"Kaaaaghhhhhhh!" A shrill sound echoed throughout the area as the creature screamed. The sound was a mixture of a human scream and a computer error.
Seeing this, Kaito smiled mockingly.
"Are you angry?"
CRASHHH!
Before it could even react, Kaito appeared in front of it and delivered a front kick.
As the fragments flew apart, Kaito grabbed two more and destroyed them against each other with a clap.
"Well, so am I!" Kaito roared angrily.
As soon as the creature reformed, Kaito grabbed it by the back of the neck and slammed its face into the ground.
Again, and again, and again, and again, while the creature was destroyed and reformed over and over.
"Do you know what it feels like? Helplessness?!" Kaito asked furiously.
He grabbed the creature by the neck and threw it into the distance. Before it could hit the ground, he appeared above it in midair and slammed it back down with a kick.
"Don't interfere with the protagonist?! Don't interfere with the protagonist, they say?!"
With the creature beneath him, he began punching it over and over again.
"Who the hell do you think you are?! I don't even know who your damn protagonist is?!"
Kaito raised both fists overhead and slammed them into the creature's chest.
"I DECIDE WHAT I DO WITH MY LIFE! DO YOU THINK YOU CAN CONTROL ME?!"
Kaito grabbed the creature once more and hurled it into the distance.
Before it crashed, he struck it in the opposite direction, appeared in front of it in less than a microsecond, and did it again. Almost at the same moment his fist connected from the front, his leg was already behind it.
He continued like that for several minutes, during which the creature was destroyed and reformed in midair without ever leaving an area of half a meter because of the barrage of blows, as if it were flying.
"You think I'll follow your damn script?! You think you're superior?! You think that just because you have a good ending you can control me?!"
CRASHHH!
"DAMN IT! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU!"
CRASHHH!
"Gods, administrators, whatever you are, I'll kill every single one of you!"
CRASHHH!
"I DIDN'T CARE ABOUT YOUR DAMN SCRIPT! I DIDN'T CARE THAT YOU TREATED THE WORLD LIKE A STORY! I DIDN'T EVEN TRY TO PICK A FIGHT WITH YOU!"
CRASHHH!
"AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME? SENDING ME TO THE VERY VOID FOR A THOUSAND DAMN YEARS?!"
CRASHHH!
"I'LL GET OUT OF HERE! I'LL FIND A WAY TO ESCAPE, AND I PROMISE I'LL HAVE MY REVENGE, I'LL KILL EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!!!"
CRASHHH!
"And after that..."
Kaito stopped halfway through the sentence, noticing that there was no one left in front of him. The only thing remaining was a fragment in his hand.
With a little force, Kaito crushed it completely, and the strange creature never regenerated again.
At the same time, everything around him began transforming into a normal forest, or at least what remained of one after all the destruction, as all the static and digital distortion vanished.
The floating chunks of land around him also fell to the ground along with the transformation.
"Huff... huff..." After taking several deep breaths, Kaito sat down right where he was, mentally more exhausted than physically, and restored "Impenetrable Mind" to normal.
"...It's been a long time since I got this angry, huh?" he smiled to himself.
"Alright, being angry won't accomplish anything. I've already vented my rage. Time to organize my thoughts."
Kaito looked around. Even though he had moved hundreds of kilometers, the forest still hadn't ended. In fact, there wasn't even the slightest sign that it was becoming smaller.
He spread his black bat-like wings and shot into the sky at full speed, searching for the end.
But as he continued ascending, he realized the sky wasn't getting any closer. It always remained several kilometers away from him, neither too close nor too far.
"First of all, let's find a way out of here.
Apparently the sky is fake, so there doesn't seem to be an exit up there. That makes sense. If it were that easy, someone would have escaped already."
Kaito looked down, noticing that what he had been standing on was a floating island in the middle of nowhere.
Besides it, there were several nearby islands and, judging by their edges, they had originally been one enormous island before splitting apart.
Although many of them were quite small, four stood out because of either their size or appearance.
The first was the one Kaito had just come from, although it looked fairly normal now that all the digital corruption had disappeared.
Another was completely frozen, its forests and mountains trapped in ice.
A third looked normal on the surface but radiated an incredible aura of death. So much so that if you observed it with your senses instead of your eyes, it would be difficult to even recognize it as a forest because of the density of that energy.
Finally, there was one that looked so perfectly ordinary that it became suspicious. Whether using his normal senses or his magical ones, Kaito found absolutely nothing unusual there, which only made it even more suspicious.
"Although I have no idea how to escape from here, I'm confident I should be able to thanks to the synchronization points I saved.
Though now, without the support of the system's consciousness, I'll have to figure out how to manipulate them myself."
