Seizure of Authority
Who could possibly have imagined it?
Godou and Erica were both thrown into utter confusion by a development neither of them had anticipated.
“I thought there’d be a price for the guilty verdict!”
“I never imagined it would be the worst possible form!”
The stolen avatars totaled five.
Gale, Phoenix, Boar, Goat, Boy.
By the rules of confiscation, these were the ones Il-gyu had arbitrarily taken.
But here, fortune and misfortune split in opposite directions.
“Damn it. Was this a dud?”
“You made a mistake.”
Il-gyu did not know exactly what Godou’s avatars could do.
All he knew for certain was the Boar, the one from which he had received evidence.
So he had simply picked names that looked suitably strong among the avatars and taken them.
But Gale was not a combat-type avatar to begin with.
Goat had usage conditions that could not be satisfied in the present situation.
And Boy’s ability was to grant buffs to others rather than to himself.
“So the only usable ones are the Boar and the Phoenix?”
Someone might ask why he had not simply seized the warrior avatar, which looked strong at a glance.
But that was less a matter of not doing it than of not being able to.
Godou, after all, was in his own way a fragment of a god-slayer, and the instant the seizure of Authority began, he had instinctively protected the warrior avatar.
In the end, Il-gyu had no choice but to take the slightly odd-looking Boy instead.
However—
“This is enough.”
Once an Authority was acquired, its method of use was engraved along with it.
More than that, Il-gyu possessed a level of prana control and talent that could not even be compared to Godou’s.
He had already mastered the knack of handling Authorities by subjugating [Ju-bok-sa-sa], and he seized the split-up avatars in a single sweep.
Then, sneering at Godou’s pitiful use of his avatar, he activated the Boar.
“I thought something was off. An avatar is never some god’s pet, you know? An avatar, an incarnation, is another face of the god itself.”
He had used the Boar avatar, but no gigantic boar appeared like the one Godou summoned.
Instead, Il-gyu’s hair surged upward like a boar’s mane, growing long and luxuriant.
His eyes inverted black and white, becoming the eyes of a beast with reversed pupils.
His teeth likewise sprouted into sharp fangs.
He looked as though he had become a boar-man.
And then—
KWAAAANG!!
“Ghk! This is—?!”
An invisible wave began spreading outward from Il-gyu’s body.
The boar did not merely destroy things with its massive bulk.
Its true power was vibration.
Upon being summoned, it caused an earthquake close to magnitude 3, and by using the force of those vibrations and shockwaves, it became an avatar of destruction that smashed mountains, rivers, trees, and all living things to pieces.
Having transformed himself into that boar avatar, Il-gyu could naturally use its power as well.
The penalty was that a destructive impulse surged through his entire body.
“Well, lucky for me, there’s something in front of me that I can smash all I want.”
Was this the kind of moment where one laughed, “Grrrraaaah”?
He transformed his staff into a hammer.
Then he added the force of vibration to his compressed prana.
Il-gyu brought that lump of destruction crashing down on Godou.
———!!!
The shockwave was so violent it even drove sound back.
Erica saved Godou, whose mind had already been brushed by the word death.
“[Hermes’ Boots!]”
Given the scale of the impact, evasion should have been meaningless in the first place.
Fortunately, Erica was a first-rate knight and witch.
She swiftly wrapped Godou in her arms and used a flight spell to leap through the air.
They managed to flee into the sky.
“I... I’m alive.....”
“Godou, isn’t it too early to relax? Look down.”
“What do you mean—huh?!”
The ground below looked as though a divine warhammer had fallen from the heavens.
A crater like a volcanic caldera.
Even if this was an abandoned industrial district, traces of civilization should still have remained.
Now there was nothing left to see.
An impossible miracle, something no human being should be able to produce.
What was terrifying was that this was not even a finishing move.
As if to prove it, through the cloud of dust Il-gyu still stood in his beast-man form, a staff slung over his shoulder, watching Godou and Erica with clear interest.
“Oh? So that’s what they call walking on air? No, it’s more like a higher form of leaping. No—closer to gliding.”
His face was full of ease.
As though Godou was no longer an opponent worth considering.
It was infuriating, but Godou could not deny it.
The power of that attack was on par with his own finishing avatar, the White Horse.
That meant he could not answer with the White Horse either.
“Yeah, no.”
“As expected......”
The White Horse had the strictest activation condition of all the avatars, second only to the warrior.
The opponent had to be a great criminal who oppressed the people.
Even though Il-gyu had killed a man first for revenge, and then killed several more under the pretext of judgment, that could never be called oppressing the people.
From the start, the people included in that category were events he knew nothing about.
Rather, Il-gyu was now a king receiving fervent support from the entire Korean supernatural world, in stark contrast to Godou.
“If I target you, I think I could use it.....”
“Godou, that’s not something to brag about.”
“I know.”
“And now that the Phoenix has been taken from you, that’s just a suicide charge.”
Besides, Il-gyu would not just sit there and take it.
