Chapter 196 (1/2)

Final Battle (7)

– How?! What illusion is this?!

A scream echoed in the dark as the Administrator looked at me with disbelief in her eyes. She shouted again.

– I have surely shot you out into the Void!

The Void…

It was a realm where even the Administrator would’ve become a lost child if exposed to without the black shield. One would lose their sense of direction and time as soon as they touched the bloody hue.

Such a world was created by determination infested with anger and hostility. She looked as if she couldn’t accept the fact that I returned intact from such a place.

I faced her in return.

The Holy Sword pierced through her blue skin. The crack, starting from the point where the sword had penetrated, began to spread. I wasn’t planning to destroy her entire existence with that attack. My sword had a well-coordinated intention.

– Ahhhhhhh!

The red nucleus was penetrated. I looked at the wriggling of blood-hued energy– the divine power that brainwashed her.

It moved much more ferociously than the Mercadius on Earth. It also indwelled stronger holiness than the ones suppressing magic, war, life, and luck’s fragments. Rather than the energy that contaminated their lost pieces that had no free will and intellect in the first place, more power was consumed for the Administrator who maintained a distinctive ego during the time of eternity.

– Kyaaaargh!

The scream that followed didn’t belong to the Administrator.

I stared at the red divine power struggling in her. Unable to hide its disgust in its eyes as my blade penetrated it, I could tell that it was being tormented. The figure repeatedly melted down and was sculpted again, and not even a single overlapping form was made while doing so. All of its features were unpleasant and appalling.

Terrible despair painted the mental wave.

– No, not when it was almost done… It was almost done!

Plo-plop!

Blood-like divine power flowed out of the hole in the Administrator’s body.

That was the same entity that brainwashed and seized her mind for almost an eternity. It was one of those that wandered around the Void and material world even before the Mercadius species’ arrival– a being in the level of their predecessor.

Fragments left by the “god of the mind.”

They leaked out and disintegrated. I knew what I had to do next.

“I’ll devour it from existence.”

The blood seethed as my body began to suck up the sloshing energy.

The Mercadius on Earth attempted to take control of my body when I tried the same thing, but the one before me, which was being absorbed, didn’t even seem to dare to do so.

That was because my state had grown incomparably to that time.

The soul, which other gods already acknowledged as having entered the state of a half-god, showed no signs of wavering.

– No! Please! I… I can’t! Not like this-!

What I performed next was an absorption technique different from Mana drain. I mobilized all the non-elemental divine power to crush the red energy that came into my body. Meanwhile, the traces left by the god of the mind busied itself with futile attempts to escape.

I leisurely led the way, driving it to a corner and blocking its retreat. I smote down as if to pound the fragile creature and tore it up as if to rip off its flesh with my sharp weapon.

“Do you want to destroy everything? I’ll make your wish come true. If I get rid of you, from your perspective as an observer, this world would just be like as if it has been destroyed!”

The entity wished for a perfect extinction as it couldn’t bear imperfections.

It had the will to bring about the material world’s complete collapse to end its own circumstances of fleeting around as a fragment.

The pieces left by it vainly dissipated in me.

– No, this is not what I wanted. This is not what we want…!

The sentience absorbed into me screamed desperately.

The moment the violently struggling resistance gradually diminished-

With the last eerie scream cried out, the mental wave that was flowing from me finally stopped.

And I…

Boosh!

I felt a powerful divine power rising inside my body, incomparable to what I had absorbed before.

‘What is it? Why does it differ so much?’

It was a different level of force than when I absorbed Mercadius.

And the other crucial difference was…

‘This power, is this the power of the god of the mind?’

If what had been absorbed before had only strengthened the non-elemental divine power, that time it remained in my body with unique properties.

Deciding to take a closer look later, I looked at the Administrator who had finished “purification.”

-…

The look that lingered on her face was completely gone. Looking at her, the memories of the ancestral successors and I simultaneously felt a certain emotion.

To find the most appropriate word, it would be close to guilt.

I opened my lips… And spilled the words I had been putting aside for a long time.

“I’m sorry.”

– …

The time we left her unattended was too long. The successors created the Administrator and made her handle a lot of work alone– for too many years.

Of course, it was for a good reason, but ultimately, there was no denying that it had a negative impact on the System and the Administrator.

While it was the fault of the future generations that sent the successor to the past, it was also the successors’ actions that worsened the situation through generations.

I spoke to the Administrator, simultaneously feeling the guilt and responsibility of the past reincarnates.

“Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

The most fundamental reason why the Administrator was neglected was that the successor continuously reincarnated.

There was a limit to the length of life that the mortal’s soul could endure, and there was a limit to the amount of memory that one could carry.

“Every time that I regressed, at least hundreds of years of a gap was created. It was inevitable.”

In the meantime, of course, the Administrator couldn’t contact the successor at all.

Furthermore, she was restricted from direct contact with the mortals as well. The successor intended to prevent her from reigning over them like a “god,” but as a result, it became a constraint that had no effect.

“It should be considered as rather counterproductive.”

It had led to the very situation that the successors of the previous life feared, after all.

Perhaps the results would’ve differed if it was a mechanical device without emotion, but for the Administrator that bloomed emotions even without a soul, it was too harsh of a job.

Furthermore, I had already tasted the eternal solitude that she had to feel.

The reason why emotions and reason were eventually contaminated when the fragments dropped by the god of the mind approached her might’ve been that it aimed for such a gap.

“Now, there is no need for me to reincarnate again.”

I looked into the Administrator’s eyes.

“I’m going to continue living with this body right now. I won’t overburden you any longer.”

And I would correct many things that had been moving in the wrong direction.

I would return the System to normal.

But before that, I had one more thing to do.