The instant Akuto sensed a hostile target entering within two meters of Kusanagi Shizuka, the Colosseum Pillar he had given her automatically activated its defense mode.
And the divine power amplification built into that Colosseum Pillar became the perfect catalyst for a god's descent.
Boom!!!
A bolt of golden divine lightning, thicker and more blinding than before, fell from the sky without warning and struck the ground just in front of Kafumaru!
Violent electrical force blasted a deep crater into the earth, and dust surged into the air.
When the dust began to clear, the stormy scene of thunder was gone. Only a single figure emerged.
He wore ancient Japanese armor, stern and imposing, full of raw martial power. Fine golden arcs of lightning danced across its surface.
The god within that armor had a hard, resolute face and hawk-sharp eyes. Suffocating divine thunder coiled around him, and the air itself crackled violently from his mere presence.
In his hand was a strangely shaped spear of lightning, its tip aimed directly at the rampaging Colosseum Pillar.
"I am Takemikazuchi! God of war, valor, and thunder!"
His voice rolled like thunder itself, shaking everyone present until their ears rang, overwhelming even the roar of lightning and storm.
Takemikazuchi's gaze locked onto the Colosseum Pillar. That golden radiance filled him with intense disgust.
There was no doubt about it. That pillar housed the authority of a Godslayer. And Godslayers were the natural enemies of Heretic Gods like him.
"A mere object of a Godslayer dares flaunt its power before me? It should be destroyed!"
Takemikazuchi raised his thunder spear. Catastrophic lightning gathered at its tip, aimed at the pillar and at the girl behind it, who was so terrified she was nearly collapsing onto the ground.
Shizuka felt as if her heart had stopped beating.
The pressure radiating from this legendary god was more terrifying than all those sorcerers and ninja combined by thousands, tens of thousands of times over. She felt like a tiny boat in a storm, ready to be torn apart at any second. Her legs, wrapped in black knee-high socks, shook so badly she could barely stay standing.
Kafumaru dropped to his knees in wild ecstasy and shouted, "We welcome the descent of Lord Takemikazuchi! Please, my lord, kill that blasphemous Godslayer and restore our-"
Before he could finish, a calmer voice interrupted him, one so plain it should have been unremarkable, yet somehow carried an authority beyond all measure.
"Kill who?"
The voice was not loud, but it cleanly drowned out the thunder and Kafumaru's shouting, echoing in every ear present.
At the very instant Takemikazuchi was about to throw his spear, at the exact moment Shizuka shut her eyes in despair, a figure appeared in front of her without warning, standing between her and that world-destroying lightning.
It was Akuto.
With his back to Shizuka, his tall figure stood like an unshakable mountain, instantly cutting off the suffocating divine pressure.
Shizuka felt the crushing force that had nearly broken her vanish in an instant, replaced by a sense of safety she could not even put into words.
She stared blankly at Akuto's broad back, and tears finally spilled from her eyes. The fear and tension she had been holding in finally found release.
Akuto did not even spare Takemikazuchi a glance. His eyes first swept over the Colosseum Pillar, now smeared with flesh and blood and trembling faintly as though proudly asking for praise. A trace of satisfaction appeared in his gaze.
Crack.
Medusa's Mystic Eyes.
With a single glance from Akuto, Kafumaru was turned into a stone statue forever.
Then Akuto's gaze moved to the horrific battlefield around them, sweeping across the corpses of the death row prisoners who had died protecting Shizuka.
Only then did his eyes fall upon the Heretic God in thunder armor, his expression indifferent, as though he were looking at an insect.
"Takemikazuchi?" A nakedly contemptuous smile curved Akuto's lips.
"So you're the god of thunder and war in Japan? Who gave you the nerve to run your mouth in front of me?"
His voice was calm, but it carried a tyrannical dominance that looked down on all beneath heaven, as though he were the true god standing above all, and the one before him was nothing more than a trivial mortal.
In truth, that was exactly the case.
Throughout history, many Godslayers had treated gods as prey, but in reality, the death rate in battles between Godslayers and gods had never been low.
Only Akuto truly looked upon Heretic Gods the way gods looked upon mortals. Because his real target had never been Heretic Gods at all, but the true divine bodies that remained in the divine realm.
...
The moment Takemikazuchi noticed the way Akuto was looking at him, his golden pupils shrank violently. He felt humiliated in a way he never had before.
He was a war god of Takamagahara, sovereign over thunder and conquest. When had anyone ever dared treat him with such contempt?
Even for a Godslayer, to look down on a god this way was sheer arrogance.
No matter how great Akuto's divine power was, he still had no right to show such disrespect to a god.
Wait... divine power?!
Takemikazuchi suddenly realized the problem.
How was that possible? How could a Godslayer possess divine power?
In truth, of course a Godslayer could possess divine power. Athena, for instance, had once bestowed her divine power through special means.
Which meant the boy standing before him had received the complete recognition and gift of a god?
No matter what the reason was, it did nothing to stop Takemikazuchi from attacking Akuto.
As a Heretic God and a god, the moment the two of them met, the foundation for a fight to the death had already been laid.
"Arrogant Godslayer! To blaspheme a god is to invite punishment!"
Takemikazuchi snorted coldly. This time his thunder spear did not hesitate. Carrying overwhelming lightning force, it tore through the air and became a golden beam that seemed to pierce heaven and earth as it shot straight at Akuto!
