Chapter 376
The word “defeat” was really foreign to Lugia. Could he admit his defeat? No, he couldn’t. He had been living for eternity, but he had never lost. Then would he be able to accept his defeat? It was bullshit that he didn’t need to think about any further. He couldn’t admit the fact in his head, so how would he be able to accept it in his heart? Even if it was possible, his pride as a god wouldn’t allow him to do so. Then couldn’t he at least try to understand? No matter how hard he thought, the answer was the same.
“Arghhhh!” Lugia looked down at the spot where his arm had been and went berserk. The highest-class demonic power spread out from him, shaking the underground space. The power of a god destroyed the chamber.
The furious god’s gaze shifted.
“I know you’re the one and only Irregular… Hehehe. I never expected you to pull off a crazy stunt like uniting divine and demonic powers.” Lugia glanced downward. Bubbles were forming where his left arm had been; a god’s self-recovery ability was far and away better than even a troll’s, but even that ability was useless now. “Don’t get cocky. This is just the beginning.”
“No, this is the end,” Joshua said.
Lugia’s eyes popped open in surprise. Bizarre sounds were coming from down below. When Lugia lowered his head, he saw thin cracks spreading from his wound. It didn’t take long for the cracks to cover Lugia entirely.
“What…?” Lugia mumbled in disbelief.
“I’ll ask now. Why did you do that to me?”
Many questions were actually summed up in Joshua’s one question because he really couldn’t understand. He got the part where he had to regress even though Lugia was just going to kill him since he had to die three times for his soul to be annihilated. However, it didn’t explain why Lugia betrayed Joshua, which was the whole reason why Lugia wished to kill Joshua.
“It’s said that a god can interfere in a human’s destiny,” Joshua continued.
“What nonsense are you talking about all of a sudden?” Lugia snapped back uncomprehendingly.
“A hound that outlived its usefulness is abandoned, and that was Joshua Sanders the human’s life. But it was really weird when I thought about it. The true mastermind and puppeteer of the Fourth Prince Kaiser was Heimdall, but would he have been satisfied with just taking over the Avalon Empire? No, I don’t think so. Under the pretext of revenge, Heimdall tried to manipulate an Imperial Family and had numerous Masters as his subordinates. He even had the Darkness Emperor, one of the three Celestials, as his colleague, so there is no way he would not want the entire continent. In fact, Heimdall must have planned the incident that took place three years ago in the Great Plain of Kraden to instigate the Continental War.”
He now knew why Heimdall had gone through all that trouble to vanish three years ago: making his enemies let their guards down. It was also related to the reason for instigating a civil war within the Avalon Empire. Once the civil war started, the other countries would fight with one another on their own.
Breaking the power dynamic between the three empires would have been the only method to make the two empires start a full-scale war. Joshua dared to assume that the Second Continental War had been started by Kaiser and Heimdall on the day Joshua had died in his previous life because that was the day they had finally taken over the Avalon Empire.
“So it’s strange because I would have served a better purpose in the Continental War. It’s embarrassing to say this myself, but the invincible spearman is very useful. Besides, I was a really obedient hound in my past life, so it doesn’t make any sense for Kaiser and Heimdall to abandon me just because they suddenly became afraid of my power. So I think the actual reason was…” Joshua looked straight into Lugia’s eyes. “...that you interfered in their destinies, Lugia—or rather, the Demon Spirit Lubechern.”
“…Hehehehehe.”
“I’ll ask you again: why did you betray me? Were you that scared of me after everything I’ve gone through?”
Joshua’s question was more about his destiny as Lucifer since everything had started from the Demon Spirit’s evil scheme.
“Let me set one thing straight,” Lugia said.
“What?”
“Yes, a hound that’s outlived its usefulness is abandoned, but you weren’t a useful hound to me in the first place.” Lugia emitted a gloomy light for a moment. “You should have slaughtered those angels, but you freaking forgave them. When those angles bowed and apologized, you should have chopped their heads off and drank their blood. Then you ought to have cut their limbs off and fed them to the wild dogs in the Demon Realm.”
Joshua’s eyes turned cold as he listened to Lugia since Joshua had seen those memories from Gaia, the primordial stone. Watching the first angel falling to the Demon Realm had been shocking, but it had been done by a few angels and they weren’t acting on all angels’ behalf. That was why a belated investigation had been launched to find out the truth. When Lucifer had returned, the Angel Spirit herself apologized—the supreme god had kneeled before a fallen angel.
“I led an army to the Angel Realm to help you, but I ended up being the weird one. Since I pulled out a sword, I felt like I should chop something, but I might have gotten killed... If it hadn’t been the four angels that cast you out, I couldn’t have walked out of there unscathed, hehehe.”
Lucifer had tried to tell the Angel Spirit, who had come forward on all angels’ behalf, that he forgave them. However, at that moment, the four angels who had cast him down out of jealousy of his power, showed up behind the Angel Spirit and stabbed her through the stomach with a sword.
The Demon Spirit had smiled contentedly when he saw Lucifer wobbling from the severity of his wounds; he finally had a justifiable cause to start a war between the Angel and Demon Realms.
