D.I.O

“It’s Quintillion.”

Shen laughed manically as his magic power rose.

However, at that moment…

Bam!

Shen’s Spell Library, which had been activated and fully operational, disappeared with a light sound like a candlelight getting extinguished.

No, to be more exact, his Spell Library had been annihilated.

“… What?”

Then an ink-black spear lunged toward Shen, who was still flustered.

Bam!

Shen deflected the oncoming spear stab with his fist.

While Lancelt felt a strong reverberation transmitting through the tip of his spear, he murmured, “It’s not enough… What is it…”

“Lancelot?” Cruze, who snapped her head toward Lancelot, asked aloud with a sense of confusion in her eyes.

She didn’t quite understand what Lancelot had just done, and she wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

“Wow, bro, what did you just do? It’s like… It’s like you just erased his attack,” Youngmin commented from the side.

“Is this something that arose because of the Hero’s Fate blessing?”

“It felt so… foreign!”

Bam!

A barrage of bullets suddenly started raining down, and Youngmin ran out and knocked them all away. Youngmin’s mind, which had sharpened like a blade due to Gaia’s Blessing, now had a wildly increased cognitive and reasoning ability. So, he was able to perfectly recognize the bullets’ paths even though the bullets were imbued and accelerated with magic power.

Despite that, Chan’s huge sword appeared amid the deflected bullets.

As a High Elf, who was often referred to as the ‘Chosen Elf’, the strength Chan had accumulated over his terrifying long lifetime of two thousand seven hundred years—which was outputted in the form of internal energy—wasn’t something that he often used.

Hence, Chan was able to unleash nearly four thousand years of internal energy in an instant.

Whoosh!

In martial art terms, four thousand years of internal energy equaled sixty-six cycles. In terms of DIO’s stat point system, this meant that Chan was exhibiting over 900 points in the internal energy stat category. This allowed Chan’s internal energy to create tsunami-like shockwaves just from releasing his energy. The shockwaves were so powerful that it wouldn’t have been strange if an entire mountain were leveled instantly!

Bam!

However, Chan’s energy disappeared the moment it appeared.

“Huh… What happened?” Chan, the Basara’s raid leader, frowned.

He couldn’t comprehend what had just happened right in front of his eyes.

“Quintillion!” Shen’s magic power burst forth once more as he overtook Chan, who seemed flustered and immobile.

Bam!

Despite that, Shen’s burst of magic power also disappeared.

“Wait, what the hell is going on!? What is this?”

‘Quintillion’ was the term that referred to Shen’s talent as an Irregular. It was a term commonly used to describe mutant geniuses, which were extremely rare existences throughout the universe.

Shen was proud of his Irregular talent. Unlike other Irregulars, he had been born into a royal family and thus possessed a special social status. As a result, he grew up being revered as a great existence.

Additionally, his ability, which he had developed in full under these optimal living conditions, was the Great Library of Magic Spells—or Spell Library. Shen had created it after gathering tens of thousands of spells.

Quintillion interconnected all the spells in his Spell Library and contained them in a compilation Having this compilation allowed Shen to activate countless spells all at once. Quintillion was an ultimate move that used various spells to protect the caster and destroy a designated target. Even transcendents couldn’t easily reproduce the ultimate move because the nature of the magic itself was so exceptional.

‘What did that guy do? Some sort of Dispel?’

Yet, even Shen’s ultimate move was countered and nullified. With thousands upon thousands of spells interconnected, Quintillion was a nearly impossible move to counter, yet someone had countered it… That should have been impossible unless one was a great mage.

“What the hell! Who are you?” Shen, who hadn’t paid any attention to Lancelot until now, felt like he was about to go crazy.

It would have been understandable if Cruze had attained enlightenment out of the blue and blocked his attack, but how did a supporting character, who seemed to have appeared of nowhere, manage to block his move completely?

Nevertheless, Lancelot didn’t seem to pay any attention to Shen no matter how much he huffed and puffed. No, to be more exact, Lancelot himself didn’t know what was going on exactly.

‘Something, something…’

The fact was, Lancelot had not benefited much from Gaia’s Blessing. It was no wonder as Gaia’s Blessing, the Hero’s Fate, was a power that maximized one’s fate and potential. After all, Lancelot had already grown and developed beyond the limits of his potential. The mere fact that Lancelot was Level 19 wasn’t normal. He had gone far beyond the preset maximum points of his given potential.

Lancelot—Byun Dongsoo—was a true living cheat code.

