Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
The goddess was unable to move. The third eye on Saleen’s forehead was wide open. A huge signet hovered above him, and the entire space was put under the signet’s control.
The goddess had just lost her divine persona and was unable to do anything to break free of the space’s bonds. Furthermore, time had stopped flowing.
It was comparatively easy to increase or reverse the flow of time. However, stopping time was the most difficult thing to pull off.
Most similar skills slowed the flow of time to the minimum, but the Signet of Silence had completely stopped the flow of time.
The rules of the Signet were ones that the goddess was unable to comprehend, so she was unable to break free from them. It put her in a very compromising position because if Saleen tried to do anything to her, she would not be able to defend herself or her kingdom.
The only one unaffected was Dante, but even so, it would not have been able to use the electrical powers of the Lightning Moon even if it had wanted to. Any lightning attacks would have dissipated when they got near the goddess and Saleen.
Saleen became the only being capable of free movement after he gained control of the Signet of Silence. The wound in his heart had just healed, but the pain was still present, preventing him from using any skills.
Both of them were gravely injured and had practically lost. The goddess’s divine persona was shattered and her power of the Source had dissipated, while there was a wound in Saleen’s heart that ensured if he were to recover his powers to the level of a normal human, he would require a healing spell of at least level 16. He was in no condition to cast such a spell on himself at the moment. No outsiders could make it into their space, and even if he wanted to get Nailisi to do it, she was overpowered by the Signet of Silence, preventing her from moving.
Dante was the only one left capable of activity, but it was only able to stay hidden in the Lightning Moon.
Saleen dared not dispel the signet’s power. He did not have the power to do so, and even if he did, dispelling the signet’s power would have caused the goddess to retaliate.
He realized the true meaning of the Signet of Silence. Time was split into countless parts by the power of the signet, which enabled him to move between the parts as he would have in a normal state. For the enemy, however, the signet simply stopped time altogether.
In the area enveloped by the signet, even if Saleen spent 10,000 years inside it, it would only be the shortest of moments to any external observers.
That meant that if he did nothing and just waited for an outsider to barge in…
No, that wouldn’t work. No one else could enter the area under the signet’s control. They would have ended up like fossils if they entered, unable to move a muscle or cast skills.
Saleen was the only one capable of doing anything, but his injury required external assistance.
He felt rather frustrated at the fact that he still ended up being ill-prepared. If he had used the signet’s powers at the very beginning, the goddess might not have been affected given that she had not been damaged at all, but he would have been free of the effects of the signet’s power, which would have given him absolute initiative in the fight.
He still thought that he was below the goddess in terms of power, which was why he behaved so cautiously.
If it had not been for all the probing attempts from the beginning, there would have been no way for him to catch the goddess’s true form. Everything had its cause and effect. Without prior preparation, Saleen would not have had much certainty taking on the goddess.
The goddess was in a far tighter spot than Saleen. The Signet of Silence was a godly item that went against everything she knew. The godly item had pinned her down completely once it was used.
All hopes of her recovering her divine persona and power of the Source were lost. That one attack from Saleen did not kill the goddess, but it robbed her of all hope.
Everything seemed to have ground to a halt in the area controlled by the signet, but the goddess knew that it was only her powers that were stopped. Her divine persona, on the other hand, was lost forever.
Saleen gradually calmed. He was unable to move, as was the goddess. However, as soon as the power of the signet was exhausted, Nailisi, the Winged Skull, and Dante would be able to deal a lethal blow.
All that was left to do was to be patient, so Saleen began meditating instead, settling in to wait for the signet’s power to dissipate.
Meditation was also a way of healing, but it was so slow that mages ignored such effects. However, the recovery rate of the human body in a meditative state was over a dozen times quicker than normal.
Of course, the extent of Saleen’s injuries would take months to completely heal without further complications, which meant that it would take him days even in meditation before his combat prowess was restored.
The signet hovered above him, and one thing on his person moved—the Ring of Cosmos. The ring had inner and outer layers. The inner layer shifted without showing any signs of movement, and because Saleen was in meditation, he was unaware of it.
After the ring turned half a circle, a rich life force was unleashed from another space, gushing into Saleen’s body and heading straight for the wound in his heart.
The life force was thick but gentle. It began to completely mend the wound in his heart from the inside, before beginning to modify his body as a whole.
It strengthened Saleen’s body, which was already considered exceptionally sturdy among mages. He only had one shot at casting a skill like the Crystal Finger, and the life force was making it safer and more possible for him to use the skill.
That was why Saleen’s body was stronger than other mages. Every time he trained using the Crystal Finger, it was equal to an attempt at strengthening his body.
