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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Ruby
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Yuma was enveloped in an ambiguous sensation.
He felt as if some tremendous force was pressing down on his entire body.
Along with the crushing sensation, he also felt as though something was pushing his body forward.
He looked down at the ground.
He could only see his own legs and feet, unable to even predict exactly what kind of space he was walking through.
It was a strange ground where he could only feel transparency.
Yuma looked up at the sky.
It was a world where only gray could be seen clearly.
Yuma felt a gaze looking down at him from the sky.
“….”
He raised his head to meet that gaze.
A bird-person with a massive beak came into view.
Deep eyes that seemed like those of a bird of prey were looking down at Yuma.
The massive beak slowly opened.
“—Human… is it?”
Yuma opened his mouth.
“I am human.”
“—Huh.”
A heavy sigh descended.
“—A human has now entered the Transcendence Altar, and is undergoing the trial for divine awakening?”
“Yes, I need to become a god.”
Yuma spoke quietly while looking at the gray bird-person who only cast a massive silhouette.
No matter how he looked at it.
“But you seem to be an already dead existence.”
The two pupils in the head that seemed to be somewhere between an eagle and an owl suddenly widened.
“—Correct. Coincidentally, I am indeed an already dead existence.”
The bird-person quite simply acknowledged that he was not a being with substance.
“—What you’re facing right now is my death-thought, merely a remnant soul remaining in this altar. It’s just a soul remaining in this altar according to the rank I possessed.”
The bird-person continued speaking.
“—My name is Ardolak. I am a bird-person who died trying to awaken divinity beyond my station.”
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Four months had passed since Yuma entered the Transcendence Altar.
Ella Brighton, the Third Seat of the Astes Empire, had returned to the empire following Yuma’s command to return if he didn’t come out within a week.
Time flowed rapidly.
The gods of the Main Divine Realm, who were the victors—the Eight Evil Gods and the gods who followed those Eight Evil Gods—rather than the Outer Divine Realm where the gods who had been defeated and driven out from the divine war had gathered, began to invade the middle realm in earnest.
The continent the gods targeted and invaded was the Silmaria Continent, located on the opposite side from the Geharden Continent where the Astes Empire and the Resen Kingdom were situated.
Blood flowed on the ground.
Corpses formed mountains.
The survivors couldn’t believe that what was scattered across the mountain ridge were people, not monsters.
“….”
Ragnak, a knight of Valcares, the empire at the center of the Silmaria Continent, desperately tried to adjust his armor that had been completely torn away on the right shoulder side.
His mouth was full of the smell of blood.
He spat out saliva mixed with red blood.
Ragnak walked forward.
Inside the tattered tent ahead, a man was crouched with his body hunched over.
It was Ricardo, the Second Prince of the Valcares Empire.
Thud!
Ragnak knelt on his left knee.
“Do you know anything about why the Red Knights who definitely protected the empire until last year are now trying to attack the empire?”
At his powerless subordinate’s words, Ricardo slowly shook his head.
“…I know nothing either.”
Ragnak stood up again and looked down at the tragedy lined up in front of the imperial palace.
The soldiers’ arms, legs, and entrails were scattered about.
Soldiers and knights with fatal wounds to their necks and hearts came into view.
Blood formed countless puddles.
Ragnak entered the bushes with numerous shadows.
From within those bushes, he stuck out only his head to look at the sky.
Blood and flesh fell down in chunks.
Crack, crunch—
The sound of bones being crushed echoed from the sky.
Bone fragments fell like hail.
Giant red birds filling the sky were snatching people with claws sharper than hooks and hard as iron, chewing them up in midair.
“Kraaaak!”
Screams echoed in the sky.
Tens of thousands of blood flowed down.
Half the continent was stained with blood.
All kinds of screams echoed throughout the world.
Stab!
Thud!
Spear-like bones sprouted from behind the [Goddess of Dead Bones], Angelica.
The bone spears mercilessly pierced the beings in front.
“Kraaaak!”
“Kiaaaak!”
The spears that extended in the shape of spider legs stabbed humans hundreds of times more.
Half were humans trembling in their limbs while screaming, and half were humans whose breath had already been cut off.
To Angelica, whether they were dead or alive didn’t seem to be such an important matter.
The goddess with gray hair and a gray face just seemed to enjoy this situation as a predator.
“Kihihit!”
Saliva flowed from Angelica’s mouth.
“Kihit!”
Dominion, massacre.
Everything accomplished through violence gave Angelica intense pleasure.
All the humans beneath her feet died off.
Blood flowed stickily from the bodies of humans pierced like honeycombs.
Angelica looked at the Death and Bone Knights lined up behind her.
