RATH 107
TL: Eevee

12. It’s not over til it’s over (5)

#9 Their story: Risen de Roa’s story.

“Mhmmf…”

I felt myself come back to the world of the living.

It’s cold. I can feel the wind blowing from somewhere.

Where is this place?

-What do you mean, where is this place. It’s the top of a flagpole. And right now, you’re a flag that can’t even flap in the wind.

Ahh. That’s right.

I bullshat that Lady Aris had fallen for Nerkia and I got caught by a very angry Lady Aris, got beaten up and fainted, right?

But still, Lady Aris.

Did you have to tie me to a flagpole!

“First sin. Betraying the academy.”

Just then, I heard Reedan’s voice nearby.

“Hm…”

When I turned my head around, what I saw was were countless red, blue green and brown lights, and even some yellow and white lights added in the mix as well.

“Elementals.”

That meant that the summoners that used Elemental Roar had all come inside the castle.

“And the sinner they’re talking about.”

There could only be one person. Nerkia.

“Heh heh, serves you right, Nerkia.”

You dare have a whopping five girlfriends?

There is no way this Risen de Roa would ever allow that, now is there?

Just for you, I only picked out the names of some very important people as your so-called lovers?

Even though the idea that they would be is absolutely ludicrous, but there’s no way they’d believe you even if you denied it here?

And the trial that began…

Ended completely outside my expectations.

“If those are my sins… if being the lover of those girls is a sin! Then the price for that sin, I will pay it, and gladly!”

-Kahh. Hey, contractor. Do you have the gift of prophecy or something? I don’t have an ability like that. By any chance, you haven’t contracted some other god without telling me, have you?

I heard Loki’s amazed comments.

I heard him, but I did not understand.

Nerkia, what manner of bullshit was he spouting now.

All I did was name the most famous beauties of the Four Academies that I knew.

Moreover I even pulled in the daughter of a margrave, that wasn’t even attending any of the academies yet.

And it was all true?

All five of those girls were his lovers?

“Lies…”

Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies.Lies

Yeah, it had to be a lie.

There was no way that could be true.

He already had five lovers.

But all of them were from good families, all of them were talented in their own right… and they were all beautiful as well?

You… are you some legendary hero or something?

Are you a harem novel protagonist!

-Loki.
-Wiing? What’s up, contractor?

“Come.”

I watched Nerkia brazenly declare war against a swordsmaster and a hundred elementalists.

…How unsightly.

-You said you made that bamboo spear to kill that god that wouldn’t die or whatever, right?
-Hm? It’s not a bamboo spear because it’s not made out of bamboo… but yeah, more or less.
-I can totally understand your feelings as to why you did it… so I want to kill that disgusting asshole too.
-Ahaa~ but wouldn’t it be a touch too impossible? I know for a fact because we had heroes in our world as well, and right now if you stuck him next to one of the folk we called heroes, he’d fit right in?

Really, now?

-I heard that a lot of heroes died because they angered the gods?
-They did. There were a lot of them that were children of gods themselves, and there were also those that were worshipped like a god. We had a lot of them mistake themselves as gods themselves.
-Well, then… doesn’t that asshole deserve divine punishment as well, then?
-Haa? But you’re human, aren’t you? You’re not asking me for help by any chance, right?

Indeed, this is my anger.

Not Loki’s anger, but the anger of myself who had never had a lover in my entire life.

-In that case… I reject my humanity, Loki!
-Urk? My power?!

I drew upon Loki’s power under my own will.

Descension, a technique of accepting a god into yourself to borrow their strength.

This anger would not sate itself with just that.

In that case, I simply need to become a god myself to unleash divine wrath.

A way for humans to become gods.

Although she wasn’t exactly human, we had an elven teacher show us how, didn’t we?

As a student of Yugrasia.

I simply had to use the technique we learned from the teachers, Ascension. (化神)

-A, are you mad?
-I am mad! Do I look like I’m sane to you?
-I confess. In all my divine life, I have never, ever seen a madman to surpass you! Kahahahahaha!

Loki had moved on from snickering to outright hysterical laughter, and he said to me happily.

-Alright then, do it! Use my power as much as you desire, and unleash your wrath!

