Chapter 72 I’m waiting for the cooldown, what are you waiting for? (Six Thousand Characters)
The bullet spun and left the chamber with a piercing shriek through the air.
It swept through the atmosphere, stirring up storms and breaking the sound barrier.
Shaya did not use any of his familiar’s attack skills.
This was because high-level Beast Masters possessed exceptionally keen spiritual intuition. Any fleeting killing intent during an offensive would be detected.
Similarly, Shaya did not use any elemental or magical abilities.
This was because such abilities would invariably cause fluctuations in the surrounding elements before activation, revealing their flaws.
What Shaya chose was merely the most straightforward firearm, crafted from purely mechanical structures.
Compared to those magic-infused guns with reinforcement and acceleration runes solidified onto their bodies, which could significantly enhance the power of their projectiles—
This firearm, driven purely by mechanical structure, was undoubtedly much weaker in terms of raw power.
However, this also meant it was pure.
No killing intent, no elemental fluctuations, and no preparatory stages for rune formations to activate.
Silent, still, yet deadly and dangerous.
One Shot Piercing the Clouds.
Bang!
The bullet was faster than the sound barrier, piercing through several tens of meters and accurately aiming for Norton’s temple.
It was a slender bullet with a dark red tip, resembling a finely polished ruby, with blood-colored radiance flowing within.
Seaweed-like red threads spread from the ruby-like tip, covering the entire body of the bullet like a spiderweb.
This was alchemical ammunition, ground from “Sage’s Blood.”
Shaya had purchased twenty grams of “Sage’s Blood” from the Shadow Council, and had only managed to refine and concentrate less than two grams of alchemical bullet heads.
In terms of value alone, the value of this single bullet exceeded thirty thousand Rhine gold coins.
A thousandth of a breath later.
Clink—
Just before the crimson bullet was about to pierce the skin and flesh of Norton’s temple.
The bullet suddenly froze.
A silver film, with the texture of mercury, spread out in mid-air outside Norton’s temple.
Then, it absorbed all the kinetic energy carried by the bullet in a fluid manner.
Beast Masters were different from their familiars. Although they received physical enhancements through the Soul Pact and could borrow some of their familiar’s power,
Pure-blooded humans were inherently intelligent rather than physically strong. Beast Masters improved themselves by refining their spiritual power. In terms of physique, how could they truly compare to the innate racial advantages of powerful races?
Directly decapitating the enemy Beast Master was always the best option in a battle between transcendents.
Therefore, how to protect oneself in combat, and the offensive and defensive struggles revolving around the Beast Masters themselves, were practically mandatory practical courses for every high-ranking Beast Master.
The reason was simple: those who faced mortal enemies with a careless smile, foolishly believing their opponents wouldn’t attack the Beast Master like in academy duels, and lacked self-preservation, were mostly buried with two-meter-high grass growing on their graves.
Norton, a ruthless individual who single-handedly dealt with over a dozen Four-Ring Master Grade Beast Masters and orchestrated this earth-shattering conspiracy to annihilate the Azure Court, would certainly not make such a rookie mistake.
He was also an elder of the Brunnhildr Family and had contracted a Silver Spirit.
However, this was not Norton’s main combat familiar. The skills Norton focused on cultivating for it were “Metal Reinforcement,” “Liquefaction,” and “Super Hardening.”
The only command he had given this Silver Spirit was “Autonomous Defense.”
This was an automatic spell directly programmed into the Silver Spirit’s body, capable of triggering automatically without the Silver Spirit’s own reaction, guarding Norton’s body twenty-four hours a day, day and night, blocking any offense that threatened him.
The crimson bullet was still spinning in mid-air, but it was thus blocked, unable to advance even a fraction of an inch beyond the mercury barrier.
This was a matter of course.
If anyone could instantly kill a Five-Ring Beast Master with a mechanical firearm not enhanced by runes—
Then the various countries on the Western Continent would not have spent so much effort cultivating high-ranking powerhouses, nor would they have invested heavily in developing magic-rune technology. Instead, they should have equipped every soldier in the army with a sniper rifle.
However.
This was precisely the result Shaya had anticipated.
He hadn’t expected Norton to be completely defenseless and be killed by a single shot like an idiot.
Otherwise, the handgun he named “Sea Blue Judgment” would not have been loaded with alchemical bullets ground from “Sage’s Blood” from the beginning; it would have been loaded with the Empire’s military-issued “Great Sin Armor-Piercing Rounds.”
