The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 252
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
Chapter 252. Sovereign vs. Sovereign (2)
The world torn asunder by the collision of two infinities.
There was neither sky nor earth.
As if the very contours of existence had crumbled away.
The landscape was consumed entirely by violet emptiness.
Laughter echoed from within that void.
“Ahahaha.”
It was laughter most ominous.
The torn edges of the world began to regenerate gradually.
The collapsed contours restored their form.
Gravity returned.
Distance reasserted itself.
The emptiness that had filled the landscape was completely driven back.
And someone spoke as if drinking blood.
“That was close… truly close.”
Beyond the receding void, sky and earth took their place once more.
At last, the landscape returned to its original state.
And so I could see it.
The Queen, her entire body covered in a thin layer of frost.
The Queen’s breathing trembled faintly.
Sharp cracks spread across her body in places, like glass on the verge of shattering.
The Queen’s eyes glanced downward for a moment.
Beneath the Queen’s feet lay someone collapsed.
Covered in blood, their face was unrecognizable.
But glimpsed between the crimson—silver hair.
…It was Seraphia.
“Ten years. Or even five more years, and the outcome would have been different.”
Blood surged forth from the Queen’s entire body.
The cracks that had marked the Queen’s form were restored.
Her faintly trembling breath found stability once more.
Meanwhile, Seraphia remained drenched in blood.
She lay motionless, not even stirring.
Whether she had lost consciousness.
Or whether she was dead—I could not discern.
The Queen’s crimson eyes narrowed to slits.
“Now I understand why he desired you so greatly.”
And why.
“He sent me here.”
The blood’s magical power rippled outward.
Seraphia’s body stirred slightly.
As the blood rippled once more, Seraphia’s body was ensnared by threads of crimson.
“I shall take this child with me.”
Seraphia, wrapped in the cocoon, lifted into the air.
In that instant.
“Let her go—!!”
“How dare you!!”
Broombar and Rielin charged forward.
Broombar’s muscles, swollen with power.
Rielin’s lithe and graceful movements.
Their combined assault—strength and speed in perfect harmony—hurtled toward The Queen.
Yet The Queen remained unmoved.
As if brushing away an annoying gnat.
The Queen waved her hand lightly.
“Begone, you insignificant worms.”
A deafening roar erupted—!!
A crimson tempest swept through.
Broombar and Rielin were caught in its maelstrom.
“Gah…!”
“Ugh…!”
Both were hurled backward.
The violent impact sent them tumbling across the ground, dust and blood intermingling.
Iliana watched this unfold.
“Sob…!”
She could do nothing.
The shield spell she had just cast had drained her of all magical power.
Even forcing her mana to gather yielded nothing—like parched earth in a relentless drought.
Her fingertips trembled.
Merely maintaining consciousness felt overwhelming.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
She was crushed beneath a suffocating terror.
She knew.
She knew she had to do something.
Even if it meant hurling a stone.
Or throwing her own body forward.
Even if it were a meaningless, desperate struggle, she had to act.
She could not let her precious friend Seraphia be taken before her eyes.
And yet.
“A-ahhh…!”
…It was too terrifying.
The very air felt cold and dreadful—she wanted to clamp her mouth shut against it.
Terror surged from my feet, tightening my throat until a scream threatened to escape.
…It was far too strong.
The word “strong” alone was insufficient to describe it.
Beyond mere levels, it was as though the very dimension itself differed—the Queen possessed a strength that defied all reason.
This was no longer combat.
It was a hunt.
Prey struggling desperately to survive against the Queen, an absolute predator.
Iliana trembled, her teeth chattering with fear.
And.
Kai was no different.
The aftermath of being seized by the Queen had not yet healed.
My aura was depleted.
My wounds remained unrepaired.
Thus.
…Kai was crushed beneath the weight of terror, unable to do anything.
* * *
How long had I been drawing numbers?
It was an endless repetition that made time itself feel meaningless.
Infinite decimals between 0 and 1.
The 0.5 that existed within them.
To isolate it, I drew endlessly, endlessly, endlessly, and endlessly again.
【0.80186421…】
【0.5125663126】
【0.00062152…9】
.
.
.
But it was hopeless.
Success probability: 0%.
Escape probability: 0%.
…It cannot be done.
…I cannot do this.
0% is literally 0%.
An event that will never occur.
A possibility forever beyond reach.
And a future that does not exist…
“Damn it!!”
I slammed my fist against the cube.
The tremendous power of my S-rank muscle cells struck the cube with devastating force.
