Chapter 239: Episode 76. The System (2)

I could understand why he was puzzled. I had improved tremendously since the last time we had met. Garatsh was a Spirit King who had entered the realm of transcendence, so he would have easily recognized my dramatic growth.

Scanning me, Garatsh spoke.

“Are you a demon? You look like a god.”

“Well, I’m trying to kill one.”

“That’s interesting. Very interesting. If I were not busy, I would have joined you.”

“Garatsh, don’t you want to get back at the Spirits of Darkness?”

I looked straight into the spirit’s eyes. The World of the Spirits of Fire was half destroyed. Only a small number of Spirits of Fire survived, and anyone could tell that the rest, too, would soon be doomed if the Spirits of Darkness invaded a couple more times.

Garatsh, the leader of the Spirits of Fire, was also very well aware of their vulnerability.

The spirit just witnessed my overwhelming power, and I was quite confident that he would accept my offer.

My offer was a saving grace to Garatsh. The spirit started to smile.

“What do you want?”

Garatsh was reasonable.

He told me about the most recent news about the spirits. Interdimensional cracks opened one day, and the Spirits of Darkness started attacking other spirits. To their surprise, the Spirits of Darkness had gotten much stronger than before. What struck me the most was the news that Adonis, the Spirit King of Darkness, had become a demigod.

“That bastard broke the balance. Other spirits have dedicated themselves in different places of the world, trying to maintain the balance. However, Adonis was caught up with the urge to destroy and started attacking everyone else. If he does not stop, the entire World of Spirits will be… Phew.”

Garatsh sighed deeply. The spirit was emitting strong flames from all over his body, but the flames looked somewhat discouraged.

“Anything else? I’m sure that the other spirits did not just let Adonis invade them.”

Garatsh nodded.

“You are correct. We united. The survivors marched to the World of the Spirits of Darkness together. And only one survived, and that was me.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know… None of us could do any damage to Adonis…”

No one could defeat an enemy to whom they could not cause damage. Garatsh described Adonis as a demigod because he seemed invincible to Garatsh’s attacks. The Spirit King of Fire did not want to admit such a large power difference between him and Adonis, and perhaps that was why he did not describe Adonis as a god.

“Is that it? Did you see something else?”

“That is a weird question. Hmm, let me think… A door, yes, there was a door. A large door appeared in the sky. It was there for a split second, but I think I saw it.”

I was quite familiar with the World of the Spirits of Darkness. I had visited the castle at the center of that world to attend the Auction of Devildom multiple times in the past.

However, never had I seen a door in the sky before.

I suspected that the door which Garatsh just told me about was new and had appeared just recently. Perhaps it could be related to the system.

“This is all I can tell. The Spirits of Darkness have gotten much stronger and grown larger in number. Adonis has become very powerful, too. Do you have a plan to defeat them?”

“I don’t need any tricks.”

I spread my wings widely.

Based on the information that I heard from Garatsh, I became confident that nothing would stop me.

Time was the most important asset now. If the system was really located inside of the World of the Spirits of Darkness, and if Death Bringer found out that I was near it, he would come to me immediately. However, I still had some time. The Hell Lord was not fully possessed with Death Bringer, and he was greatly confused, unable to make any moves.

“You’re going alone.”

Garatsh seemed astounded.

“When I come back, I expect you to open the storage.”

“Well, that depends on the progress… Fine, I will open the storage. You can take whatever you want. However, you must eliminate all of them.”

Garatsh gave up on negotiating with me.

He had wanted to give me armors in return for my service, but he decided to let me take anything.

The spirit seemed like he wanted to accompany me, but Garatsh had to stay behind and take care of the remaining spirits.

I walked towards the crack again.

I always liked quick fights, and I was going to do the same again. I would not let my enemies have the advantage to prepare for my arrival.

The Spirits of Darkness were originally merchants, and they depended on the points that demons spent. In the previous life, it took them decades to start wars. However, this time, they improved much more quickly and declared a war in less than a decade. I wondered what was different this time.