The next moment.
The alchemical bullet, resembling a ruby, melted silently on the mercury barrier.
The crimson crystals on the alchemical bullet dissolved.
Like blood, yet like ink.
It split into myriad intricate blood threads, instantly corroding the Silver Spirit’s body, causing it to emit a sharp, mournful cry.
But this chain of reactions did not stop there.
On Norton’s aged face—
The ecstatic joy of bridging the gap between human and god froze.
Up to this point, Norton still didn’t know what had happened to his body. His mind was still immersed in ecstasy, yet excruciating pain spread throughout his entire body.
His internal organs and the entire nervous system let out a mournful cry, his facial muscles twitching, contorting his aged face into a grotesque expression.
The dim yellow Twilight Divine Power, which had been gently flowing into Norton’s body, lost control in an instant, savagely tearing at every inch of his flesh.
And this was only the external manifestation.
On a deeper level—
The soul origin that constituted Norton’s Spiritual World was now undergoing an unimaginable collapse.
Blood spurted from the corners of Norton’s mouth and eyes, arriving even before his scream.
This was the true value of “Sage’s Blood,” which cost thirty thousand Rhine gold coins per twenty grams.
Purely physical attacks could not make a Great Sage bleed…
To inflict pain upon a Sage, one must first shatter the soul root that constituted their essence.
This was a curse that directly damaged the enemy’s spiritual origin, condensed and processed through alchemical engineering, and sealed by Shaya into the bullet as its core.
The physical destructive power of this bullet was negligible, but it could directly issue out of-control and insane commands to the hit target’s soul.
And now, that concept of losing control, through the Silver Spirit and Norton’s Soul Pact, directly reached Norton’s soul origin, causing all his spiritual power to rampage uncontrollably.
Normally, this temporary loss of spiritual power control was not so terrifying; it could be smoothed out with a period of meditation.
But Shaya chose the exact moment to fire, precisely at the last instant before Norton was about to completely usurp the Twilight Divine Power and ascend.
“Sage’s Blood” was one of the highest achievements of alchemical technology in Shaya’s current timeline.
In the era of the Azure Court Duchy, this Historical Echo, even the prototype of “Sage’s Blood” had not appeared.
Therefore, Norton could never have known about such a cross-era alchemical creation, nor could he have prevented it.
Thus, the ritual of ascending to godhood was abruptly halted at its climax.
And those who failed on the path to godhood would naturally bear the most violent backlash of the Twilight Divine Power.
The closer he had once been to the Divine Throne, the heavier the price of his fall would be.
…
Everything happened in the blink of an eye.
From Shaya firing, to the bullet hitting the mercury barrier generated by autonomous defense, to Norton being affected by Sage’s Blood, his soul origin circuit going wild, and the ascension ritual failing.
In reality, it only took a fraction of a second.
By the time Sylvia snapped back to reality, Norton’s furious screams were already echoing in her ears.
Along with a deafening roar.
Swish—
Behind Shaya, from the dark and deep shadows, a Shadow Blade as black as ink suddenly slashed diagonally towards Shaya’s neck.
Norton’s main combat familiar, the Shadow Demon born from night and darkness.
This race, capable of controlling shadows and even moving within them, was a natural assassin and the primary culprit behind the silent demise of the Brunnhildr Family’s Four-Ring elders.
It had been following Shaya in the shadows for a long time, ever since Shaya returned to the mansion.
Norton indeed needed a helper who could collect faith for him after ascending to godhood.
And Shaya had always behaved perfectly, showing no flaws, which was why Norton had kept Shaya alive until now.
But with Norton’s cunning and scheming nature, he never truly trusted anyone. Even Shaya, whose life he could supposedly control, was no exception. He had long ago ordered the Shadow Demon to monitor Shaya and kill him the moment he made any move.
However, Norton had miscalculated.
At the moment before ascending to godhood, Norton’s ecstatic joy of about to ascend to the Divine Throne was transmitted to all of his familiars through the Soul Pact.
As a result, all his familiars showed a momentary lapse due to that ecstasy.
Yet, it was precisely this flaw, less than a second long, that Shaya keenly captured.
The Shadow Scythe descended, landing directly on Shaya’s neck.
This caused a flicker of shock and worry in the eyes of Sylvia, who was watching.
