Chapter 139
[Mephistopheles – Phase 3]
[HP: 1,439,294/4,444,444]
“I see. I can’t feel them. Not Baalzeebub, Belphegor, or Asmodeus.”
Mephisto swept back his white hair and smiled bitterly.
“You were the one who erased them all! Should I thank you for getting rid of my competitors, or what?”
In the war among the demons to seize Yggdrasil, Mephistopheles was the only one who survived, pathetically enough.
How many ages had he wasted gathering strength since the ‘Primordial Annihilation’?
The will of evil wandering the world gathered together again and became dust, and the dust became a lizard wandering through the shadows.
Then the lizard grew into a snake, then an eagle, and finally, after thousands of years, its will reached humanity.
It was an unimaginably long time compared to the ten years it took Yggdrasil to grow.
“Yes. They were hasty. They ruined thousands of years of endurance because they couldn’t wait for the final ten. But I! I do not make mistakes.”
Bubbles began boiling in the open hole through his torso, and his body started to regenerate.
Nearly a million HP made his body itself resemble an aerial city.
Not a walking tank, but a walking city.
The brighter his purple eyes shone, the more violently the mana currents in the atmosphere swirled and gathered in his grasp.
Trees that had failed to put down deep roots snapped with a crack, and boulders the size of houses were tossed away helplessly.
And to overcome this, Name had only four laurels imbued with a mere sixteenfold output enhancement.
-Doesn’t he have way too much HP?
-It’s 500,000 on Normal, but what the hell is thisㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-His defense has to be higher too, right? He feels not ten times but dozens of times stronger.
-Is this where NoName’s run ends?
-A one-try clear was ridiculous anyway.
“No! My big sister isn’t that weak!”
The silver cat shouted at the viewers.
Can none of them really feel it?
Mephistopheles was not the only one gathering strength.
And as if to prove that fact, Name’s golden eyes burned red-hot.
“Humans killing one another is only natural.”
Name had lived through an age of war.
Scenes of hundreds of corpses becoming food for crows and weathering away without leaving even bones behind had not even qualified as unusual sights.
Humans killed humans, humans killed demons, and demons killed humans in turn.
Amid that endless cycle of slaughter, she remembered those who had fallen without ever leaving their names behind.
“But humans are also the ones who save humans.”
Paradoxically, the battlefield was a place filled with goodwill.
A village woman who carried a soldier who had lost his leg to a bombing across mountain ridges, day and night,
A band of mercenaries who burned up their own lives to protect residents from monsters,
And humans and demons who joined forces to protect the children of a village.
That was the kind of battlefield where there was no malice in killing an enemy, but nothing except goodwill in saving a person.
That was how strongly Name believed in the possibility of goodness.
If only she could stop the wars raging across the world for even a single moment, if she could buy everyone just a brief moment to catch their breath, perhaps she could end this age of madness.
That was why she stole the ‘Key to Heaven’ and turned back the army of the Alphenheim Holy Kingdom, then stole the ‘Tears of Agnes’ and nullified the Prahain Empire’s entry into the war.
“Eternal peace and rest for the world? Everyone who spouted such sweet nonsense was nothing but a mad warmonger.”
The common people did not wish for such grandiose causes.
They only hoped that an ordinary, peaceful day would continue just the same tomorrow: working hard in the fields during the day, then gathering to share a chat and laughter over a meal when the time came.
Whether they were human or demon, regardless of their racial identity, the princess had always been the spokesperson for people like them.
“If you want to call someone like me the Demon King, then go ahead and call me that to your heart’s content.”
[5th Circle Cast: Akashic Records]
Five magic circles of different sizes appeared above Name’s head.
They were not five different magic circles.
Molecular formulas comprising polymer compounds were written across each disk in an instant.
In magic, the speed at which information could be recorded could not exceed the caster’s speed of thought.
But an enormous quantity of circuit formulas, far too much for a human brain to contain, was completed in the blink of an eye—enough to make anyone question that self-evident principle.
When the five circles merged into one, the magic circle finally revealed its full grandeur, brightly illuminating everything in the world, down to the tiny insects hiding among the weeds.
The magic circle gradually shrank, eventually becoming no larger than a human head before settling atop Name’s head.
