My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! - Volume 10 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3 — After Going Through All the Trouble of Setting Up This Ritual, Do You Not Intend to Use It?

After returning to the Axis Church, the Divine King began to investigate Yogiri Takatou. He was a being capable of slaying a Dark God. She couldn’t simply be glad that he had brought peace to their world. Making use of believers all across the world, she collected information. Using the treasures left behind by the High Wizard Eglacia, she gathered facts about events that had happened everywhere.

As a result, she understood that Yogiri was an unparalleled threat to their world. As a person, he at first seemed benign. But the power he wielded was the definition of evil and posed an ever-present danger. Looking at the situation so far, his actions had been far from wicked, but he resisted whenever someone attacked him. The vast majority of his assailants were slain, but he paid no mind to the effects his power had on the world around him.

No matter how important his opponent was to the world, or how many unrelated third parties would die as a result, he didn’t hesitate in the least. Even if it meant the end of the world, he always prioritized himself and his companions. In fact, not only the High Wizard Eglacia himself, but a fair percentage of the world’s entire population lay dead at his hands.

She had no idea what had led to those results, but such were the facts. When Eglacia had attacked Yogiri in the tower, he’d been slain. When a mysterious individual had attacked Yogiri aboard a cruise ship, countless people, livestock, wild animals, insects, and even plants had died. Anyone he wished to kill would die. If there was a chance Yogiri would die, the potential cause would die instead. There were even cases where people who seemed to have nothing to do with him had died. From the information she had gathered, that was the only conclusion she could draw.

She doubted he possessed any malicious intent of his own. He was only protecting himself, so from his perspective, what he was doing was fair. However, permitting him to continue in this way would spell the end of their world. Whether he was good or evil himself was irrelevant. As the figurehead of the dominant religion, she couldn’t leave the fate of their world resting on the whims of a single boy.

But what could she do about it?

She considered refraining from intervening at all. There was a chance he would return to his own world eventually. There was also the possibility of him settling down and adopting a quiet life somewhere. She could even potentially convince him to stop using his powers just by talking things through with him.

But she couldn’t risk betting on any such shaky possibilities. If she did nothing, then at any moment the entire population of the world could be wiped out without warning. She couldn’t ignore that possibility. She needed some way to neutralize his power.

Though she decided on that quickly, she just as soon gave up on trying to kill him. If she so much as made an attempt, she’d be killed immediately. Of course, she wasn’t that attached to life. If she thought sacrificing herself would put an end to Yogiri, she would gladly do so. But deciding to kill him would lead to a pointless death, so it would be little more than committing suicide. Whether they were gods or superbeings from beyond the world that exceeded human understanding, anyone who sought to harm Yogiri Takatou died. She had learned that from her investigation.

The Axis Church was the largest religious organization in the world. Though she could freely make use of its believers, she wasn’t on the level of a god. There were countless examples of those who had failed to kill him before her. There was no point in adding her name to the list. So she needed to find a way to neutralize his power without that power being turned against her.

She considered trying to lock him away using a similar method that had been used to neutralize the Dark Gods. She could trap him in a space where time barely moved at all. The most important part would be to seal him inside without his knowledge. The seal itself wouldn’t harm Yogiri. From the inside, he wouldn’t even recognize the flow of time changing. For him, nothing would change at all. That might be sufficient to neutralize him without being killed in turn.

That was what the Divine King decided.

◇ ◇ ◇

The construction of the towers began immediately. They were built near a port town in the Kingdom of Brea. Previously, Yogiri had encountered a battle between the heroes and a Demon Lord in the area. This location had been chosen due to the ease with which they could transport the necessary materials there.

Currently, ten towers were being built, and the Divine King was standing at the heart of the circle they drew. The towers seemed like they were made of little more than paper. Only their frameworks had been built so far, their walls having barely begun construction. In order to perform the ritual, the towers needed to be a certain height, so construction had been rushed to accomplish that. Of course, the towers would have barely any durability in that state, so they would need to be reinforced later. And in the end, they would erect barriers to hide the towers from the outside world.

It was a far larger scale than anything that had been used against the Dark Gods, but she wanted as much room for error as possible. In their battle against the previous Dark God, they had lacked both time, material, and personnel. She had barely managed to pin him down by sacrificing herself, sealing both of them away. The mechanisms in the tower in the canyon were far from perfect. The threat posed by Yogiri Takatou was unmistakable, but it wasn’t particularly urgent. They could take the time needed to make the proper preparations before confronting him.

Believers filed into the towers. They would spend the rest of their short lives inside. The believers would have their arms and legs removed and be plugged directly into the tower. This was the most efficient method. For now, what they needed most was numbers, so they were crammed into narrow spaces. In order to make more of them fit into a tighter space, they needed to remove unnecessary body parts. Feeding them all individually would be inefficient, so tubes and piping were connected to them to both supply nutrients and extract magical energy to power the seal’s core.

This wasn’t the ordinary method that the Divine King would choose. She was well aware of how inhumane this was. But it was to save hundreds of millions of lives. A sacrifice of tens of thousands was unfortunate but necessary.

If Eglacia were alive, he may have found a more efficient way of doing this...

The Divine King and the Swordmasters had been created by Eglacia to stand in for the useless gods of this world. He had been a genius capable of manipulating the underlying system of the world itself, so he might have come up with some sort of brilliance that could avoid this, but there was no point lamenting his loss now. All they could do was make the best of the knowledge he had left behind.