Although she hadn’t had time to understand what had happened…
The furious roar of Norton echoing through the underground plaza undoubtedly announced—that there was another hidden story behind all this.
But just at the moment before the Shadow Scythe struck.
The young man’s figure shattered like a fleeting dream.
“Blink” activated.
The Shadow Scythe, as furious as its master, fell into empty space, leaving only the Shadow Demon’s gloomy hiss in the shadows.
…
“Bastard! You bastard!”
“Do you know what you’ve done!”
“You’ve ruined my masterpiece!”
“Ruined a grand achievement of ascending to godhood as a human!”
Norton’s enraged roar echoed throughout the plaza.
The expression on his aged face was contorted, blood oozed from his features, and the dim yellow Divine Power around his body surged up and down but never broke free.
He had suffered a severe blow.
But Norton, with his immense strength, forcefully suppressed his rampaging spiritual power and Twilight Divine Power within a short period.
His gaze locked directly onto Shaya, who had disappeared from the Shadow Demon’s scythe but was slowly reappearing at the other end of the plaza.
“Although I don’t know your reasons!”
“You are finished!”
“Since you refused the blessing of becoming my kingdom’s vice-lord and God’s right hand, then only destruction awaits you.”
Norton took out a crystal from his pocket and crushed it violently.
This was the catalyst for the secret medicine he had made Shaya take earlier.
In principle, as long as this catalyst was shattered, the secret medicine Shaya had taken would be triggered and transform into the most potent poison.
Norton could already see the tragic scene of Shaya’s flesh and blood rotting and dissolving into a pool of foul pus within seconds.
But—
Five seconds passed.
Ten seconds passed.
Nothing happened.
“Lord Norton, it seems Sage’s Blood has truly burned your brain.”
Shaya sighed and said calmly, “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Since I decided to betray you, do you think I would really let you hold something over me?”
As time passed, Norton’s spiritual power, interfered with by Sage’s Blood and continuously raging out of control, calmed down slightly.
And a hint of clarity flashed in his aged eyes.
He recovered from the rage of losing and falling from the clouds at the cusp of ascending to godhood, regaining his usual composure.
Mystery and conspiracy were Norton’s greatest weapons for victory in the past.
He had indeed failed, but he was far from defeated.
“So that’s how it is—”
“The poison was concealed by you using a spatial skill similar to a storage space?”
“This means you didn’t join my plan, see the opportunity to steal divine authority, and then, driven by greed, decide to betray me on a whim.”
“But rather, you infiltrated the family from the very beginning with a plan in mind…”
A hint of solemnity flashed in Norton’s eyes.
He scrutinized Shaya, no longer looking down on him from above, but regarding Shaya as an equal.
“To forge your identity as an orphan, to have you seamlessly inserted into the family, and to have not been discovered under my nose for so many years…”
“Speak, which force stands behind you?”
“Abyss? The Lost Beast King? Or a Cult?”
“Shadow Council? Black Tower, or the Empire, the Alliance of Lieges?”
Norton rattled off a variety of guesses, all of which were powerful entities renowned on the continent, with Legends guarding them.
In his opinion, only such colossal powers could orchestrate the placement of an agent within the Brunnhildr Family to lie dormant for over a decade.
“Of course, it’s fine if you’re unwilling to reveal the name of the force behind you.”
“I know some forces that consider themselves on the side of order and are protective of their reputation—they wouldn’t want to be associated with the infamy of endangering the lives of civilians by researching Evil Gods.”
“Since you can be placed as such an agent, I acknowledge your backer’s qualifications to cooperate with me.”
Norton’s words became confident and sly again.
“A sealed Ancient God’s half-body, powerless to resist.”
“Even if we don’t replace it all by ourselves, there are still many ways to develop and utilize it.”
“We can open a small gap in the seal and gradually extract the Twilight Divine Power for our use.”
“We can also mass-produce Pollutants and then use them to secretly spread our faith across the continent, turning faith into our own power.”
He spread his arms and walked slowly around the underground plaza, his words laced with a hint of temptation:
“Of course, the commotion this time was too big, and it will likely attract a lot of attention, especially from the Dawn Holy See.”
“This kind of trouble might require your backer to step in and resolve it from the shadows.”
“But this is also a good opportunity.”
“We can blame the deaths of the clan elders on those invading Cultists. Once the Patriarch is also cornered and killed, I will be the leader of the Brunnhildr Family, and the Azure Court Duchy will become my absolute domain.”
