"This scale of Heretic Gods already makes the local spiritual veins unable to support them?"
Seeing the five manifested disobedient beings before him, Ryuga pondered slightly.
Spiritual veins included earth veins and water veins, which could be seen as the planet's blood vessels—the so-called Greater Source magic power.
The descent of gods involved gathering Greater Source magic power and condensing it into divine power.
When Heretic Gods returned to mythology, their divine power would dissipate into heaven and earth, equivalent to giving back.
So overall, if not considering entropy increase, Heretic Gods' descent didn't consume additional energy from reality and wouldn't bring extra changes to the world.
However, even if macro calculations showed no energy consumption, in micro processes, the carrying capacity of earth's spiritual veins had to be considered.
Currently, the earth's spiritual veins' carrying capacity had clearly reached its limit, unable to support Dionysus's manifestation, forcing him to descend far away and travel here.
"The Last King's awakening also seems to cause volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. Over time, it could even lead to world's end. It seems these phenomena are all caused by over-extraction of earth's essence."
Divine beings of this level, though usually only showing nation-destroying performance.
But that was basically the result of being constrained by energy scale.
Though divine power could be extracted almost infinitely from planetary spiritual veins, its refinement speed was limited, thus limiting Authority power.
If this limitation could be removed, as long as energy supply was sufficient, nation-destroying level gods could easily advance to Tier 4 continental destruction level, possibly even directly升级 to Tier 5 planet-busting tier.
Great force creates miracles. If one simply wanted to increase strength, they only needed to raise their magic power limit.
For Campiones, this was extremely difficult to achieve. No matter how much they trained, the total curse power within a Campione's body could hardly show significant improvement.
For Ryuga, however, this wasn't the case.
Not only because his cultivation speed far exceeded that of Campiones, but also because he possessed considerable intelligence beforehand.
In this world, there existed certain equipment that could rapidly strengthen gods or Campiones.
"Guinevere's Grail of Magic, perhaps worth studying when there's time."
Ryuga thought to himself.
Just as the Holy Grail in the TYPE-MOON world could enhance Servants to divine level, the Grail of Magic in the Campione world contained at least dozens of times the curse power of ordinary Campiones. Even the most common Campione possessing this divine tool could gain world-ending power.
Though the current Ryuga had no urgent need to increase his strength, such key divine tools still had research value.
Besides the massive curse power, its method of manifesting pseudo-gods was quite helpful for Ryuga's research.
While Guinevere was thinking about the new king, Ryuga was also thinking about Guinevere.
Though neither side had good intentions, this was, in a sense, mutual pursuit.
"Hmph! Facing us gods with such a contemptuous attitude—the son of fools truly deserves death!"
Seeing Ryuga completely ignore him, Vulcan, god of flames and forging, grew furious.
Since becoming one of Rome's twelve chief gods, no one had dared slight him so!
Magma erupted beneath his feet, making the earth tremble. Massive hammers emerged from the magma flames, and the rising heat distorted the air.
Simultaneously, the sun god's chariot, Jupiter's divine shield, and a series of divine artifacts personally forged by Vulcan also manifested.
Though he had few Authorities, the divine artifacts he forged were no less effective than Authorities.
"Using my rival's name to deceive this king—let such sins be settled here!"
Silver-Armed God King Nuada slightly raised his hand, crafting the flowing wind at his fingertips into an incomparably sharp storm greatsword, pointing its tip at Ryuga.
Unlike Doni's usage, the true source of the [Tearing Silver Hand] Authority was actually one of Celtic mythology's four great treasures.
—The Sword of Victory, Claiomh Solais.
"Claiomh" originally meant sword, "Solais" originally meant light.
Therefore, this Authority's essence was the ability to transform all things in the world into magic swords, changing various forms until leading to victory—the Sword of Light.
Compared to the blade that severed everything that Doni commonly used, the power before them was the magic sword's true form.
Simultaneously, dark clouds and thunder gathered above God King Nuada's head—manifestation of sky Authority.
The name Nuada itself meant "cloud-maker." Before losing his arm, he was originally a deity who could manipulate weather phenomena.
At this moment, he simultaneously invoked two Authorities, his sharp gaze locked deadly onto Ryuga.
"Dragon's aura—this knight, it seems you are my opponent."
Unlike the other two gods, Siegfried chose Artoria as his opponent.
As a dragon-slaying hero, he keenly judged that she possessed strong dragon attributes.
"Wait a moment—in dragon slaying, I cannot yield to others!"
Before Artoria could respond, Saint George stepped forward, targeting the King of Knights.
Faced with conflict, Siegfried was slightly silent but showed no intention of backing down.
Like hunters eyeing the same prey, the atmosphere between them grew slightly tense.
"Hahaha! What a joyful banquet! Would everyone like to drink some fine wine?"
