I Picked up the Demon King - Chapter 164

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 164

The heart filled with burning love for the Goddess did not fade for quite some time, even after I had devoured her completely.

Rather, it burned even more fiercely.

The most primitive form of Soul Magic. She and I had truly become one.

The world had perished, and I was left alone in this place where nothing remained.

Left alone, I savored the Goddess’s memories.

Her time as a human, before she had obtained Divinity. Born in the countryside, catching the Emperor’s eye with her outstanding beauty, and the memories of having to become vicious to survive.

Eventually poisoning even the Emperor, ascending to the throne herself and being revered as a god. Yet the memories leading up to destroying the Empire with her own hands.

The memories of realizing how to handle Divinity, agonizing over methods to cultivate it, and finally plundering other worlds.

However, even that did not last very long.

No matter how intense an emotion might be, emotions naturally fade as time passes. The pleasure of examining memories gradually diminished. Perhaps it was because as the Goddess was digested by me, her influence over me disappeared.

It was empty.

I was so desolate and lonely. There was nothing to find joy in, and nothing I could do. Only extremely hollow emotions remained.

With my gradually returning sanity, I thought.

In the end, I had defeated the Goddess. I had fulfilled my contract with the Demon Lord, but had accomplished nothing else.

Every single element composing the world had been broken down and absorbed into me, so the world had ultimately perished.

Perhaps this is the fate of gods.

Perhaps gods are born by devouring their own worlds. The Goddess did so, the Demon Lord did so, and I did so.

The Demon Lord had greatly influenced me.

Since my meeting with him was the starting point of all these events, it was natural if it could be called natural.

However, what I felt most keenly now was not such things. The deception with which he had imprisoned me. The research laboratory where I had been confined in my childhood, which I couldn’t even remember.

The endlessly repeating torture, and the time that flowed by endlessly.

Perhaps it was because of that experience that I could avoid going insane now.

But I felt no gratitude toward the Demon Lord.

Rather, I resented him. The time spent in this emptiness was difficult beyond what words like “considerable” could express.

I wanted to go mad right away. The fact that I wasn’t going insane was more despairing than anything else.

What should I do?

In this endless boredom, there was only me.

I looked at the Divinity within me.

I could feel an enormous amount that seemed to easily exceed dozens of times what I last remembered.

It was probably because I had absorbed the entire world and even devoured the Goddess. Together with the Divine Essences that had been accumulated in my body before, they lay dormant like that. Without mixing with each other, just as they were.

Only after what felt like hundreds of years since being left alone did I try to move them.

‘….’

They did not move easily.

Like tangled things that had hardened as they were. Like when I first harbored the Dragon’s Divinity, but even more so, they had hardened firmly and would not move.

However, it was also true that I had nothing else to do.

So I continued to cling to it.

* * *

Another few hundred years passed. Perhaps close to a thousand years had passed.

With a twitch.

I succeeded in making the hardened Divinity move slightly.

I rejoiced for a while at this great sense of achievement. However, even my voice did not spread through this endless emptiness. And there was no one to rejoice with me.

I spent time endlessly like that.

In a place where nothing existed.

* * *

Once I became able to move the energy to some degree, what came to mind was the old method.

When my Mana Core was destroyed and handling Divinity felt difficult. I had created a new organ by rotating and condensing energy.

I never gave it a name since I had no one to tell, but if I had to call it something, it would be a Divinity Core.

I decided to try recreating that.

Of course, I couldn’t recreate it perfectly identically. Since I was already existing in a state that transcended the concept of a human body, even my heart was not functioning properly.

It wasn’t only the divinity that had stopped as if dead.

But what did that matter.

Time was abundant anyway, and all of this was merely to relieve boredom.

I moved the very faint divinity little by little. I rotated it around my still heart as the center. It took over a hundred years again just to rotate the thread-like divinity once.

However, it gradually gained momentum.

As it rotated and rotated, the divinity began to slowly draw in other divinities. It looked like dissolving sugar in water.

A hundred years, two hundred years. Over a thousand years passed again.

My daily routine was simply watching the endlessly rotating divinity. The divinity that had rotated repeatedly was now completely mixed into one. It was hard to guess what had originally been there.

However, it remained uncontrolled all the same.

The rotation of divinity had now left my hands. It only rotated endlessly, endlessly.

How much time had passed.

It seemed like several thousand years had gone by roughly.

I still couldn’t sense another world. All I could feel was the endlessly rotating divinity.

The divinity rotating inside my body had quite a different appearance than before.

After rotating and rotating, as if sensing there was nothing more to draw in around it. The divinity was concentrating around my heart as the center.

I felt it instinctively.