However, such training was rather brutal. Despite being a level 17 mage, there was still lingering damage to his body.
A level 17 mage had a very long life, at least in the range of 30 to 50 thousand years, sometimes even to hundreds of thousands of years if the mage were truly long-lived. The ones with special constitutions easily lived millions of years. All of that referred to a common mage. If a mage trained in some secret art capable of prolonging one’s lifespan, a mage of level 17 or above would have a lifespan comparable to gods.
However, Saleen’s body had injuries everywhere, as he was unable to forsake the potent, devastating damage potential offered by the Crystal Finger.
The life force gushing from the Ring of Cosmos repaired all damages in his body, making him several times stronger than he used to be.
For other mages, it would have been pointless to make their body indestructible, as no mage could have fought a warrior of the same level on equal footing. Magic was the only thing the mages found reliable.
However, Saleen was different. His Crystal Finger skill put too much strain on his body. Even if he had the Crystal Ring and advanced level by level, the growth in the Crystal Finger’s power devastated his body every time he used it.
Raphael seemed to have a seething hatred towards the gods for creating the skill.
As such, for Saleen, having a strong body was more important than anything else. Only with a perfect body would he be able to cast Crystal Finger with impunity.
At that moment, Saleen emerged out of his meditative state. Something unexpected happened after he was joyfully surprised—the ring shifted again. Aqua Fulgur gushed out of the space he knew so well, melting his entire palm.
However, Saleen had no fear. In truth, there was little to fear. The power contained within the ring could have killed him at any moment, leaving nothing behind. If anything untoward had happened to him, it would have happened a long time ago. It was utterly ridiculous for the ring to repair his injuries, only to destroy him in the very next moment.
From the mages’ perspective, there were patterns, and thus order, to be found in everything.
The Aqua Fulgur quickly worked on Saleen’s hand, so much so that it even worked on the Crystal Ring. While the process was speedy, Saleen still sensed that some unknown power from the ring had copied the power of rules of his Crystal Ring and had begun reconstructing his palm with said power of rules in it.
Saleen extended his hand and looked at the unmoving goddess, who wore no expression. Her appearance was the same as the moment the signet had been fully activated.
He had long gained the ability to use such powers of the signet, and the goddess regretted the fact that she had not taken into consideration any preparations that he did without her knowledge. She was the one who gave Saleen his luck, and she wondered if that was her destiny all along.
The goddess was still capable of thought. She felt as if she returned to the time when she perished, being thrust into the boundless darkness. She never stopped thinking and had spent her time reminiscing the same thing over and over, hoping that she would gain the ability to sleep again.
At that moment, the goddess wanted to sleep more than anything else, just so that she could shift her eyes away from what he was doing.
There would be nothing left for her now that Saleen gained the upper hand.
The bones on Saleen’s left hand grew, which contained the raging power of lightning. Attribute-less granule-like material was placed at the spot where the bones of his hand were connected with his original arm. The rules contained within the Crystal Ring were perfectly copied into his bones and muscles. The hand had every elemental structure lined up in an orderly fashion as if it was an expanded Crystal Ring. The hand was even capable of casting the thunder beads from the Ring of Cosmos.
Saleen cast the beads one after another, starting from one or two hundred to tens of thousands. All of the beads circled Saleen as if they were filled with a rhythm like stars in the sky.
“Be obliterated, Myers,” Saleen said. Hundreds of balls of lightning were conjured in each of the beads. He did not bother to probe and just sent all of the balls of lightning into the goddess’s body at once.
Her body was equal to a divine kingdom, which was very vast.
However, the divine kingdom had not been repaired after she had suffered grievous injuries. Most of the space within her body was broken, and only a few locations were still capable of harboring life.
The beads entered the goddess’s body and unleashed all of their power at once, forming huge black holes of energy, which then exploded.
The terrifying powers tore the divine kingdom into pieces. The energy contained within the hundreds of balls of lightning was beyond what her body was able to contain, and it tore her apart without making a sound.
However, under the workings of the signet, the external appearance of her body remained the same.
Saleen walked up to her and took her bangle off gently.
The Withering Dance was completely free of the goddess’s control as he took it away. In the next moment, Saleen squeezed his fingers together, reducing the wooden Withering Dance to dust with a crack.
Saleen had completely destroyed the root of the god.
If she were able to resurrect after she was killed by Saleen, she would have to start over as a level 13 pseudogod, and she would lose all the memories and powers she had had before.
It would be hard to tell if that being would be considered the Goddess of Myers if that occurred. The newly resurrected Goddess of Nature would have to reach the peak of level 18 before it would become possible for her to inherit bits of the memories she had at the moment.
