Ultimate Gacha System: Reborn As A Mob in My Favorite Game

Chapter 127: The Difference Between A Man And A God [II]

The sound wasn’t a regular pew.

Valeria had compressed her raw elemental wind magic into two dense spinning bullets of pure wind pressure.

The wind bullets crossed the arena instantly.

Ryoki, completely focused on Klaus and secure in his own divine superiority, didn’t anticipate the offensive capability of the tiny spirit sitting on the mortal’s shoulder.

CRACK! CRACK!

The compressed wind bullets slammed directly into Ryoki’s right shoulder and left kneecap.

The impact didn’t pierce his divine silver armor since the metal was forged from centuries of hoarded mana but the force behind the shots was identical to being hit by a speeding carriage.

"Augh!"

Ryoki let out a startled grunt as his right arm was violently thrown backward with his rapier swinging wide and leaving his center exposed.

His left knee buckled under the pressure, forcing the elegant tyrant to stumble awkwardly in the sand.

His pristine silver boot dragged through the dirt, completely destroying his flawless posture.

"Nice shot," Klaus grunted, not wasting a single millisecond of the opening.

He charged forward.

Klaus closed the distance in two massive strides, his combat boots kicking up plumes of yellow dust.

He swung his massive glowing white broadsword in a brutal horizontal arc aimed directly at Ryoki’s ribs.

Ryoki barely managed to recover.

The god twisted his slender frame, bringing his rapier up in a desperate reverse-grip block to catch the heavy blow.

CLANG!

The impact rang out like a cracked church bell.

The Second King was pushed back forcefully.

His silver boots carved deep ugly trenches into the yellow sand as he skidded backward, struggling to absorb the raw physical output of Klaus’s body.

’Is this because I’m not at full power ... is that why he can match me?’ Ryoki thought.

"Insolent, filthy parasites!" Ryoki snarled.

His face contorted in fury.

The mock-politeness vanished... The detached elegant smile was gone as well as his divine pride was deeply wounded.

A mortal and a tiny ghost were actively pushing him back in his own realm?!

Ryoki stopped skidding.

He drove his back foot into the sand to anchor himself.

When he looked up, the luminescent white glow in his eyes wasn’t arrogant anymore...

It was quite murderous.

He didn’t float backward this time nor did he play the part of the untouchable fencer giving a lesson to a novice.

He lunged instead.

Ryoki crossed the distance faster than Klaus’s eyes could track and it wasn’t through raw speed... he used a spatial fold, bypassing the sand entirely.

Ryoki appeared directly inside Klaus’s guard with his rapier moving as a continuous blur of silver light.

Klaus brought the broadsword up, but the weapon was too large and too heavy for close-quarters parrying.

Ryoki exploited the weapon’s massive size perfectly.

The god batted the flat of Klaus’s blade aside with the flick of his wrist and unleashed a terrifying flurry of strikes.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Klaus was forced into a frantic retreat.

He channeled his Frostblood Aura, forming thick plates of jagged blue ice over his forearms to catch the blows his sword couldn’t reach.

Ryoki’s rapier shattered the ice like cheap glass.

The god’s swordplay was suffocating.

Every thrust aimed for a vital organ... and every slash was designed to sever a tendon.

Ryoki wasn’t just swinging too... he was weaving spells into his blade work.

"Soul Rend!" Ryoki shouted.

He whipped his rapier in a wide arc, unleashing three massive, crescent-shaped blades of gray necrotic energy.

The projectiles screamed through the air, tracking Klaus’s movements.

Klaus ducked under the first crescent, feeling the necrotic chill singe the hair on the back of his neck.

He deflected the second with the flat of his broadsword with the impact sending a painful vibration straight up his arms, numbing his fingers.

The third crescent clipped his right thigh.

It cut cleanly through his trousers.

The living tissue instantly died, turning a sickly ash-gray.

Klaus gritted his teeth, forcing Rapid Cellular Mend to activate.

He burned a massive chunk of his internal stamina to force his cells to replicate, pushing the dead flesh out and knitting the muscle back together in real-time.

Steam poured off his leg.

However Klaus didn’t have time to catch his breath as Ryoki was already on him.

The god launched a devastating kick.

BAM!

His silver boot slammed squarely into the center of Klaus’s chest.

The impact lifted Klaus entirely off his feet, sending him flying backward through the air.

He crashed hard into the yellow sand, tumbling over his shoulder.

Valeria clung to his shirt, cursing loudly as they rolled.

"Fuckity fuck fuck!"

