As if summoned by his call, a comet shot down from the sky.
It was Ashen, spear brandished, his eyes blazing gold.
False Mercy raised his head to see the new foe and did not panic.
He fingers moved in unison, drawing a circle of mana in the air. From within it, a sludge of obsidian spears erupted and shot toward the airborne man, leaving red trails behind them from air friction.
Ashen's eyes shone brighter.
As the spears approached, they slowed down just enough for him to weave between them, deflecting some while using the momentum from those deflections to dodge the rest.
False Mercy's eyes widened as he witnessed the new time spell and decided to use more of his precious mana to counterattack.
Mana was what he fed into his Eros Concept to escape death, so he was always sensitive to his remaining reserves. But being so easily outmaneuvered had momentarily clouded his survival instincts.
The spears that had passed Ashen veered back, while those at the front intensified.
And the moment they were all about to collide, every projectile suddenly turned deep red before detonating in an absurd fashion, spewing black fire and corrupted mana in every direction.
Ashen's eyes dilated as he was caught in the middle of it.
In that split second, he decided to use his last trump card… the one he had been saving for the moment he finally found an opportunity to escape.
{Path Skill Activated: Blindstep.}
Everything froze.
Even the propagating explosions came to a halt.
Ashen allowed himself to fall until he reached the suspended Outer God and plunged his spear into his heart.
Crack—!
His expression darkened as he saw yet another fracture mar the spear.
Knowing that it truly couldn't handle any more, he tossed it back into the Hourvault and cocked his fist back instead.
It was at that moment that Blindstep's newly accumulated time, gathered over the past year and a half, finally ran out.
Time resumed its gaze upon him.
The first thing False Mercy saw wasn't his foe being burned alive in the explosions—
BOOOOOOOOOOM—!
The detonated spears created a dark red mushroom, but the intended target was absurdly already tackling him down, where he had absolutely no business being.
He didn't even get to react before a fist met his face, and the pain of his pierced heart finally caught up to him.
"Agh!"
False Mercy reacted instantaneously, launching a punch of his own, one infused with the baleful aura of his corrupted mana.
Thud—thud—
The fist hit true, but Ashen remained rooted in place.
If False Mercy could have seen the scene from a slightly inclined angle, he would have understood why.
Ashen had rooted his calves into the ground with two earth spikes.
His bewilderment allowed another punch to land directly on his temple.
BAM—!
But False Mercy's face turned demonic from what was almost an insulting strike, and he retaliated with one of his own, painting Ashen's face red with blood.
The latter seemed to have no thoughts about losing the contest.
He simply infused even more mana into Riven Convergence, making the invisible aura surrounding him gain a white sheen.
BAM—! BAM—!
His punches seemed to hurt a little more, judging by False Mercy's enraged expression, while the punches he received seemed to become a little less deadly from the amount of pain he perceived.
After that, the two devolved into a rapid contest of punches, disregarding defense and focusing solely on killing their target.
False Mercy wanted to cast his spells as well, but Ashen didn't allow him to.
From a position this close, all it took was two additional punches to disrupt his casting.
But it didn't matter.
The foolish human would soon understand that his mortal body could never compare to the resilience of an Outer God such as himself.
BOOM—! BOOM—! BOOM—!
But no matter how much he hit him, the wretched man returned every blow twofold.
False Mercy also noticed that his own punches were getting slower, while his opponent's were inversely getting faster and faster…
'Damn Time Magic!! Even now…'
That wasn't all.
Now, each punch was causing a miniature explosion, turning his torso and face into a deformed monstrosity.
The human's physical reinforcement was evolving in real time!
'It doesn't matter!! This would never kill me!'
He landed a punch, and teeth flew.
A retaliatory thump cracked half of his own.
Another broke Ashen's nose, but a pummel caved his own in.
A strike to his cheek nearly snapped his neck, while a smash to False Mercy's temple almost turned his brain into mush.
The two continued going at each other like a pair of unreasonable beasts.
And around them, neither realized that the situation had taken an entirely different turn.
Parasitic Sovereignty had detected False Mercy's plight and moved to help him, disengaging from the dragonkin holding him back.
But he was met by a white-haired girl.
"Goddess…"
The girl didn't waste time on a greeting.
She merely raised her palm in his direction, and a giant circle manifested at once, spewing disintegration rays that evaporated everything in their path.
Parasitic answered with a spell of his own, blocking the rays with a wall of flesh before using the resulting aftermath to sneak behind her.
He was met with a superpowered sidekick that sent him hurling backward.
Sovereignty didn't seem particularly hurt by the strike.He landed lightly on the ground and dashed back in.
From there, it became almost akin to a game of cat and mouse.
One tried to avoid the other, while the other did her best to catch him.
The explosions and detonations grew even more exaggerated as they seemed to teleport all over the battlefield, each attempting to outsmart the other.
But amid it all, Sovereignty was never able to reach False Mercy.
He could only circle around him as he accompanied the Goddess in a dance of death.
Ashen and False Mercy, ignorant of this—or perhaps too absorbed in killing each other to care—continued blasting one another with physical strikes that rang louder and louder.
