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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Ruby
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Cloney, having finished drawing the magic circle on the floor, stood in the exact center of that circle.
Then she closed his eyes.
A deep blue light flowed faintly from the magic circle.
“…There’s no reaction.”
Cloney let out a deep sigh.
If the magic she had just activated properly interacted with herself, there should have been a reaction from the mana heart rotating around her heart, and blue light should have flickered from her own body as well.
That was the kind of magic it was.
[Mana Source Detection] was.
After casting the [Mana Source Detection] magic, there were few cases where the caster’s mana heart and magic circle did not have a mutual reaction.
Cases where one had fallen under illusion, confusion, hypnosis-type magic, or corresponding curses.
Those were the only ones.
Cloney pressed her temples firmly with her index fingers and slumped into her chair.
Based on casting the magic, she could already be certain of one thing.
“…This place isn’t reality.”
Having said that, Cloney opened her eyes wide and examined every corner of her research lab.
The minute cracks and distortions that could exist if it were illusion or confusion-type magic.
In this unidentified world, those cracks were not visible to the eye.
Even so, Cloney did not push back the suspicion she had once held.
This place was definitely a wrong space.
Cloney was certain of it.
“I need to find the contradictions.”
Cloney cleared away all the documents and materials with research on [Time Regression] from her desk, and placed a single sheet of white paper on the now clean desk.
She began writing on that paper.
“I need to do reverse calculation.”
From where was the ‘twisted part’?
She needed to catch clear evidence that this world was fake.
Inside Cloney’s head, her thoughts rapidly accelerated.
She had to abandon the myopic notion of looking only at the cross-section called the current situation.
Cloney listed out not just the present, but past situations in sequence.
“I need to go up to the point where the contradiction is most certain.”
A clear error.
Or an error close to that.
There was one part that she suspected to be such an error.
Scratch…
Cloney wrote down one sentence in the center of the blank paper.
[Lord Yuma’s Death]
“This…is a clear error.”
She had been too buried in the very fact that Yuma had died, missing the point she should have naturally suspected.
Cloney circled that sentence and wrote down branch lines.
The branch lines filled the empty blanks with numerous sentences.
Should she start with the question of whether Yuma had really died?
That was where she should have started.
Only then could Cloney look deeper into her own memories.
There was no clear memory.
There were only residual scenes like the god called Barbatos piercing through Yuma’s upper body with his fist.
There was not a single bit of memory remaining about the detailed circumstances of how he came to die.
Cloney thought deeply.
Very deeply.
“If this world is a curse in the form of a nightmare…”
Lost in deep contemplation, Cloney unknowingly approached the truth rapidly.
“There must be something that acts as a key to break the curse.”
Cloney reached that conclusion.
If it were illusion magic, there would be a point to break that illusion.
If it were sorcery, there would be a special point belonging to [Dispelling].
She knew that there existed types of magic or sorcery that could be dispelled simply by ‘recognizing’ that this world was fake.
But the fact that it hadn’t crumbled even though she had realized this world wasn’t the real world meant that there existed a key point capable of dismantling this world.
Cloney first volatilized the problem of [Time Regression] from her mind.
Without a trace.
If this was a curse and she was inside a nightmare, regression was rather poison.
And when she cleaned up his mind and thought about it, the very fact that she had thought of ‘regression’ was too inconsistent.
“…Regression is merely a delusional escape.”
A mage.
For someone like herself, called one of the tribe that infinitely pursues knowledge, to be buried in such delusional circuits – her pride was crumpled, crumpled too firmly.
Cloney pressed down hard on the paper with her fountain pen.
“Barbatos.”
If this world itself was false.
There was sufficient possibility that the bastard god who killed Yuma was also an illusion.
Cloney murmured quietly.
“I should kill this bastard first and then think.”
Cloney’s eyes, which had been darkly tinted like a dead person’s, shone sharply.
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The god of Void looked at the gods who were crying out toward him.
“Wh-what exactly are you trying to do? Void.”
The white-haired male god sitting in a giant chair, Eltines, spoke toward the gods who were looking at him with faces full of shock.
“I’m only trying to help you do useful work.”
Eltines looked at the seven gods whose movements he was controlling with his power.
