The Lord Who Levels Up by Devouring - Chapter 320

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 320. Death vs. Immortality (2)
A minute sense of discord that marred my consciousness.
It floated like a single point orbiting an infinite trajectory.
Toward its center—
I glimpsed the silhouette of a person.
But it was not a person.
It bore the contours of a beast.
Yet it was not a beast.
Its form continued to shift.
Swelling, then elongating.
Severing, then reconnecting.
The outline blurred as if becoming clear.
Growing distinct as if dissolving.
A murky chill radiated outward.
‘This is….’
My thoughts shattered in an instant.
* * *
Hades was hurled backward.
He rolled across the ground several times before scattering into darkness.
Then he coalesced once more.
[…!!]
Hades’s eyes widened in shock.
The wound that remained on his body.
Darkness did not flow properly from the pierced mark.
It was undeniable damage.
Yet such damage could not lead Hades to death.
Therefore, the reason Hades’s eyes widened was not because of Kai’s strike just now.
[That one—.]
Hades’s words cut off in an instant.
At the same moment, the entire Whitewolf Territory trembled.
* * *
Kuuuuuuuuuung…!!!
A colossal earthquake shook every structure in Whitewolf Territory.
The bell in the watchtower rang out in chaos.
Carts overturned.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the Castle Wall as it swayed precariously.
Yet no buildings actually collapsed.
The Dwarves’ earthquake-resistant design.
Their flawless engineering was sturdy enough to withstand tremors of this magnitude.
Thus the Count’s Castle remained unscathed.
Rielin and Seraphia remained steady despite the violent tremors.
The shaking was still intense.
But Count’s Castle held firm.
Seraphia’s gaze shifted to one side.
Adrian within the cocoon.
Boom—! Boom—!
Fortunately, it appeared undamaged.
Had Count’s Castle not endured, the cocoon would have been destroyed without a moment’s respite.
And had the cocoon been damaged, Adrian would have been utterly doomed.
No—something far more terrible would have transpired.
“…I’m so relieved, truly.”
Seraphia exhaled a breath of relief.
But Rielin was not.
Her beautiful face had hardened into a rigid expression—
“That tremor just now wasn’t a simple earthquake.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s not the earth shaking. Something is… rising up.”
“Rising? What is it?”
“That’s—”
Kuuuuuuuuuung——!!!
A tremendous vibration surged up from beneath the earth.
It was as if some colossal beast were thrashing about underground.
Boom… boom… kuuuuuuuuung—!!
Cracks etched themselves across the Castle Wall.
Debris cascaded down in torrents.
The Dwarves’ earthquake-resistant architecture was gradually reaching its limits.
But the tremors showed no sign of ceasing.
They only grew stronger.
“Wh-what in the world is this—?!”
Seraphia’s shoulders trembled.
She turned her head to ask Rielin for answers and explanations.
But then Seraphia’s eyes beheld a sight.
“Yggdrasil is…?”
The trunk of Yggdrasil was turning black.
As if rotten blood were flowing through it.
From root to branch tip, the entire canopy was beginning to darken to pitch black.
The trunk was splitting open in places, turning black.
The bark was crumbling away.
The verdant leaves were withering to black ash.
Yggdrasil was dying.
“Wh—? Wh-what—?”
Seraphia couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
Yggdrasil was the World Tree.
A mystical tree that transcended merely representing nature—it was nature itself.
Which was why it never withered.
Because it was nature incarnate.
Yet it was withering?
Wasn’t that the same as saying nature itself was fading away?
“Wh-what—??”
Seraphia’s eyes trembled.
Her wavering gaze drifted unconsciously toward Rielin.
Rielin’s eyes were closed.
Resonating with Yggdrasil itself.
An emerald current swirled violently across Rielin’s entire body.
And then.
“Hgh!”
Rielin’s body staggered.
Seraphia rushed to steady her.
The body she caught.
Trembled violently.
Beads of transparent sweat dotted Rielin’s forehead at close range.
“Forest Guardian…?”
Seraphia called out carefully.
Rielin’s eyes slowly opened.
Those luminous eyes, usually as radiant as if emeralds had been set within them.
But not now.
As if swallowed by darkness.
They gleamed with a deep and ominous black light.
Then Rielin’s lips parted.
“…It’s a death spirit.”
Seraphia tilted her head in confusion.
A death spirit?
Such a thing existed?
Seraphia wanted to ask, but she couldn’t.
Rielin trembled like an aspen leaf.
“A death spirit… has descended upon this land through Yggdrasil as a conduit.”
Rielin’s beautiful face had turned ashen, corpse-like and pallid.
* * *
Beneath Hades’ feet, jet-black light erupted.
Murky darkness surged upward.
The earth trembled ever so slightly.
Space itself wept at its center.
Time held its breath.
All possibility, if only for a moment, ceased to exist.
Existence itself dissected and analyzed with surgical precision—
Empty eye sockets.
An abyss of unknowable depth.
A frozen scream.
It was undeniably a gaze.
And the instant that gaze brushed past them.
“…Ugh!”
“Gasp…!”
“Ahhhhh─!!”
People died.
None could escape.
The soldiers of Whitewolf Territory, the Elves, the Dwarves—all living things—
Perished on the spot through ‘instant death.’
There was no cause.
No reason, no warning.
[Slowly, yet suddenly.]
Only the result of death.
[Death comes in such a manner.]
