Chapter 226
Chapter 226: Icy Flames
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
The entire temple was collapsing. Due to its height, the broken stones that fell from the ceiling hit with the force of meteors, smashing large holes into the ground. However, the two that were facing off against each other ignored this nearby threat.
With a flash, that gigantic black stone giant vanished completely. In the very next instant, I swung my sword.
*Clang!*
In the midst of falling stones, the sword slice met Emordilorcan’s heavy fist, sending sparks flying everywhere. The impact forced me into the ground, and my right arm, which held my sword, ached with pain. My purlicue [1] 1 also started bleeding. However, I revealed a delighted expression.
“I’m able to block his attack!”
Yep, facing off against Emordilorcan and being able to block his heavy fist was already beyond my expectations.
“You really think you can win just by being able to block me!?”
A thunderous roar echoed throughout the temple as the raging Earth Elemental God vented his anger and laughed tauntingly at my delight. “Then let me inform you! That punch just now was only one percent of my strength! Doesn’t that make you despair?!”
Hearing this, I laughed out even louder than he did. Was he just testing the waters? It was the same for both of us; my sword slice just now hadn’t used any of my trump cards. Even though I was actually somewhat disappointed inside, I definitely wouldn’t let it show or lose in a war of words.
“I know how to talk a good fight, too. My attack just now was also only one percent of my strength. Were you trying to give me a massage?”
The power of frigid ice was gradually spreading down my sword, and everything was within my expectations. Before I could even stand back up, Emordilorcan’s furious barrage of attacks arrived again.
*Whoosh!*
Emordilorcan didn’t respond to me this time as he took a deep breath, shook his body, stomped, and instantly vanished again.
His gigantic body had inconceivable agility. The afterimages he left behind were actually beyond the ability of my eyes to perceive. I only saw a blur before the giant arrived before me. The only thing I could do was follow my combat instincts and wield my silver longsword in defense.
A force that was too strong to resist against was transmitted to me through my sword. The scenery around me changed at a rapid pace; with just a single blow, I was sent crashing into the incredibly high ceiling.
*Cough!*
The impact from my back hitting the ceiling caused me to cough out a large amount of blood. This blow heavily injured my internal organs. It would seem that there was still a large difference between our strengths. My physical body’s strength was akin to a titan’s but was nothing before him at all. No wonder all those tower giants were also destroyed by Emordilorcan in a single blow.
My right arm was beginning to ice over, and my ice crystal sword was frozen to my hand, which was the only reason I hadn’t dropped it. With this exchange of blows, I had lost again, but I still laughed.
The force of gravity caused me to fall from the ceiling, but a pair of crystal ice wings suddenly opened up behind my back.
“The preparations are complete, and he shouldn’t be as on guard anymore. In that case, you should allow him to have a taste of your world.”
The female loli’s voice that sounded in my ears seemed to remind me that I wasn’t alone in facing off against my mortal enemy. Meanwhile, Emordilorcan was tossing rocks at me from below; they flew at me with the force of a meteor shower.
*Boom!* *Boom!* *Boom!* Colossal holes were created in the ceiling from the force of Emordilorcan’s thrown rocks; however, I was gliding through this meteor shower…
With darting, rolling, and gliding movements, Emordilorcan’s rocks had zero percent chance of hitting me thanks to Harloys, who was controlling my flight. With her assistance, I was able to concentrate on my next attack.
“Emordilorcan!”
Together with my angry roar was the icy sword energy coming from a furious attack. It was the most direct type of challenge invitation possible.
When Emordilorcan saw that I was actually gliding right towards him with an obvious intention to clash with him head-on, he remained unafraid. For someone like him who specialized in melee battles, there was no way that he would be afraid of such an ambush.
However, some type of natural instinct seemed to remind him of something. He had an ominous premonition, so he imperceptibly focused on the sword that I was holding, the preternaturally beautiful sword of ice.
My sword was far longer than most, at nearly 1.6 meters. Its entire body was made of ice crystals, and there was a pair of Goddesses embracing on the hilt of my sword. The blade was actually two ice blades that twisted around each other. The sword was as transparent as glass and seemed to be sparkling like the stars.
It was obviously an exquisite sword that seemed like a work of art, but Emordilorcan instinctively felt afraid as he looked at the sword. Fear was an emotion that he was supposed to have abandoned long ago.
Right after, he stomped and took a deep breath, causing that inexplicable sense of fear to disappear.
“A magic sword that can affect emotions? So what!?”
This unusual Elemental God, who had even managed to become a Master Monk, was able to ignore all negative emotions due to the countless battles he had been through. They had tempered his heart and soul; in combat, he was always able to fight at one hundred percent. What he perceived to be a mere magic sword able to influence emotions was nothing more than scrap metal to him.
This time, he didn’t intend to dodge. Emordilorcan was intending to teach me just what true strength was.
As I descended using my wings of ice, Emordilorcan suddenly jumped up into the air and my icy sword once again clashed against his heavy fist. We both fought using our basic instincts.
