Chapter 125

[Translator - Night]

[Proofreader - Gun]

Chapter 125

"Soul Barrier."

I approached Asura and used Soul Barrier.

Starting from my body, the Soul Barrier gradually expanded, enveloping Asura.

As it did, the white flames clinging to Asura’s body slowly disappeared.

"Huff, huff... I think I can survive now."

As the flames vanished, Asura's body began regenerating.

Once his scorched body had fully healed, Asura slowly rose to his feet.

A giant with three heads and six arms.

He had a single neck but three heads attached to it, and his muscular six arms were much larger than mine.

With long fangs and a fierce, twisted face, he looked just like a monstrous creature.

His upper body was completely bare, but fortunately, his lower half was covered by cloth.

"Thank you. Are you the God of Souls, Kim Jiho?"

One of his six arms extended toward me.

His arm stretched out like rubber.

Was he asking for a handshake?

Asura, whose hand was as big as my entire body, lightly shook my hand.

"Thanks to you, I was able to survive."

"What exactly happened?"

At my question, Asura scratched his head with one of his upper hands.

"That guy... He was way stronger than I expected. I couldn’t break through the Soul Barrier. If I had fully recovered my strength, maybe..."

"But you were acting so confident..."

"Ahem. It was similar to the fight you and Pollux had earlier."

Asura waved his six arms around as he explained.

This guy had a monstrous face unlike anything else in the world, but his demeanor felt oddly naive.

"I dodged most of his attacks and landed plenty of critical hits. But that damn Soul Barrier blocked everything."

Was he talking about how Pollux had overwhelmed me earlier, but I survived thanks to my barrier?

I guess the situation was reversed here.

"Anyway, what kind of low-ranking Olympus god runs around using Soul Barrier with their soul energy? Still, I dealt enough damage to make your job easier. Otherwise, your SP consumption would've been enormous."

I didn’t really feel that way...

His words made me suddenly curious about how much SP I had left.

I opened my status window and saw a chaotic mess of SP consumption logs.

Since every clash of attacks altered the numbers, the log was too long to read.

So, I just checked the final result.

I had 100 million SP remaining.

I started with 475 million and used up 375 million?

That was an insane amount.

A shiver ran down my spine.

If Asura hadn’t held back, I might have completely drained my SP.

And this remaining 100 million included SP that had been restored through the Soul Sword’s conversion, meaning my actual remaining SP could have been even lower.

Wow... That was a close call.

[You have eradicated an opponent of similar rank. The Soul Sword has been slightly enhanced.]

[The current rank of the Soul Sword is S.]

Since I had killed another S-rank god, the sword's rank hadn’t increased.

Well, it would be too convenient if it ranked up every time I killed a god...

"Looking at my SP, I really was in danger."

"Right? Right? I played a big role, didn't I?"

"Well, I also lost a lot because I had to avoid hitting you when you were down."

"Ahem... I apologize for that."

"Pollux was trying to kill you no matter what before he died. Why do you think that was?"

At my question, Asura scratched his head with his upper hand again, looking puzzled.

"I was shocked too. If you hadn’t been there, I would’ve been annihilated."

"But if he really wanted to kill you, why didn't he do it when he had you subdued?"

"As a low-ranking god, killing me—a high-ranking god—would have caused a massive backlash. If he had gone through with it, his SP would have been drained significantly, and he might have been sealed as well."

Hmm, is that so?

When I killed Skuld, I didn’t suffer any penalties like that...

Maybe it’s different for high-ranking gods at the SSS level.

I should be careful if I ever need to take down a high-ranking god.

"From what I saw, you don’t seem to have fully adapted to being a lower-ranked god yet."

"Really? I did reach S-rank, though."

"Then you probably haven’t been at S-rank for long. You still don’t seem to fully control your body's abilities."

Asura stroked his chin with four of his hands.

He looked surprisingly serious when talking like this.

Thinking back to my fight with Pollux, maybe he had a point.

I had been leveling up so rapidly that I hadn’t had time to adjust.

And I hadn't fought many equally matched opponents, so I never had to go all out.

"I owe you my life, so once the seal is released, I’ll help you out."

"Oh, thank you."

"I’d give you a skill too, but my SP is practically empty right now... Once I recover, I’ll reward you."

Oh, a skill too.

Even though he lost to Pollux, he was still a god specializing in combat, so his skills should be useful.

Asura then said,

"Alright, let's go release the seal."

He turned around, and I followed him forward.

A massive purple gate loomed before us.

"Is this the seal?"

"Yes. Countless gods from Earth are imprisoned behind it."

"Is there a way to open it?"

Asura stared at me silently.

What? Why is he looking at me like that?

"I don’t have any SP left."

"I only have 100 million SP left."

"100 million? That’s more than enough!"

Asura got excited upon hearing that I had 100 million SP left.

He stretched out multiple hands and pointed at the purple gate.

"We don’t need to destroy the whole thing. We just need to create an opening."

"Sigh... I’ve already used too much SP..."

"Don’t worry, we’ll pay you back later. We were once the ruling gods of Earth, after all!"

Asura pounded his chest confidently.

His exaggerated movements, filled with bravado, somehow made him seem less reliable.

He was nothing like the Asura I had imagined...

I thought he was a silent god of battle.

Still, we had to break the seal.

But... did I really need to use SP to do it?

"Phoenix, try shooting fire at it."

[You think a normal attack will work on that?]

"Let's at least try. I’ll attack too."

I had Phoenix attack, even though it seemed doubtful.

At the same time, I fired my Thunder God technique.

I also took out Yeoui for the first time in a while, infusing it with sword energy and slashing at the gate.

But all our attacks simply passed through the purple gate and vanished.

