Bell blinked and Ares was already ahead of him, a spear and sword ripping toward him with uncanny precision.
His own sword swung to intercept.
Clang.
A moment hadn't passed before the Sword of Extermination reached Ares' shoulder. The god pulled his spear back and swung it in a wide arc, deflecting its trajectory.
Alfia reached Ares' opposite flank simultaneously. Without looking, Ares brought his heel up and kicked straight at her temple.
At the same time, balancing on a single leg, he tilted his head by a fraction—Bell's free fist sliced past his cheek.
Before Ares could press further, a voice resounded in his ears.
"Limit Off."
Time seemed to drag. Ares' eyes narrowed as Alfia's thin fingers wrapped around his leg and pulled, hurling him away.
He didn't even have a moment to breathe before Mahoraga slid beneath his airborne form while Bell and Alfia closed in from both sides.
Ares rotated mid-air, sword and spear screeching down toward Mahoraga's enormous white fist rising from below. His legs spread—one collided against Bell's heel, the other parried Alfia's elbow.
The impact travelled from his legs, through his body, to his arms, into his weapons.
BOOM!
Mahoraga was crushed into the earth, a sword and spear buried in his fist, while Bell and Alfia flew away.
Ares remained still for a moment.
Then—vanished.
Bell had barely found his footing when the god materialized in his peripheral vision—a fist already halfway to his jaw.
He brought his arms up to block.
BOOM!
A fist connected from the right. The left one was a feint.
Bell didn't let it rattle him. He slammed his head against Ares' forehead.
Crack.
His own skull cracked.
Ares continued without pause. Every muscle across his body tensed as he kicked at Bell's side, a blinding, silver light flashing across his leg.
Arcanum.
Only revealed to the naked eye.
BOOOM!
A spiralling shockwave erupted as Bell saw a vision of an unending sea of weapons. He sank into that sea, being pierced by every weapon in existence simultaneously. His mind forcefully shut down, as he was launched meters away, rolling across blood, entrails, and soil before coming to a stop.
Before Ares could pursue, Alfia and the Divine General attacked from either side, trying to halt his advance.
Meanwhile, Bell's heart pumped frantically, fighting to keep him alive.
Alfia and Mahoraga held Ares back.
But they were being pushed back relentlessly.
Countless bodies—Rakia's soldiers and Orario's adventurers alike—were spread around them like a painting of devastation, death, and despair.
Blood flowed in rivers. Even the sky seemed to mourn, stained a deep crimson that swallowed anything resembling hope.
Ares walked forward. Each step absolute. Each step perfection incarnate.
"Gospel." Alfia's voice was calm as she punched toward Ares, sliding back even as she spoke.
Air quaked. A devastating wave of sound tore all the way to the opposite end of Orario. Every being in the city heard it, falling to their knees, their ears bursting from the sheer force alone.
Yet...
Ares slapped aside the vibration heading toward him. Something that had nearly brought every being in Orario to its knees—deflected with a single hand.
Everything to his left was crushed into smithereens.
"I don't know how that boy summoned you, but the dead should stay dead. Don't you think so too, Silence?" His voice was measured, each footfall making the pressure he released increase.
He was mid-step, heel suspended in the air, when Mahoraga moved and the world lagged behind.
Faster than a blink, the Divine General stood behind Ares, its Sword of Extermination swiping toward the god's head—far faster than sound.
The god of war stilled. One hand came up and caught the Sword of Extermination barehanded. He used it as leverage to twist and kick back with his raised leg.
Sound itself screamed as Ares' heel found Mahoraga's chest.
A moment before impact, the wheel spun.
Clunk.
Muscle fibers within its chest multiplied exponentially, weaving over one another at staggering speeds.
Yet even faster was Ares.
He saw what happened, catalogued it, reached a counter instantly, and adjusted his kick's trajectory.
BOOOM!
His kick tore a deep gouge through Mahoraga's stomach.
Ares turned his head at a sudden sound.