This single strike was enough to flatten an entire mountain range.
And yet, faced with that apocalyptic blow, Akuto did not even blink.
Authority - Goat!
Authority - Camel!
Authority - Vāmana!
With those words in his heart, the three great Authorities fused and activated in an instant. Akuto lightly lifted his right foot and casually stepped forward.
Boom!!!
A dull, thunderous shockwave exploded outward, like the heartbeat of the earth itself.
In the sky, a gigantic beast's foot made of visible lightning came crashing down. It fused the heavy yellow glow of earth with savage purple arcs of thunder.
Even before the Lightning Trample descended, Akuto's thunderclouds had already nearly swallowed Takemikazuchi's.
And when it fell, that lightning beast foot had already shattered the thunder Takemikazuchi had gathered.
The thick pillar of lightning Takemikazuchi had unleashed rapidly shrank the instant it made contact with Akuto's Lightning Trample, as though it were being swallowed by a black hole. Its radiance dimmed and scattered away at once.
The raging power of thunder had found its natural nemesis. It was crushed beneath that heavy yellow radiance and frantically torn apart and devoured by the purple lightning arcs.
"What?!"
The fury on Takemikazuchi's face was instantly replaced with shock.
He had never imagined that the thunderous divine power he took such pride in would be crushed and absorbed by Akuto in such an overwhelmingly tyrannical, brutal way.
For that to happen, it could only mean one thing: Akuto's authority over lightning far surpassed his own.
And the truth was exactly what he feared.
After devouring the thunder spear, the Lightning Trample kept falling, smashing toward Takemikazuchi with even greater ferocity.
Everything in its path was crushed flat. The ground compacted under its pressure, and the air screamed with sharp sonic booms.
It had all happened too fast. Takemikazuchi barely had time to raise his thunder spear horizontally in front of himself in a desperate attempt to block it.
Boom!!!
A deafening explosion erupted.
Takemikazuchi's figure was completely swallowed by the descending Lightning Trample.
His Japanese armor let out piercing cracking sounds. Golden electrical arcs flared wildly as they tried to resist, but under that trampling force, which fused the weight of the earth with the savagery of thunder, they were steadily crushed.
"Gahhh!!!"
A miserable scream rang out from the center of the blast.
When the light faded, Takemikazuchi was on one knee.
The thunder spear in his hand had broken into several pieces. His armor was covered in spiderweb cracks, and golden blood streamed out through them.
"No... impossible... how could this..."
Pain and utter disbelief filled the face that had once looked so heroic and unyielding. His golden pupils stared fixedly at Akuto, as though he wanted to devour him alive.
Because that was the only thing he could still do now.
With just that one move, Akuto had not only gravely wounded him, he had directly shattered his godhead.
That was right. Other than Authorities like Golden Sword, which attacked the source of a godhead directly, there was another way to destroy one.
Pure, overwhelming, violent force.
Akuto's face remained expressionless, as though he had done nothing worth mentioning. He slowly raised his right hand, spread his fingers, and aimed it at the heavily wounded, dying Takemikazuchi.
Authority - Disc of Usurpation - End... activate!
A gigantic phantom disc flashed behind Akuto for an instant, glowing with chaotic light and engraved along its edge with countless mysterious runes. The divine power and Authorities still lingering in Takemikazuchi were forcibly stripped away in full. As the source essence of the Authority that embodied "valor and thunder," they turned into a brilliant golden torrent and poured into Akuto's palm like rivers rushing into the sea.
"What?! This is...!"
Takemikazuchi let out one final, despairing scream. His body crumbled inch by inch like a weathered sand sculpture, until at last it scattered into drifting motes of golden light and vanished completely between heaven and earth.
A Heretic God had fallen.
Hm. Just a little. It really only increased my divine power by a tiny bit.
For an ordinary Godslayer, Authority and divine power were a tremendous supplement, but for me now, this is barely a drop in the bucket.
Akuto shook his head. He could only hope that when the time came to devour Takemikazuchi's true body, there would be more substance to gain.
...
On the other side, everyone was still trapped in the aftershock of their disbelief.
From Takemikazuchi's appearance to his death at Akuto's hands, the entire process had taken only a little over ten seconds. It had happened so fast that everyone had still been reeling from one shock after another before the result had already been decided.
The wild joy on Kafumaru's face had long since frozen and been replaced by bottomless terror and numb despair.
He trembled like a leaf in the autumn wind, and a hot wetness spread beneath him.
He had wet himself from sheer fright.
The surviving sorcerers and ninja he had brought with him were even worse. They scrambled backward as though they had seen a ghost, crawling and stumbling over each other in desperation, cursing the fact that they had not been born with two extra legs.
Akuto could not even be bothered to look at them.
He turned around and let his gaze fall on the girl behind him, still curled in on herself and trembling.
Shizuka stared blankly at everything that had happened before her eyes.
From Akuto descending like a god, to casually neutralizing divine punishment, to stomping the legendary Takemikazuchi so hard his divine armor cracked apart, and finally erasing him completely, every part of it was beyond the limits of what she could understand.
She had been able to imagine, vaguely, the kinds of things Akuto might one day have to face.
But she had never imagined that a god this powerful would not even survive a single exchange against him.
(End of Chapter)
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