He had gotten to where he was now through a quirk in the system rather than through a miracle or achievement. By increasing his stab skill rank after executing the requisite number of skill successes, he had overcome his [wall], which would have normally taken him much longer to overcome if at all… In other words, Lancelot had taken advantage of a loophole in DIO’s system.

Bam!

“Woah… Ack! What’s this?! This isn’t martial arts!” Chan, who had trained in martial arts for thousands of years, gnashed his teeth at Lancelot’s vanishing spear attack.

Chan couldn’t even track or at all see the movements of Lancelot’s spear anymore. Moreover, Chan’s sword, which normally glowed a divine silver light color, had disappeared as if it had been erased. The cross-section of the missing sword’s blade was as smooth as a mirror.

If someone couldn’t even figure out what their opponent was doing, would they be able to block the unknown attack if they fell into the opponent’s attack [radius]?

“It’s not… martial arts?” Lancelot, who momentarily stood still from bewildered, parroted what Chan had just mentioned.

Chan was right. Lancelot wasn’t using martial arts. After all, he wasn’t a martial artist. It was easy for anyone to mistake Lancelot for one because he used a spear as his main weapon… but the fact was, Lancelot had never learned proper martial arts. He had only learned how to stab.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Lancelot had raised his spear skill to the SS rank by repeating hundreds of billions—no, trillions of stabs over hundreds of years in the training room. However, strictly speaking, that was just a [piercing] move, not a [spear] art. Moreover, Lancelot couldn’t even predict his enemy’s movements during his stab move, nor did he move from his standing position.

If a proper martial artist were to have seen what Lancelot had done in the training room, that martial artist would have shaken their head. For starters, the practice of repeating only a stabbing move every day was a complete waste of time from the perspective of a martial artist.

Martial arts were, after all, techniques for fighting. Repeating a simple stab without thinking about defense or evasion and without even assuming or predicting the enemy’s movements was absolutely not a formal or even an effective way of training. It was pure labor—a grind.

Nevertheless, it was through his labor and grinding that Lancelot could become a Level 19 user.

He advanced in level despite repeating an act that many—if not everyone—would have viewed as simply a waste of time.

“It’s not… martial arts.” Lancelot’s expression subtly changed.

He felt something tickling his brain. It was as though something was appearing and then disappearing from his mind. He could sense that something was there, but he couldn’t seem to obtain it.

An intense inspiration, something he had never experienced throughout his entire life, was currently stimulating him. Gaia’s Blessing, which had not been of much help to him until now, was pushing him into a realm that he would never have reached with his own powers and effort.

It was a moment of surprise and epiphany that would never happen again.

“This… No, it is…”

Whoosh!!

Lancelot exuded aura power.

The aura power didn’t seem to have a particular characteristic. This was because Lancelot was still in a state where he couldn’t properly materialize his aura power despite having reached Level 19. Obviously, this was an anomaly considering that it was generally accepted that aura power users could materialize their aura power in some form or direction by Level 5. Nevertheless, after Lancelot received confirmation from the White Divine Celestial Dragon, Thousand Scents, that the reason he couldn’t materialize his aura power was that he simply lacked talent, he gave up and just forgot about the whole thing. Moreover, all he was doing was a stabbing move anyway, so there was no reason or occasion to develop his aura power materialization skill.

Whoosh!

The aura power increased explosively. Lancelot, who stood there absent-mindedly, had been given a new rank, and his soul developed to befit the rank that had been bestowed upon him. Thus, his soul now possessed the quality to accept all the developments and upgrades associated with the rank.

“That…!”

Even Lancelot didn’t know that what he’d been refining for hundreds of years wasn’t a simple stabbing move. His achievement of reaching the SS rank in his stabbing move was an effect of what he’d done, not the cause of what was happening now.

What he’d refined all that time was… his spirit.

“Ah man, don’t be ridiculous! You’re telling me that guy…! That homely guy reached transcendence? What the hell is going on!?” Shen’s expression contorted in an unsightly manner when he realized that Lancelot was in the process of ascending to the transcendent realm.

It was a complete flip-the-script moment.

Unlike other Irregulars, Shen took great pride in his innate talent as an Irregular. In fact, his colossal genius was surprising even to those who had already risen to the height of transcendence, so what more needed to be said?

However, Shen was over three hundred and fifty years old. He had now reached a point where he couldn’t go against the limits of his lifespan. Even with the help of magic and technology, he still wasn’t able to overcome the wall of transcendence. If a person were to take into consideration how Shen had brushed up against the wall of transcendence when he was only fifty years old, they would be able to understand just how desperately he wanted to overcome that wall, especially since he considered himself a peerless genius.