A dominating power began to flow into me.

Not just Loki’s power, but ones even beyond him!

-What is this?
-I’m not all that strong among the gods. But… my children are strong enough to defeat the strongest gods of them all. This is the power of my children. Contractor. Can you withstand it?

I remembered hearing Professor Nicerwin’s tales.

Loki’s children,
Vanargand Fenrir.
The World Snake Jörmungandr.
And the Goddess of the Underworld, Hel(1).

Each one of them were all monsters on the same level as an archdevil.

Did Loki’s Ascension mean I had to be able to take on their power as well?

In that case.

-Of course I can!

I will take in that power. The aftermath?

I felt like if I could execute that motherfucker Nerkia then I could even make a contract with the silver devil.

And so, after a moment that felt like an eternity.

-You madlad, you actually accepted it.

I, became a god.

“Shadows.”

I cut the ropes that bound me with shadows.

Even after the ropes that stopped me from plummeting through the air was cut, I did not fall to the ground.

I could use the shadows as a medium to draw on the power of Loki’s children.

“Very well, I will kill you.”
“Risen…”

My eyes met Nerkia’s.

“Nerkia!”

The moment they did, my thread of reason snapped.

“I’ll kill you, you little bastard!”
“Show me your anger that you’ve held in for so long!”

I transformed my shadow into Fenrir and swallowed the Spirit King’s lightning bolts.

“Die. Die. Die. Die!”

And as Fenrir’s shadow was destroyed by lightning, numerous small wolves that were Fenrir’s clones were summoned around it.

As over ten wolves suddenly jumped onto Nerkia, he easily defended against them with his elementals.

“Death God’s Scythe.”

A higher rank scythe than Loki’s.

I drew on Hel’s(2) power to borrow Hel’s(3) scythe that reaped away souls with every swing.

“Kghh.”

Nerkia, too, realised that the power imbued in the scythe was much greater than what he normally had to deal with, so he chose not to block, but dodged instead.

‘His intuition’s still as sharp as ever.’

The person that was even harder to fool than Karen, with whom I’d spent a long time together even before our Yugrasia days, was Nerkia.

His intuition which let him avoid anything that could be to his detriment made him like a ghost with how slippery he was.

And that intuition had saved him yet again.

“But… if it is unavoidable, now that’s another story!”

Suddenly, the world was dyed in darkness.

“Are you going to kill us all?!”

A giant shadow that even blotted out the setting sun.

I unleashed the power of Jörmungandr, who could wrap itself around the world.

“Hup!”
“Hang on?!”

The giant snake’s tail struck Nerkia, and even sent Lady Aris flying through the air.

“You attacked your allies!”

Lady Aris did a half-flip in the air and landed on her feet as she glared at me, but it couldn’t be helped.

Sometimes you needed to make small sacrifices for the greater good!

“Die, Nerkia!”

I tried to grab Nerkia by Jörmungandr’s tail, but Nerkia was avoiding it by a sliver every time.

But, Jörmungandr’s abilities didn’t lie solely in its size.

“Wait hold up, are you really trying to kill me? Why are you using poison! This is against the rules!”

A lethal toxin that even once killed Thor, the god of thunder, the god that Hirto, one of the first years had contracted.

This was Jörmungandr’s true power!

“O power of water, purify me!”
“Did you think you could detoxify that with just an elemental?”

He tried to cleanse the toxic smog that was spat out near the tail with a water elemental, but there was no way he would be able to purify it perfectly.

It was a poison that even killed gods.

And he was trying to purify it with an elemental?

-If that’s possible, he deserves the title of hero. Actually, no. Do you call them Braves in this world?

And Nerkia.

“Haaaaaaaa!”
“Are you actually a hero, you little shit?!”

He went and purified a god-killing poison with the power of an elemental!

“Everything’s possible for an elemental!”
“Piss off! Maybe if it was a Spirit King of Water, but how the hell did you purify that poison with a highest-rank elemental!”

Damn it, what the hell. This totally felt like I’d become a villain fighting against a hero.

How admirable, villains!

Had you been fighting against these embodiments of injustice against the world the entire time?