Klaus dug his fingers into the dirt and forced himself up to one knee.

He spat a mouthful of blood onto the sand.

Ryoki was dismantling him... The god was faster, his technique was centuries older, and his magic was lethal.

’Well maybe I shouldn’t be too confident in defeating someone who defeated the Death God alongside the hero...’ Klaus thought but regardless he would try.

"You rely entirely on brute force and a crude healing factor," Ryoki mocked, walking slowly toward him.

The god raised his empty left hand ss six glowing gray spears of concentrated soul mana materialized in the air around him, glowing with deadly intent. "Take away your durability, and you are nothing."

Ryoki flicked his wrist as the six spears shot forward like ballista shells.

Klaus didn’t dodge.

He knew he couldn’t outrun them all.

He roared, gripping his broadsword with both hands, and channeled his wind magic directly into the blade.

He swung the massive weapon in a full, 360-degree rotation, creating a tornado of white mana and yellow sand.

Four of the spears hit the vortex and shattered, dissolving into harmless gray sparks.

The fifth spear punched through the wind and pierced Klaus’s left shoulder, burying itself deep into the muscle.

The sixth spear grazed his ribs.

’Fuck...’

Klaus choked on a gasp of pain.

The necrotic energy immediately began eating away at his shoulder joint.

His left arm went entirely numb and he dropped to both knees, the heavy broadsword resting on the sand to keep him propped up.

Rapid Cellular Mend flared again.

The heat in his veins was agonizing and his stamina was tanking rapidly.

He was burning too much energy just to stay alive.

Ryoki casually strolled through the settling dust of the tornado.

The god didn’t have a single scratch on him as his armor was pristine.

"Is this the limit of the anomaly?" Ryoki sneered, standing ten feet away. "I expected a better fight before I hollowed you out."

Klaus looked up. His dark eyes locked onto the god.

The pain in his shoulder was blinding, but his mind was crystal clear.

Ryoki was getting arrogant again... He was stepping into range without his guard up...

Klaus didn’t stand up this time. He stayed on his knees, looking defeated.

"Valeria," Klaus whispered with his voice barely audible over the hot wind.

"On it," the tiny sniper replied from his collar.

Ryoki took one more step forward, raising his rapier for the executioner’s strike.

Klaus moved.

He didn’t swing the broadsword, instead he let go of the hilt entirely.

He lunged forward from his knees, driving his right shoulder hard into the sand, and kicked his back leg up in a brutal sweep aimed directly at Ryoki’s ankles.

Ryoki scoffed, easily hopping over the low sweep.

But Klaus hadn’t aimed to hit him... He aimed to force the god into the air.

As Ryoki left the ground, Valeria popped up from Klaus’s back.

She leveled her phantom-finger guns directly at the airborne god’s chest.

BANG! BANG!

Two compressed wind bullets slammed squarely into the center of Ryoki’s silver breastplate.

The impact didn’t pierce the armor, but it ruined the god’s airborne balance.

Ryoki grunted with his body twisting awkwardly in mid-air and Klaus didn’t wait for him to land.

He pushed off the sand, rising to his feet in a single motion.

He channeled his Frostblood Aura directly into his right fist, encasing his knuckles in a thick gauntlet of blue ice.

He twisted his hips and delivered a devastating full-body right hook directly into Ryoki’s exposed ribs as the god fell.

CRUNCH.

The sound of the silver armor buckling was sharp and immensely satisfying.

Ryoki was launched sideways.

The god hit the sand hard, tumbling ungracefully across the dirt.

He rolled three times before finally digging his gauntleted hand into the earth to stop his momentum.

Klaus stood there with his chest heaving as his ice gauntlet began to break apart.

"Haah... Haah... a good hit in."

Ryoki slowly pushed himself up from the dirt.

He looked down at his pristine silver armor as there was a visible ugly dent in the side of his breastplate.

The god froze.

The silence in the arena stretched out.

When Ryoki finally looked back up at Klaus... His flawless face was twisted in hatred.

The luminescent white glow in his eyes began to bleed into a dark sickly gray.

"You dare," Ryoki whispered. "You dare lay your filthy, mortal hands on my flesh... You break my armor... You infect my realm!"

He reached down and grabbed the hilt of his rapier with both hands.

He raised the blade high above his head with the white mana turning a deep pitch-black.

"I am done playing with my food," Ryoki snarled.

He drove the rapier directly downward, burying the blade deep into the yellow sand of the arena floor.

’I am only currently able to use about 10% of my original power.’ He thought, this fragment was ten percent of his whole self .

