Chapter 983 – 983. The Lion and the Four Dragons (4)
Anies’s strength has already been unleashed due to the fierce battle.
The golden lion’s guardian spirit, which had raised her combat power to its peak and exercised overwhelming physical power, has disappeared.
The time limit that had been maintained while consuming a huge amount of divinity had passed.
However, this did not mean that her divine power had been exhausted to the point that her physical attacks were weakened.
Pow!
Anies’ fist struck Marius in the face.
Her divinity-enhanced fists were as hard and heavy as a mace.
It hurt.
Her jawbone was crushed, her teeth were broken, the inside of her mouth was burst open and her tongue was torn out.
An indescribable physical pain overtook my entire body.
“Kkkk…” .”
Marius laughed.
Even as his face was struck again and again with such forceful blows as to have been hit with a sledgehammer, Marius smiled.
The wounds that accompanied the intense pain were regenerated.
It was not a miracle caused by his divine power.
Marius was already no different from a monster outside of the human frame.
Just as he used powerful moral energy to give substance to the resentments floating in this land, he was also able to manipulate parts of his own body.
As if priests were healing people with divine miracles.
To Marius, the magic and necromancy were no different from miracles of divinity.
“No use.”
Pow!
“How many times…”
Pow!
“Even if you say they hit and beat you…”
Pow!
“You can’t kill me… !”
As a strong god, he consumed a huge amount of divinity, so Anies’s fist had no divinity left.
It was no different from her defeat.
He did not pour all his divinity into a strong god to deal with the evil dragon.
However, the amount was too insufficient to purify this powerful evil.
The soul and death energy that invaded Marius’ body, and the enormous karma he accumulated while slaughtering countless humans, are a burning flame, and the divine power is like a stream of water that extinguishes the corrupted flame.
Water and fire have the worst compatibility as their correlation, and divine power is overwhelmingly advantageous, but this time, the case is different.
Marius’s karma is absolutely not at a level that one individual can handle.
If I had to express it, it would be an understatement to say that it is a huge forest fire that covers the entire world.
There is no way that it can be extinguished by just a small stream of water.
What if all of his original divine power was used to purify his soul?
There is no way that the current Anies, who has consumed more than half of his divine power through the River God, can bear the karma of Marius, who slaughtered and devastated tens of millions of lives.
“Kkkk…” ! Haha! It’s my victory! “Followers of the damn goddess!”
Marius laughed maniacally, even as his face was torn open and torn as he was repeatedly beaten by Anies.
As long as he himself dies, this host of ghosts will never disappear.
Time was on Marius’ side.
But still.
Pow!
“Whoa…” !”
No Es did not stop his fists.
“Who says I will personally destroy you?”
I grinned and thrust my fist into his face once again, confident of victory.
“My role is. I just dragged you out of the fucking sky. So that you don’t run amok like a crazy bastard.”
In the first place, Anies’ real purpose was to bring down the dead dragon that had flown into the sky back to the ground.
Anies, who has fulfilled his role, beats Marius incessantly like this, which is nothing more than a means to keep him here.
Until the goddess’ agent comes to destroy this evil.
Anies smiled, as if countering the laughter of a crazy necromancer.
And finally, the successor to the goddess’s representative, who had inherited the will of Anies, landed on the floor.
Spreading wide white wings of divinity, protecting and saving people with angelic feathers imbued with high quality divinity.
The representative of the goddess, reminiscent of a holy angel, slowly walked towards Marius.
“No way…”
Marius’ face, which had been smiling maniacally, hardened.
“Looking at your face, it looks like you’ve realized it, right?”
“…”
“You’re screwed now.”
It’s like a death sentence.
The words of Anies, who had unilaterally hit her in the face, pierced her ears.
But Marius just kept a blank expression and did not respond to her words.
It was true that Anies’ mocking death sentence was not heard.
Marius’ blank gaze was focused on only one place.
The sight of Eleanor walking slowly, spreading her pure white wings of divinity.
It looked so beautiful and divine that even Marius himself muttered without realizing it.
“B-star…”
Yes.
The appearance is so beautiful and sacred that one wonders if Goddess Vesta has appeared in this world.
Marius stared blankly at the slowly approaching figure and came to his senses belatedly.
“Don’t…”
I barely let it out in a strained voice.
“Do not come.”
There was an emotion of ‘fear’ in his voice as he spoke while instinctively pulling back.
Dangerous.
That is physiologically unreasonable.
‘Evil’, which had already assimilated with fraud and had become the essence of its composing being, instinctively rejected that dazzling divinity.
It was the first fear Marius felt.
A fear I had never felt, not even when I was accused of being a heretic and subjected to unreasonable treatment in a temple, or even when I was left rotting in a dungeon filled with the corpses of the villagers I was imprisoned with.
He had no choice but to fear the divine power that sought to destroy him, to transform and purify him.
“Do not come!”
That’s why he screamed at the top of his lungs and tried to pull his body back, but he couldn’t escape Anies’s grip on his collar.
“… Sorry.”
[… Sorry.]
Marius was shocked.
It wasn’t because of the apology that came from Eleanor’s voice.
This is because, separate from the voice heard in person, I felt the presence of a voice speaking in a completely different way.
It was not a conversation that involved speaking and hearing voices through the mouth and ears.
