WebNovels

Chapter 61 - The hand of a holy man is pure.

I managed to deflect his strikes, but he pushed me back with ease. His current physiology was immune to all physical attacks. 

 Such a thing was clear from his lack of strain. 

Even worse, whenever our blades clashed, I felt the pain and took the damage, though without the wounds. 

If I continued like this, my body would collapse purely from the weight of his blade.

It was entirely illogical to think this man was normal. 

I leapt back as he swung once again, then fired off a beam of light that crashed into him. He walked through it expressionless.

"Tale of demons and gods," he said calmly.

Instantly, darkness clung to my skin, tearing it apart as a giant stream of flame and light flew toward me. 

I ducked, but it grazed my chest, burning away my armor. 

I rolled beneath the rest of the beam, but before I could recover his blade came arcing down. 

I rolled left, spun sharply, and forced my momentum into a rapid succession of dodges.

I crashed into him, forcing my will into the infons around me, directly affecting the essence of nature itself. 

The difference between being, nature, and body was simple: being was the existence that defined him, nature was the law shaping that existence, and body was the catalyst through which it operated. 

Affecting his nature was the furthest extent of my capabilities when ordinary attacks failed.

He felt the effects of my struggle and stumbled back as I landed on the ground. However, it was not nearly enough. 

An infinite pressure pressed down, lamenting the entire world. The weight was divine. 

It also felt as if countless blades pierced my skin with every breath.

Then his fist struck my stomach, caving it inward and forcing blood from my mouth as I was hurled backward. 

Slowly, I began healing myself while deflecting stray beams of light that whipped chaotically around me.

I landed on the sand, bent back just as his sword thrust forward. 

In that fleeting instant, I rewrote the laws of nature, the very defining factors of cause and effect. 

I forced his next moment to create an unnatural result. As he swung down, his blade pierced his own heart.

His eyes widened. I kicked his left knee, then struck him across the face. 

He spun with the impact but immediately caught my hand and flung me above him. 

I snapped my fingers, causing pillars of sand to erupt upward, but a moment later everything froze.

Time, space, causality, fate, nothing moved except my own mind. 

Yet he seemed unaffected.

In fact, he could even extend his hands toward me. 

Then I caught sight of someone who should most certainly be dead.

Saint Satire walked up behind him with an intrigued smile.

"Really, I didn't think she'd come along."

He brought me crashing to the ground and wrapped me in chains of light. "She's going to be slaughtered. Must you do this?"

Satire shrugged, her tone both pitiful and playful. "Becoming a martyr was painful. That damn girl erased me from all of time. It took effort to come back."

Thomas sighed, glancing at his sword. "Griffin brought you back so you could maintain the barrier, not to get yourself killed again."

She chuckled, placing a hand on his shoulder with a teasing expression. 

"Unlike you, my death was at least somewhat planned. After all, I'm now completely immune to erasure."

If Griffin could make martyrs at will, then was all this planned? 

Did Zehliah return as well? No, his information had been completely deleted. There was no way. 

Unless Griffin had already ascended past the twelfth Wall. To even bring back a life, one would need to surpass it.

It was more likely he had help, but even then, to restore someone erased from time itself was a feat only possible for someone who had reached at least the eleventh wall. 

Moreover, from the way Satire carried herself, it was almost as if she had grown stronger. 

I felt far more energy from her than I ever did when she last visited the capital.

Satire had already been formidable, but this was unthinkable.

Because I could not move, I was certain they assumed I could not think or act either. 

Luckily, I had already begun stimulating my brain with infons to infinitely accelerate my perception.

Even so, there was no way I could devise a method to move within such a short timeframe. 

The only option left was to abandon my physical body completely. 

I would not be able to return to it for some time, but it was possible.

Spiritual lifeforms such as souls and fairies were immune to time and space, existing beyond those concepts. 

The price was that they could not interact with such laws without a vessel. 

Meanwhile, those who operated within reality could affect them freely.

Astral projection itself was difficult, even though spiritrons naturally ignored space and time. 

Its stability was highly dependent on the persona being embodied.

Because my will was empowered by my near-absolute control over infons, I refined it repeatedly, erasing time and space from myself. 

I began setting my plan into motion, rewriting myself again and again until I drifted free of my body.

As time and space tried to bind me once more, I broke free by separating my soul and spreading my will equally throughout every particle. 

Then, after recombining them, I was able to move.

Looking down, I saw the two, and to my surprise, they neither saw nor sensed me. 

This meant I was no longer a soul, but likely something far more abstract.

Concepts themselves were born of infons, mana, and spiritrons. 

Time and space were laws, and their concepts were the manner through which they interacted with the world. 

Yet the Great Spirits of Time and Space, and those who held them as their Mythical Beasts, existed above those concepts entirely.

The same applied to all other fundamental laws. 

Rosen likely had some connection to the Great Spirit of Law, while I myself carried only a faint link to the Great Spirit of Nature. 

My true Mythical Beast was a byproduct of three intertwined forces: nature, life, and charity.

I considered summoning it, yet doubted it would contribute much to this battle. 

What mattered now was completing my mission. I would honor that Nicole girl's wish and end them both with my strongest attack.

Stretching out my hands, I shattered the space around us. 

They glanced about in confusion as my body unraveled into pure information, a beacon of raw infons. 

I could reconstruct myself later. Satire attempted to leap forward in time, but her effort failed. 

I had already sealed all three of us within a barrier forged entirely from infons.

Then I unleashed the same spell Rosen had once used to end his own life. 

The difference was that this time, I left the prison before the annihilation struck. 

Before my eyes, space and time collapsed into absolute nullity.

If pure force could not erase her from existence, then I would erase her very information.

Zero time passed between activation and effect. They both vanished from this world once again.

The barrier between physicality and spirituality fell away without warning, and I drifted slowly to the sand below. 

My will bled from me with every heartbeat. 

The creation of a spiritual body, coupled with the erasure of infons, had consumed nearly everything I had left.

Killing only two of them was not enough, but I could not demand more. If I died here, so be it.

With the last reserves of mana, I rebuilt my physical body, reknitting it exactly as it had been before. 

Layer by layer, I applied spiritrons and wove infons into its structure until darkness claimed me.

When I finally awoke, the rough sand pressed against my skin. 

Pain screamed through my stomach as I stared down at trembling hands.

"There it is, you bastards," I muttered, the words spilling like an oath. "The first step to my revenge."

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