The Strongest Student of the Weakest Academy-Chapter 495: The Heavens Shall Fall (XXXVI)

I took another step forward, and this time none of them tried to speak.

"Eleven of you left," I said quietly, letting frost spread further across the chamber floor. "I wonder how long each of you will last."

"W-wait, we can negotiate—" one of them started.

I moved.

Swish!

The first angel didn't even have time to finish its sentence before I was in front of it, Midnight pressed against its chest just hard enough to draw a thin line of blood through its robes.

"Negotiate?" I repeated, almost laughing.

"You offered me servitude or slow destruction. Now I'm offering you something similar. Except I'm not giving you a choice."

I grabbed one of its wings with my free hand, feeling the mixture of golden feathers and that corrupted dark substance under my fingers.

"Let's start with these."

RIIIIIIIP!

I tore the first wing off entirely, ripping it from the base where it connected to the angel's back.

The scream that followed was silent because of the Domain of Silence I activated in that instant, but I could see the agony written across what little expression showed through the cracks in its mask.

Blood sprayed across the frozen floor, turning the ice red.

I tossed the severed wing aside and grabbed the second one, and deactivated the Domain of Silence for a moment.

"No, please, stop, I'll tell you everything—"

RIIIIIIIP!

The second wing came off just as easily, and the angel collapsed to its knees, blood pouring from the wounds on its back in thick streams.

I let it suffer for a moment, watching it try desperately to stem the bleeding with hands that shook too badly to be effective.

Then I drove Midnight through its skull, ending it quickly.

The black slimy energy emerged from its dissolving corpse, and I absorbed it without hesitation, feeling my power grow incrementally stronger.

"Ten left," I announced, turning to face the others.

They had started to scatter, trying to put distance between themselves and me, but the chamber was only so large, and my wings gave me speed they couldn't match.

I caught the second angel mid-flight as it tried to escape toward one of the exits.

This one I decided to freeze slowly.

My Authority of Frost concentrated around its body in layers, ice forming over its robes, then its skin, then seeping deeper into its flesh.

I made sure it stayed conscious through the entire process, made sure it felt every second as the cold worked its way into its organs, into its divine core, crystallizing everything from the inside out.

Its mouth opened in a soundless scream as its lungs froze solid.

Its eyes went wide with terror as ice spread across them like cataracts.

When it was completely encased in a block of crystal-clear ice, I could still see the expression of absolute horror frozen on what remained of its face.

I shattered the ice block with a casual backhand, and the angel came apart in a spray of frozen fragments that tinkled across the floor like broken glass.

More black energy absorbed.

"Nine."

The third angel tried to fight back.

It manifested what remained of its corrupted authority, creating blades of dark energy that it launched at me in rapid succession.

Swoop, fwip!

Each blade carried enough force to punch through reinforced barriers, but the Heaven Swallowing Sword nullified them before they could reach me.

I walked through its assault without slowing, reached it, and drove the Heaven Swallowing Sword through its abdomen. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

But I didn't kill it immediately.

Instead, I channeled the sword's nullification effect directly into its divine core, and I watched as its power began to unravel.

"Kurghaafrafghh..."

The authorities it had spent centuries cultivating dissolved, the divine energy that sustained its existence drained away drop by drop, and the corruption from the outer god that had claimed it started eating itself in the absence of anything else to consume.

It took almost a full minute for it to die, and every second of that minute was visible agony as it felt itself being unmade piece by piece.

When it finally stopped moving, I withdrew the blade and absorbed what remained.

"Eight."

The fourth angel I caught with my newly attained Authority of Ruin.

I didn't touch it physically, just extended my hand and let the authority flow toward it like an invisible wave.

Where it touched, things began to break down at the fundamental level.

Flesh separated from bone, bone crumbled to powder, the divine core fractured into increasingly smaller pieces until it was just dust scattered on the wind.

The angel tried to scream, but its throat dissolved before sound could form.

"Seven."

The fifth one I impaled on a spike of ice that erupted from the floor beneath it, the frozen pillar punching up through its torso and lifting it several meters into the air.

I left it there, bleeding and struggling, while I dealt with the others.

It was still alive when I came back to finish it ten minutes later.

The sixth angel I tore apart with my bare hands, my race strength was more than sufficient to rip through divine-reinforced flesh like it was paper.

Arms first, then legs, then I crushed its divine core between my fingers and felt it pop like an overripe fruit.

The seventh tried to beg.

"Please, I was forced into this, the corruption took me against my will, I didn't want—"

SPLAT!

I froze its mouth shut mid-sentence and then used Midnight to carve it into pieces slowly, methodically, making sure each cut was precise and... slow.

When I was done, there were maybe thirty separate pieces scattered across the frozen floor, each one still twitching slightly before they finally stopped.

After all, I only activated the God-Killing Authority on the last second.

The eighth angel I drowned in my Authority of the Abyss, surrounding it with darkness so complete that it couldn't tell which way was up or down, couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't sense anything except the crushing void pressing in from all sides

I let it suffocate in that darkness for several minutes before I finally ended it.

Quite useful, the Authority of the Abyss, eh?

Splurt!