There was no difference from last time. I was thrown upwards again, and the ceiling was so hard that I wanted to cry. But, as I wiped away the blood I coughed up with my sleeve, I started smiling in delight as I looked at my opponent.
Emordilorcan was uninjured, but there was now something blue flashing on his right arm. Suddenly, that speck of blue started expanding.
The black stone giant glanced at it and saw the spreading ice, so he gritted his teeth and sliced down on his right arm with his left arm.
*Snap!*
Emordilorcan’s entire right arm and right elbow were cut off, and it transformed into a block of ice which shattered on the ground. Nothing happened at all besides that.
Emordilorcan didn’t care about something like losing an arm. This had become a common thing for him way long ago when he was dealing with powerful enemies, and all he had to do was gather the earth element and create a new arm. It didn’t hurt one bit.
It was just that being tricked like this made him quite angry, which was why he glared at me.
“Fool, all you know is how to play useless tricks. I…”
Before he even finished speaking, his angry glare changed into shock and disbelief.
“…You—what have you done! Why can’t I regrow my limb! Why? Impossible!”
“What did I do? I didn’t do anything. It’s just that this ice sword of mine isn’t so easy to deal with. This is my strongest sword of all!”
What was strength, and did this world have the so-called strongest power rank of all? For every living being who sought to become stronger, they would all wonder about this. And based on their different understandings of the concept of strength, they would walk different paths.
On the path to becoming stronger, the natural course of evolution and the cultivation that powerful individuals undertook were actually the same things. Some would believe that a solid defense was the best, so either they would put on heavy armor or maybe grow a solid outer shell. Some would believe that high speed to the point where others couldn’t see them clearly was the strongest; perhaps they would become an agile assassin or even grow wings and speedy legs.
True top-level existences were impossible to copy. They had their own personal understandings about strength.
Emordilorcan was incredibly strong. He abandoned the fancy-seeming elemental magic and wholeheartedly threw himself into controlling the power of physical might. His elemental composition was the most practical muscular structure of all, which further increased his physical power that was already at the top of the world. Then, he even learned the “weakling mortals’” fighting techniques and used the most practical of his talents to evolve his physical combat ability to the utmost.
To be honest, the moment I saw Emordilorcan rip through dimensional fabric with just pure physical power earlier, I knew that there wouldn’t be a single person alive who could confidently say that he or she could defeat Emordilorcan solely in physical combat. This was already taking into consideration that the current Emordilorcan was injured all over and that his power wasn’t even one-tenth of his maximum power level at his strongest.
Sword Saints? Emordilorcan’s fighting experience and techniques were far above the level of the so-called human Sword Saints. His over ten thousand years of fighting experience helped him to understand countless schools of martial arts techniques. Perhaps he lacked humans’ creativity and innovation and was unable to come up with his own school of martial arts, and perhaps he might have lost in martial arts techniques to some genius in the past. But when you add on the fact that Emordilorcan possessed a physical body of unmatched might, he remained unbeatable in physical combat.
However, no matter how strong Emordilorcan was, it was all meaningless to me.
I wasn’t being arrogant. It was due to our different interpretations of what strength was.
“So-called strength is undoubtedly an unblockable sword (attack power that can’t be defended against), an impenetrable shield (a solid defense that can block all attacks), and an abnormal attacking method that’s difficult to dodge (a surprise attack method that’s too hard to conceive of and be on guard against).”
Perhaps this was due to my way of thinking as a transmigrator. My understanding of strength was completely different from the mainstream understanding of strength in this world, which was why I never hesitated to use small tricks or underhanded techniques. As long as they could be of use to me, I would attempt to learn anything and everything, and make it my own strategy.
If Emordilorcan was the representative of the “specialist” school of thought, where he continued to improve upon his greatest strength, then my path could perhaps be described as the “generalist” school of thought.
“Perhaps I’m not my opponent’s match in certain areas, but I can find a method to counter my opponent’s strengths. I’ll always use my strengths to attack my opponent’s weaknesses. Emordilorcan’s very strong? Indeed, but his attacking method is obviously too simplistic. All I need is a shield that can counter him and seal off his advantage, as well as a sword that can slice through his rock-solid defense, and that’ll be enough. I don’t need to be better than him in his strongest area. I simply need to win. So-called strength is the power to defeat your enemy; that’s all.”
And right now, I just happened to possess a magic sword in my hands that was easily able to slice through Emordilorcan’s defenses.
“Ice Calamity!”
This was an incredibly dangerous magic sword, dangerous to the point that I didn’t even dare to use it in the mortal plane.
The reason? Just like those Seven Brothers of the Gourd, its power came from “Shadow,” an incredibly dangerous Divine Sin. I had no intentions of having fun by being ganged up upon by all the True Gods.
When Shadow combined with Harloys, I was finally able to control his powers, which were a double-edged sword. His “Cold Flames of Despair” finally became my power.
“Come, Emordilorcan! When temperatures reach absolute zero, what will happen?”
My ice crystal sword emitted blinding silver flashes, and the arcs of my sword swings sent blue flames into the air.
This was no combination magic of any sort; it was the pure gathering of coldness. It was ice magic with the power of a Divine Sin, which even the Gods would fear.
