At the highest layer of the Norse world stood Asgard.
"Rumble!"
The world supported by Yggdrasil was shaking. Across the snow-covered land, countless Valkyries and Giants stood ready, rushing back and forth as they worked together to build defense line after defense line, stabilizing the trembling Yggdrasil.
"They're here!"
With that shout, the busy Valkyries and Giants below instinctively tried to look up, but before they could…
"Whoosh!"
Two streams of black and gold light, tangled together, appeared at the edge of the sky and instantly pierced through the defensive lines on the ground. The magic circles laid across the earth had only just activated before the immense Magical Power released by the two streams of light collided with them, detonating and tearing them apart.
"Ah…"
Mud, stone, and snow across the entire field were thrown into the air. The Valkyries and Giants, who had no time to react, were crushed beneath ice, snow, and debris, collapsing to the ground with agonized cries.
In the exposed black earth, a bottomless crater ten thousand meters wide had been blasted open. A spatial vortex torn apart by Magical Power, as though capable of devouring everything, continued to spread.
The colossal tree rooted in the void, connecting the Nine Realms and supporting the entire Norse world, was now shaking violently.
Compared with Yggdrasil's immense size, the two streaks of light were tiny beyond measure, yet they drew the eye immediately. They fell from the very top of Yggdrasil toward its base, and one of them pierced through Yggdrasil at an unimaginable speed, making the entire world of Norse Mythology tremble.
"That felt amazing…"
Cid flew out from a spatial rift torn open by the battle, dropped straight down, and finally landed on one of the world's poles, a continent of ice covered in snow.
Inside the huge crater, Cid brushed off the wood chips and frost that had stuck to him by accident. His face was flushed, his expression filled with satisfaction as he looked up at the white figure.
He had to admit, it had been a long time since Cid had enjoyed a fight this much. Especially a clash between opponents in the same realm, filled with skill and wisdom. If he could, he would have kept fighting forever.
But… how should he put it? He felt it was about time. The Underworld, Yggdrasil, Greece, India, and other Mythological Realms had already been pierced through by them. The strong fighters who had jumped out midway to stop them had all been swatted away one by one. If they kept fighting, it would only repeat the same dull exchanges. The same combat techniques, similar realms, and neither could truly break the other's moves.
"And…"
As the golden figure darting out of the spatial rift drew closer and closer, Cid slowly lowered his head. His expression was hidden by shadow, but two wisps of purple phantom fire drifted out where his eyes were.
"I've already… lost interest in that dull, boring realm of yours."
He took a step forward, walking into his opponent's attack range without making any defense. He ignored the attack that was only a hair's breadth away, turned sideways, clenched his fist, and struck.
"Bang!"
The attack that had been right in front of him was easily dodged by Cid. Cid moved after her yet arrived first, and his attack, full of openings, struck straight into the only part of Sonki's body that she had protected.
"Ugh!"
The golden figure traced a beautiful arc through the air and slammed into a snowy mountain. A huge sheet of snow shook loose and rolled down, burying her.
Several seconds after being buried, as if she had only just reacted, powerful Magical Power erupted and blasted apart the snow piled on Sonki.
When the snowflakes fell, the golden pressure surrounding Sonki had already dispersed. The elegant face she had copied from Sherry was covered in a deep blush. Her body swayed, then she finally dropped to one knee in the snow, gasping heavily.
"Well, I didn't expect an emotional energy lifeform to have weak points in its body too. What a wonderfully unreasonable sight!"
Looking at the scene unfold exactly as expected, Cid nodded with admiration.
To be honest, he had actually had plenty of choices for that last strike. After all, his opponent was not like him, "attacking with full force without exposing any openings," but rather "attacking with full force while exposing a pile of openings that all get corrected."
Once he broke through her realm, that pile of openings was his to choose from. The only reason he chose that spot was because she had been protecting it from the beginning of the fight until now, so he was curious what was special about it and decided to test it.
"And whose fault do you think that is, you inhuman freak?"
But after hearing that, Sonki raised her head. Her beautiful emerald eyes glared at Cid in fury as she spoke through gritted teeth.
"?"
What does that have to do with me? You may have split off from me, but I'm not a pure energy lifeform!