Vwoong-
[Unique Magic – Demon King’s Horn]
What burst through her hair, which held the light of the sun, was a black horn a handspan long.
The ends of the bony structures, which stretched straight out on either side, were pointed and razor-sharp, and they were as sturdy as if they had been part of her skull from the very beginning.
Seeing the horn bloom alongside thick murderous intent, Name raised the corners of her mouth in satisfaction.
“I’ll make sure you can never say something like that anywhere again.”
* * *
Demons were generally more skilled in magic than swordsmanship.
The reason was the horns possessed by their race.
Horns purified demonic energy while also serving the vital function of reading mana currents.
Thus, casting magic for demons was no different from having a calculator installed in their heads, so they were inevitably superior to humans in magical accomplishment.
Moreover, the mana currents in the game world were constant.
In other words, Name was certain that if one could derive the exact environmental coefficient for casting a spell, one could cast magic without much power, like a boat drifting along a current.
Adella’s astonishment proved how incredible it was to cast every spell as the ‘optimal solution.’
“A magic circle is coming out of your horn...! Big sister, weren’t you an angel...?”
The one thousand spears launched at Name were blocked by fierce air pressure, their trajectories all twisted out of shape.
-What the hell is that horn?
-NoName became a demon!!!!!
-what the hell is that demon?
-How can she cast magic without even using her hands? Is this possible?
└ Mana is coming out of her horns ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ
Mephisto’s blows, which would send her to the other side of death if they so much as grazed her, were blocked by Name’s sword strikes time and time again.
When she searched for footage of Mephistopheles’s battles, Name had already realized it.
The reason the final boss’s strategy was impossible for ordinary people.
Mephisto learned every attack the player used, then responded to it and even imitated it.
At a glance, that trait resembled Schadenfreude, but the difference was that it always allowed the first strike.
Therefore, users had to study a different pattern every time or use different magic to overcome it until the boss’s HP fell.
The boss inevitably had weak early-game influence as it grew stronger over time, but its raw stat of four million HP even made up for all those shortcomings.
However, none of this applied to Name.
[4th Circle Cast: Glakis Asta]
[MP: 9400(9520-120)/13500]
The 4th Circle spell was cast while consuming only 120 MP.
A sharply honed niobium spear flew at hypersonic speed and pierced Mephisto’s heart.
The moment she saw Mephisto stagger, Name immediately linked the First Form of her Unique Magic to Adella.
“Let’s go, Adella. Now!”
Compared to the time of Jin Chronicle (Asmodeus), the situation was far easier.
How much had she been restricted in her actions because of a single main penalty?
“I never thought I’d end up killing this many demons in my life...!”
[Unique Magic – Estasha Style, First Form (式) - Adella]
Hundreds of blades ravaged Mephisto’s body as he was caught in the stun effect.
Adella instinctively realized that the attacks she had unleashed were on an entirely different level from before.
The sword felt light, but the power contained within it was anything but.
Two daggers and a longsword scattered through the air, leaving behind a dizzying afterimage.
The two girls completed a 300-hit combo at ever-increasing speed before retreating a considerable distance from the demon.
Name’s horns resonated with a time lag.
[Unique Magic – Estasha Style, First Form (式)]
[Adella – 300-hit Combo]
[Break]
Mephisto’s body began to collapse, like the demon from Jin Chronicle that had lost its form and turned into black slime.
“How dare you resort to cheap tricks...!”
But although Mephisto seemed to endure to the very end,
“Watching an idiot who can’t even recognize his own death talk about the world is truly...”
The mana currents swirled violently. They were churning around the demon so fiercely that the red afterimages of mana had become clearly visible.
It contained energy on an entirely different level from any magic she had cast so far.
[6th Circle Advanced Cast: Hellfire]
“It’s so laughable I could die.”
[Grr... Graaaaaaagh!]
Heat at thirty million degrees Celsius burned the demon down to its very soul.
A temperature twice that of the sun’s core was not something an intelligent life-form could possibly resist.
The skin soaked in blood slid away. The demon escaped the limits of its physical body and returned to the mist it had been at the beginning.
The mist contained stars,
Galaxies,
And finally, the universe.