Alfia's shadow fell over Ares a heartbeat before her fist did. Her form flickered as [Silentium Eden] shed from her like snake skin, her knuckles already racing toward Ares.
"Lugio."
Air quaked. Warped. Then quaked further. [Satanas Verion] superimposed over itself—twice as strong, twice as devastating.
Everything went silent... then shattered into a roar.
Cracks appeared across the ground near Babel deep inside Orario.
Ares looked at the fist heading toward him. His own free fist came up in response.
Divine and mortal clashed.
BOOOOOM!
Drowning out that sound was a *Clunk*.
The hole within Mahoraga's stomach closed in a single breath, trapping Ares' leg within—pinning him between Alfia from front and the Divine General from behind.
Alfia skidded back, but her feet dug in and she launched herself forward again, fists raining toward Ares from the front.
The god of war's expression did not change. His grip over the Sword of Extermination became crushing as he used it and the arm connected to it as a makeshift weapon, battering aside Alfia's oncoming fists with fluid movements.
Mahoraga's free hand collided with the back of Ares' head. Cracks rang out as, instead of the god's skull shattering, Mahoraga's fingers broke.
Clunk.
Mahoraga's fingers reconnected—denser, more compact. Its next blow came harder.
Clunk.Clunk.Clunk.
The wheel spun without pause. Each rotation stripped away another limitation, each blow landing with greater force than the last.
Both Alfia and Mahoraga assaulted Ares from opposite sides, not even a second's interval between their strikes.
Ares did not seem daunted. Alfia's assault—he calculated, found a pattern within her unpredictable rhythm, and determined the most optimal ways to confront her.
Mahoraga, however, was a different problem entirely.
Ares used the Sword of Extermination connected to Mahoraga's hand as a pivot and twisted his free foot. His trapped leg became an axis—Mahoraga was dragged into his rotation and slammed directly into Alfia's side.
The force of their collision ripped Ares' pinned leg free from Mahoraga's stomach.
Both the Divine General and Alfia were launched away.
Silence fell. Brief. Fragile.
Step.
Ares brushed off his hands and turned toward the sound of footsteps.
Bell was limping toward him, his long white hair hanging over his face, matted with blood and soot.
Cracks had spread across half his face, radiating abyssal darkness, countless blood-red eyes visible within those cracks. Waiting. For now.
The god brought his arms behind his back and watched while closing in—like a man observing something genuinely intriguing.
Blood trailed Bell's stumbling steps. He even fell in between. His hand dropped into a clump of uneven soil.
He closed his fingers and felt them wrap around something.
Bell pulled.
A sword was unearthed from the ground—cracks running across its body, just like him—alongside a broken blade with a reddish-gold handle.
Yes... It was that same sword.
Typhon.
Bell looked down at it for a moment, and tightened his hold over the handle.
Ares' face went still, a small acknowledgment slipping from between his lips at the sight of that sword.
Bell ignored him.
Dragging his weary, broken body forward.
Visions flashed across his mind.
You can do it too. — The future him said.
People made of embers met their ends with a smile. — He had shown Freya.
Haha...haha! — Arnold laughed in death's face.
All three seemed to overlap over him for an instant.
"Ha..." A laugh—barely. More like a cough that had forgotten how to stop.
Sight was never needed.
"Ha... haha..." His laugh scraped louder. A crack split across his cheekbone, and something abyssal pulsed beneath it.
Guess I overestimated myself.
"Haha... HAHA—" His voice cracked, then steadied, then rose. Blood vessels burst across his eyes, turning them from ruby to something darker.
This is what I get for acting like I could go against a god.
"HAHAHAHA!" The laugh erupted—full, unhinged, and completely at odds with the nearly ruined body producing it.
Sound was forever lost.
Yet the laugh continued—vibrating through his bones, through the ground, through the air itself.
Touch was slipping.
Would Goddess Astraea cry if I died?
His legs gave out. He dropped to one knee. His laugh didn't falter. If anything, it grew louder from below, rising from the dirt like something buried was finally digging its way out.