A crack was a crack, after all. The Spirits of Darkness could have saved some energy through making cracks, but such energy would not be sufficient to start wars against the entire World of Spirits.

I suspected that the system was somehow related to their rapid growth.

I entered the World of the Spirits of Darkness through the crack.

I moved quickly and reached the central part, so that no spirit could notice me.

No one in this world would dare stop me. I was much more powerful than anyone here. I held back in the Auctions of Devildom, only because my power was restricted by the contract with the Demon God. Without such restrictions, those in Devildom were much more powerful than those in the World of Spirits in general.

Even if the Spirits of Darkness had improved, they were still very weak to me. It seemed that all of them were promoted a level or two, but that did not matter to me.

“Adonis,” I thought.

My target was Adonis.

Garatsh described him as a demigod, implying that Adonis had become very powerful. Of course, I was not worried about his power, but I wondered how he could grow so quickly. Adonis broke through his limits only very recently, and I could not imagine how the spirit took such a large leap and became a demigod.

Soon, I arrived at the center of the World of the Spirits of Darkness. In the middle of this world was the large castle and the large door, floating in the sky.

I could not see it clearly, but it was definitely there.

My heart beat even harder. That door would lead me to the system. Gustarte, inside of me, told me so.

However, many Spirits of Darkness were guarding the paths to the door. They built stairs to the sky and created castles from places to places. All of them were heavily guarded against strangers.

“I don’t think I can ignore the guards,” I thought.

I scratched my chin.

The guards did not matter. I was not going to play it quietly from the first place.

I wanted to get Adonis alive because I wanted something from him.

“The Seven Sins,” I thought.

I wanted to take what he had among the Seven Sins. I only had three from the collection. The last one was an imitation of Greed. That left me three more to collect.

I wondered what would happen if I get the entire collection. The Hell Lord created the set of armors because he wanted to use them to kill the gods; the Seven Sins must be extremely powerful. Even Oswen, the greatest blacksmith of all time, was aware of the power of the Seven Sins. Afraid of the collection being misused, the blacksmith hid the collection in interdimensional cracks.

I woke up the Lightning God.

Yawning heavily, the Lightning God came out.

“Say hello to them.”

I wanted the Lightning God to take care of the guards.

The Lightning God reluctantly charged at the castle, which the Spirits of Darkness had built for protection.

Boom! Boooom! Boom!

The Lightning God destroyed the castle in no time.

After the castle was breached, I continued to slaughter the Spirits of Darkness.

I had seen some of them, but I did not save them. Our relationship had been strictly business, and now it was that between enemies.

I wasn’t nice enough to sympathize with my enemies.

I did not even try hard. However, I was way too powerful for the spirits that simple touches killed them.

There was a huge gap of power between them and me, and I did not bother using any of my powers.

After I crushed dozens of Spirits of Darkness, someone appeared.

“…Randalf Bruciel, I don’t remember inviting you.”

It was Adonis, the Spirit King of Darkness.

The Spirit King was wearing a thick and black cloak. He was also wearing clothes and armors, which seemed to be equivalent to or higher than the legend grade.

Although he was merely a spirit, Adonis took some time to dress himself in flamboyant clothes.

“Adonis, I came to take what I lent you.”

“What did I borrow?”

“The Seven Sins and that door!”

I pointed at the door in the sky with my finger. Inside that giant door was the system.

Adonis scoffed at me.

“What a robber!”

“No, I’m not robbing you. I’m giving you an offer. I will spare you if you hand them to me.”

If the Spirits of Darkness wanted an item to sell in the auction, they always ended up getting that item, no matter how hard it was to get it. I was using the same approach as them. In addition, I had proof that the Spirits of Darkness conspired with Death Bringer.

When I said I would spare him if he handed the items to me, I wasn’t lying.