Crack, crack, craaack!
The explosion erupted in a staccato burst.
A tremendous shockwave shook the Shrine.
But nothing changed.
Even with my transcendent muscle fibers [S-], I couldn’t so much as create a ripple before the hexahedron brimming with infinite power.
My teeth gnashed involuntarily.
The taste of blood flooded my mouth.
…It’s over.
With the power I possessed, there was no way to break through.
An infinite wall.
Before it, I was nothing but an utterly powerless existence.
In the end, I could do nothing.
Before infinity, I wasn’t even dust.
Ian’s abilities were useless.
The experience of my past life held no meaning.
My strength, Ian’s abilities, the experience of my past life—none of it could shatter the infinite wall.
And yet.
There was one thing left.
A power I never anticipated.
A power that shouldn’t exist probabilistically.
Therefore, a power that couldn’t exist.
Not my strength, not Ian’s abilities, not the experience of my past life—
◆Fate Quest, [Two Madmen, Yet Strongest!] has been cleared!
The Fate Quest with Kai.
It was the newly accumulated ‘power of fate’.
* * *
Seraphia, wrapped in a crimson cocoon.
As the Queen raised her hand, the blood-red threads moved in response.
Seraphia’s body, cocooned within, rose higher and began to vanish somewhere.
“I have no interest in small fry like you.”
The Queen turned her body away indifferently.
Had the battle with Seraphia drained much of her strength?
The Queen seemed unwilling to fight any further.
In other words.
The Queen’s power had been greatly depleted.
Yet Kai still couldn’t move.
…I can’t win.
The Queen’s back was unguarded.
But I couldn’t dare approach.
Kai felt a despair as though his heart were being torn from his chest.
Oaths and promises carved deep within his heart.
All of it was crumbling in this single moment.
And from this point forward.
I could never stand beside Seraphia again.
This was what defeat meant.
The defeat I had sworn—again and again—never to experience.
Yet here it was. Again…!
I had succumbed to powerlessness.
I could do nothing once more.
-I will accept the proposal from Beneron Barony House.
I could not protect Seraphia as she was sold into marriage.
-I’m sorry… Sir Kai…
I could not protect Seraphia from the Lycanthrope.
-I will-! Until the very end-!! The humble homeland of the Dwarves-!
I could not even shield Seraphia from the Ogre’s threat.
Ssssshhhhh….
Now I could never protect Seraphia from the Immortal Queen—not forever.
To stand at the pinnacle of strength?
To swear I would remain at her side even if the entire world turned away?
To vow I would protect Seraphia to the very end?
What was it all! What could it possibly be!
The greatest knight, they said!!
Every oath and vow was nothing but empty words.
My lips trembled violently.
My immortality was incomplete.
It was rooted in aura, and ceased to function once the aura was depleted.
My aura was now exhausted.
Therefore, I could not escape death.
I knew better than anyone that I could do nothing more.
And yet.
…Why could I still not release this blade?
It was merely conviction without strength.
Just as powerless justice was nothing but illusion.
My powerless conviction was nothing but reckless stubbornness.
I lacked the strength to uphold my conviction.
Shattered bones would not mend again.
Flesh that had been regenerating tangled in dysfunction.
My resolve, my conviction, my oath—all had collapsed.
I possessed the will to fight.
But the foundation and strength to realize that will did not exist.
…So then.
Will remains.
Even knowing I can no longer fight, this will—the will that refuses to release the sword’s grip—has not yet died.
So then.
…Think. …Remember.
That day’s defeat.
Do not turn away. Face it to the very end.
-Listen at ease, Kai.
That despair from back then.
-Kai, the power of the aura you wield is, simply put, the power of imagination.
And imagination differs from person to person.
-By honing different imaginations based on such varied experiences, the form of aura reached at that culmination is called an ‘Exclusive Aura’.
Exclusive Aura.
A power born from one’s own unique imagination.
But an Exclusive Aura cannot manifest everything it imagines.
-Because excessive imagination is constrained by the laws of the world.
Yet very rarely, it happened.
Those who manifested their own absurd imaginations—things that could never be realized by the world’s laws—into reality as they were.
-Kai, that is the realm of Master you now touch.
But being a Master does not grant omnipotence.
Because it is a power that defies the world’s laws, it is not truly free.
-That is why Master is called the pinnacle of aura.
Because the world permits nothing beyond it.
The end of imagination itself.
A limit from which one cannot advance further.
There is nothing beyond Master.
And yet.
-A realm beyond that exists.