Would Goddess Hestia wait for me to come back home?
Taste was gone.
He stood back up. Not steadily. Not cleanly. He wrenched himself upright like a man pulling his own corpse from a grave, and the laugh followed him up—growing, spreading, escalating.
Every sense ignited silently.
Monochrome became my world.
Bell walked. Each step clumsy, broken, and shaking.
Grey streaked through his radiant white hair.
He ignited his whole body. No... He ignited his whole existence. His mind. His thoughts. His emotions.
Everything that made him 'Bell Cranel'—he burned.
He did not need a minute. He did not even need a second. A moment was all he needed.
A moment where... he could touch the divine.
"Eternal Flame Envelop."
Embers—the colour of molten gold—ignited along Typhon's broken edge. They didn't flicker. They didn't dance. They radiated outward, as if the metal itself was trying to give birth to a sun.
Heat distorted everything around Bell. His skin began to blister and smoke.
Ares' stride, which had been measured, stuttered for the first time.
"Vitality Stabilise."
His voice steadied—slightly. The blisters on his skin continued spreading. The grey in his hair did not stop its advance.
But inside his eyes, something was burning. Not metaphorically. His irises, already crimson, had begun to glow from within, as if someone had set them ablaze.
His burning vitality. It was all flowing into Typhon. The sword drank him like a desert drinks rain.
Ares broke into a sprint.
"Justice Judge."
The word "Judge" left his mouth as a roar.
Light—pure and golden and absolute—erupted from Typhon's broken blade. It shot upward in a column that split the crimson-stained sky in half, brightening everything for a single, blinding second.
The light didn't illuminate. It purged. Shadows didn't shorten—they ceased to exist within a hundred meters.
Ares closed the distance.
Ten meters.
Bell's lips moved.
"Exempt Are..."
Five meters.
The light around Typhon began to compress—the column collapsing inward, folding into itself, growing denser and brighter with each contraction.
Three meters.
"Not Even The..."
Ares lunged forward. His hand clawing for Bell's heart.
One meter.
"DIVINE!!!"
Typhon swung.
Bell's arm moved. That was all anyone could process—a single arm, rising and falling in a visible arc.
Then a pillar came.
It didn't rise. It appeared—as if it had always been there and reality had simply been waiting for permission to acknowledge it. A shaft of golden light wider than Babel, connecting earth to sky, standing where Ares had been a heartbeat ago.
Golden flakes drifted down from its edges like snow made of solid light, settling on the upturned faces of thousands—Rakian soldiers and Orario adventurers alike—who had stopped fighting, stopped breathing, stopped moving.
In the distance, deep beneath Orario, something ancient and vast trembled.
The Dungeon felt it.
Someone had touched the divine.
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Limit Off] - A temporary state in which surrounding conditions combine with emotion to overload the falna. It exponentially increased the power of attacks. Despite its quite conditional nature, Alfia was able to deliver attacks strengthened by this state at will due to her skill [Gif Blessing].
[Satanas Verion] - It is a super short chant magic that hit enemies with blocks of sound. Despite its rather simple nature, it was extremely powerful and deadly. A single direct hit was easily able to deal with a whole group of Ganesha Familia members as well as a high Level 5 Gareth, having such power that Ryuu and her comrades were also able to sense the attacks even from the other side of Orario in the case of the latter.
The magic power that remained after using it could also be made to explode with the Spell Key Lugio.
Main Spell Key - Gospel.
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Eternal flame envelop. Vitality stabilise. Justice judge. Exempt are not even the Divine.
...
Ignite my vitality. Ignite my will. Ignite my emotions. Ignite it all.
...
This is it.
My everything. Everything I've learned in the short three months that I have started writing novels.
Bell gave his everything.
I, too gave my everything.
...
Feeling the ending was vague? Feeling that this ends the volume?
No it's vague on purpose, you all will know in a bit.
Is this chapter the volume's end?
No. We still have some chapters left.