Read Novel Full Chapter 377: Against a Fourth Rank Being
Chapter 377: Chapter 377: Against a Fourth Rank Being
Chapter 377 – Against a Fourth Rank Being
There was something everyone in the world knew. Something never directly stated by anyone, or written into any law. Yet people carried that instinctive knowledge, and made sure never to let temptation override it.
It was simple, but deeply intuitive: never stare at the face of a god, as a mere mortal.
It was a fact, and no one would ever dare argue otherwise. But naturally, a question always followed that fact:
Why?
The answer to that question was unfolding right in front of Cassius, in the middle of absolute nowhere.
There, inside that steel dome, hidden from the world, Cassius called upon his goddess, Marvela O’Lune, also known as the Sleeping Goddess of the Eternal Kingdom.
The nonhuman creature felt a shiver run down its spine in that instant, its yellow eyes widening so much they looked ready to burst from their sockets.
Before William, Diaila, or Meadow could witness anything, Cassius used his Blessing — Unwanted Slumber — putting all three of them to sleep, collapsing them gently to the ground.
He didn’t stop there. He activated a barrier artifact to shield them from any danger to come.
Then Mother System spoke, its cold, flat tone echoing like the voice of the world itself:
[The goddess, {Sleeping Beauty of the Eternal Kingdom}, daughter of {Eternal King} and of the feared {Tongue of Thorns}, has paid a large sum of GeumGeum and a fraction of her Authority to request a Descent.]
[Reason: Her Blessed, also recognized by the World as her adopted son, has requested her Descent.]
Already, in those seconds, the other subordinates who’d held the guns began collapsing too, as if suddenly overcome by sleep.
The beast sensed it — an unknown pressure swelling around the steel dome, ready to burst — and knew it was time to act. Its massive body blurred as it shot forward at Cassius, moving at blistering speed.
The air behind it detonated and fractured, as though it had briefly turned solid.
In the blink of an eye, the beast stood an inch from Cassius, its fist about to turn his head into a mess of flesh and bone.
But the blow never landed.
[Request accepted.]
It felt, in that moment, as if the whole world had paused. The beast froze mid-motion and dropped to its knees, veins bulging in its neck, as if something were writhing beneath the skin.
Cassius stumbled a couple of steps back, a strange sensation surging through him. He raised his head and watched Marvela descend to the ground like a stunning, otherworldly heavenly goddess, whose gaze fixed on the beast.
And that was when the Last Born finally understood why mortals shouldn’t look upon gods — or, more precisely, gods who weren’t their own patron.
The instant that beast’s yellow eyes met Marvela’s divine ones, something inside it broke, permanently. Its very mind fractured, and it clutched its head so violently its fingers sank into its own skull.
Marvela remained on the mortal plane for roughly five seconds before withdrawing, sparing Cassius one brief but meaningful look. Then everything snapped back to normal.
Only now, everyone else was asleep, and one being was suffering a full identity collapse, its very sense of self shattered.
Cassius Desdemona was the only one left unharmed. And he’d be damned to waste the window Marvela had bought him, at such a steep price.
His body crackled with golden plasma, sizzling and hissing, and he blurred forward, appearing right in front of the kneeling beast.
Cassius clenched his right fist, and a sword of purple, poisonous plasma formed in an instant — long, sharp, its very aura corrupting the air around it — before driving straight into the man.
The strike split the air like a sea parting in two, poisonous plasma still trailing behind.
That was the exact moment the beast erupted, roaring so loudly a staggering shockwave burst outward; strong enough to shatter Cassius’s sword before it even touched its target.
The Last Born was flung backward like a rag doll, his clothes shredded by the sheer force of the roar. His back slammed into the dome’s steel wall, though his face registered little more than a faint groan.
He tried to move, and only then realized it now took four times the effort just to shift a single muscle.
’Gravity?’ Cassius thought in alarm, eyes widening. ’He controls gravity?’
The pressure kept climbing, the air thinning as if being siphoned into a black hole. Cassius could feel the bones inside his body straining under the crush.
He raised his head, eyes wide, and watched the creature in front of him transform into something even more nightmarish.
Its height surged further, forcing Cassius to tilt his head back just to see its face. Red dragon scales erupted, covering its entire body. Two horns — black and long — jutted from its skull, while a fractured red tail whipped behind it, thorns bristling along its neck.
Cassius looked into the beast’s eyes and saw no intelligence left inside them. Marvela had shattered its mind completely.
And as if it somehow sensed who was truly responsible, all it wanted now was to kill Cassius, no matter the cost.
That was exactly what the dragon set out to do. It planted one foot on the ground, and the ground shattered beneath it, a hole opening underneath, black, pulsing, like a gaping wound.
Its body turned to a mirage, shooting straight for Cassius.
By then, the gravity had grown so extreme he needed five times his normal strength just to shift his body at all.
’It’s time,’ Cassius thought, knowing he had no other option left.
Without further hesitation, he activated his second ultimate skill: Sun Body.
The temperature spiked to a breakneck degree, and that was when the dragon arrived, striking Cassius’s head so hard its fist punched straight through and slammed into the steel wall behind him. The whole dome shuddered. Its monstrous fist stuck fast inside it.
