Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 164: Unwilling to Become a God
The pitch-black space abruptly dispersed.
Lawler slowly collapsed to the ground, his arms empty. Salaar’s magic had forcibly knocked him unconscious, and he immediately passed out. Fog still filled the surroundings, but it had become lifeless and no longer corroded Salaar.
Not far away, the strange “dandelion” had already unfolded again, the chunks of flesh across it writhing continuously.
And yet…
Myss looked at his perfectly pristine palm.
The instant the head caught fire, Myss had almost immediately smelled his favorite scent of blood. Before Salaar could even move, he had swept away the last fragment of “Marcela’s” spirit with a magical thread, like some kind of predatory instinct.
Like fangs piercing prey through the throat, he precisely annihilated what remained of Marcela’s spirit. The enormous divine body nearby was now little different from a human sunk into a deep coma.
“…You moved too fast.” Salaar silently helped Lawler up.
Myss raised an eyebrow. “What? You still wanted to spare it?”
There was a faint sound of him swallowing in his voice. In his eyes, the divine body nearby was no different from freshly roasted fish. If he hadn’t been worried about exposing himself, Myss would already have taken a bite.
“No. She only wavered because I deliberately amplified her emotions and made her perceive her own heart.”
Salaar helped Lawler to a relatively dry spot and let him lean against a soft chunk of flesh. “She had only just begun to understand the most basic form of goodwill. She wasn’t capable of an emotion as advanced as ‘remorse.’”
“And ‘remorse’ can’t be used as payment anyway.”
Tass suddenly spoke, sounding rather dispirited.
After leaving that black space, he had once again become a trembling lump of flesh. After the exertion earlier, he looked even more listless.
“…Haa. Looks like I’m beyond saving.”
There was a very good chance they were currently at the bottom of Gemstone Lake. As for the secrets of the Dragon Fae as a species, he now knew more than any other Dragon Fae alive.
Now that “Marcela” was dead, there was even less chance anyone could give him a definite answer.
Maybe this isn’t so bad, he thought.
He had always been an unusually individualistic Dragon Fae, and now he had effectively committed the sin of killing his own kin. Even if his conscience was clear, a faint sense of loss suddenly appeared inside him.
Even if his life ended in illness and pain, it had already been legendary enough.
“No,” Myss suddenly said. “You can still let me experiment on you.”
Tass and Salaar: “?”
Myss took a deep breath. “Isn’t Kendrick really good at switching bodies?”
“You and that thing can barely be considered one entity. Your situation barely qualifies. Anyway, that thing’s spirit has been annihilated. I want to try it on you.”
Although he couldn’t switch consciousness as freely as Kendrick did, Myss was still confident he could practice using Tass.
Cracking body-switching was one of his ultimate goals, and Myss had never forgotten it for even a moment.
Tass: “…?!”
Even without facial features, the lump of flesh managed to display sufficient terror. He twisted his body toward Salaar, but Salaar remained silent.
After a long while, Salaar finally said, “Even if that divine body has no memories, controlling it would still let you see your own condition more clearly.”
“You’re serious?” Tass said in shock. “That thing is still going to need magic in the future…”
“Gentry happens to be here. He can help you think of a solution, just like you said before,” Salaar said. “The biggest problem is that you’ll have to bear those scars. They must be extremely painful.”
He raised his eyes toward the black wounds at the top of the “dandelion.”
Tass fell silent.
Continue adventuring while sick until the final moment, then meet a heroic death… Or bear those horrifying wounds and support that body of unknown origin.
After a moment, he sighed. “If I control this body, will the Dragon Faes fare better?”
“I’m not sure,” Salaar said honestly. “But their lives definitely won’t be worse than being ‘controlled by an unconscious divine body.’”
“…Forget it.” Tass said, “A price is a price. She paid the price for killing. Now it’s my turn.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Myss.”
Myss nodded happily and extended both hands.
Imitating Kendrick’s divine fluctuations, he tried his best to squeeze Tass’s consciousness into the empty body.
Truthfully, the sensation was stranger than he had expected. It felt a little like squeezing a bean out of its pod. The bean called Tass flew out from that dying lump of flesh and stumbled into the enormous divine body.
Salaar quietly watched Myss. The smile on his face faded considerably, and his eyes became unreadable.
Suddenly, the “dandelion” gave a very human shudder. Black mist once again surged from those wounds, gradually taking the form of Dragon Fae Tass.
“Fuck,” Tass cursed through gritted teeth.
Salaar hurriedly asked, “What’s wrong?”
Tass hugged his arms around himself, his wings still pitch-black. “This divine body is abnormally sensitive to all kinds of magic. To put it in human terms, it gets sick very easily.”
“If the invading magic isn’t strong enough, it slowly digests it using its own power. But if the magic infecting it is especially dangerous, it can’t heal, and black rot appears.”
At that point, Tass paused.
“If it really was injured by someone and thrown here, then we, and even itself, are nothing more than canaries lowered into a mine.”
Myss turned toward Salaar. “?”
“He means we weren’t wrong. It really was being used as a living alarm. If one day large numbers of Dragon Fae turn black or go extinct, that means…”
Salaar glanced silently at Myss.
“It means some sufficiently powerful god has descended into the world.”
Tass nodded. “So I was infected by some kind of extremely powerful divine power.”
Then he fell into thought. “Could it really be Kalen? But the Lord of Shadows doesn’t sound like He’s in very good condition…”
“Can you heal yourself now?” Salaar hurriedly changed the subject.
