Volume 2 – The World Sneered
Ox got into a state of mental confusion.
Though it was likely he had already lost all his sanity the moment he embraced an urge to kill towards Mary.
“Aaaaaaaagggh! You’re lyiiing! Lies, lies, lies, lieees! Kiss!? With you!? A Goddess like Lady Francis would never kiss a filthy woman like you! She would never kiss yooooou!”
He shouted over and over again.
Perhaps because all his muscles were strengthened, Ox’s voice was excessively loud.
“Her first kiss…… will be me! Yes, she promised, promiiised! I thought about inviting her to a restaurant in the royal capital! I’ve always had seats reserved! Promise…… Promise…… Aaaah…… Lies……”
He was exhausted in an instant and aged around 10 years.
His muscles also seemed to wither a little.
But he quickly recovered.
He immediately opened his eyes and his muscles tightened up again.
“Lies…… Lies, lies? Lies!? Ah, yes! Lies! That’s a lie! Yes, of course! You’re sisters! It’s disgusting just to imagine sisters kissing each other and blushing!”
“You can’t differentiate between what’s acceptable to say and what’s not, can you?”
Mary’s voice deepened a little.
Insults were fine.
However, she could not let him say that it never happened.
Anger burned in her stomach, and she formed gatling guns on her arms and back.
Then, she showered Ox with 50 bullets a second shot from each one.
“Huhahahahahaha! Hahahahaha! Ahahahahahaha! I knew you were lying! Of course! Of course it’s a lie! Lady Francis would never offer her lips to anyone but me!”
Ox swung his sword around while laughing.
This alone was enough to drop around half of the bullets.
The remaining ones bounced off his muscles.
He was abnormally tough.
(His Sorcery Rating is almost up to 40,000……)
It seemed that the arcana of
Power
was not the only thing residing within his body.
Mary’s irritation grew stronger.
She needed a way to shut his disgusting mouth as soon as possible.
She had an idea, and created a bone bow.
The black bowstring was formed from the hair of the dead.
She then created a bone arrow, and pulled the bowstring back as far as possible.
“Haha, you didn’t like what I said, huh? You want to confuse me and shut me up using
Lover
’s power, right?”
Ox predicted Mary’s move and spread his arms in anticipation.
“Good, come at me. I’m different now. My mind is sharp. Even if I get hit by that arrow-”
Mary fired before Ox could finish his sentence.
Fwish!
It was set loose with a quiet sound and hit Ox while maintaining its maximum speed.
“Guooh!?”
It directly hit his chest with a sharp sound.
Ox foamed from the mouth as he held his chest and backed off.
“It’s just a normal arrow……!”
“Who said I was going to use
Lover
’s power?”
“How unpleasant can you be……!?”
“It’s only natural when we’re trying to kill each other, right?”
Mary dismantled her bow and arrow, and pulled out an arcana power this time.
Arcana Installation –
Hierophant
.
The
Hierophant
Mary took in originally had strict conditions, and was highly dependent on its former user’s environment, so it was impossible for Mary to utilize it in its original form.
As such, the moment
Death God
adopted the power, its conditions and effects were greatly scaled down.
Mary activated it.
Its effective range was around a 30-meter radius.
“Why did someone like you have to be Lady Francis’s sister!?”
Ox raised his sword overhead and fiercely struck the ground with its blade.
The ground violently shook.
Simultaneously, the earth bulged up.
Mary immediately leaped backwards.
Then, a rock with a sharpened tip protruded out of the ground at high speed and scraped her cheek.
“This is sorcery!”
“No, it’s swordsmanship!”
She evaded the shock.
But half of Mary’s cheek got taken away by just a graze.
“Uuugh…… This power……!”
“The arcana of
Power
is more effective when you finally surrender to violence with all your might.”
This was a shortcoming pointed out by Philias.
There was no way the man himself did not know.
“But! I didn’t give up. I held my love for Lady Francis in my heart and kept training! I believed in mastering skills worthy of the power I wield! This is the swordsmanship that I created!”
Then, a part of Ox’s legs turned into stone.
But he kept speaking and did not notice this.
“I smash the earth with this sword, and compress the particles. I transform them into an ultrahard stone pillar and crush my enemy at ultrahigh speed. I call it Pillar of Francis! A combination of my technique, power, and love for Lady Francis! It is far more powerful than any other sorcery on the same level!”
The Francis part was quite pointless.
But that alone was enough to make the stone pillar bulging out of the ground disgusting for Mary.
“Oooooooh! Reach the heavens where Lady Francis resiiiides!”
Ox charged towards Mary.
He used this momentum and smashed the ground in front of Mary.
The sword deeply tore into the ground.
The resulting shockwave dented the terrain.
Mary somersaulted backwards and dodged the rock coming out from right under her.
“Don’t run! Don’t run! Recognize my love! Pay for your siiiins!”
Ox repeated this attack again after that.
He jumped ahead with his massive body and smashed the ground with his sword.
Ox could adjust the range and timing of his attacks, and they came from underground which was hard to see for Mary, so she was focused on defense only.
“Huhahahahahaha! Pathetic Mary, you can do nothing but run! I knew you were lying! Lady Francis would never devote her lips to a coward like yoooouuuu!”
“First of all, stuffy men like you aren’t my sister’s type.”
“Shut uuup! Don’t mock Lady Franciiiis!”
Ox incorrigibly raised his sword overhead to smash the ground.
However……
“Uooooh- Oh?”
He suddenly stopped.
Mary looked at his shoulders and shook her head sideways while sighing.
“You just noticed, didn’t you? Your body feels too slow, right?”
“My body…… stones? I can just rip these off!”
Ox grabbed the stone on his shoulder with his empty left hand.
He firmly pulled it out and tore muscles along with it.
“Guoooh! Hnnh…… What’s going on? I’m integrated with the stones? No, is my body turning into stone!? Mary, what did you do!?
Death God
doesn’t have a power like-”
Ox should have known.
Because he had sent him to Mary and the others.
“Ah!
Hierophant
!?”
“It has a small range, and there’s only one conditional precept. And when you break it, your body slowly turns into stone. However……”
Mary had set Ox’s obvious weakness as a ‘precept’.
“You can’t stop yourself from saying my sister’s name, can you?”
It was to say Francis’s name out loud.
Ox’s body started turning into stone when he broke this precept.
“You’re saying I can’t say Lady Francis’s name out loud……?”
Despair filled his facial expression.
“Saying Lady Francis’s name violates a precept? You’re saying it’s a sin……? That’s the same thing as death!”
He started clawing his face as blood seeped out of it and went down on his knees.
Ox was filled with grief.
“Why don’t you just die, then?”
Mary really hoped he would, but he did not look like he would kill himself.
In fact, Mary looked on in amazement and sighed as the man seemed to have transformed his sorrow into more anger.