Chapter 497: Kill Count

The last of them no longer tried to fight me individually. Maybe they should have. I was deeply injured, and they might have got lucky. The Death Stone made it easier for me to die, and it was very possible that I would simply drop dead in the next moment from the wounds I had taken.

Without the loop, this was the point where I was supposed to run, lick my wounds for decades, and come back stronger... and that only happens in a sane world that is not at the point of destruction. In a world as broken as mine, only something like me could be made to defend it.

They retreated as they merged into each other, and I rushed them, throwing bolts of red lightning to spoil the mergers before they completed. I mostly succeeded. The largest combination was three Titans, and not all of them managed to join.

I could kill something like that. With a roar, I went in.

∞

I stopped looking at the essence after a while. The numbers were still arriving, and I let them pile up somewhere behind my eyes unread. Any distraction at that point would have been deadly, especially since I had fallen into a peculiar rhythm of battle, and I could almost feel several of my Lightning Law Shards reaching for completion.

I did not want to spoil it. I had gained my first Lightning Law in silence, and something was telling me that beyond breaking down the Sixth Earth Gate, the next few shards would open in the midst of battle.

Rip... tear... crush... burn... freeze...

Magic and might burst out of me with increasing intensity, as if I were a machine built to fight forever. It did not matter how badly I was hurt. I would kill them all.

One of them tore my chest open from the collarbone to the hip, and I killed it with my hands inside its mouth. Another got both arms around me from behind, and I broke my own left shoulder getting out, and then I kept using the shoulder anyway.

Mortal Shell made it possible to move my body even when bones were broken or limbs hung by a thread of flesh. As long as there was connective tissue, it kept me fighting with as little loss of ability as possible, and that is before accounting for the fact that it was boosting my soul by tying the strength of my body to it, which was the only reason I had been able to hold the seals through all of this.

When the last one fell, I was standing in a lake of burning demonic flesh in the middle of a crater that had been a plain. I was bleeding, and I was not healing fast enough, and the ash was coming down on me like grey snow.

My body was broken in a dozen places. Ribs shattered, left arm hanging by a thread of connective tissue, chest torn open from collarbone to hip. The Law of Flesh was working, and it was slow. The Titans’ attacks carried corruption, a will that made healing harder.

I was alive, and the battle around me had gone quiet for the moment.

None of that mattered.

[ Stored Essence: 4,760,114 / 2,000,000 ]

∞

I was shivering, holding my broken body together with my own hands. Dropped out of the terror and excitement of battle, the pressure that had been building inside me could no longer be denied.

I had been so focused during the fighting that I had been holding back my own advancement without any conscious effort. I believed I would have been able to smash down the Sixth Earth Gate at double the required essence, and I had gone well past that.

There were no threats near me, so I decided to look at the changes to my Demon Slayer Title before I opened the floodgates to my ascension.

There was so much pressure inside me that it felt as if I might explode, and with a strength of will that nearly tore my mind in two, I pushed the Death Stone into the spatial pocket in my soul. Then I turned to the notification that had been sitting in the corner of my vision for a while, and in the silence, I let myself read it.

[ Demon Slayer — Title Evolution Available ]

I blinked, and a burst of excitement went through my chest.

Demon Slayer was one of my most important Titles, if not the most important. My access to every Celestial-tier skill came from it. The Seven Earth Gates came from it. The path to becoming a Celestial came from it. And how could I forget the Hollow Avatar.

After all this time, I was still shocked that it had remained at Epic Grade, since the benefits it gave me were things not even a Mythic Grade Title could match, though I knew I had not truly explored what a Mythic Grade Title could do, because of my present Tier.

Apparently all of that was about to change, and I could not help wondering what was waiting for me as I opened the notification.

[ Demon Slayer — Title Evolution ]

[ Current Tier: Epic ]

[ Evolution Available: Legendary ]

[ The Title has absorbed sufficient demonic essence to transcend its current limits. ]

[ Evolution Requirements Met: ]

— Killed 100,000,000+ demons (current: 371,247,893)

— Absorbed a fragment of a Transcendental Demonic Entity (current: 7)

[ Evolve? ]

[ Additional Achievements Recorded: ]

— Unlock the Seven Earth Gates #Error# Celestial Essence intake vastly exceeds conditions. Prerequisite nulled.

— Acquire a Celestial Implant (Cor Telluris — Grade Unknown)

[ Evolution Available: Mythic ]

[ Evolve? ]

∞

For a moment I disregarded the fact that my Title had upgraded twice in one go, and simply stared at the number of demons I had killed.

Three hundred and seventy-one million, two hundred and forty-seven thousand, eight hundred and ninety-three.

How was that fucking possible?

I had known the number was high in an abstract sense, the way a man knows the ocean is deep. Seeing it written out in the cold blue light of the System was something else.

Three hundred and seventy-one million.

I had killed more demons than there were people on most continents. I had killed more demons than there were stars in the sky I could see. I had killed enough demons to fill a world.

A great many of them had been Khaaz, and that did not really matter. Only the loop made it possible to go back and kill them again and again, and every one of those kills had been recorded somewhere.

I let the number settle into me. In the first loop, I died to a single demon in seconds. Now I was looking at a count that defied comprehension.

I read the notifications again.

[ Evolution Available: Legendary ]

[ Evolution Available: Mythic ]

Both at once. The Title had accumulated so much power that it could skip an entire tier.

I did not know what Mythic would give me, or whether someone of my Tier was supposed to hold a Title that powerful at all.

I had not come this far by being safe or wise.

I chose Mythic.

There was no consideration in my mind to go for Legendary. In a sane world, I would be more careful, but in a sane world, I would never have had the chance to ever push my Title to this stage.