"The soul…"
Faced with Orsaga's proposed solution, Alison hesitated.
Hand over her soul to a demon and be taken into the Abyss?
No matter how she looked at it, that sounded completely wrong.
It felt like an insult to her intelligence—like she was being tricked into killing herself.
If any other demon had made this suggestion, Alison wouldn't have hesitated to respond with a volley of arrows. But since it was Orsaga, she wavered.
After knowing him for over twenty years, she couldn't claim to fully understand Orsaga's way of thinking.
After all, his mind didn't always function normally. He'd often come up with bizarre and unpredictable ideas. But at the very least, she had some grasp of his personality.
As strange as it sounded, for a demon, Orsaga actually treated his friends quite well.
His demeanor was calm, he behaved politely, and—oddly enough—he was generous and rarely lied.
He didn't seem like a demon at all—more like a completely different species from his kin.
That was exactly why, after confirming that he held no ill will toward the Elven Kingdom, Alison had tacitly allowed him to stay. Partly because of Golarial's influence, but also because Orsaga himself was, frankly, pretty well-behaved.
All he ever did was eat, drink, laze around, and live a carefree life.
As far as Alison was concerned, that had been Orsaga's routine for over two decades—harmless and idle.
If she had known that the diseases Orsaga had quietly spread were now silently infecting more than half the world, who knew how she'd react?
She might very well regret not having killed him while she had the chance.
And if she found out that it was Orsaga who had destroyed the front Line years ago, and that he had even played a role in the fall of Augustus, her feelings would only become more complicated.
Orsaga's good behavior and easygoing nature were always conditional.
He only acted that way with people he considered friends. Toward strangers, he never bothered to restrain his true self.
That twisted side of him was still there—just beneath the surface.
Right now, seeing the hesitation in Alison's eyes, Orsaga understood that she still didn't fully trust him. But he wasn't angry in the slightest.
After all, deciding the fate of loved ones wasn't something easily done.
Smiling casually, he spoke calmly, "No need to give me an answer now. There's still time—take your time and think it over."
Not even the slightest bit of annoyance crossed his face at her suspicion.
To him, this was more than just doing Golarial a favor by offering them a lifeline—it was also a kind of business deal. He was smuggling people en masse; asking for a service fee seemed fair, didn't it?
As for whether they could actually survive in the Abyss—a place where even native demons perished like weeds—that wasn't Orsaga's concern.
He had offered them a chance to live. If they couldn't make something of it and got wiped out, that was their own failure.
He wasn't their babysitter.
Just as he was about to say more, a sudden signal caused his brows to lift. The corners of his mouth curled into a smile.
"Twenty years… and he finally left that damned hideout."
With that thought, he stood up and said to the two nearby elves, "I'm heading out for a bit."
Before they could respond, his figure vanished from the spot, locking onto a distant set of coordinates and teleporting away to an unknown location.
---
Ten minutes later.
Using spatial transmission, he crossed countless kilometers and arrived near his destination.
What met his eyes was a vast, untamed jungle—dense with colossal trees, some towering hundreds of meters high and stretching on for who knows how far. It was a true wilderness, untouched by civilization.
Though he was still some distance from the actual target, it was close enough for him to gather more detailed intel.
So he closed his eyes and activated the virus slumbering within his target's body to scan the surroundings.
"Twelve of them. Only two demigods including the target…"
Within moments, using the pathogens that had latched onto their team, Orsaga easily deduced their strength.
A pleased smile appeared on his face.
In the blink of an eye, his human form was replaced by his true demonic body.
With a flap of his wings, a deafening sonic boom erupted. A white shockwave blasted out, uprooting every plant within a hundred meters. Debris and dust were sent flying in all directions.
It was as if an offensive spell had just gone off.
Using the resulting force as propulsion, Orsaga launched himself forward—moving at speeds hundreds of times faster than sound—straight toward his prey.
---
From atop a mountain peak, the dark god Charass frowned slightly, his senses picking up the approaching noise.
He could feel it—pure, unfiltered malice aimed squarely at him.
Whoever it was, they were coming for him.
He didn't know how this vaguely familiar presence had found him, but he raised his hand and signaled his followers to prepare for battle.
At the same time, he began drawing upon his own divine power, ready to deliver a crushing blow to whoever dared approach alone.
---
Ten seconds later.
A glint of red light appeared on the far horizon. In the blink of an eye, it grew dramatically.
It was at that moment Charass finally saw the attacker's face—and recognized him.