That thing was the same as the divinity core I had made before. But I shouldn’t leave it as is.

If something I couldn’t control became so dense, it would harden so solidly that I wouldn’t be able to do anything anymore. I wouldn’t be able to move even a single strand of divinity at will.

Though I no longer had the will to do anything, watching the movement of that divinity was now my only pleasure.

I had to find a way before it stopped moving.

* * *

I found a way.

The answer was in my memories.

Not my memories, but the Demon Lord’s memories. After the final battle with the Great Demon, the Demon Lord who had briefly occupied my body learned something strange at the Black Tower.

Circles.

A technique developed by Kaela Rowan that created thin bands around the mana core and rotated them.

It not only amplified mana but also increased control over mana. Couldn’t similar results be achieved with divinity as well.

Examining my heart, I let out a sigh of relief.

If I had remembered just a little later, it would have completely hardened and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. I succeeded in touching the hardening divinity and extracting a single strand.

* * *

Creating a circle was not an easy task.

No, the creation itself was manageable. In what felt like about three hundred years, I formed one circle.

And the circle I created immediately collapsed.

It was because of the divinity core formed in my heart.

Having gained tremendous density, it now began to draw in surrounding divinity just by staying still.

A poorly made circle couldn’t withstand that gravitational pull.

‘….’

I felt deflated, but it was fine. Time was something I had in abundance.

I created circles over and over again. And the circles collapsed as many times as I attempted.

The divinity core grew increasingly solid, but creating circles became faster and faster. Was that basic principle of magic working even in this moment – that what happens once can happen again.

I shook my head for the first time in a long while.

In this void where laws no longer existed, magic would no longer exist either.

While creating circles, I suddenly had a thought.

The circles collapsed because of the tremendous gravitational pull of the divinity core. However, since the circles I created rotated around the divinity core as the center, wouldn’t they also possess gravitational pull.

They kept collapsing because that gravitational pull was too weak and also unstable. Then.

I no longer focused only on creating circles, but paid attention to making them more solid. And.

It didn’t work.

No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. Even circles I created with utmost care, close to the limits of what I could control, collapsed the moment my concentration wavered.

What was the reason. Obviously the circles couldn’t withstand the gravitational pull of the divinity core. One alone couldn’t endure no matter what I did.

‘…Then what about two?’

I didn’t know if it would work or not.

For the next few hundred years, I focused on forming two circles simultaneously.

It wasn’t an easy task.

According to Kaella’s theory, circles should be increased one at a time, step by step. She hadn’t even considered the situation of forming two simultaneously.

Well, what of it. She probably never even considered the situation of creating circles with divinity in the first place.

I had an abundance of time, and there was nothing else to do.

Thanks to continuously pouring time into it, I succeeded in forming two circles simultaneously.

“Oh.”

A voice escaped me.

Of course, sound didn’t spread in this void, but it was a result satisfying enough to make me open my mouth for the first time in a while.

The circles I created collapsed instantly, but compared to when there was only one, didn’t they last much longer? If two didn’t work, I could make three. If three didn’t work, I could make four.

I was convinced that the direction I was proceeding in was correct. It was quite an achievement. The small joy felt in this utterly boring situation was enough to make me completely absorbed in this one thing.

Creating three circles was several times harder than making two simultaneously.

Considering that making two was several times harder than making one, it would probably become several times more difficult with each additional circle.

But I didn’t stop.

Because there was nothing else to do.

* * *

Hundreds of years passed, thousands of years passed. Perhaps tens of thousands of years had passed.

I mechanically repeated the process of creating circles.

The number of circles I could create simultaneously was now eight. It was faster progress than I had initially thought.

This was because from when the number of circles exceeded six, the firmly hardened divinity core began to melt little by little. It was only for a very short time, and it would immediately harden again, but since I was fast enough at creating circles, it was a great help.

However, if there was a problem.

‘It’s boring.’

How long had I been doing this?

The movement of divinity was no longer interesting. It was just tedious repetition. It felt no different from just sitting still and doing nothing.

The reason I continued to repeat creating and destroying circles was.

Because it felt like something would happen soon.

When I created eight circles, it took about several hours before the circles collapsed.

Quite a stable state compared to the beginning. If I could succeed in creating just one more, a total of nine circles, wouldn’t there be a big change?

I had such expectations. I did.

Thousands of years had passed since that expectation faded. Now honestly, I had stronger thoughts of what would really change if I made just one more.

Then one day.

It was a day when I was resolving that if I succeeded in making nine, I wouldn’t repeat this task anymore.

“…!”

I created the ninth circle.

A total of nine rings were slowly rotating around the divinity core as the center.

So very stably.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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