Myths Reawakened

Saigner was astonished. “I’ve sealed Shadow Nightmare and prevented you from using the power of Death. What are you fighting me with?”

“With the goddess’s blessing!” Wayne held the longsword upright before his chest. The snow-white blade trembled with a resonant ring, reflecting half of his righteous face. “A knight’s power doesn’t lie in Shadow Nightmare. I’ve come to the Underworld on the goddess’s order. On Her behalf, I’ll ask you this. You disloyal, unfilial, cruel, and unjust traitor, what gives you the right to fight me? To fight Her?”

“I told you to shut up!!”

Saigner’s composure broke again. She tore space open with a wave and pierced her black-gloved hand through the roiling darkness, aiming at Wayne’s face.

Wayne’s eyes gleamed with surging light. He slammed his head against her delicate palm. The tremendous power behind the headbutt crashed into her, collapsing the surrounding space with the sheer force of it.

Saigner felt a stabbing pain in her palm. She couldn’t help but stagger back.

She didn’t have time to be surprised before a cold blade came at her, the tip drawing a trail of white light across the night sky like a shooting star. The speed of the attack was absurd.

Saigner tilted her head back to dodge it, invoking the Authority to hurl Wayne away before he could make a follow-up attack.

Wayne sensed space close around him. When he looked, there was nothing in front of him. His killing move had cut nothing. With a raised eyebrow, he blinked to the spot right before Saigner and slashed through the heavy space with Shadow Nightmare, ripping through the leaden air in a piercing shriek.

Wherever the tip of the blade passed through, air stirred. Space rippled outward and formed vortex after vortex. There was no technique involved, only pure brute force. Wayne tore through the space around Saigner.

If I kill space, you’ll have no space to manipulate!

Saigner raised her hand and caught the blade with her slim, gloved fingers, twisting her wrist. The incredible power behind the slash sent her flying.

Wayne narrowed his eyes and chased after her, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Everyone, I got a good look! She’s wearing black underwear! I haven’t caught a glimpse of her carpet!”

“...” xN

Who the hell asked?! xN

They had thought that Wayne would have another rousing speech to give, continuing his righteous monologue earlier. But he ended up saying something that was rousing in an entirely different way. Their hearts went cold, and they lost the passion that had ignited.

It felt terrible!

Saigner felt terrible, too. The abomination she was fighting had absurd raw power. Even with the Authority of the Divine Realm inflating her stats, she could not match Wayne’s power.

Had he really come as the goddess’s representative?

Saigner blocked the sword with one hand while keeping the hem of her dress down, deep in thought.

“What’s the point of covering up now?” Wayne pontificated. “You disloyal, unfilial, cruel, unjust traitor, I’ve already seen everything!”

If his lines weren’t so depraved, he would’ve seemed like a hero.

“For someone disloyal, unfilial, cruel, and unjust like you, I wouldn’t bother looking even if you weren’t wearing underwear. Try me if you don’t believe it.”

“I told you to shut up!”

Saigner had had enough. She caught Shadow Nightmare with an arm and unfurled her black wings—they were crow’s wings that left brilliant light in her wake. Her presence became even greater.

At the same time, Wayne’s presence plummeted, and all of his stats were halved. Saigner’s fist collided with his face and sent him slamming into the ground, creating a massive crater.

Dust surged and formed walls tall enough to dwarf the Summit of Pride. Inside the deep crater lay Wayne. His distorted face writhed quickly and restored his appearance in an instant.

He rose slowly, frowning as he took stock of his change. His thoughts were restrained, and his power suppressed. It wasn’t a seal, but something else altogether. It was as if he were fighting the entire world. Every blade of grass and every flower and leaf rejected him. Even the air itself denied him. To keep the world from suppressing and caging him, he had to spend the bulk of his strength pushing back.

“Authority again...” Wayne drifted up with Shadow Nightmare in his hand, sneering. “You’ve been fighting with Authority from start to finish. Without the goddess’s power, you would’ve died a long time ago. Traitor who only gets by thanks to the goddess, if I were you, I would’ve long since committed suicide in shame.”

He raised his sword at Saigner. “I’ll give you a dignified way out. If you have even a shred of shame, end yourself!”

Saigner stared at Wayne in shock, at a loss for words. She had never met anyone who could move freely while suppressed by the Divine Realm. She asked herself if she could do the same were she in Wayne’s place, and the answer was no. She wouldn’t be able to even stay on her feet.

In other words, Wayne was far more powerful than her when she had been a simple subordinate god. Despite being a demigod, he could stand toe to toe with a god.