"Why don't you… just DIE!!!"
BANG—!
Ashen's head swayed, and his vision swam when a particularly hard punch caught him in the temple.
Even then, his fist was already moving on its own, curving into a hook that connected with the Outer God's shin.
'Die.'
With each hit he landed, only one thought echoed inside his head…
'Die.'
Even when he was in hellish pain…
'Die.'
Even when the memories assaulting his mind intensified to the point that he felt like he was reliving them all over again…
'Die.'
'Die.'
'Die.'
The mana directed by Trinity Harmony to feed into Riven Convergence had long since threaded through every cell of his body.
But under his relentless, hateful call for death, Mana Imperium reacted even further.
The threads no longer merely strengthened him.
They became hostile entities of their own, craving the same outcome as their host—
Death.
Bang—bam—! CRACK—CRASH—BOOM—!
Like living little creatures, they moved in unison with each of his fists and vibrated wildly, making it seem as if they were chanting alongside him.
"Die… Die… Die… DIE! DIE! DIE!"
False Mercy had unknowingly stopped moving somewhere along the way.
But Ashen never did.
Like a deranged maniac, he continued his mechanical chant of death, striking in a rhythmic pattern as if he were simply performing a chore.
He felt his mana approaching its limit.
But instead of stopping, he opened the Hourvault within him and let what remained of his stored mana spill out, renewing him and allowing him to keep going.
"Die! Die! Die! Die!"
Riven Convergence devoured the mana like a ravenous beast. And, surprisingly, this time, the threads multiplied even further.
They passed the trillions and became an utterly uncountable number.
"Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die!"
The new mana threads moved beyond his cells and entered his organelles. Then they propagated into his molecules.
…All the way until they reached every atom of his body.
Vrmmmm~
The next strike didn't merely blast another hole through the poor creature beneath him.
It blasted through the earth and stone behind him, pulverizing the rest of his body and drowning False Mercy in a deep crater.
But Ashen never stopped.
He knew this thing was the hardest among them all to kill.
And it proved true.
False Mercy had abandoned all thoughts of retaliation and redirected every remaining drop of his mana toward his Eros Concept.
Even through his rage, Ashen seemed to catch on.
And he did something crazy in response.
'I already have plenty of it. What's a bit more? Let's absorb it!'
Just like that, False Mercy felt a violent tug pulling his mana in the opposite direction.
If he had still been capable of thought, he would have been absolutely livid at the audacity.
While he contested the Outer God for his own mana, Ashen never relented in his strikes.
And along the way, something else began to happen.
The intent that had tainted every part of his mana, echoed back by the mana itself, began resonating within him.
Birthing a will to kill so high…
So intense…
That it reached a God.
The aura surrounding him gained a reddish hue, reminiscent of the Godkiller Icon.
And with the next strike, the Outer God known as False Mercy… had finally gained his own mercy.
A mercy known as death.
But Ashen wasn't satisfied. His fist detached from the writhing flesh. And this time, the reddish hue gained a deep indigo color around his knuckles.
'Inertia.'
The Concept that embodied resistance to change.
"Stay dead."
BOOOOOOOOOOM—!
Ashen employed it to keep False Mercy in a state of death, no matter how strong his will to return was.
"Haah…"
As he felt the last drops of False Mercy's mana being absorbed into his body, Ashen finally stopped.
'My memories… they came back… ahh… How I missed you… Alice… Seraphine… Lucia… Mother… Father… Lapis… …'
He didn't get to savor that brief feeling of joy for long, as a System announcement interrupted him.
[Riven Convergence ↑ (Masterful-)]
'Well… I had just integrated Inertia into the Skill, so that's expected…'
Before that thought could even end, the System chimed again.
[Riven Convergence ↑ (Zenith-)]
Ashen looked at it and didn't find it strange.
Just now, he felt as if he had seeped mana into every biological component of his body, all the way down to his very atoms.
If that wasn't the zenith of the Skill, then he didn't know what was.
But the System chimed yet again.
[Riven Convergence ↑ (Beyond-)]
"…"
That announcement reminded him that he hadn't merely used Riven Convergence to reinforce his body.
He had also used the mana within it as a medium to converge his own killing intent until it reached a state high enough to slay a god.
That was undoubtedly beyond mere physical reinforcement.
And when such a godly feat had been achieved through a Skill, even Beyond mastery no longer seemed suitable.
Because the Skill would surely be…
[Riven Convergence ↑ (Godly-)]
◉◉◉
Ashen didn't get much time to analyze the System's latest announcement, because the few seconds he had already spent standing in the same place were dangerous enough.
More than that…
Everything had become unusually silent.
When the debris and rubble finally cleared, he understood why. They had stopped fighting, the Custodian Order and the Outer Gods alike.
Ashen tensed as he saw them all looking in his direction, but he soon realized that their gazes weren't directed at him.
They were looking right above him.
He raised his head to follow their gazes and found a white light.
An Icon.
And it was none other than his own.
It seemed to have been hanging there for some time, shining with the same hue as his Twin's Godkiller Icon.
But what was etched into the sky wasn't Godkiller.
It was a…
『Paradoxite』