"Domain..." Ryoki commanded.

The words didn’t just echo as they struck Klaus like a hammer to the chest.

"[Stagnant Eternity]."

The world snapped.

There was no explosion of light... There was no roaring shockwave...

The fundamental laws of physics simply ceased to function under their normal parameters.

The thick layer of yellow sand covering the massive killing floor instantaneously melted.

It didn’t burn but rather it fused together.

The coarse grit rapidly transformed into a perfectly smooth mirror of black obsidian glass.

The reflection was absolute, stretching out across the entire fifty-yard radius of the arena.

The ruined stone bleachers surrounding them stopped crumbling.

The dust hanging in the hot air froze perfectly in place, suspended mid-float like insects trapped in amber.

Klaus felt the heavy pressure instantly drop onto his shoulders.

It felt like walking into a deep-sea trench.

Ambient mana in the air locked up as the very concept of time felt sluggish.

"My domain," Ryoki’s voice echoed.

It didn’t come from his mouth... It came from every single direction at once, bouncing infinitely off the black glass floor.

"The fundamental rule of this isolated space is absolute stasis. Progression is outlawed... Evolution is forbidden and change is a capital crime."

Klaus felt it immediately.

The white-hot, comforting heat of his Rapid Cellular Mend instantly died in his veins.

The passive skill was violently deactivated by the overarching rules of the domain.

The deep puncture wound in his left shoulder, which had been slowly knitting together, violently split back open.

The gray necrotic skin sloughed off again.

A fresh wave of dark blood and gray mist leaked heavily down his arm, splashing onto the pristine black glass beneath his boots.

He couldn’t heal...

"You cannot mend," Ryoki stated.

The god was looking down at Klaus’s reflection in the glass with his face twisted in a cruel sadistic smile. "You cannot buff your body... You cannot rely on your vitality... Every single wound you take in this space is absolute and every drop of blood you spill is permanent."

Klaus gritted his teeth.

A cold knot of genuine dread formed in the pit of his stomach.

He reached down with his fingers wrapping around the hilt of his heavy Soul Broadsword, lifting it from the glass.

He didn’t panic.

Panic got you killed in every scenario... and even if he died, he wanted to kill this bastard.

He adjusted his grip, ignoring the burning agony in his shoulder.

If he couldn’t heal, he just couldn’t get hit.

Klaus channeled his wind magic, fighting against the heavy suppression of the domain, and launched himself forward.

He skated across the black obsidian glass, closing the distance in a heartbeat.

Klaus then swung the broadsword low, aiming directly for Ryoki’s knees to cripple his mobility.

’I can’t even use the System in the trial... so I can’t spin gachas.’ He thought, in all that was happening as of recent, he hadn’t even spun the gacha wheel once!

Ryoki simply stepped downward.

The Second King sank directly into the solid black glass of the floor and he merged with his own reflection perfectly, dropping into the two-dimensional plane of the mirror as if stepping into a pool of dark water.

Klaus’s heavy broadsword cleaved empty air.

Before Klaus could even halt his forward momentum, Ryoki stepped out of the glass directly behind him.

The god rose from his reflection entirely silently, completely bypassing the physical space.

SLASH!

The silver rapier cut cleanly across the back of Klaus’s left thigh.

Klaus didn’t just feel the blade cut his skin.

He felt a sickening tug deep inside his chest cavity.

[WARNING!]

[You have suffered a Soul Severing strike.]

[Agility permanently decreased by 5.]

Klaus grunted loudly.

His left leg buckled instantly. It wasn’t just physical damage... a literal chunk of his output had been physically erased from his existence.

He dropped to one knee on the black glass.

The gray mist leaked steadily from his hamstring and Ryoki was already gone.

He sank back into the reflection.

He appeared ten feet to Klaus’s right, rising from the mirror like a silver ghost.

SLASH!

The rapier grazed Klaus’s right bicep.

[WARNING!]

[You have suffered a Soul Severing strike.]

[Strength permanently decreased by 5.]

Klaus roared in raw frustration.

He spun wildly, swinging the massive white broadsword in a desperate horizontal arc designed to clear the space around him.

The heavy blade hummed, tearing the stagnant air.

Ryoki sank into the glass before the blade could connect.

"You are swinging at shadows, anomaly," Ryoki’s voice mocked from everywhere at once.

The god appeared directly in front of Klaus.

SLASH!

A cut across the ribs.

[WARNING: Vitality permanently decreased by 5.]

Klaus stumbled backward.

His vision swam.