“This...” Saigner murmured, thinking of Aztimor. “Could it be... he really is here on Her behalf?”

Rattled, she panicked visibly.

That’s my opening!

Wayne charged with his blade, reaching Saigner with two teleports. His raw power shattered space. Then his sword, with black swirling currents, pierced through her chest. He drove her into the black space ahead.

Crack!

Under the blank stares of the demigods bearing witness, space ruptured into a gaping hole thousands of meters away, and Wayne and Saigner reappeared.

Wayne moved his sword downward, smashing through a large expanse of mountain ranges. His thoughts condensed into a giant hammer and struck Saigner in the crudest and most violent way possible. Her mind blanked as a result, with nothing but static filling her head.

The tentacles of thoughts wrapped around her limbs, trapping her. Then Wayne made several swings with Shadow Nightmare, the dazzling arcs weaving into a net as he cut Saigner to pieces.

Her body dissolved into writhing sludge in a wet slide. Her black wings faded into black smoke and vanished.

Wayne frowned. Without looking, he held Shadow Nightmare behind his back. Following a metallic clang, his body tilted slightly forward. He steadied himself in a single step.

Whirling around, he swung Shadow Nightmare horizontally at the black-winged figure.

Clang!!

Two pristine white greatswords clashed. Saigner frowned, staggering back under the monstrous power.

The frozen space behind her buckled under the pressure, folding like broken shards of mirror as she tried to regain her footing with the world as her support.

Rip!

Wayne’s power overturned Saigner and the space around her. She plunged into the black turbulence.

“It’s too late to run now...”

He leapt in after her.

The demigods below couldn’t track either of them. With cold sweat covering their hands, they scanned for fractures in space. The bursting spiderweb cracks told them how fierce the battle was.

Boom!!

Dust soared from the ground as over a hundred mountain peaks collapsed all at once, crashing down into the bottomless abyss below amid howling gales. The broken space healed then, and the abyss disappeared. The mountain ranges snapped one after another, leaving the whole land in shambles.

Before the demigods could take a good look, another explosive noise came from above. Shattered space swallowed everything and spat out black currents, then inhaled everything tangible and intangible once more.

For the next five minutes, the eighth level endured devastating abuse. More than half of the world collapsed. The proud, solitary black peaks that had once stood toppled; barely one in a hundred of them remained.

Rip!

Saigner emerged with her sword in hand, stumbling and staggering. Her face had drained of all color.

The primitive, violent clash left her thoughts ravaged. She didn’t understand how a demigod this powerful could exist in the world, or why she had never heard of him.

Where did the monster come from?

The only explanation she could think of was the goddess’s blessings. The man had to have entered the Divine Realm on her orders to quell the rebellion.

But it can’t be!

She rejected the possibility wholeheartedly. Sensing a chill behind her, she invoked the Authority and teleported away along with the space around her.

Crack!

Crrrack—

A staccato of shattering noises rang. Under Saigner’s horrified gaze, the cold blade of Shadow Nightmare cut space open, annihilating everything in its path at an absurd speed. More precisely, it had slammed through everything with sheer raw power.

If the sword weren’t so well-crafted, it would’ve been chipped.

Saigner abandoned space and fled, coming to rest on a flattened highland, only to see Wayne leap out of space and pursue her. She looked like she had seen a ghost.

In fact, it was part of her daily life to deal with ghosts as the Judge of the Underworld, so seeing ghosts wouldn’t put such a look of shock on her face.

“What are you?” Saigner parried Shadow Nightmare with her sword, speaking in disbelief. “Why doesn’t the Authority work on you? You’ve been growing stronger... Do you have the Underworld’s Authority, too?”

I’ve probably evolved to adapt to the changing environment!

Wayne was grateful for the pressure Saigner applied. It allowed him to tap further into his potential.

“It is the goddess’s blessing,” he said righteously. “I believed I could defeat you, and hearing my declaration of unwavering conviction, the goddess came to stand behind me. Open your eyes and look closely at the one swinging this sword at you!”

Such nonsense wouldn’t have fooled anyone who knew him. Any of his harem members, like Veronica, would’ve already thrown a punch at him.

But Saigner believed him!

Not only did she believe him, but she also saw a hazy, elegant figure behind him. The figure put her arms around Wayne in an embrace and guided Shadow Nightmare with her hands over the backs of his hands.

That was why the Underworld’s Authority couldn’t restrain Wayne, thought Saigner. Moreover, he was shaking off the Authority’s influence and growing stronger, becoming more and more impossible to defeat.