As he thought of this, Kaito remembered the system. Even without its consciousness, it was otherwise completely normal. After all, the system was linked to him, so that made sense.
After examining the situation more carefully, he didn't head toward another island in search of an exit. Instead, he returned to the ground and sat on a chunk of earth shaped somewhat like a seat.
"Alright, the first issue, finding a way out, is in progress. Let's move on to the second."
Kaito opened the system window.
---
[Name]: Takayama Kaito/Lucifer
[Level]: 40 (64,500/300,000,000)
[Race]: Original Demon: Motion
[Titles]: Territory Lord, King of Hell, Demon King, Winner of the Battle of Lords (First Edition), Red Haired Demon
[Base Stats]:
HP: 191400, 3190 x 60
MP: 750, 75 x 10
Strength: 10000 ((95+30)x60+2500)
Agility: 24500 ((120+20)x150+3500)
Constitution: 7500 ((85+20+20)x60)
[Skills]:
Original Demon: Motion (Max.), Speed Force (Max.), Demon King Body (Max.), Magic Manipulation (5/5), Omnipotence (5/5), Fusion (5/5), Strikeback (3/5), Upgrade (3/5), Nemesis (5/5), Supreme (5/5), Communication (2/5), Reflection (4/5), Soul Manipulation (3/5).
[Stat Points]:
[Skill Points]:
[Gold]: 125,000,000
---
"This is a mess" Kaito sighed. "Even though I can fuse some of them thanks to 'Fusion' and keep things organized, I still have way too much variety."
In reality, Kaito obviously knew that was a bad thing. Whether it was him or anyone who had ever played a class-based video game, everyone knew that focusing on one specialty was the best way to become stronger, while those who tried to master everything ended up mastering nothing.
But Kaito had never really cared because of his overwhelming strength, which allowed even his weakest abilities to easily overpower everyone else.
Now, however, he had to reconsider.
Setting aside the god who had sent him here, against whom he hadn't even been able to move before being teleported, even before that, during his fight against a Shadow Beast, most of his abilities had been useless except for his speed.
If he didn't want to end up in another situation where he couldn't do anything, he needed to become stronger, and quickly.
"So if I have to focus on just one, then of course it has to be this."
Naturally, Kaito was referring to Original Demon: Motion. Not only was speed his greatest strength, but it also had the highest potential of all his abilities, being his very race.
Having made that decision, Kaito chose to focus on learning how to control it better, especially considering the vast range of things that fell within its "domain."
Based on what Gid had explained earlier, Kaito now understood this so called domain much better. To be precise, it was literally a domain in which he could use his true power, the power to control the very concept of Motion itself.
That was also where all the "abilities" of this domain and their equivalent "cooldowns" came from. Basically, the more powerful the effect, the harder it was to achieve.
"So it doesn't just depend on distance, but also on power" Kaito realized as he experimented.
"Then, if it were only, let's say, one centimeter around me, and the power were something as basic as denying movement..."
Kaito picked up a few stones from the ground and threw them at himself. As they were about to hit him, they bounced away as though he had an invisible shield.
"No." Kaito frowned. "They're not stopping, they're just bouncing off. And it's difficult to maintain."
Kaito continued practicing for a while until finally, one stone stopped exactly one centimeter away from him.
It didn't fall, it didn't bounce, it didn't continue forward, it remained in absolute stillness.
"It worked" Kaito smiled in satisfaction, though that only lasted a second before the stone fell directly onto his head. "Though I still need to adjust the details."
After even more training, Kaito finally managed to make the stones remain motionless for at least five seconds before continuing. It wasn't much, but it was more than enough for Kaito to accomplish a great deal.
"But if it's only one centimeter around me, then..."
With an idea in mind, Kaito tossed another stone into the air. This time, instead of waiting for it to fall, he simply moved his hand close to it.
Sure enough, the stone stopped exactly one centimeter away from his hand.
When he pulled his hand back, it fell.
"But if I have to stretch out my hand, then it doesn't really count as a ranged attack.
Besides, I can't maintain the effect once it's outside my domain" Kaito muttered as he thought about how to fix the problem.
"Still, for now vibrating through attacks and hitting them at my speed is more useful, but I need to keep training this.
Most importantly, right now I'm only stopping them, when I should be able to control their movement itself."
Besides the fact that it had the greatest potential, there was another reason Kaito wanted to improve his control over it.
He was supposed to be the very concept of Motion personified, and yet when teleportation had been used on him, he hadn't even noticed.
It was spatial movement, movement itself, and yet he had remained completely powerless against it.
"Let's keep going a little longer, then I'll start exploring."
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)