I'll kill you after I finish this game!

"The sacrifice of a child and a family brings lasting peace... Only by sacrificing the small family can the greater good be achieved. This is the path that Deus took. It was clearly a will towards righteousness and redemption, but it brought sorrow in the process of approaching the ideal end."

Skadi reached out and extracted a lot of the negative emotions from the pale green tube, gathering them in her palm. This action only slightly relaxed Misra's furrowed brows before she returned to her original state amidst the massive wave of true words.

Mary inside her remained silent upon hearing this; Deus, who wanted to save the world, brought only pain and sorrow to it.

The starting point and the ultimate goal are selfless, but the process is indeed the most selfish and cruel.

Deus could be described as unjust, but he was not evil.

"...Lord Deus is not without a trace of guilt in his heart, Skadi."

Upon hearing that Skadi had arrived at the core of the Causal Fortress, Olga, who had been working there, rushed over and overheard Skadi's earlier words as soon as she got close.

Olga was relieved that Skadi understood Deus's behavior.

However, Olga couldn't argue with Skadi's lament; what the Yagami Generals were doing wasn't justice, but a noble cause.

Having transformed into demons, they didn't expect others to understand them.

“I know, my master… that man has absolute arrogance in his own sense of justice, and is also arrogant about protecting the world. But emotionally speaking, if Olga and Deus were together and had a child, and then encountered something like this, how would you feel?”

Skadi casually extinguished the negative mantra power in her palm and uttered words that made Olga's face turn red and then pale.

"......"

What was she feeling? It must have been terrible.

Olga, who secretly loves Deus, finds happiness in being with him; if he were to die, it would feel as if the meaning of her own existence would vanish.

Not to mention, if the two of them had a child and then encountered something like Misra, they would die with their eyes wide open in disbelief.

"Even gods and humans have human troubles. In the end, we all possess humanity, not divinity. Since we possess humanity, let us do what humans should do."

Skadi glanced at Olga behind her, whose expression was complicated. Longing was the furthest distance from understanding.

This woman, who can't live without Deus, probably doesn't know that Deus was willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.

Righteousness was always Deus's top priority; no amount of personal affection could touch or surpass it.

Mary, do what you want to do, do what we want to do. I don't want to waste these ten thousand years.

【Um! 】

Mary responded to Skadi with a resounding thud; a thousand years had passed, and she had developed an overwhelming number of emotions about the world.

She wants to do what she truly desires, and so does Skadi.

"Buzz!"

The golden light illuminated Skadi's snow-silver hair, and a holy golden halo of mantra power materialized behind her, a manifestation of the shining power of mantra.

It is neither one of the eight mantra powers, nor is it the power of the Wrath mantra inherited by Skadi.

That was Mary's power manifested through the power of the Word, if one had to give it a name.

That must be the power of the mantra called 'love'.

It possesses no destructive power, and this emotion is also among the true words collected by the Causal Fortress, but it is extremely rare compared to the overall amount.

"What...what kind of mantra is this?! This isn't a mantra! I'm furious!"

Seeing Skadi suddenly unleash the power of her mantra, Olga, bathed in this power, was completely dumbfounded. She didn't understand what this power was. But seeing Skadi, whose appearance had drastically changed, walk towards the central hub of the Causal Fortress, her expression changed, and she subconsciously said:

"Skadi, what are you trying to do? Stop!"

Skadi, whose eye had already turned emerald green, ignored her and vanished from Olga's sight in the blink of an eye with her mysterious footwork.

Olga gritted her teeth, her expression shifting between light and dark. After informing Deus, she led some of the Divine Kingdom's army in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Skadi flashed to the core of the Causal Fortress, arriving in front of a palm-sized mechanical core whose surface emitted eight kinds of faint light.

The small core before us is the central furnace hearth that stores the true power of the mantras collected by the Cause and Effect Fortress, the Eight Extremes Furnace.

Skadi looked at the thing and felt a deep connection with it.

The Eight Extremes Furnace before us is used to store the power of the Soul Transformation Mantra collected over twelve thousand years, serving as the core energy source for the Causality Cannon.

This core already contains the power and soul of the ominous mantra.

Even so, it is still not full.

Its load-bearing capacity is simply terrifyingly unparalleled.

Self, lust, emptiness, worry, laziness, desire, violence, anger... These are the eight major karmic forces represented by the Eight Extremes Furnace.

Looking at the heart of the furnace, Skadi's heterochromatic eyes flashed with determination as she reached out and lightly touched the very center of the Eight Extremes Furnace with her fingertips.

The eight-colored light above the Eight Extremes Furnace began to shine, but Skadi added the power of the mantra representing 'love' to its center, thus unifying its eight karmic forces.

“Boom, boom!!!!”

In an instant, the entire Causal Fortress trembled violently, and the eyes of the humanoid Causal Fortress suddenly shone brightly.

An immense power of mantra began to flow into the central core of the Cause and Effect Fortress, simultaneously extracting the souls harvested by the Divine Kingdom army.

Originally, the arm of the Causal Fortress was completed, but the hand was not yet finished.

However, under the infusion of this immense power of mantra, the hands began to materialize and form out of thin air.