Because the Phoenix was in Il-gyu’s hands now.
In the end, the two of them decided to widen the distance and begin a probing battle.
Fortunately, since they had seized the sky with flight magic, Il-gyu did not seem to have any obvious answer.
Besides, since he had already shown the Authority of trial, there could not be another Authority waiting in reserve.
So they decided to keep their distance and think of a way to break through Il-gyu’s defenses.
But they should have known.
They should have known just how absurd Il-gyu’s talent was.
“Is this about how you do it?”
“Huh?”
“What the hell are you even—”
“Tch. Still not enough. The prana I used is about three times yours, but the height is roughly the same.”
That insane monster copied the flight spell after seeing it only once.
Before they knew it, he had flown up behind Godou and Erica.
“I haven’t handed down a death sentence yet, so I won’t kill you. Still, after what you’ve done, you were probably prepared to be crippled, weren’t you?”
Prana and vibration gathered again around the staff.
Godou moved reflexively, stepping in to save Erica this time.
“Erica!”
He grabbed her by the nape and hurled her aside, taking the blow meant for her with his own body.
Struck while suspended in the air, Godou was blasted downward at nearly bullet speed and slammed into the ground.
At least Erica had escaped Il-gyu’s range, just as he intended.
Paaang!
Il-gyu kicked off the air and surged after her, and even Erica could not escape him.
“You could use a little manners training too.”
“What?! Ghk!”
Il-gyu seized Erica by the back of the neck.
Then he released [Ju-bok-sa-sa] once more.
But this time, instead of the domain, he used a summary trial to invoke his Authority on Erica.
“You were trying to protect your king, but during the trial you confessed far too much to me. To judge you now, I don’t even need a defense beyond the list of your sins.”
Erica’s attempt to shoulder the blame was not limited to the destruction of the Colosseum.
She had taken on every possible sin she could in order to reduce the sentence that would fall on Godou by even a little.
A knight’s noble sacrifice for her lord.
In truth, it had helped Godou greatly.
Without her, he would have had to take on at least two more avatars.
But sacrifice always comes with a price.
“Confiscation will be executed.”
“Kyaaaah!!”
Since he had shown some mercy in his handling, the confiscation ended with only her prana and ownership of the magic sword being taken away.
That left her effectively an ordinary person, unable to fight.
Perhaps because of that, she could not endure the shock of confiscation and fainted.
Il-gyu laid Erica down in a suitable place, took off his coat, and covered her with it.
Then he ran again toward where Godou had been sent flying.
And as expected, when he arrived there, Godou was in no normal state.
“Kueeek! Hah... hah.....”
Both arms, struck head-on by the staff, were reduced to rags and could not move.
The shock of the vibrations had battered his entire body, and it seemed his internal organs had been damaged too, because he was vomiting blood by the bucketful.
“A normal person would have died a hundred times over.”
But Godou was, after all, a god-slayer.
Death? Not a chance.
Even in that state, his eyes still burned with fighting spirit.
“[Br... bravery, I bestow upon you the mark of the fierce camel!]”
The fourth avatar of Verethragna: the Camel.
Activated only when the user is severely wounded, it grants the owner powerful kicking strength and martial skill.
As though his ruined arms were no longer needed, Godou launched a barrage of kicks.
Enhanced by the Authority, the force behind them was formidable.
And thanks to the granted martial technique, his stance was perfect.
But he had chosen the wrong opponent.
“And what exactly do you think you’re doing in that state?”
It was a fairly impressive attack, but in the end he was still just a fighter who could not even use both arms.
More importantly, Il-gyu was not the sort of man to let his guard down just because his opponent was badly injured.
If Godou had lain down obediently, that would have been one thing.
But if he bared his teeth and resisted, then Il-gyu would simply rip those teeth out.
He dodged the kick lightly, widened the distance, then shrank his staff down again and hurled it at Godou.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
“Y-you bastard! Fighting dirty—”
“What bullshit. Why the hell would I bother with close combat against some guy who clearly powered himself up for melee? I’m winning even like this.”
He only had one staff, but retrieving it into his hand had no delay.
He repeated the cycle of throwing the staff, letting it strike Godou, then recalling it and throwing it again.
In the end, Godou’s entire body—not just both arms—was turned to rags.
He was enduring it with the mental toughness of a god-slayer, but even that had limits.
When Il-gyu, looking bored, added vibration to the staff and threw it again, the blow sent Godou flying and knocked him unconscious at last.
“Huh. So that’s it? Less than I expected.”
He was not a god, but he had fought the first god-slayer, an opponent of equal standing.
Still, to be honest, Il-gyu was deeply disappointed.
What had he been doing all this time, unable to even seize control of an Authority properly?
His use of Authority was clumsy.
Aside from being of the same kind, there was nothing worth praising about the opponent.
“Still, I did get the spoils.”
Satisfied, Il-gyu made a call and informed the National Intelligence Service that everything was over.
thanks for the chapter