Seeing Cid's expression, as though he wanted to retort but did not know where to start, made Sonki grit her teeth in anger. Still, she quickly calmed herself and suppressed her body.
"I'm the part of you that you didn't need. What do you think that part contains?"
"…That thing can gain sentience too?!"
Cid closed his eyes in thought, realized something was wrong, then opened them wide in suspicion and shock as he looked at Sonki. For the first time since the battle began, his emotions fluctuated this violently.
"That's right. You saw pain as proof of your effort, so you never discarded it. You even drag it out from time to time to savor it.
But as for that ecstasy, you only experienced it once before sweeping all of it into the garbage pile. That terrifying, 100,000-fold… sensitivity of yours."
"..."
"You freak. You're carrying around 100,000-fold sensitivity, yet you still live like a normal person…"
Maybe it was his imagination, but even in this frozen world, Cid felt a sticky warmth against his back.
There had once been a period when he had fallen into a dilemma over tolerance. Just as heroes since ancient times had struggled to pass the trial of beauty, he felt his resistance to negative buffs had been trained very high, but he had no idea how to train resistance to positive buffs.
Getting defeated by a positive buff sounded absurd no matter how he looked at it, but in the anime he had watched in his past life, he had seen quite a few bosses lose that way. To avoid ending up the same, he decided he still needed to train it. The method he eventually came up with was "desensitization training."
Just as some people used five seconds of time stop to try to rule the world, while others had unlimited time stop and only wanted to do lewd things, the bugged abilities of the "hentai" world were more ridiculous than the last.
And in order to become stronger and become an Eminence in Shadow, he had long since discarded his sense of shame. While he was at it, he collected all kinds of absurd strengthening methods from the "hentai" world, and one of them left a particularly deep impression on him…
Taimanin, 3,000x sensitivity. Now that's peak hentai-heroine degeneracy!
Of course, even if he was going to use that method for desensitization training, he still felt 3,000-fold was far too ridiculous. At first, increasing it by one hundred times alone took him a full two days before he could live like a normal person while continuing the Magic Power Training Method. So, based on his ideal plan, he decided that if nothing went wrong, he would stop once he reached 3,000-fold.
But… this was an absurd training method inspired by the "Hentai" world, so naturally, something went wrong. After he adapted to 3,000-fold sensitivity and decided to stop the training, he realized that he seemed… unable to go back.
The desensitization training had succeeded. In fact, it had succeeded a little too well. After removing the 3,000-fold sensitivity, Cid discovered… that he seemed to have lost his sense of touch.
He was clearly holding a sword, yet he could not feel the steel in his hand. Even the Magic Power Training Method constantly tearing apart and regenerating his flesh no longer gave him pain…
Ahem. In any case, at the end, he spent three minutes thinking and came up with a solution. Maintain the same intensity.
What a flawless solution. Normally, he could live like an ordinary person. And if someone ever really tried to corrupt him with pleasure, he would just disable the 3,000-fold sensitivity. Hahaha, if only his body's evolutionary ability could be controlled by a single sentence…
In less than three days, his body had evolved to a level of desensitization where it ignored 3,000-fold sensitivity entirely. Mm, he had tested it. He stabbed himself while under 3,000-fold sensitivity, and in the end, he did not feel the slightest pain. What an incredible body. Hahaha, haha, ha…
This was the severe consequence he had mentioned, the result of letting his body evolve on its own. His body's evolution had gone out of control, and he could not possibly suppress his body's evolutionary instincts twenty-four hours a day.
He had no choice but to increase the intensity. If 3,000-fold produced no sensation, then he raised it to 4,000-fold. The main problem was that this was percentage-based. At first, it increased by dozens at a time. Now it increased by thousands. As of today, his body had already reached the terrifying level of 108,000-fold sensitivity.
Truly too powerful. Ha, ha, ha…
Damn it! It was hard to say whether his puberty had been a side effect of that 100,000-fold sensitivity.
But if that was the case, then that part of her should have been formed from the pleasure and pain amplified by 100,000-fold sensitivity over the past year, while he crushed and regrew his body every day.