Cassius’s body dissolved into a swirl of gold, red, and purple plasma — everything he could currently draw on under his Burn Truth — and reformed above the dragon.
His Sun Body Ultimate let him convert some part of his entire body into plasma when needed, while pushing his power to an entirely new level.
The gravity the dragon imposed lessened in this form, freeing him to move again.
Portals opened, and crimson chains slithered out behind and beneath the dragon, wrapping around it, and through it, all at once.
The beast tried immediately to tear the chains apart, and would clearly have succeeded within seconds. But before it could, the Last Born combined his second skill with his plasma abilities.
He fused his purple, poisonous plasma into the chains, driving the poison deep inside the beast.
The beast grunted, muscles bulging, gravity spiking dramatically.
Cassius then detonated the crimson chains themselves into destructive red plasma. With the destructive red plasma and the corrupting purple plasma fused together — and the blood already on the chains sharpening the lethality further — the explosion tore an agonized howl from the beast, its mouth wrenched wide open.
Its crimson dragon scales cracked, fire bursting through, but still held. Green blood poured from its mouth.
Cassius used the beast’s moment of disorientation to move. His body crackled with golden plasma, carrying lightning properties stolen from Emrys, making him blindingly fast and lethal, and he appeared right in front of the screaming, burning beast.
Then he did something he never expected of himself in that moment: he drove his right hand straight into the beast’s open mouth, which widened its eyes with sudden, lethal alarm.
Before the dragon could react, Cassius poured all three varieties of his plasma inside it, burning everything within with chilling intent.
He tried to pull his hand free before the dragon’s jaws closed, but he was too slow.
The dragon’s tail snapped forward. Cassius saw it just in time and turned his head to pure plasma before the strike landed.
But the gravity slowed him just enough that he couldn’t transform his whole head in time. The attack landed, blood sprayed through the air, and part of his face lost its skin entirely.
The hit disoriented him for a heartbeat, which was long enough for the dragon to snap its jaws shut, severing three of Cassius’s fingers as he yanked his hand free.
Pain exploded through his mind, and he fought down the urge to scream.
The beast pressed the advantage relentlessly, its eyes flooded with rage and madness. It followed with two brutal punches straight into Cassius’s gut, caving his stomach inward, cracking bone, forcing him to vomit up both blood and organ matter.
The world spun, his head fuzzy and disoriented. But his sense of impending death pushed Cassius to summon every scrap of willpower left, trying to haul himself away from the beast. He tried to mark it with his third skill, but the attempt failed outright.
He cursed, then used his second skill to chain the dragon again. Then, drawing on his Sun Body, he turned his legs to plasma and retreated.
He landed far off, his knees hitting the ground hard the second he touched down. Without hesitation, he activated Nourishment Truth to heal himself.
At the same time, he lifted his head and looked at the dragon, its bloodlust now at a level he’d never witnessed before.
It had lost all intellect entirely, leaving it incapable of realizing that unleashing its Phantasm, a power tied to Fourth Rank, would already have killed Cassius outright.
Even its Soulblade alone would have been more than enough.
But no.
All that filled its mind now was the desire to kill Cassius in the cruelest way possible: to tear off his limbs and crush his skull.
The Last Born, meanwhile, found himself in an entirely different position. The mad, brutal blows of a Fourth Rank being were something no Second Rank — or even a decent Third Rank — could survive.
Yet he had. And he knew he wouldn’t survive a second hit like that. That was when a single truth settled in:
’I can’t win,’ he coughed, organ matter and blood spilling down his chin, ’Not with my own strength alone.’
He lifted his head weakly, glancing towards where his teammates lay sleeping peacefully, and saw they were still safe.
The dragon seemed entirely fixated on him. And it had already broken free of his crimson chains, charging towards him with a speed so brutal its fist would crush his skull before he could even blink.
Cassius’s mind spun through solution after solution, discarding each in turn, until only one remained.
He waited until the dragon’s fist was nearly on him, then let Stella appear in the sky above. She screeched with all her strength, and the beast froze instantly. Stella’s scream tore madness through its already fractured mind.
Given its current state, the beast was even more vulnerable to her attack than it should have been.
It collapsed to the ground, roaring, the sound so horrific Cassius watched several of the gun-wielding subordinates’ bodies burst apart from the force of it alone.
His eyes widened, fear striking him for his teammates’ safety, even behind the artifact. He forced himself upright and moved towards the beast, his wounds slowly closing as Nourishment worked through him.
A couple of meters from it, he triggered his Illuminate Truth, and blinding light erupted right in front of the beast. It shone so fiercely that the creature’s eyes snapped shut on instinct, its roar climbing even higher in pitch.
Bodies kept bursting apart, faster now, as if the gravity itself was surging with the beast’s wrath.
Cassius’s movements grew more urgent as his body slowed further, his vision beginning to double.
But he finally reached the dragon, and as he watched it roar, mouth wide open, he dared to drive his hand inside it once more.
Only this time, he didn’t stop at one hand...
Cassius grinned, blood streaking down his whole face, his eyes burning like twin suns. "Let’s try two fucking hands, shall we?"
...but pushed in both, sizzling with plasma.
—End of Chapter 377—