The physical toll was immense, but the psychological terror of watching his raw stats... the very numbers that kept him alive permanently tick downward was suffocating.

He was bleeding gray mist from four different wounds.

He was getting slower... His broadsword felt heavier in his hands with every lost point of Strength...

Ryoki wasn’t aiming for lethal blows in one go like a god would.

He was playing with his food.

"I told you," Ryoki whispered, appearing on Klaus’s left flank. "You are just a brawler swinging a club... Take away your healing, take away your stats, and you are nothing."

Ryoki lunged, aiming for Klaus’s left knee.

"Get away from him!" Valeria screamed.

The tiny sniper on Klaus’s shoulder aimed her finger guns at the silver blur.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

She unloaded a rapid barrage of compressed wind bullets.

The projectiles slammed into the black glass where Ryoki was standing, cracking the pristine surface of the mirror, but the god was already gone.

Ryoki materialized twenty feet away.

He looked down at the cracked glass, then looked up at the tiny, glowing red spirit standing on the mortal’s shoulder.

The god’s eyes narrowed.

The spirit was a nuisance. She was tracking his movements faster than the mortal could...

Ryoki decided to eliminate the variable entirely.

The god stepped backward into the glass.

Valeria tracked his movement, her finger guns panning wildly.

"Where did he go? Boss, I lost him!"

Klaus’s combat instincts screamed.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as the air pressure shifted directly above him.

Klaus looked straight up.

Ryoki hadn’t stepped out of the floor. He had used the reflection of the glass to fold space, appearing in the stagnant air directly above Klaus’s head.

The god was falling downward with his rapier pointed perfectly, flawlessly at Valeria’s tiny physical form.

A strike from that blade wouldn’t just sever her stats.

She was a soul.

It would permanently erase her from existence.

There was no time to pull her away.

Klaus was too slow with his Agility crippled and there was no time to raise the heavy broadsword to parry the falling god.

Klaus reacted.

He violently twisted his entire torso to the right, throwing his own body directly into the trajectory of the descending blade.

SHHHHK!

The sound was sickening.

Ryoki’s silver rapier punched cleanly, brutally down through Klaus’s left shoulder.

It tore through the heavy muscle of his trapezius, sheared past his collarbone, and erupted entirely out the bottom of his armpit.

The bloody glowing tip of the blade stopped mere inches from Valeria’s terrified face.

Klaus took the strike entirely.

He pinned the god’s weapon inside his own flesh.

The pain was absolute.

It was a blinding white-hot supernova of agony that detonated at the base of his skull.

[CRITICAL WARNING: Major Soul Severing!]

[Strength permanently decreased by 15.]

[Vitality permanently decreased by 10.]

[Soul Integrity Compromised]

His vision went completely white and his left arm went entirely dead, dropping uselessly to his side, paralyzed by the severed nerves.

The gray necrotic mist poured heavily from the massive entry and exit wounds, dissolving his life force directly into the stagnant air.

Ryoki landed lightly on his feet on the black glass, holding the hilt of the rapier that was currently skewering the mortal.

The god smiled, his flawless face inches from Klaus’s chest.

"How remarkably pathetic," Ryoki whispered, twisting the blade slowly inside Klaus’s shoulder to inflict maximum agony. "Sacrificing your own existence to protect a dead thing. It changes nothing ss you are finished."

Klaus was bleeding out.

His left arm was useless and hewas pinned by an immortal god in a domain where he couldn’t heal a single scratch.

But Ryoki was wrong... It changed everything...

He had Ryoki anchored at zero-distance.

Klaus dropped his massive Soul Broadsword.

The heavy blade hit the black glass with a dull thud, dissolving back into raw mana.

Ryoki blinked, confused by the surrender.

Klaus didn’t surrender though.

He gritted his teeth, his jaw locking so hard his gums bled.

He forcefully flexed the torn muscles of his left shoulder and chest, using his own shattered collarbone and torn flesh to physically clamp down on the silver blade stuck inside him.

Ryoki tried to pull the rapier out to step back into the mirror.

The blade didn’t budge. It was locked in bone.

"What?" Ryoki muttered, his eyes widening.

Klaus raised his uninjured right hand.

He reached out and grabbed the front of Ryoki’s pristine silver breastplate with his fingers digging into the metal collar.

Klaus pulled the god forcefully forward, and simultaneously launched his own upper body downward.

He didn’t use magic... He didn’t use a sword... He used the only weapon he had left...

Klaus delivered a brutal full-force headbutt directly into the exact center of Ryoki’s flawless face.

CRACK!