Skadi transformed all her cultivation power, which amounted to a full 500 trillion units of energy, into mantra power and poured it into the Eight Extremes Furnace. At the same time, Mary also transformed her divine power into mantra and integrated it into the Eight Extremes Furnace.

Skadi couldn't bear to see the sacrifices of countless humans, and ultimately couldn't overcome her inner conflict. So she transformed the immense cosmic power she had painstakingly cultivated into the power of mantras and gave it to the core of the Causal Fortress.

As for those souls, Mary took them all and stored them in Skadi's body.

These souls were a real headache for Skadi. Although she was a magnetist, she was not a murderer.

Killing others and seizing their souls to make her own power goes against her nature and true heart.

Therefore, she plans to release those souls at the appropriate time.

"What happened!?"

The other divine generals still atop the Causal Fortress also felt the tremors of the Causal Fortress and the flow of immense mantra power.

Meanwhile, Deus, upon hearing Olga's report that Skadi had gone to the Causality Fortress's central hub, was worried and prepared to go there personally to resolve the matter. However, after hearing his subordinate's report, he silently stopped in his tracks.

"Commander-in-Chief, the mantra energy reserves in the central core of the Causal Fortress have inexplicably begun to surge rapidly. The current mantra energy value has reached the mantra reserves of 80 trillion people, and the central core is approaching its limit."

Listening to the report from the Yin Mage beside him, Deus, who had originally planned to go to the heart of the furnace, walked toward the command room of the Causal Fortress with a very complicated expression, and used the power of mantra to send a message not to attack Skadi.

When Deus arrived at the command center and looked at the screen displaying the energy reserves of the Causality Fortress, his eyes held a mixture of joy and... melancholy.

As for Olga, she has already arrived at the central hub of the Causal Fortress.

Olga remained silent when Deus ordered her not to take action.

Not to mention that Deus stopped her from making a move, she was now unable to do so. Many of the attendants, generals, and great masters around her stopped and did not move, their eyes filled with disbelief and astonishment.

Before Olga, Skadi sat cross-legged in front of the core of the Eight Extremes Furnace, her long hair shimmering with a pale golden light.

However, Skadi was no longer as beautiful and young as she once was; her once fair and pearly skin was now wrinkled and looked like old tree bark.

Skadi poured all the cosmic energy she had absorbed into the Eight Extremes Furnace.

She originally only intended to transmit half of it, but halfway through, she realized that the remaining gap needed more life to fill, so she simply converted the remaining cosmic power into mantras and transmitted it out.

The decline of vitality caused Skadi to age.

The old woman in front of Olga, whose body was withered and dying like a dead tree, was her student.

Skadi fell into a deep silence, like a stone that could be found anywhere on the road, showing no signs of life.

Olga could naturally sense that the core of the Causal Fortress, the Eight Extremes Furnace, was filled; she never expected Skadi to do such a thing.

Despite having gone through great hardship to become a god-human, she still possesses a long lifespan.

Once the demon is vanquished, peace can be found, and one can fully enjoy life outside of battle. But why...?

"...Why..."

Standing before Skadi, who seemed on the verge of death, Olga's eyes were filled with heartache and complex emotions. She never expected that the student before her would do such a thing.

She had subconsciously assumed Skadi was going to sabotage the Great Round, but seeing the current scene, she realized how shallow and narrow-minded she had been.

Skadi had no intention of going back on her promise to Deus.

"...One cannot arbitrarily sacrifice others, but one can decide one's own..."

Skadi felt no emotion towards her decaying and aging body, for it was nothing more than an empty shell.

She did what she wanted to do, giving up the precious power she had painstakingly cultivated, but without any reluctance. At this moment, her heart was filled with a sense of enlightenment gained only after giving up.

Olga was speechless upon hearing Skadi's words.

What is the greater good? This is what's right in front of us.

P.S.: Please vote and recommend!

Egil.jpg

Chapter 53 The Golden Spider, The Narrow World

The central hub of the Causal Fortress, namely the mantra energy storage of the Eight Extremes Furnace, has been filled to near its limit.

But those souls that were harvested disappeared.

Deus roughly understood what was going on. He should be happy that the core energy reserves of the Causal Fortress had been filled to the level of 80 trillion people.

But the news from Olga did not bring him any joy whatsoever.

Skadi is now in a critical condition and Olga has rushed to save her.

The situation was dire; no amount of technological or medical means in the divine realm could save Skadi, whose life had deteriorated to the point of near unconsciousness.

With Deus's permission, Olga used the True Word Energy Reserves stored in the capital to 'stop' Skadi from the brink of death using the Field Stasis Device.

Skadi, whose body was nearly exhausted, was as if time had been frozen, and she was sealed in a recuperation pod in the Causality Fortress.

"...Why, why did this happen? It shouldn't be like this!!"

Olga looked at Skadi, who was frozen in place in the treatment pod, with a pained expression. She never imagined that her student would do such a thing.

Although Olga didn't like Skadi at first, they had developed a mentor-student and friend relationship over the course of a thousand years.

Olga's proudest student, who had such a bright future, has now become a withered corpse, like a dead tree.