“Yes, but I have to draw on the true body’s power,” Tass said. “Still, the contaminated parts can’t return to normal. At the end of the day, it’s a lesion. Haa.”
After saying that, he shuddered again. “Damn it, these wounds really hurt.”
Truthfully, Myss didn’t care much about any of this.
All he knew was that his experiment had been highly successful. Magic was becoming increasingly obedient to his commands. It meekly submitted before him, letting him knead and reshape it like clay, while he only needed to work harder at learning these new tricks.
“Did you see anything just now?” Salaar suddenly turned toward Myss. “I know you were watching.”
“Mm. She kept thinking about that window.” Myss yawned. “Looking through that window at someone completely impossible to communicate with. Kind of like you, except…”
Salaar’s body stiffened slightly.
“Except I’ve been looking at you too, so we’re even,” Myss declared. “So I won’t stupidly focus on a window like she did. I’ll just remember you directly.”
“That does make some sense.” Salaar smiled.
“All right, let’s head back. I’m tired.” Myss yawned again and stretched enormously.
First constructing the black space, then transplanting Tass’s spirit; very little of his magic remained. All Myss wanted was to collapse and sleep.
“You go back first,” Salaar said. “I’ll try healing it.”
Myss curled his lip. “What a hassle. Fine, I’ll wait for you.”
But he didn’t leave. He simply found an area where the flesh chunks were especially dense and lay straight down on top of them.
Before Salaar could even speak, faint snoring had already begun.
Tass looked toward Salaar. “You really don’t have to force yourself…”
“No. I want to try too,” Salaar said. “Go over there and keep an eye on Myss. I’ll be done soon.”
Myss was terrifyingly powerful. Even now, Tass still had no idea what that black space had been. What possible care could someone that strong need?
Even so, he obediently flew in Myss’s direction, his figure swallowed by the rolling fog.
In an instant, Salaar was the only one left nearby.
The easy smile on Salaar’s face vanished completely. He stepped forward and pressed his right hand against the slick surface of the divine body.
Golden magic surged up. It flowed along the “dandelion’s” long stalk and poured into the several black, hideous wounds.
Accompanied by the hiss of burning flesh, smoke rose from the enormous wounds. They slowly began to heal, though the speed was barely worth mentioning.
Salaar lowered his eyes. His free left hand moved slightly, releasing a murky golden glow.
…Divine power.
The mutated divine power still remained inside his body, far more mature than his current strength. If he wished, he could continue down that path and become a god who froze time.
If he continued exploring a road that belonged only to him, it was impossible to know when he would achieve results.
Myss’s learning speed was astonishing. His chances of victory were even slimmer than they had been three hundred years ago, not to mention V.O.R hiding in the shadows.
And now, an effortless shortcut lay within his reach.
“He still doesn’t know.” Salaar looked down at his lowered left hand. “Myss still doesn’t know what exactly he created.”
That pitch-black space with a floor of sand and stone. Perhaps Myss hadn’t realized it, but Salaar had seen it with exceptional clarity. After all, he had lived on that land for more than three hundred years.
Using power reduced almost to its absolute limit and a human body that hadn’t yet become divine, Myss had summoned his own Divine Realm once again.
Even more terrifyingly, he had successfully used Tass to experiment with body-switching magic. If, only if, that immature Divine Realm could connect with the true Divine Realm inside the seal…
The footsteps of the Night Scourge were already approaching.
Salaar closed his eyes.
He knew he should take the shortcut and freeze Myss’s time here. He would become the Archdemon’s jailer and prevent the apocalypse that loomed on the horizon.
As for V.O.R, no matter how vile it appeared, too much about it remained unknown. It couldn’t compare with the Chaos Archdemon right before him, capable of destroying heaven and earth.
Besides, just as Salaar had always believed, humanity would find its own way to respond.
Act now. You know this is the best judgment you can make right now. End everything with your own hands while that person has absolutely no defenses.
Today, bring this absurd journey to an end. Lay down your mission.
…But no matter what he did, he couldn’t raise his left hand.
Bang!
Salaar slammed his right fist into the malformed divine body.
Not long ago, when faced with the troublesome “Marcela,” Myss had overturned the fork in fate. He used brand-new magic to preserve the Dragon Fae species and restored Salaar’s magic without hesitation.
Barely a single day had passed. Now it was Salaar’s turn to stand at the crossroads of fate. He had just killed a heart that had never finished growing, making its owner hesitate before death for a brief moment.
Now his own heart pounded wildly, making him hesitate before the “optimal solution.”
Salaar couldn’t help remembering those happy red eyes.
Whenever they looked at him, they were always shining, filled with absolute pride and with an affection that even Myss himself had never recognized.
“Salaar, are you still not done?” Myss’s drowsy voice drifted through the fog. “If it’s not serious, just leave it. Be careful your body doesn’t start having… problems… again…”
The filthy gold gradually became clear. The surging divine power fractured and dispersed, transforming into powerful but ordinary healing magic.
It poured much more violently into the wounds of the divine body. In an instant, more than half of those hideous injuries healed.
At that moment, the Hero of the human world completely abandoned the immature authority within him.
“I can’t stop here. I’ll become his stronger… enemy, not a shackle.” Salaar whispered to the dead nameless god. “Even if I have to pay the price for this heart too.”
“Let the two of us trade the costs before the apocalypse arrives.”
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