The ninth one I used both authorities together on, combining Frost and Ruin in a technique I'd never tried before.

The result was something that didn't just kill, it erased, removing the angel from existence so thoroughly that even the black corrupted energy had trouble reforming afterward.

The tenth angel was the one I'd left impaled on the ice spike.

By the time I returned to it, it had lost so much blood that it was barely conscious, hanging limply on the spike with its wings drooping lifelessly.

I pulled it down, laid it on the floor, and then systematically broke every bone in its body one at a time, starting with the smallest bones in its fingers and working my way up.

When I finally killed it, it had long since gone into shock and couldn't even register the final strike.

The eleventh and final angel had collapsed against the far wall, completely broken mentally from watching what I'd done to its companions.

It didn't try to run or fight or even beg.

It just stared at me with empty eyes visible through the cracks in its mask, waiting for the end.

I made that one quick.

SPLURTT!

A single thrust through the heart, and it was done.

The last of the black energy absorbed, and I stood alone in the chamber surrounded by the remains of twelve corrupted angels who had thought they could threaten me.

The silence was absolute.

I dismissed the Domain of Silence and let sound return to the world, then I turned my gaze toward the painting on the far wall.

That cursed image of Nyarlathotep that had been watching everything with whatever fragment of consciousness resided within it.

My eyes darkened as I stared at it, both swords still gripped in hands that were covered in blood and ice.

FWOOOP!

A beam of dark energy suddenly shot from the painting directly at my face, fast and concentrated, carrying enough power to punch through a peak 9✯ True God's defenses.

I slapped it aside with my backhand.

The energy beam deflected harmlessly into the wall, blasting a hole through the reinforced stone and dissipating into nothing.

I didn't even slow my approach.

"Why don't you come out?"

I knew I wasn't as strong as Nyarlathotep, not really, not compared to a true Outer God who had existed since before time had meaning.

But with the power the creator had given me, with the full might of the Fallen God race unleashed, and these absorbed corrupted energies adding to my strength, I might have a chance.

A chance to at least injure it badly enough that it would think twice before interfering with my realm again.

I wasn't going to waste this opportunity.

A dark chuckle echoed from the painting, the sound carrying layers of amusement and something darker that made reality shudder around it.

"My, my... what a delightful display of violence," the voice said, and it was both male and female, old and young, human and utterly inhuman all at once.

"You are far more entertaining than I anticipated, little Fallen God."

"Stop wasting time and face me," I demanded.

"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" the voice replied, and I could hear the smile in it.

"No, I think we should play a game first. After all, games are so much more interesting than simple combat, don't you agree?"

"I don't have time for games."

"You'll make time for this one," Nyarlathotep said with absolute confidence.

"Here are the rules: I will descend into your realm, but I will transform into one of your friends. Perhaps that strategist woman who coordinates your forces, Christina, right? Perhaps one of your friends. Perhaps one of the lovers who waits for you to return. If you can identify which one of them is me before I grow bored of the game, I'll allow you to meet my true form."

My hands tightened on both sword hilts, and I felt frost spreading across the floor in patterns that reflected my rising anger.

"And if I fail to identify you?"

"Then I get to play with them however I wish," the voice said cheerfully.

"One by one, I'll corrupt them, break them, turn them into servants just like those twelve angels you so thoroughly destroyed. Though I'll be much more creative about it than those crude vessels were capable of."

Every instinct I had screamed at me to refuse, to attack the painting now and try to destroy whatever fragment of Nyarlathotep resided within it before it could escape.

But I also knew that refusing wouldn't stop it.

The Outer God had already decided to descend, had already chosen this game as its method of entertainment.

All I could do was try to set terms that might protect the people I cared about.

"I'll accept the challenge," I said through gritted teeth.

"But you cannot hurt any of them before I identify you. No corruption, no manipulation, no harm of any kind until the game is resolved."

The painting pulsed with dark energy, and I felt something shift in reality as the agreement took hold with a weight that suggested even an Outer God was bound by it once spoken.

"Agreed," Nyarlathotep stated.

"How wonderfully sporting of you. This will be such fun."

The painting began to convulse, the image within it twisting and warping as the frame started to crack.

Dark energy poured from it in waves, and then suddenly the entire thing simply vanished, disappearing from the wall as if it had never existed.

The Outer God descent was complete.

Nyarlathotep was now somewhere in the divine realm, wearing the face of someone I knew, waiting for me to find it.

I felt my Fallen God form beginning to recede, the massive wings folding back and shrinking, the horns retracting, my hair shortening to its normal length as the transformation reversed itself.

But even as my appearance returned to normal, I could feel that something had changed.

I was stronger than before, significantly stronger; the power I'd absorbed from the corrupted angels and the full awakening of my Fallen God bloodline had permanently elevated my capabilities beyond what they'd been.

But before I could fully process what had just happened or begin planning how to deal with Nyarlathotep's game...

『 Now~, now~ 』

The creator woman's voice echoed in my head, carrying that same playful tone that somehow made everything she said sound both innocent and deeply concerning.

『 It's time for you to do me a favor~ 』

I closed my eyes and took a deep yet slow breath.

"What do you want?"