“At that time, it will be much easier to conduct any research.”
Norton spoke of various tempting proposals, but his cold eyes remained fixed on Shaya, searching for a moment of carelessness.
He was not willing to share the Divine Throne he had meticulously planned for so long with outsiders.
During this time, Norton had figured out everything that had just happened.
The damage Shaya inflicted upon him was caused by some special alchemical material, and it was not repeatable if Norton was prepared.
Although Norton himself was in a poor state, having to reconcile the berserk Twilight Magic within him and also suppress the uncontrollable spiritual power from his soul origin, he was only at about fifty percent of his peak combat strength.
However, facing Shaya, who was only at Three Rings and had not even reached Master Grade at Four Rings, he still held an absolute advantage.
The only concern was that Shaya might suddenly pull out another devastating weapon, like the previous “Sage’s Blood” bullet, something he had never heard of or seen before.
But this was not entirely unpreventable. Norton’s gaze was fixed on Shaya’s hands. Taking items with spatial skills also had precursors, and with his preparedness, he could naturally devise countermeasures.
He still held the advantage.
Even though the ascension ritual had been interrupted, the key was still there.
As long as he killed the youth before him, with no one to stop him, he could continue the unfinished path.
But the next moment.
Clap, clap, clap—
Shaya applauded, expressing his sincere admiration, “Elder Norton, you truly have an imagination. You’re already envisioning my background before I’ve said anything.”
“I think, rather than being a clumsy schemer, you’d be better suited to writing novels.”
“Also, I really didn’t know that a sealed Ancient God had so many uses, you’ve even come up with mass-producing pollutants…”
Shaya stopped clapping and shook his head slightly at Norton, “But, unfortunately.”
“I don’t have any extraordinary background or connections.”
“I’m just a hero, interested for the sake of it.”
“And I’m not really interested in stealing divine authority or anything like that. I prefer to advance one step at a time.”
“Interested for the sake of it… hero.”
Norton vaguely repeated the phrase, finding it absurdly laughable.
In his view, Shaya’s reason for staying underground was his covetousness for the Twilight authority.
Otherwise, why wouldn’t he have escaped after firing that shot? Why would he still be here?
As if seeing through Norton’s thoughts, Shaya’s calm voice sounded again.
“Why am I staying here? Of course, it’s to wait for the cooldown.”
“On the other hand, Elder Norton, what are you waiting for?”
Shaya’s figure shifted slightly.
Norton, thinking Shaya was about to draw his gun again, tensed up and became fully alert.
That shot earlier had left a vivid impression on him; the damage to his soul had not yet recovered.
But Shaya did not make an attack.
He simply walked to the side of the young girl not far away and crouched down.
Sylvia suddenly felt two not particularly thick but well-defined hands grasp her thighs, lifting her up.
Those hands were so familiar, with a warm touch.
Just like the hands that had pulled her up from the icy abyss of Grant Sea on that winter night.
“Hold on tight.”
That familiar voice sounded.
Sylvia, bracing her weakened body, lifted her head slightly, only to see those clear black eyes.
There was no conversation or exchange, but the moment she saw Shaya’s eyes, Sylvia understood everything.
She had not been betrayed.
Even if the life named “Sylvia” was indeed a script that had been woven and manipulated.
But that precious memory—
And that glimmer of light that pierced the darkness and illuminated her eyes were definitely not false.
Sylvia nodded silently and reached out, wrapping her arms tightly around the young man’s neck.
After Sylvia held him tightly, Shaya turned to look at Norton in the distance.
His gaze was clear and deep, and he extended a slender finger to his lips: “BOOM—”
The next moment, Shaya and Sylvia’s figures dispersed and vanished from the underground plaza.
Norton looked blankly in the direction where Shaya and Sylvia had disappeared, unable to comprehend the meaning of Shaya’s final gesture.
But then, his pupils contracted sharply.
In that instant, Norton saw myriad blazing white lights ignite simultaneously—
If converted into the unit of measurement from Shaya’s previous life, it was equivalent to five hundred tons of TNT detonating simultaneously.
At some point, Shaya had replaced the soil in the area around this thirty-meter-deep underground plaza with his specially customized Detonating Clay.
Detonated along with the Detonating Clay were two hundred grams of holy water blessed by a Bishop of the Sun Church.
The high temperature vaporized the holy water into holy water steam.
A radiance akin to daylight instantly engulfed the entire underground plaza, including Norton.
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