The mist swelled and swelled, repeating division and creation until it covered the entire sky.
-Is this Phase 3?
-This damage is insane.
-No, it’s not a Phase 3 pattern.
An instant-death skill.
“Already using a self-destruct move...”
Their attacks had already been enough to end the demon’s life.
However, protected by the system and guaranteed to survive once, the demon converted every available stat into energy.
Name quickly slung Adella over her shoulder and kicked off the ground.
[system: Mephistopheles is casting ‘Requiem of Death.’ Immediately move outside a 3 km radius.]
[▶Navigation Assistant – ON]
[▶Minimap – ON]
“What happened to the map size...?”
Name swallowed a groan when she saw the shrunken map.
No matter where she went, she could not get outside the 3 km radius.
-The map is blocked?
-Can’t we break through it like before?
-That was possible because there was an overlapping open world back then, but it seems to have been fixed when the restoration wizard was run.
-If they were going to fix it, they should’ve fixed it properly. What is this?
-Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease
-Teleportation? A portal? Oh, right, this place doesn’t have anything like that.
-Hurry up and come up with some collective intelligence!
-There are so many viewers, so use your heads!
[‘Veixel’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Teacher! The Immortality Curse trait!
One viewer shouted desperately.
It was an absurdly powerful trait that granted five seconds of invincibility.
Fortunately, it was not on cooldown, but there was another problem.
-It only applies to the user, though?
-Agh, seriously, is there really no way? ;;
-Normally it’s a simple pattern where you just run away with your tail between your legs, but this is ridiculously unfair.
-For real, I want to punch someone in the philtrum.
Name closed her eyes and recalled the countless Nightmare clear videos she had studied.
Two minutes from now, a skill with an instant-death effect would fall from above her head.
What came next?
Three seconds after Requiem was cast, the world would be rebuilt, and the combat power tally would begin along with the ending.
‘When does the clear register?’
With her eyes squeezed shut against the violent wind pressure, Adella lay in Name’s arms, unable even to groan.
“When does the story clear register, everyone?!”
-Story clear?
-It should already have cleared, right?
-Yeah, Mephisto’s HP is 0.
-If she were a berserker with an invincibility skill built in, she wouldn’t have to run like this.
The clear had already registered.
But the player had to survive the Requiem until the very end.
Combining those two conditions in her mind, Name’s thoughts raced faster than ever.
She could not count on the trait-sharing bug. According to the update history, it had been cleanly fixed in a hotfix four years ago.
Could she break out of the map? There was no information she had discovered at Mephisto’s final battlefield.
‘There’s exactly one shelter where I can survive...!’
If the clear had registered, that meant the open world had now been incorporated into Waresoft’s database.
If so, she would be able to access the world’s ‘data’ with administrator privileges.
She could not alter traits bound to an entity, but an individual skill might be possible.
[system: Run as administrator]
[Pantomime: Steals one of the target’s skills and uses it.]
[MP Cost: 2000, Cooldown: 80 seconds]
‘What if I expanded what I steal from a skill to the target itself?’
If she could clearly ‘identify’ Adella as an entity, she could somehow transfer her through a skill.
Five hundred sixty lines of skill code unfolded before her eyes.
Despite being an absurdly simple skill that merely duplicated its target, it was covered in auxiliary code to handle every conceivable bug and error.
After rapidly reading through the source code and confirming that adding one line would not cause any particular problems, she began unfolding a new spell.
[Code Change: base World -> %PrivateRoom/NoName%]
[SessionTask failed with error: Network connection lost.]
[system: Broadcast forcibly terminated.]
The Blue Dragon,
The Great Sage of the Black Tower,
And the masterpiece of Tserevis Ostantin, who was also her master’s master.
[7th Circle Advanced Cast: Persona Pyxis (persóna pyxis)]
[Insufficient MP.]
One of Name’s horns shattered, unable to withstand the power compressed to its absolute limit.
[7th Circle Advanced Cast: Persona Pyxis (persóna pyxis)]
[Insufficient MP.]
A box for holding personalities, Persona Pyxis.
[7th Circle Advanced Cast: Persona Pyxis (persóna pyxis)]
[MP is...]
[MP: 0(6795-6795)/15000]