"You bastard… A mere High-Rank Demon dares come at me alone?!"
Though he scoffed, the sheer intensity of Orsaga's energy forced him to abandon all arrogance and brace himself for a serious fight.
As the distance closed, Orsaga's speed increased once again.
Bloodflame erupted across his wings, instantly raising the surrounding temperature to hundreds of thousands of degrees Celsius. He now looked like a fiery meteor streaking across the sky.
From a bird's-eye view, it was easy to see: everywhere he passed turned into a blazing sea of blood-red fire.
Even the empty air behind him gave off a scorched smell, while the forests, rivers, and swamps on the ground were ignited and vaporized—reduced to charred earth and cracked terrain. The violent winds he stirred whipped the flames into storms, spreading the inferno even farther.
Amidst this apocalyptic display, Charass and the other demigod held their ground, but the ten remaining subordinates were visibly stricken with despair.
Even Orsaga's aftershocks could easily wipe them out.
What they didn't know, however, was that this battle had drawn the attention of another being.
The forest's guardian, awoken from its ancient slumber by the destruction, erupted with Demigod-Rank power, intending to strike down the invader who dared desecrate its domain.
Of course, Orsaga felt the guardian's wrath—but he couldn't care less.
His focus remained solely on his true target.
With a burst of speed at hundreds of times the speed of sound, he shot straight at Charass.
And Charass, too, wasn't about to retreat. At the peak of demigod rank, his divine power surged as he prepared for a head-on clash.
But then, at the critical moment, a sharp pain erupted within his body. His power was suddenly disrupted by an unknown interference.
It was the poison and virus that had lain dormant inside him for decades.
Though they hadn't posed a threat before, they had seeped into every corner of his being over time. Now, they didn't need to be fatal—just enough to cause any disruption at this moment was enough to become deadly.
Under the stunned gaze of Charass and his followers, Orsaga crashed into him, brushing off an attack from the other demigod as if it were nothing.
With overwhelming force, he slammed both of them into the earth—driving them hundreds of meters deep underground.
Stone and metal shattered alike. The entire mountain trembled.
The remaining subordinate, stunned but unscathed, rushed to assist his master in a panic.
But Orsaga didn't give him the chance.
Standing atop Charass's battered, momentarily paralyzed body, he chuckled darkly.
"Time Shift—Thirty Thousand Combo!"
Charass's hair stood on end, a chill gripping his soul. He screamed in panic:
"Belmorr! HELP ME!!"
At that moment, across hundreds of thousands of kilometers, another Dark god—Belmorr—sensed the call through the power of their Oath of Alliance.
Without hesitation, Belmorr prepared to rip through space and come to his aid.
But Orsaga paid him no mind.
As the spell activated, he removed himself from the current timeline and then reappeared in the very next instant.
And with him returned tens of thousands of accumulated strikes.
The roar of impact defied description. Dust and shockwaves rocketed tens of thousands of meters into the sky, blanketing the Sky.
Within a fraction of a second, the other demigod and the ten remaining fighters were annihilated.
The mountain—thousands of meters tall—was crushed into a basin under the storm of blows.
The surrounding land cracked open for hundreds of kilometers. Every living creature was launched skyward by the shockwave.
The air filled with debris and ash—an awe-inspiring, apocalyptic spectacle.
When everything finally began to fall, the entire region was overturned. Trees and animals were embedded in the ground like skewers, then buried under falling rubble.
Hovering in midair above a crater thousands of meters deep and tens of kilometers wide, Orsaga raised the crystallized remains of Charass in one hand.
His eyes locked onto the forest's guardian, who stood frozen in shock.
In that moment, something in the guardian's mind clicked—he understood that protecting territory mattered far less than not angering this kind of "guest."
Rubbing his palms together apologetically, he said:
"Ah… terribly sorry. Took the wrong turn and didn't mean to cause a scene! I'll be on my way now!"
And with that—he ran.
---
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, Belmorr had just torn open a spatial rift to come to Charass's aid.
But sensing his ally's death, he silently retracted his foot from the portal, sealed the rift shut, and—without saying a word—ran for his life.
---
[Time Shift]
Effect: Temporarily removes the caster from the current timeline. All attacks made during the isolated phase manifest simultaneously upon re-entry.
The duration and number of actions possible depend on the caster's mana consumption.
A spell created by Orsaga using temporal magic knowledge gleaned from the demigod of Augustus.
____
T/N:
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