"I know this probably isn't the right thing to say, but right now, I just want to punch you in the face!"
Staring at the part Sonki had locked down so tightly that she did not dare let anything touch it, Cid merely nodded in silence, even after being told she wanted to punch him in the face. No wonder she did not even dare let the airflow touch it. Even he had started from one hundred. Jumping straight to 100,000-fold from the beginning, who could possibly withstand that?
"Forget it. Let's skip this topic."
Cid rubbed his brow, pretending to look profound, then raised his head toward the golden figure that had already recovered.
"I've already broken through your realm. So… do you have any moves left?
If not, you might lose here."
"Already… broken through? Ha!"
Sonki slowly rose into the air, dense golden pressure gathering around her. Hearing Cid's words, she laughed, but her emerald-green eyes stared at him coldly.
"You've been calling my realm dull and boring since earlier. Shadow, do you really think you've figured out my realm?"
"More or less…"
Looking at Sonki, who seemed to have merged into the world itself, Cid spoke casually.
"If our personalities were similar, then you would probably name this realm…"
Replacing the will of heaven with one's own heart, letting the world fill in one's flaws. At that moment, the surrounding environment became part of oneself and fought alongside oneself. Twice the result with half the effort was no longer enough to describe that state. That luck, almost like the fortune of a chosen protagonist, could only be called…
"Heavenly Timing and Earthly Advantage."
Objectively speaking, power had no rank of noble or lowly. Drawing on the world's power to patch one's openings was, in terms of cost-effectiveness alone, even above the realm of "effortless control." But from Cid's subjective point of view…
"A dull and boring realm. A realm that prefers relying on luck and weakening the enemy over improving oneself. But if you rely on borrowed power like that, how can you call yourself the strongest?"
"Feels like I'm being underestimated."
"The strong don't deliberately distance themselves from friendship, but they don't fear solitude either. Because even if the strong stand alone, they are still enough.
No need for friendship, no need for tools, no need for cooperation, yet still able to live freely. That is what it means to be strong."
Cid spoke coldly. He would not use his standards to demand that others live the same way, but if someone wanted to convince him, then the winner was king.
"That really is heartless…"
Sonki chuckled and raised her arm, the golden aura around her growing even fiercer.
"My path was never the same as yours. In my eyes, you've already gone mad chasing that dream of becoming an Eminence in Shadow.
You discarded longing, emotions, and desires because you believe everything can be weighed. But for me, what I need isn't your dream of becoming an Eminence in Shadow. What I want is emotion.
You can enjoy solitude, but forgive me, I can't sympathize with you. You discarded your rejection of loneliness. You prepared yourself to be alone, prepared yourself to remain unmoved even as you watched Alpha and the others die of old age, while I inherited the part of you that discarded.
You are my teacher, so I believe the vitality of emotion is infinite. One person's strength has limits in the end, but you're different from me. You'll only blame yourself for not being strong enough.
Why must you keep walking alone? Can eternal loneliness really be endured? If someone becomes the strongest through tools, does that make them not the strongest? Are those things really that important?
Means are the process. The result is the goal."
"That's nothing but an excuse for cowards. I have the confidence and resolve to smash through the wall in front of me, and I've already prepared myself to walk alone."
"So this is where our paths diverge. You want to become an Eminence in Shadow who represents absolute strength and perfect completion, while I only want to become a happy protagonist, even if I have to use despicable methods."
With each word, the cold wind swept snow across the ice. A special momentum erupted from Sonki, and the waves on the sea gathered together in strange ripples. The realm Cid had broken reappeared around the golden figure.
"Hey, Shadow. You guessed the name I would give my realm wrong. No, I should say our thought process was the same, but you misunderstood one thing, so you guessed wrong. The power of this realm doesn't end there. It isn't only the power of heaven and earth. It represents this world…"
She raised both hands high, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Then she opened her eyes and looked at Cid as transparent ripples appeared between her hands.
"It is divided into three parts. You've already seen Heaven and Earth. The final part is called Man. So its true name should be…"
"Heaven–Earth–Man Unity."
Cid slowly spoke the answer. Feeling the ripples that covered the world, he covered his face with one hand. Beneath his palm was a smile he could no longer suppress.