However, I did not specify who the “you” was going to be. I meant some Spirits of Darkness, and it did not have to be Adonis.

Of course, I did not expect the Spirit King to give the items to me without resisting.

“Well, I don’t know how you have gotten stronger, but it seems that your strength has made you way too arrogant. If you want to die, I can help you with that.”

It seems that Adonis and Death Bringer were not closely connected in terms of communications. The Spirit King did not have any idea what I had absorbed to get stronger.

In fact, it would be awkward if a Demon God like Death Bringer told Adonis about every single thing he knew. The two were business partners; Death Bringer gave the system to Adonis, and the spirit brought back the Hell Lord’s body from Nothingness in return.

Garatsh recognized what had changed inside of me. However, the proud Adonis became too arrogant with his power, so he did not realize what changes I went through.

If he did, he would not dare talk to me like this.

“I’m glad that Adonis is dumb,” I thought.

Shrugging my shoulders, I grabbed Rage and the Sword of the Emperor.

I felt that I did not have to even use other skills to kill Adonis.

Coincidently, the Moon was up in the sky at that moment.

“The swordsmanship of Highendall would be enough,” I thought.

I was going to crush this spirit solely with my sword.

Using even the smallest amount of mana on Adonis would be wasteful.

Adonis was no match for me. The only reason that Garatsh’s attacks could not do any damage was because he had skills of demigod grades.

In particular, the spirit used a skill called Elemental Shield (Demigod), which canceled the opponent’s attack.

However, such a skill was useless to me. Even if Adonis’ skill was of demigod grade, the power gap between him and me was too great.

A good weapon was powerful only when its user was as good. Adonis, despite the advanced skill that he had, was too weak to make full use of it.

The Mind’s Eye was a good example. One could use this skill to view the other’s status windows, but that was only possible if the user was as good as their opponent in terms of skills, intelligence, and mana.

I was much more powerful than Adonis, and his skill did not work on me.

“What the…”

Adonis’ eyes widened.

He could not believe the large power difference between him and me.

Unfortunately, the spirit could not finish his sentence.

My sword split Adonis’ head into two pieces.

Splash!

I cleaned my sword and looked around.

Many Spirits of Darkness were surrounding me, but none of them would dare start a fight with me. All of them were silent.

“I made a promise with Garatsh,” I thought.

All of the Spirits of Darkness were guilty.

I decided to burn most of them and leave only a few alive. After all, they were part of the balance, and I did not want to exterminate them.

Boom!

The Lightning God went wild.

The Flame of Pride surrounded the Spirits of Darkness, so that none of them could escape.

Trapped by the flames, the spirits were waiting for their ends.

In the blink of an eye, their number had reduced significantly.

I stopped attacking the spirits and went to one of the spirits, who had been wobbling with fear throughout the entire combat. The spirit looked like a kobold, and it was the dumbest of all.

“What is your name?”

“M-my name is… hiccup! Snipper.”

I nodded and continued.

“Snipper, now you are the leader of the surviving spirits.”

“Hiccup! Huh?”

“Leader Snipper, bring me the rest of the Seven Sins. Otherwise, the rest of you will follow Adonis.”

Simply put, they were all going to die if they did not bring the Seven Sins.

Even though Snipper looked dumb, he seemed to understand my message. Then the spirit nodded his head hard.

“Y-yes!”

Snipper ran as fast as he could. He did not seem to be running away.

I looked at the rest of the survivors.

Looking at the ground, the survivors did not move. The survivors were not willing to fight at all.

“You lost.”

I talked slowly, accurately pronouncing each word, so that they clearly know their defeat.

The only reason I spared them was because I was merciful, and I wanted to maintain the balance in the World of Spirits.

Of course, I was not obligated to keep the balance, but the Spirits of Darkness could be useful. After all, they were excellent at getting items.

I thought about using some of them as my servants, after all these were over.

“Then…”

I looked up and saw the giant door that led to the system.