"This gate was built to seal gods. Did you really think mere magic would break it?"

"It didn’t even budge, huh. Damn."

No choice, then.

Man, now that fights have reached a divine level, Yeoui feels pretty useless...

[Translator - Night]

[Proofreader - Gun]

I unsummoned Phoenix and put away Yeoui.

Instead, I took out my Soul Sword and approached the gate.

"Soul Energy Emission."

As I infused the Soul Sword with soul energy, pure white flames erupted from it.

As I drew closer to the gate, I realized—this wasn't just a gate.

It was like cutting through an entire world of purple light.

When I slashed through the space in front of me at an angle, a different phenomenon occurred than when I used Yeoui.

[You are cutting through the 'Seal of the Gods.']

[5 million SP will be consumed.]

Following the trajectory of my soul sword, the violet atmosphere turned pure white.

However, after a brief moment, the world was dyed purple once again.

"Keep slashing along the same trajectory in succession,"

Asura advised from behind.

So, I needed to keep cutting the same white space repeatedly?

Alright...

Since one slash consumed 5 million SP, I had 19 attempts left.

For now, I decided to slash five times in a row.

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

I swung my sword along the exact same trajectory.

As a result, the violet energy was unable to seep back into the slashed space.

Instead, the white area gradually expanded.

"Just a little more!"

Geez, Asura sure was eager—probably because it wasn’t his SP being drained...

Still, I had already spent 30 million SP on six slashes.

Since I’d already used this much, I might as well keep going a bit longer.

I decided to invest up to 50 million SP and slashed four more times.

The white space began expanding rapidly.

“Oh, it’s opening...!”

The diagonal white space continued to grow.

Soon, it became large enough for Asura to pass through as well.

Most of the space was still filled with violet energy, but at least an opening had been created.

Hmm, I guess I could stop slashing now.

I deactivated my soul sword and stepped back.

"This should be enough, right?"

"Yes. The gods will be emerging soon."

Just as Asura had said.

"Fortunately, everything went according to plan."

The first to step through the rift I had created was my father, the avatar of Michael.

Behind him, radiant wings of light spread wide.

"Father."

"Thank you, Jiho. Thanks to you, we were able to break the seal."

At the same time, gods began pouring out behind my father.

Angels representing Christianity and deities from Buddhism were the first to emerge.

Following them, more and more gods kept appearing.

Hindu, Taoist, and Japanese gods, as well as others I couldn’t even recognize, continued to emerge.

At first, I tried counting them, but after surpassing one hundred, then two hundred, I simply gave up.

There were just too many.

"Wow… freedom at last!"

"I thought it was over when we were sealed..."

"We must reclaim our followers. And we must exact revenge on Olympus and Asgard."

"Now that we’re out of the seal, SP is flowing back into us. The distortion of our believers’ faith is being restored."

Although their SP had been depleted, the deities were visibly energized.

They all seemed delighted to be regaining their divine power.

Had they reclaimed their faith the moment they were freed?

If so, that was a relief.

As my father observed the gods around him, he approached me.

Unlike the joy of liberation, his expression was quite serious.

"Hmm... something is suspicious."

"Why do you think so?"

"I never expected that we would regain our faith the moment we emerged. If Olympus and Asgard knew this, they would have strengthened the seal’s defenses. But to leave only a low-ranking god in charge… doesn’t that seem odd?"

"Hmm… that’s true."

"The reason Olympus-Asgard can maintain their endless regressions is because they’ve been siphoning our faith. Reversing time on a global scale requires an immense cost. Without the SP they steal from us, it wouldn’t be possible. Yet they left the seal so poorly guarded...?"

The gods trapped in the seal were crucial to maintaining the time loop.

Considering their importance, they should have been under constant guard by high-ranking deities.

Pollux was strong, but he was still just a low-ranking god.

Leaving such an important area under his sole supervision was far too careless.

"We’ve decided to scatter for now."

"Where will you go? Earth?"

"If all these deities descended upon Earth, it would throw the world into chaos. Every god has their own divine realm. Once we regain a bit more power, we’ll have enough strength to return to our domains."

"Won’t Olympus attack again?"

"They might. But as long as we recover our faith and regain SP, we can restore our strength quickly."

"I see. But something about this still bothers me."

I explained Pollux’s use of Hercules' Divine Aura and SP Barrier.

Hearing this, my father’s frown deepened.

"A low-ranking god wielded Hercules’ authority? Hmm... this is troublesome. Asura, what do you think of the power of those skills?"

"They were a real pain. That low-ranking god was putting out strength equivalent to a high-tier middle god. I got completely wrecked by him, and your son had to save me."

"So, those two abilities allow them to punch above their weight class..."

That meant an S-rank could fight at SS-rank power, and an SS-rank could rival an SSS-rank.

Wouldn’t that mean that most gods would be helpless against anyone wielding those two abilities?

Damn it...

"If even a low-ranking god can fight at a mid-tier level..."

"This is a real problem."

The once chaotic and noisy gathering had grown silent.

Everyone was now watching my father, Asura, and me, their expressions grim.

"And Pollux tried to kill Asura."

"Asura? He tried to kill you?"

"Yes."

"But why? They could have just re-sealed you and continued stealing faith… unless they no longer needed to?"

Suddenly, my father’s eyes began glowing.

Had Michael fully descended?

"We must all retreat to our respective divine realms for now. Asura’s attempted assassination is suspicious."

"That sounds like a good plan."

"Understood."

One by one, the deities began vanishing.

Had they recovered enough SP to return to their divine realms?

That was fast...

"Soul God Kim Jiho, I will take my leave as well. Contact me later. You should also hurry and find a safe place."

"Understood."

[Translator - Night]

[Proofreader - Gun]