Only Hades’s verdict echoed.
* * *
Hades.
The guide of the souls of the dead.
The god of the Underworld who maintains the order of the departed.
In other words, Hades is not the god of death itself.
Since humans who have not experienced death cannot imagine it, they merely erected a god in the Underworld—the place where death dwells.
And thus was Hades formed.
In essence, a Death Legion commander.
But he differed from the other legion commanders.
Rather than receiving a portion of divine authority as a ‘grant,’ he had ‘mimicked’ the authority in its entirety.
By that measure, he was certainly of legion commander rank or higher.
Yet calling him the Death Lord would be far too ambiguous.
And so I could discern it.
The true Death Lord had descended upon Whitewolf Territory.
And I could also understand.
The reason the Death Lord could descend upon Whitewolf Territory.
‘Could it be… through Yggdrasil?’
It was the opposite of her previous life.
In her past life, Sylvandir Forest had vanished, and Rielin lost her power.
But ironically enough.
Rielin was able to recover her strength thanks to the Death Lord.
In her previous life, the Death Lord had merely been interpreted as a form that maximized finality.
In other words, he was originally part of nature itself.
And his essence as a death spirit remained unchanged.
Therefore, the Death Lord became a medium that revealed the existence of spirits, allowing Rielin to resonate with them once more.
Through this, she was able to bloom new life in opposition to the Death Lord.
…But now the positions had reversed.
Unlike her previous life, the Death Lord was now interpreted through the lens of cycle.
Yet his essence had not changed.
His nature as a death spirit.
That remained the same.
If in her previous life Rielin had reconnected with spirits through the Death Lord.
Then in this life, the Death Lord had infiltrated Whitewolf Territory through Yggdrasil.
Yggdrasil was the legacy left behind by Sephiroth, the first Elf.
It was the medium connecting Elves and spirits.
Through this, all life in Whitewolf Territory had died.
Literally.
Dead.
Every living thing upon the land of Whitewolf Territory.
The animals that dwelled in Sylvandir Forest.
The fungi that grew naturally in Feractrum.
And tens of thousands of the Territory’s inhabitants—Elves, Dwarves, all of them.
…Dead.
Territory buff? The Oath of Immortality?
Meaningless.
The Death Lord’s authority was not mere mental oppression.
Death itself.
That was all.
And every being in this world experiences death.
Even if one possessed a lifespan longer than the universe itself, it did not mean living infinitely.
Animals, plants, objects, even gods.
Only individual differences existed.
An end exists, and when that distant end arrives, death is met.
The moment one exists in this world.
Every being carries the inescapable fate of meeting death.
The Death Lord was capable of forcibly accelerating that fate.
He determined death to come ‘sooner’.
Thus reversing the chain of causality.
First, the result of death is manifested.
And then.
Only afterward does the cause of death emerge.
For instance, aging occurs after breath ceases.
A spear pierces the heart only after the heart has stopped beating.
Disease ravages the body belatedly, long after death has already claimed it.
Death is determined first, and only later does the cause that would lead to that death follow in its wake.
This is precisely.
A being standing at the apex of the cycle.
A being that embodies terror transcending the limits of imagination itself.
An entity that The Emperor recognized not through breeding and slaughter, but through acknowledgment—another level entirely.
The Death Lord.
For any living creature.
If it is fated to inevitably meet death someday.
Then no one could escape from the Death Lord.
A countermeasure… did not exist.
Just one.
Only a theoretical countermeasure existed—one that was virtually nonexistent.
* * *
“Aura Deployment.”
Kai’s voice, faint yet resolute.
Across the entirety of Whitewolf Territory, where death had descended, crystalline structures of azure light erupted from the ground.
Shhhhhhaaaaa!!
I
Through the cracks of death, torrents of blue light poured forth.
The light strands wove together.
And ultimately formed a single, colossal structure—
“Image Realization.”
Shaking the very world of death itself.
And there unfolds a new world.
The Cradle of Eternity.
Flesh that should decay is resurrected.
Will that should be broken rises once more.
Every concept and law related to death is utterly negated.
Thus within this domain.
I am completely excluded from death.
And.
I could firmly establish my own definition of existence.
No longer bound by flesh, nor by name.
Neither past, nor origin, nor fate.
Could define Kai any longer.
His own choice.
He need not explain who he was.
He need not prove to the world what he was.
Kai simply existed in the manner he had chosen for himself.
And what Kai had chosen was.
To unfailingly protect all that must be protected.
To never retreat even in the face of death.
“I am a Knight of Whitewolf Territory.”
Kai’s inner realm expanded.
Kai’s oath, Kai’s conviction.
And Kai’s choice and will.
All of it blanketed reality, and wherever it touched, new laws seeped into existence.
The world could no longer suppress Kai.
For Kai already existed in the manner he had defined for himself.
Rather, the world itself fell within Kai’s framework.
And thus.
It was no longer Kai alone.
Whoever stepped into this domain.
Whatever Kai’s inner realm touched.
If it was something Kai sought to protect.
All were ‘absolutely’ excluded from death.
“…I can breathe again.”
“Am I… alive? I…?”
“By the gods!”
The dead were resurrected.
No, they were not resurrected.
The very fact of their death was negated.
In this realm, death as an outcome no longer existed, and thus death could never be determined under any circumstance.
An immortal knight who even severs death itself.
[This is absurd…!!]
Hades staggered backward, words failing him.

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