The leader of the Holy Blessing Society naturally thought of fighting back, but under this unrelenting string of combos, his consciousness had long since grown hazy. Only now, as they hurtled downward like a falling meteor, did he finally regain some semblance of awareness.
Yet trapped high in the air without the ability to fly, he had no leverage whatsoever. All he could do was grip War Freya’s ankle with both hands where her foot remained planted on his face, trying desperately to pry it off.
At the same time, the cult leader summoned several Hands of Curse to grab onto War Freya, hoping to slow their descent.
However... all his efforts were in vain. In the next second, the meteor slammed violently into the ocean. Because the destructive force of this impact promised to be catastrophic, War Freya had deliberately avoided aiming near the pier or the shore—otherwise, the shockwave alone might have obliterated everyone on the coast.
Boom!
A colossal column of water twenty to thirty meters high exploded into the sky. At such extreme speed and height, hitting the surface of the water was practically no different from slamming into solid ground. What was more, War Freya kept her foot stomped onto the cult leader’s head as they plunged deeper, slamming him brutally into the seabed to deliver a secondary wave of devastation.
On the shore, David—who had watched the entire battle unfold—had not closed his mouth once. He hadn’t even noticed when the battle’s shockwaves blew a mouthful of sand right into it. “Th-this... this... cough cough, ptui, ptui, ptui!”
At this moment, David’s perception of extraordinary powers had completely transformed. Long ago, when he first traveled to the empire and scratched the surface of supernatural powers, he had learned a bit about the Mind Pathway—abilities like Mind Reading, which he had thought were the coolest thing ever back then.
After returning to the kingdom, he had gone through immense hardship to find Cyril, witnessing the power of divination and thinking it was immensely impressive too. And just now, he had seen Tarik’s ability to manipulate earth, as well as the purple-haired woman’s dazzling green beams of light that looked incredibly flashy even if he didn't know what their exact effects were.
These flashy, elaborate abilities had perfectly matched David’s romanticized fantasies of the extraordinary world. But now, he realized that they were nothing more than flashy gimmicks.
David turned to look at Victor. As a fellow extraordinary, Victor’s ability was merely having good luck—which sounded rather underwhelming on paper, didn’t it? But that very luck had “summoned” War Freya!
David looked back toward the towering surges of water on the sea that had yet to settle. War Freya’s ability was just possessing immense physical strength. That also sounded quite ordinary, but that brute strength had utterly steamrolled every single one of those other abilities mentioned earlier!
In David’s mind, a conviction gradually solidified: no matter how fancy the mechanics were, pure stats reigned supreme!
He immediately turned to Victor and said, “I want to walk this pathway too!”
Victor was dumbfounded. “Huh?”
Wait, young master, what are you blurting out all of a sudden?
Underwater, War Freya held her breath as she stared at the Holy Blessing Society leader before her. After that relentless barrage of attacks, a massive depression had caved into his skull and his neck was twisted unnaturally, yet even so, the man still exhibited faint vital signs. He wasn’t completely dead yet!
Just as War Freya was considering how to follow up, she noticed the cult leader’s body suddenly begin to twitch erratically. It wasn’t the kind of twitching brought on by seizures, but rather a twitching that resembled a sort of digital distortion.
Black shadows seemed almost desperate to rip their way free from this physical husk.
War Freya immediately realized that this bastard was probably on the verge of losing control!
Never forget that the Curse Pathway was an “unexplored pathway.” And anyone who knew about the previous unexplored pathway—the Devil Pathway—understood what that entailed. Yet by comparison, hadn’t the Curse Pathway seemed a bit too stable? It even boasted something as wildly broken as the Curse of Myriad Recompense, which, once activated, granted power far surpassing one’s own rank.
Just like the ordinary cultists who consumed mixed potions, such overwhelming power always came with a price. Naturally, the cult leader’s use of the Curse of Myriad Recompense carried its own cost as well.
As for that price, it was simply that the human body could hardly withstand such immense power. Therefore, once the Curse of Myriad Recompense was invoked, losing control became an inevitability—and War Freya beating him into a near-death state had only accelerated the process.
In truth, whether the cult leader won or lost this battle, the outcome would have remained the same. He would have let himself lose control regardless, unleashing his fury upon this city. His grand scheme had completely collapsed, and his subordinates were all dead; he had gone completely insane.
This is bad, War Freya muttered inwardly. Making a swift decision, she clamped a hand around the cult leader’s neck, rocketed out of the sea, and accelerated toward a specific direction.
Although War Freya had no spirituality limits, she still had stamina limits! Having fought intensely for so long, her stamina was already nearly exhausted. Besides, who could fight an enemy of the same rank whose raw power even exceeded their own, and emerge from the victory in peak condition? That was impossible.
Therefore, if she had to fight a completely rampant, freshly transformed monster of the Curse Pathway right now, War Freya was certain she couldn’t win.
Still, she certainly couldn’t let him run rampant in Auxerre. If even she couldn’t defeat him, the current forces in the city—those Rank Fours from the Special Service—stood even less of a chance. Going by official protocol, calling in a Mobile Squad right away was the correct course of action.
However, it would take time for a Mobile Squad to arrive. Then an idea struck War Freya: why not just carry the not-yet-fully-rampant cult leader and dump him right in a Mobile Squad’s face? Or better yet... why not dump him right in front of Trig?
...
In the kingdom’s capital, Law Freya immediately found Trig and said to him, “In a little while, a rampant Rank Five monster of the Curse Pathway will be dropped near the capital. Go deal with it.”
Trig: “?”
He wasn’t questioning the order, merely thoroughly bewildered. In the dead of night, where on earth was a monster coming from?
Even so, Trig replied, “Where will the exact location be? I’ll handle it.”
...
High in the sky, War Freya continued flying at high speed with the cult leader in her grip. As the loss of control deepened, his struggles grew increasingly violent. His humanoid shape had almost entirely eroded away, replaced by a writhing, squirming mass that resembled pitch-black ink.
War Freya now understood why this bastard had been able to withstand so many of her physical blows without dying. As common knowledge dictated, an extraordinary’s lifeform underwent changes after Rank Four, varying with each pathway. The Curse Pathway had transformed the cult leader’s body into this bizarre black substance.
Furthermore, because he was on the verge of losing control, the cult leader’s degree of dehumanization had reached an even higher level. In plain terms, his physical resistance was through the roof. Even if War Freya struck with all ten parts of her strength, at most two or three parts actually affected him.
...
Rate on N.U.