Seeing the gods' drawn swords, Dionysus seemed completely neutral, producing precious divine wine.
"Let us all drink together! First celebrate the blasphemer's downfall, then compete for victor's glory!"
Seemingly carefree on the surface, with one sentence he made the two dragon-slaying heroes with signs of conflict put aside their fighting spirit.
Rather than internal strife, they should prioritize eliminating the troublemaking Campione.
"That makes sense!"
Saint George thought for two seconds, actively stepped back, and reached for the wine Dionysus offered.
For him as a Christian believer, this wine was equivalent to the Son's blood—drinking it would grant God's protection.
After draining it in one gulp, he drew a crimson spear and pointed its tip at Ryuga's shadow.
"Lord! Protect me! Jesus Christ, protect me! My great enemy stands before me!"
After shouting in devout tones, he activated his Authority.
"Unbelieving heretic, Demon Lord who tramples the world!"
"Thou—art dragon!"
Ryuga's previous provocation was very effective—overly effective, even.
It not only caused five Heretic Gods to descend simultaneously but even made gods of different faiths who would likely fight each other set aside their differences and unite.
Under Dionysus's subtle guidance, the five Heretic Gods seemed to compete, showing no restraint in applying full force against the Campione before them.
To them, only Ryuga's corpse could wash away his previous insults.
Thus, without waiting for Ryuga's response, the five Heretic Gods immediately erupted with their strongest offensive.
"Five against two—advantage is mine!"
Dionysus confidently assisted from behind, providing enhancements to several Heretic Gods while preparing his final trump card, determined to slay the son of fools here.
Heaven and earth shook, the sea churned, magma flowed upward...
Scenes resembling world destruction appeared before Erica's eyes.
Then—
All five Heretic Gods died.
In less than a minute, the Heretic Gods who had seemed capable of overturning heaven and earth, capable of destroying the world, completely returned to mythology.
Watching the divine corpses dissipate into light particles, both Erica and Artoria remained stunned.
"I didn't even get a chance to act..."
As a retainer, Artoria murmured in a daze.
Facing five divine-level opponents, she had thought her strengthened self could help Master by at least holding off one or two Heretic Gods.
She never expected the battle before her to have no room for her intervention.
An orange-red light sword flashed briefly—almost instantly, the three most aggressive Heretic Gods—Nuada, Siegfried, and Saint George—immediately fell, declaring defeat.
No matter how strong they were or how powerful their Authorities, if they couldn't pass the first judgment—couldn't deal with god-speed Golden Sword—they had no qualification to enter the battlefield.
In terms of direct combat power, these three warriors were the most powerful Steel Hero Gods, but faced with mechanism killing, their valor was meaningless.
Seeing their side instantly lose three gods, Dionysus immediately transformed into his father Zeus's lightning while releasing his prepared trump card [Divine Madness].
By making all curse power go berserk, he interrupted the Sword of Victory technique's judgment.
Vulcan on the other side, after using the Aegis shield to dodge the first round of judgment, wisely chose to join forces with Dionysus, attempting to counter Ryuga with divine artifacts' power.
When both sides couldn't use Authorities and curse power, even if divine artifacts couldn't use divine power, they could still display basic property advantages.
If they had a war god skilled in close combat, this strategy might have allowed survival for a few more seconds.
Unfortunately, all war gods were defeated in the first round, with no possibility of battle.
More importantly, Ryuga hadn't lost his Authorities due to this.
"Good technique, but useless."
Ryuga, who had preemptively used Golden Sword to create barriers, was completely unaffected by Dionysus's Authority.
As long as it was power related to gods, Golden Sword could restrain it.
Not knowing which gods would descend, being caught off guard was understandable. Knowing Doni's related gods in advance, how could Ryuga possibly fall for it?
Thus, like a hot knife through butter, Golden Sword severed both Dionysus's and Vulcan's Authorities and curse power together.
At this time, he also didn't overlook Dionysus's mythological immortality and resurrection, successfully camping his respawn point and completely slaying him.
This battle lasted nearly a minute total, with thirty seconds spent camping Dionysus's resurrection.
Without leaving any future troubles, all five Heretic Gods fell here.
After the battle, Doni, who had observed the entire process, was completely bewildered.
The effect of watching from the sidelines seemed little different from when he personally fought.
He couldn't see anything clearly, only feeling Ryuga's overwhelming power.
Was this really human?
Faced with everyone's shock, Ryuga shook his head without feeling anything, explaining:
"If these five Heretic Gods' divine power were concentrated in one person, it might be somewhat troublesome. Spread out like this, they're still too weak."
"..."
Doni didn't want to speak.
This was the first person to complain that Heretic Gods were too weak.
Losing to such an opponent, he suddenly felt it wasn't so unacceptable.
On the contrary, winning would be the strange thing.
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