A voice that resonates with your soul, as if speaking directly to your soul.
For some reason, the voice is so warm and kind that it almost makes you melt.
“I’m really sorry.”
[I’m really sorry.]
It resonates with Marius’ soul.
“Stop…”
“Because I was so pathetic and stupid.”
[Because I was so pathetic and stupid.]
“Stop…”
No matter how many times I told him to stop, to stop, he wouldn’t stop.
As for Eleanor, no. The goddess who was present in her body also repeated her apology several times.
“That’s why I made you sad.”
[So I made you sad.]
“Stop. Please…”
“I am so sorry.”
[I am so sorry.]
Finally, as if the broken necromancer’s mind was liberated, she let out her anger.
“Don’t apologize now!”
They massacred countless people.
He stole their souls and ravaged the dead, enjoying their screams of pain.
The countless evil deeds and karma accumulated in that soul were now filled with great malice that was helping to destroy this world.
But, if that’s the case, why on earth?
“Why… “I’m apologizing.”
I asked the question with all the hatred and anger that remained in my heart.
His words and actions, expressing his desire to tear her to death at any moment by shooting her with his eyes, were extremely profane for a believer who had her goddess in front of him.
Ironically, Anies did not punish Marius.
The act of beating him with all the force and divinity just a moment ago had stopped.
As for why it was like that, Anies couldn’t explain it himself.
Only because she felt that the goddess she served did not want it.
So Anies just let those profane looks and words directed at her goddess remain.
“Why?”
Marius asked again.
Why are you apologizing to yourself? Why are you gently embracing your broken, torn, and corrupted soul with such warm words?
“Why are you showing that kindness now…”
“…”
[…]
“Why is it only visible to me… ! At that time, I… ! How long have I been looking for you… !”
No. In fact, until now, Marius was still searching for the existence of the goddess.
Before becoming a necromancer, he prayed again and again, hoping for salvation from the absurd reality that had befallen him and his villagers.
And after becoming a necromancer, he continued to commit evil deeds and hoped that the presence of the goddess would actually appear to judge him.
Although his actions and methods varied greatly before and after, Marius’s purpose was always the same.
Proving the existence of the goddess.
If there really is a goddess, go ahead and judge me.
Make them pay for their constant evil deeds.
It was appealing to this continent and the entire world.
So, if the goddess really proved her existence to judge her, she wanted to tell the goddess who was blaming and cursing her for committing so many evil deeds.
‘You are wrong.’
‘You are not a goddess or anything.’
‘What kind of goddess are you who turned a blind eye to the misfortunes of humans, neglected them, and allowed the world to become like this?’
She wanted to deny its existence, criticize it, ridicule it.
This was the same as the gamble of a lifetime that Marius set as his goal by selling his soul to the Queen of Death called Medea.
And that gamble.
“Why… Shit.”
It was a complete failure.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
I didn’t want to show that expression, that emotion, or that attitude.
I had to be angry and curse myself for making the world like this.
Marius’s goal is achieved by denying and ridiculing the goddess, who must see her hands and feet shaking in incompetence and helplessness.
But why does Goddess Vesta, instead of showing emotions of anger, contempt, and disgust, show feelings of pity and regret?
She simply could not understand with her own common sense.
“I’m really sorry.”
[I’m really sorry.]
He only uttered words of apology.
She said the goddess did not say anything else.
“It was wrong.”
Marius finally spoke to Eleanor and to the goddess Vesta, as if he had no choice.
“Your apology shouldn’t have been directed at me.”
“…”
[…]
It is an insult to the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been trampled and suffered miserable deaths due to his necromancy and evil deeds.
It is ridiculous and contradictory that the person pointing this out is Marius himself, who carried out the evil deed.
But in a way, it made the most sense.
In Marius’s mind, their screams and the scene of the dungeon littered with cold corpses always remained as hallucinations and visions.
The goddess’s apology should have been directed to her past self, who had aimed to become a faithful priest, and to the villagers who were accused of being heretics and starving to death in the dungeon.
That is why Marius truly hated the goddess Vesta, who had acknowledged and apologized to him for her incompetence and helplessness.
He definitely had to say this.
“You idiot.”
“…”
[…]
Eleanor closed her eyes gently.
Vesta, who temporarily became a strong god in her soul and body, accepted the sad voice of the evil person criticizing her as it was.
“You’re not a goddess or anything.”
Her contempt, disgust, and hatred became a dagger that stuck into her heart.
This is the result of trying to benefit the world by forcibly bestowing divine grace on the underworld, but failing to overlook human greed and selfishness.
Goddess Vesta was so foolish that she decided to bear the consequences of this horrendous failure.
Marius’ body gradually became stained with pure white light and began to blur.
The karma he accumulated inside him, accumulated while slaughtering countless people.
The deep morale was purified as it came into contact with the divinity of Vesta, who was indirectly manifested as the strong god of Eleanor.
“Who would let someone like you do whatever they want with my soul and heart?”
Marius could not accept this ending.
At least to Goddess Vesta, she could never tolerate being destroyed by the goddess in front of her whom she hated so much.
That is why the necromancer prayed to the Queen of the Dead who saved him.
[You are my goddess. Please take everything from me. And win your ‘love’.]
That was the final wish of Marius, who chose to annihilate himself.
[I will. My only believer.]
Malice began to consume believers.