Things always develop in the opposite direction when they become extreme. When coldness reached an extreme point, the extreme cold air actually gathered into the shape of flames.
Just looking at the slowly burning flames of ice made Emordilorcan feel suffocated, as if those icy flames were spreading on his arm and death was waiting for him right behind his back.
If he hadn’t been willing to slice off his right arm earlier, he was well aware that perhaps he would be entirely frozen solid right now.
This was a Divine Sin’s curse against the world and Shadow’s natural talent ability. It was to make everything reach the absolute limit of low temperature—absolute zero.
At this abnormally low temperature, physical matter wouldn’t be in liquid, solid, or gas state anymore. Instead, they would become “superatoms,” the most basic state of all.
These atoms would stop moving, stop acting, freeze over, and merely exist.
At absolute zero, any power would vanish, and any consciousness would enter hibernation. They could only exist, as if time itself had been frozen.
It was only natural that Emordilorcan’s arm was unable to be regrown. The concept of his arm still existed, but it was simply frozen solid. Just like how humans were unable to grow three arms, as long as he didn’t destroy the concept of his arm that I had frozen, he would never be able to regrow it!
This was a type of toxic poison, a poison of the world that could freeze everything—a time poison that could freeze even the most basic fundamental natural laws of space and time.
This was also why I feared “Shadow” so much. If he had ever spat a mouthful of icy flames at me, it probably wouldn’t be any different from me sleeping all the way until the end of the world.
There was nothing in this world that could possibly be immune to these icy flames. The only reason I was able to use them was that I possessed an even stronger shield, strong enough to block this poison of the world.
Since these icy flames were able to even freeze time itself, then how could this world possibly possess something that could defend against it? Indeed, while this world may not possess anything, that wasn’t true of my new world.
“Whew! This really is the coldest ice. My hands are already numb to the point that I can’t feel them anymore. Yikes—yikes!”
Even though I was obviously in the scorching hot Earth Elemental Plane, I kept saying how cold it was as if it were the middle of winter. My arms were currently covered with the [Coldest Ice] that came from my new world.
Although I called it the coldest, it didn’t actually have much of a difference from the ice in this world. However, when I gave it the Concept of [Coldest Ice in the World], then even the Divine Sin’s icy flames were no longer able to make this [Coldest Ice]’s temperature go any lower, which was how I was able to protect myself.
Of course, I couldn’t do anything about the fact that I would have frostbite afterwards…
This was a special right of the creator of a new world, and also the impenetrable armor that I prepared for myself.
What? You’re saying that I used the wrong word? I should be using the word indestructible rather than impenetrable? Heh heh, you’ll soon find out why I used the word impenetrable.
As I forcefully stuck my calamity-bringing ice crystal sword into the ground, the familiar frigid earth of my world appeared around us.
“Emordilorcan, welcome to my world—Frigidwinter Earth!”
“You… you dare to challenge the Divine Authority of the creator? You’re insane!”
His angry questioning suddenly stopped. The frigid ice covered me and transformed into a heavy armor of frozen ice, while that dangerous two-handed longsword suddenly started burning with blue flames and transformed me into a person on fire.
“This is a nightmarish opponent! He actually dares to wear such a thing? Using the power of a Divine Sin and challenging the Divine Authority of the Creator Eich herself, you’re a heretic far crazier than I am! You’re challenging all the True Gods! You’re challenging the very basic order and natural law of the world!”
Emordilorcan’s evaluation of his enemy Roland kept continuously increasing, but upon seeing this sight, he knew that he had still underestimated me. I was completely illogical to him.
After the first time, Emordilorcan had already lost the confidence to defeat me. For a mortal that seemed so insignificant to him, I actually became a threatening opponent, and now that he had witnessed me challenging the Creator herself, he probably felt that I had gone completely insane. For the first time, Emordilorcan was seeing himself meet his own end, as well as regretting—for the first time—that he had gained such a dangerous mortal enemy, all for the sake of some mortal beastmen.
How could I possibly let the signs of fear and regret in his eyes slip past me? I laughed in satisfaction.
Frigid, frozen ice now covered this entire area. Since the long preparation time required for it had already completed, my wintry world had now descended upon this place, and I had instantly pulled Emordilorcan into this frozen plain as well. This time, there would be no escaping for him.
*Ding! Ding! Ding!*
Clear sounds resounded and the countless amount of frozen ice crystallized into numerous huge ice swords. This icy plains had now transformed into a corridor of innumerable swords. After that, when I stuck my Ice Calamity Sword into the mountain, those fatal blue flames appeared on every single ice sword’s blade.
I randomly picked up an ice sword. The flames upon it were burning vigorously, just like torches, and caused me to smile in satisfaction. This time, it was my turn to be rushing Emordilorcan head-on.
“Emordilorcan, there are no more chances for you to repent. Now then, let us begin our second round in our duel to the death! I said before that it’s time to settle everything between us! You’re a God that’s high up above? Taste the revenge of a mortal that you view as nothing more than an ant!”
Note:
1. The space between one’s forefinger and thumb.