“Sweep them all away, my children.”
The Death Knights quickly moved their bodies according to Angelica’s command.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The army of death advanced toward the surviving forces of the Valcares Empire who were fleeing through the main road.
“Captain! There, it’s the enemy!!”
A knight of Valcares shouted this while igniting a clear aura blade on his sword.
He swung that sword toward the death forces wearing black armor.
A sword path advancing in a horizontal line.
However, that sword path couldn’t reach the death knight.
It was shattered like fragments by the black sword light. And the sword was also broken.
Slice! Slice!
Arms and legs were cut off like chunks of meat.
The breath of a hundred knights was cut off in an instant.
Angelica’s knights possessed strength of a different dimension from the death knights controlled by black magicians.
The empire knights’ armor was crumpled like paper.
There was also a black knight wielding a massive mace-like iron club.
Crash!
The empire knight’s head was crushed as is.
Blood and flesh decorated the empire’s land.
“Yes, yes.”
Crack!
Angelica raised the corners of her mouth while stepping on the severed corpse of a knight sprawled on the ground with her foot.
While looking at the knight’s face.
“Human beings should collapse this easily for it to be proper.”
Angelica lit up her gray pupils.
“Should I kill these guys and use the divinity obtained to attack the Geharden Continent once more, or should I try being the main god of this Silmaria Continent…”
The three evil gods including Angelica began to devour the Silmaria Continent in an instant.
The evil gods who manifested in the middle realm were not just these three.
Middle realm.
Half the continents of the middle realm were being targeted by evil gods.
A space of causality for obtaining divinity through the process of destruction and restoration.
To the evil gods, the middle realm had no meaning other than being a factory for obtaining divinity.
The Geharden Continent, where there was a being named Yuma who had killed two evil gods, was temporarily excluded from the list of target countries for invasion.
Ragnak raised his head toward his trembling charge.
“…First, we must move, Your Highness the Prince.”
At the knight’s words, Third Prince Ricardo grabbed his blonde hair and opened his mouth.
His lips were trembling.
“I understand.”
The Third Prince and his subordinate group, who had become one of the few survivor groups of the Valcares Empire, moved to survive.
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Step.
Yuma was continuing his aimless steps once again.
He still couldn’t determine whether these steps were moving forward or going backward.
The origin of this place, the Transcendence Altar, lay in condensing tens of thousands of divine artifacts and holy relics beneath the altar.
The totality of divinity that could be gathered in this land called the middle realm.
Also, the rank ascension stairway that the bird-person priests had created a thousand years ago by literally burning their bodies for the divine awakening of the bird-person Ardolak.
These two divine treasures possessed the power to enable divine awakening.
If one stood completely at the top of the stairway, one would be able to achieve divine awakening.
And now a stairway finally appeared faintly before Yuma.
A stairway where black and white were mixed.
Step.
Yuma placed his foot on the first step.
He had stood at the entrance of the stairway that the bird-person Ardolak, who was now watching Yuma as a dead soul, had been unable to climb completely.
“—…No matter how much I look, I can’t believe it.”
The bird-person Ardolak said while watching Yuma continue forward.
What was now surrounding Yuma’s body was the divinity of the god Incrinew.
When Yuma had killed the god Incrinew, because Yuma had not yet escaped being a mortal, he hadn’t even been aware of the [divine storage] formed in his heart, but the divine storage had been accomplished.
[Anguishing Mercy], Incrinew’s divinity served as a protective barrier that blocked the impacts inflicted on the body according to the changes occurring in the body.
Unlike Ardolak, Yuma needed a defensive barrier to endure this process of awakening because he hadn’t built up physical mastery.
And it needed to be a very powerful defensive barrier.
The role was fulfilled by Incrinew’s divinity that had been stored in Yuma’s body.
And the root of divinity that began awakening in his heart was the divinity of the [God of War and Struggle], the War God Barbatos.
Apart from the deep sin of declaring war on fellow gods, considering only the accumulated divinity, he was an Eight Evil God who could only be called great.
Among those Eight Evil Gods, the third highest divinity had become the root of Yuma’s divinity.
“—How on earth did you kill two gods? And Eight Evil Gods at that…”
Yuma ignored Ardolak’s words filled with shock and walked.
—Focus.
Because it seemed the stairway would collapse if his mind scattered even a little, he had no choice but to pour all his nerves into concentrating.
Ardolak widened his golden eyes and nodded.
“—Yes, focus.”
“—You must concentrate. Soon, countless questions of causality will strike you who dare to reach divinity with a human body.”
Step.
Yuma continued to move his steps.
Steps toward divine awakening.
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