprecedented.

In fact, from a certain perspective, it might even make this book the only one of its kind anywhere in the entire universe!

Why?

Users of Identity normally employed their power just like users of any other Master Law, using it for combat, construction, and domination. The primary application of Identity itself was to manipulate and alter the percentages and designations within something, exactly as Jabba had demonstrated earlier when he changed the properties of that rock.

An Identity user could change an ordinary attack so that it became lethal instead, alter a small amount of money until it became a large amount, or even change the Identity of an ordinary pet until it became that of a legendary dragon.

Identity users were terrifying existences by nature, extremely difficult to deal with and even harder to capture. Unless one of them was discovered and seized while still weak enough to be restrained, then once they had grown sufficiently powerful, getting hold of them afterward would become virtually impossible.

But despite all of that, they were ultimately still nothing more than tremendously powerful users of a Master Law. Their abilities were used for strength, survival, and domination; research, science, and technological development had nothing whatsoever to do with the path they normally followed!

For an Identity user to deliberately employ such an extraordinary power for the sake of research, careful analysis, and writing books, approaching his work almost as though he were still nothing more than a dedicated Truth Chosen?

Such a thing had never been heard of before.

After all, who could possibly possess the Master Law of Identity and gain access to all those miraculous abilities capable of enriching them overnight, yet willingly put those temptations aside and devote himself to research and writing a book instead?

It required someone like Jabba, someone who had already spent so much of his path immersed in this kind of work, for something like this to even become possible!

That was the true value of the book Robin was holding in his hands right now, unique across the entire the universe, and may is across many others!!

But that undoubtedly wasn’t the book’s only source of value... Even setting aside the extraordinary circumstances surrounding its creation, the book itself was genuinely priceless.

And that wasn’t merely because of the person who had written it, but because of the actual contents recorded within its pages and the conclusion those contents pointed toward.

According to this book... the loophole Robin had spent so long searching for, the fundamental problem afflicting humanity itself, was actually an artificial problem, something deliberately introduced rather than naturally inherent to humans, and it hadn’t even existed during the previous cycle.