That defeat I received from Adrian back then.
The teaching Adrian gave me at that time.
It was a wall I could never overcome.
A perfect wall that would not even permit understanding.
No matter how hard I tried, no matter how desperately I struggled.
I could not breach that wall.
After that day’s defeat.
I strived endlessly.
And yet I could not overcome it.
No matter how much I imagined.
No matter how much I tried to conjure it in my mind.
I could not picture myself becoming as strong as Adrian.
No imagination of surpassing Adrian would come to me.
The wounds left by defeat.
They ran far too deep.
I could never become like Adrian.
I was not ignorant of that fact.
I understood it better than anyone.
And yet, even so.
“Here I stand, sword in hand, and I swear this oath.”
In that instant.
A knight’s vow transformed the shattered air of the battlefield.
My vision stained crimson.
Before my eyes, a phantom path unfurled.
At the end of that path stood Adrian.
…So distant.
Impossibly distant.
The chasm between myself and Adrian.
It stretched so far.
No matter how hard I strove, I could not close it.
Could I narrow it, even slightly?
Perhaps.
Yet even then, I could never catch up.
Still, I pressed my feet forward.
So long as I did not abandon this path.
One day, without fail.
I would stand at Adrian’s side—I believed this with unwavering conviction.
Whooooom!
My blade vibrated, cleaving through space itself.
The path toward Adrian vanished.
Now, what I beheld was the Immortal Queen’s back.
The Immortal Queen.
She who transcended death and reigned through eternity.
The distance to the Queen was vast.
But I had learned.
The ultimate martial art.
I had witnessed and studied it from Adrian.
Though I had never touched that pinnacle myself, the knowledge, the failures, the experience needed to reach it already dwelled within my mind.
I lengthened my stride.
Shwoooosh!
A wave of azure light rippled outward in all directions.
The world shimmered entirely in blue radiance.
Aura flooded forth like a tidal wave.
The Queen flinched and spun around.
And as she beheld Kai enveloped in azure light, the Queen felt an emotion that transcended tension, surprise, or caution.
“You couldn’t possibly…!!!”
Shock.
Her pupils trembled without cessation.
Kai continued his advance.
The scars of defeat carved deep within.
Upon them, another layer of will, resolve, and conviction was layered anew.
“Aura Expansion.”
Sssshhhaaaa!!
Azure crystals erupted from all directions.
Streams of blue light poured through the gaps in the void.
The light streams wove together.
Forming a single colossal structure—
“Image Realization.”
With Kai’s declaration, reality itself trembled.
Kai’s unique imagination.
A concept that did not exist in this world.
These were inscribed upon this world one after another.
“…This cannot be….”
Someone’s voice echoed.
Whose it was mattered not.
All present shared the same sentiment.
Even in that very moment.
Kai was forcing his own aura and imagination upon this world.
Kai’s blade tip became the nib of a quill, beginning to inscribe new laws upon the canvas of the world.
The world resisted.
Kuuuguuuguuung…!!
It threatened death upon Kai, who sought to impose twisted laws.
And he could not overcome it.
One man’s resolve could not overcome the world’s resistance.
One knight’s loyalty could not break through the world’s resistance.
One person’s oath could not exceed that threshold.
And yet.
When one man’s will alone remained unbroken, rising his body once more from the ruins of collapse—
—he could twist the laws of the world.
The world’s resistance finally submitted to his will and knelt.
“This is impossible!!!”
The Queen’s shock finally tore through her composure and erupted forth.
Her crimson eyes trembled as if possessed by madness.
“How…! How!! How in the world!!!!”
The Queen instinctively stepped back.
Around the Queen’s retreating footsteps.
The world crumbles.
Not once.
To anyone.
The will of the world, which had never yielded, now knelt.
And thus.
The absoluteness accumulated over eons of time.
The absolute authority bearing the name of law.
Bows to the will of a single man, rewritten, redefined, and overturned.
Thereby unfolding.
A new world.
The Cradle of Eternity.
The body that should have crumbled is resurrected.
The will that should have been broken stands straight once more.
Every concept and law affirming death is negated the moment one steps into this domain.
And thus within this realm.
Kai is ‘completely’ exempt from the concept of death.
Kai’s eyes burning with deep blue flames.
Kai’s blade rippling with a deep blue aura.
And.
“Your immortality and mine.”
Undying death and undying loyalty.
“Let us see whose immortality dies first.”
Two undying convictions clashed.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Azrael
So I was wrong it seems Kai is gonna be a badass