“Then, I will chew you up physically!”

I switched my shadow from Jörmungandr to Fenrir.

Its size was only slightly smaller than Jörmungandr’s.

“Swallow him up, Fenrir!”

A power that swallowed heaven and earth, and even the king of the gods!

“Kgh!”
“Yes!”

Perhaps he had used too much strength into purifying Jörmungandr’s poison, or he had been unable to adjust to the sudden switch to Fenrir.

Nerkia could not respond to the giant wolf’s fangs and was swallowed up.

“Finally, I finally killed Nerkia with my own hands!”

-Not yet. With heroes, it’s never over until it’s over!

Was what Loki said, but I didn’t think Nerkia would ever be able to get out of that place where not even the king of the gods was able to break out of.

Was what I had thought.

“He came out?”

A giant light almost erased the shadows entirely as a giant hole opened up in Fenrir’s upper and lower jaws, and Nerkia jumped out of the hole.

-Ah dammit, my eldest… you’ve opened up another hole in your mouth again… Why the heck does everyone keep opening up holes in my boy’s jaws?(4)

…It seemed that he’d had holes punched through him previously.

“Come, owner of the god-killing branch.”

But there was no doubt that Nerkia’s stamina had bottomed out.

The number of elementals he had wielded, which wouldn’t have lost to a hundred elementalists, had dwindled to just ten.

Most notable was the fact that there were no highest-rank elementals left, his strongest units aside from the Spirit King, as if they had run out of mana.

All that was left was the Spirit King, two high-rank elementals, and the rest were all mid- and low-rank elementals.

“Pierce, Mystletainn.”
“Roar, lightning spear!”

As if he had no strength to either block or dodge Mystletainn, Nerkia poured everything he had left into one final attack.

“He’s going to block me.”

Let’s think rationally.

I had to go with the assumption that nothing would go as I wanted it to.

Nerkia had managed to purify a god-killing poison, and survived the jaws of the wolf that swallowed the king of the gods.

In that case, he could certainly defend against the spear Mystletainn that could even kill immortals.

“It was my fault for trying to kill him with powers that killed gods.”

Nerkia was human.

I made the incorrect decision because I had become a god that had obtained Loki’s power.

Nerkia was human. I just had to kill him as a human would.

“Loki’s shoes, Scythe of the Fool.”

I took out my weapons that I was familiar with.

The moment the smoke created by the collision of Mystletainn and the lightning spear dissipated, that was my moment.

I simply had to slit Nerkia’s throat at a speed not even he could react to.

Even if he had the abilities of a hero, he would still die if his head was cut off!

“Now… then… kughh?”

The smoke created by the explosion between Mystletainn and the lightning spear began to clear away.

But even so, I could not run forward to kill Nerkia.

All I could do was clutch my chest, and stand firm with my knees that threatened to fall to the ground at any moment.

“Kgh…”
“Damn it all…”

Groans burst out from the lips of one hundred elementalists that had been watching my fight with Nerkia.

Some of them had fallen onto their knees, and there were many others whose hands were only barely keeping them off the ground, too.

Because Nerkia was…

Using a devastatingly cruel attack on us!

“Your wounds are awful! Are you really alright, oppa?”

We saw Nerkia being supported up by a beautiful girl whose eyes were moist with tears.

“Kghh…”
“O, oppa?”

I could hear the sounds of people collapsing around me.

I, too, wanted to cough up blood and fall.

“You don’t need to fight for us anymore. Because it’s our problem.”

Because I could also see Arucia’s vice-president bite down on her lower lip as she glared at me.

The very image of a filthy couple.

“Ugh…”

But I was not confident I could continue watching the radiant light they were emitting.

“Oppa, since oppa fought for us… I will fight too.”

“Don’t, don’t do it…”

They were saying lines that had me cringing, but for some reason, I felt like I was getting weaker.

“Me too… for you… I will fight.”

“Don’t say it…”

I even came close to dropping my weapon, my hand was shaking so hard.

“Now, oppa…”
“Nerkia…”

“N, no…”

But very mercilessly, those two went and said it.

“”I- no, we will protect you!””

The words to sink a hundred summoners, no, a hundred solos.