They were all gods belonging to the 2nd or 3rd hierarchy.
Eltines looked at one goddess beside him.
“It’s your turn to work. Infinity.”
The woman with black hair nodded with an indifferent face.
“But Eltines.”
One of the [Eight Evil Gods] and the god of [Infinity] with the second strongest influence, Karaphenel, spoke toward Eltines.
“Do you think that by grinding in the souls of a few such gods to that bastard, he could become a god capable of defeating that godless one?”
Eltines twisted his lips at Karaphenel’s straightforward words.
“That’s also a part that weighs on my mind, but it’s better to try than not to try, so I’m just doing it.”
“Ah, I see. If it’s that intention rather than a clear purpose, it’s certainly worth trying…”
Convinced by the explanation, Karaphenel looked at the gods bound by the binding magic, one of Eltines’ numerous authorities.
No matter how much they were gods placed in an insurmountable hierarchical difference, the ability to detain fellow gods as a group all at once represented the greatness of the god of [Void], Eltines.
“Hey, you need to do it properly.”
Karaphenel spoke while looking at the god to his right, [God of Souls] Seiben.
Seiben, a 1st hierarchy god in the form of an old man, opened his mouth while sweating profusely.
“…I understand.”
“I’ve widened the scope of divine storage so there won’t be any disruption to the divine enhancement of that [God of Steel and War Clouds], Duke, so you just need to put those gods’ souls into the spell formation.”
Seiben couldn’t understand Karaphenel’s attitude of speaking indifferently as if it were just a very simple task.
‘Anyway…these two are properly insane bastards.’
Seiben ground his teeth inwardly.
The current situation was literally an insane situation.
Grinding the souls of gods into one god.
That was exactly the situation.
From Eltines’ back, countless white currents extended like tentacles, and those tentacles were tightly binding the seven gods.
Binding the bodies of gods was meaningless work.
Even if the caster was a fellow god, they could abandon their body and escape.
Therefore, the ‘void chains’ of the god of [Void] Eltines bound not just the gods’ bodies, but the gods’ souls.
So they couldn’t even abandon their bodies.
A golden light floated in Eltines’ right hand.
The seven gods looked at the giant circular spell formation beneath their bodies.
The gods, still unable to accurately grasp this sudden situation, cried out while looking at Eltines.
“…Wh-what kind of act is this? No matter how much you are the supreme gods of this divine realm…!”
“Do you think other gods will allow such evil deeds!”
Among the seven gods, the [Master of Ten Thousand Swords] and the [God of Violence and Madness] shouted toward Eltines in succession.
The gods whose souls and bodies were bound in this place were all gods directly or indirectly related to martial combat.
The [God of Steel and War Clouds] Duke, whom they were trying to artificially modify through the spell formation on the floor, was also a god belonging to the ‘martial combat’ category like them.
The reason all the sacrifices were gods belonging to the martial combat category was both to maximize the success probability.
And also to achieve the clearest enhancement effect.
Eltines looked at the fifty or so other gods gathered beyond his territory in this vast divine realm, [The Library], then looked again at the seven gods whose souls he was strangling.
“Anyway, even if you all attack together, you won’t be able to defeat Yuma, that bastard bearing the name of godless, so I’m just trying to combine our strength to the fullest once.”
Eltines thrust the golden spear held in his right hand toward the god on the far left, the [God of Violence and Madness], Kahorn.
“Keuueueeok…!”
Eltines’ spear penetrated the abdomen of the female-bodied god Kahorn with dark red hair.
Eltines stared into the red pupils at the corners of her wide-open eyes and said.
“Considering your status, this is a most glorious death.”
Zzzzzt…!
Golden cracks began from the center of the abdomen where the spear was thrust.
The body shattered like a vessel, and – Kiiaaaaaak!
In an instant, a gray soul that floated in the air was drawn and seeped into the interior of the spell formation.
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Crack!
Far beyond what couldn’t be measured by the unit of distance in the divine realm─
The [God of Steel and War Clouds], Duke, standing on the ground of the ‘Sky Continent’ in the middle realm, trembled his body convulsively at the changes that began occurring in his body and soul.