“Everyone, get down! I’ll take on the first wave of attack…!”

“Stay back, you idiot…”

Bam! Bam!

The dwarf girl, who pulled out her huge gun barrel from her inventory subspace, and the dragon-headed man, who tried to protect her, were both erased from the world. Even Chan, who always rushed into battle with fearless momentum, was caught by surprise by Lancelot’s attack and had no choice but to pull back.

“No, wait. No matter how close he’s getting to the transcendent realm, is this sort of thing normal? Even those who have already reached the transcendence realm wouldn’t be able to eliminate us with one blow, right?”

A transcendent being was an absolute being who had crossed a certain threshold, but it was still possible for a being to muster put up some resistance against the transcendent if they were a being that wasn’t far behind in terms of power level. This was why the Masters had been able to collectively fend off Tan, a great mage, when he first descended onto Earth.

Yet, to think that someone who was not a veteran transcendent but a newly transitioned one could erase not just one but two Basara pirates with a single blow…

“… That’s it.” Shen’s eyes brightened for a moment.

Even though he had essentially given up his pursuits of becoming a transcendent and joined the pirate group, he was still an Irregular, and he soon realized what the characteristics of Lancelot’s power were.

“Non-attribute!”

The God of Magic classified the attributes of the physical world into twelve categories. There were three attributes among these that lower beings weren’t allowed to touch, so those three attributes were often referred to as the three major attributes or the absolute attributes.

The three attributes were time, space, and emptiness. Almost everyone who studied the spiritual world started their studies by leaving these three attributes out of the equation. Even in the realm of magic, which was said to have the highest degree of freedom among all spiritual abilities, these three attributes were only used in a limited way.

“How entertaining. A non-attribute… something I’ve only heard of in legends.”

Even Shen, who had traversed across the universe as a member of the pirate group Basara, had never seen an existence that handled a non-attribute properly. Occasionally, he’d come across talented beings that dealt with such powers, but those beings were only able to deal with the non-attributes at an insignificant level.

Whoosh!

Shen raised his magic power.

‘The power of non-attributes is focused on creation and extinction.’

The power of non-attributes was extremely rare and powerful, but there were plenty of ways to attack it if one understood its roots.

Crack!

A rock fist, bigger than a mid-sized modern apartment, emerged from the ground and attacked Lancelot.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

As if an invisible eraser were erasing it, the front part of the rock fist disappeared without leaving behind a speck of dust. However, the power that protected Lancelot quickly ran out. His ability wasn’t something that could be maintained indefinitely.

“Don’t struggle. Just die…” Shen remarked.

“Shut up! You die!” Cruze shouted.

Bam!

Shen’s left shoulder, which had been generating magic power like crazy, was blown away. As the flow of his magic power was disturbed, the rock fist lost its power and fell to the ground.

Meanwhile, Chan, who was trying to protect Shen, was unable to achieve his goal due to Youngmin, who still had his Celestial Star killing intent swirling around him.

“You bitch…!”

“Hmpf! I was trying to hit the center of your body.”

Standing to the right of Lancelot was Cruze, who was floating slightly above the ground while holding a large-caliber pistol that was completely different from the ones she had used so far, and standing to his right was Youngmin, who was wrapped in his dark killing intent.

Whoosh!

In the meantime, Lancelot’s basic mana control ability, absolute mana control ability, and synchronization with all things were reached their peak level and formed a trinity. Those abilities became a low-level divinity, divine position, and divine status respectively to create a new transcendent being.

However…

Slash!

The completed divine status was destroyed. Lancelot’s body was split in half, and his upper body and lower body fell to the ground.

[Excluded.]

[Hmm~ I don’t really like interrupting the moment when a new transcendent is born, but… I guess it’s too dangerous to just let a new power enter the fray.]

[Absolute Attribute.]

[Yes, yes… You took the appropriate action.]

Listening to the conversation between the two machines, Lancelot came to his senses. He felt the transcendent power that had been faithfully filling up within him disperse.

“Ah, darn it…”

His opportunity to rise to the transcendent realm had been the result of great luck that could only be described as fortuitous chance. Gaia’s Blessing had given him a moment of enlightenment—something he would never experience again.

It was a great misfortune that a powerful enemy, who could interfere with Lancelot’s transcendence process, was present right at that moment when Lancelot had been enjoying his improbable luck.