“Hehehehe, I remember that day.” Lugia swept his hair up with his remaining arm and bared his teeth with alien mirth. “I had no reason to keep my hound as he was not listening to me. Well, it was easy to fight in the war because you wreaked havoc.”
“…You were planning to use me for a war in the first place, just like Kaiser,” Joshua mumbled.
“Yes, that is your destiny as the best battle ghost in both Angel and Demon Realms.”
“Did you also make me get betrayed in the Human Realm?” Joshua asked.
“How could humans have found Amon’s Marble otherwise?”
“Was that also the reason why… you offered to pull me out of the pit when I first fell into the Demon Realm?”
“You’ve heard about the butterfly effect, right? A small change can cause a cataclysm like how the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can lead to a giant storm. At the time, your power was surely feeble, but I concluded that a being who has both angel and demon blood would be a big help to me in the future. Of course, I was right,” Lugia said, smiling slyly. “Shall I tell you one more interesting fact? I, the one standing here, am not the fragment.”
“…What?”
“Didn’t you already expect that? Using the Tower of Trials, you headed to the Demon Realm and scoured the place, killing so many of my subordinates, but you couldn’t find ‘me’. Isn’t that why you came to the Human Realm again?”
“That means…”
Lugia’s smile deepened. “The Angel Spirit has died. That wretched woman got herself killed after using too much of her power at once. When you were dying, she made you reincarnate as a human and trapped my soul in none other than your fucking spear.”
“You’re not… the fragment?”Joshua muttered. “Then…”
“It’s simple. I’m the real Demon Spirit.”
Joshua’s eyes slowly widened.
“Do you get it now? I lost most of my power and fell into this Human Realm. I’m finally recovering my power, so I won’t go through that same shitty trouble because of you. That is the main reason why I’m trying to kill your soul—but sadly, I don’t have time to explain any further.” Lugia smiled. His body was crumbling more quickly, so he tightened his grip on the red spear.“You know that our fight isn’t over even if I lose this vessel. It takes three deaths to kill a high-dimensional being’s soul completely, so wouldn’t it be odd if a god was killed right away?”
As Lugia was preparing to launch his final attack, Joshua drew up his power and gripped his spear that was tinged with a harmonious mix of both black and white.
“Hmph, you and your cheap tricks again. I’ll show you that my great demonic power can overwhelm any other powers in the world!”
Joshua finally broke his silence: “…I’ll get my weapon back.”
“Oh?” Lugia smirked. “Do you think you can do it? I already killed you once.”
“It won’t happen again,” Joshua bluntly answered. His spear snapped to the ready position. Lugia was going to die anyway even if Joshua left him be, but it didn’t matter now because he felt like he was going to lose it if he didn’t slay Lugia right now.
“Come!” Lugia roared, his energy bursting out. Anything it touched turned to dust. There was only a trace of the ancient ruins now, and it didn’t take long for the ruin to disappear entirely. Even the sturdy ground of the underground space was sinking little by little. It wasn’t an exaggeration to call the power great, but Joshua didn’t care.
Joshua started walking forward.
In his first step, he fixed his eyes on his opponent.
In his second step, he squeezed space.
When he finally took his third step, his footsteps reflected the world.
Lugia froze. The unbothered footsteps made his heart sink. Lugia was very familiar with those footsteps: Lucifer, the most notorious battle ghost in both Angel and Demon Realms, walked as lightly as if he was dancing on clouds, but his every footstep had the power to inspire awe in every living creature.
“How can you do that with a human body…?” Lugia muttered in disbelief.
“…Urgh!” Lugia grunted. The pressure he felt coming off of Joshua was greater than anything he’d ever felt before.
However, Joshua was using the power that belonged to him, not a new kind of power like the one he had created by mixing divine and demonic powers, and even that was enough to put Lugia into this state…
“I definitely copied all your powers—no, I’m above your level, so how…!”
“An imitation can’t beat the real thing. Besides, aren’t you an imitation of an imitation?” Joshua said, crushing the last bit of Lugia’s pride.
“You…son of a bitch…!” Lugia cursed, his blood boiling.
An imitation of an imitation—Joshua was mocking Lugia for being sealed and using the body of a doppelganger, but Lugia couldn’t do anything except get angry even though he knew what Joshua meant.
“You…!” Lugia growled.
Joshua was now right before Lugia.
“Disappear now.” He slowly raised his spear. “You’re just a trashy god who chanced upon an imitation and got ahead of himself.”
Lugia stared, wide-eyed, as Joshua’s spear slowly dropped toward his head.
The spear cut through him with the sound of glass shattering instead of the sound of human flesh parting. The fragments of his body turned into black light particles and scattered beautifully into the air.
Joshua watched every particle, one by one, and thought to himself that even a god could not stop him from changing his future.
1. This phrase is a Korean idiom about how someone shouldn’t give up until they complete what they started, but nowadays, it’s often used to describe the feeling that they feel like they should at least do something since they decided to start it.
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