Luckily, the Divine King was familiar with this particular kind of seal, so if she was given sufficient time to prepare, she was confident she could do it well. Establishing the seal would require ten thousand believers, and maintaining it would require another thousand every year. Half-demons would be more efficient as fuel, but collecting them now would take too much time. They could replace the humans with half-demons at a later date, but for now, activating the seal was the highest priority. She had no choice but to use the regular believers she had on hand.

At present, Yogiri had crossed the sea and was in the Empire of Ent, a small island in the east. The huge scale of the construction had been so that they could seal him away where he was. Of course, it would have been best if he had been nearby, but Yogiri was always on the move. By the time they finished the construction around him, he would have moved on to a new area. As such, she had no choice but to build it in such a way that it could trap him wherever he was.

“Construction of Tower E has been completed,” one of her subordinates reported.

Though she had been gone for centuries, upon her return, she regained control of the Axis Church and successfully restructured it. Her power to instill a deep, sincere adoration for her in the believers had made it easy enough. While that may have been far from what one would hope for from a founder of a religious institution, that was the power of the system of the Axis Church built by Eglacia.

“Thank you. Please continue your work.”

The believers didn’t have the slightest doubts about their work. They had a blind faith in the words the Divine King spoke. They honestly believed that they were working to save the world and that sacrifices would be necessary.

The Divine King couldn’t help but pity them. If she had never returned, they never would have been seized by such a religious fervor. However, it was true that this ritual was necessary to protect the world, so she could hardly stop now. They needed to finish the trap and neutralize the unprecedented threat that Yogiri Takatou posed at any cost.

The Divine King looked down at the hole in front of her. It was about ten meters across. It was ringed with white stone, and a light shone in its depth. The hole itself was the altar, the light within the magical energy necessary for the ritual. Their current objective was to fill the altar with sufficient energy, but first they needed to finish the construction of that central area.

The Divine King reached out a hand, prompting a stream of light to reach up out of the hole. As she moved her arm and fingers, the light drew an intricate pattern in the air. The pattern took the form of an enormous sphere. That would serve as the core of the seal when it was activated. She could leave the construction of the towers and the arranging of the believers to others, but she needed to do this part herself.

“Oh, how impressive. You have truly constructed it well. Your timing leaves a little to be desired, though. Even if you thought to seal me away again, do you not think this method is far too slow? Though that leads me to question how you knew I was revived in the first place. Was there a prophecy or some such thing?”

The Divine King stopped her work and turned. A young girl in a simple white robe stood behind her.

“Who are you?” Countless believers were in position around her hard at work. Just in case, they had kept up a strict guard. There was no way an ordinary person could get this far undetected.

“How unusual. Or perhaps my image is not so well known, so I should expect you not to recognize me? No matter. I am a god. You may call me UEG, the Ultimate Extermination God.”

Though she claimed to be a god, she seemed like nothing more than a human girl. But the Divine King was well aware that looks and ability often conflicted. Just because she felt little threat from the girl didn’t mean she could let her guard down. She made sure to keep her guard up.

“You seem quite gloomy, though. Your eyes look totally lifeless. Not that it is of any concern to me.”

The Divine King felt a little irritated. The damage Yogiri was inflicting was growing worse by the day. With his victims in mind, she could hardly hope to be cheerful and couldn’t relax for a moment.

“So? Why are you here?” the Divine King asked.

“Hmm. You really are quite slow. I am the Ultimate Extermination God. Naturally that means I am here to exterminate you.”

“I see.” The Divine King hesitated. Though this was a suspicious person who had appeared out of nowhere, she still appeared to be a young, cute girl. Anyone would hesitate to cut someone like that down without question. But as she sensed the bloodlust beginning to emanate from her, the Divine King’s hesitation vanished.

Though she was the figurehead of a religious organization, her true nature was that of a warrior. If it came to a fight, she would hold nothing back, even against a girl like this. She drew her sword.

“What use have you for a sword? After going through all the trouble of setting up this ritual, do you not intend to use it?”

“Unfortunately, it is still under construction.” And of course, the seal was being built for Yogiri. There was no way she’d use it on some random person like this.

“Hmm. My apologies, but I have no desire to sit around and wait for its completion.”

Even if the girl had said she would wait, the Divine King couldn’t let someone go free after learning about the trap. In order to keep the world safe, she needed to eliminate as many uncertainties as possible. She swung her sword down. The fact she was clearly out of range made no difference. Extending the range of her swing was no challenge for her.

“Oh? That looks like a type of Holy Sword. You seem to be well equipped. You may even be able to harm me with such a weapon,” the UEG said, her expression relaxing as the blade failed to reach her. She had pulled her own sword out from somewhere, blocking the strike. “Simply taking your life would be a feat of no particular challenge, but it would be boring. Instead, let us have a contest of arms.”

The Divine King hadn’t held anything back. She had unleashed the most powerful attack she could in her current state, an attack that would have annihilated any lesser foe. But it seemed her opponent wasn’t so weak.

I would like to avoid excessive fighting here, if possible.

Her primary objective was to finish the trap ritual. If they fought here and destroyed the altar or the towers, all their effort would have been for nothing. But if she held anything back, the damage would only be worse. She would need to eliminate the UEG as fast as possible, careful to avoid as much collateral damage as she could.

The Divine King released the seal on her own powers.