If You Won't Let Me Eat, I'll Kill You

Elegy of the End could not understand.

Logic was the foundation upon which deities built worlds and comprehended all things.

Desire was the primal fuel that drove mortal beings to act.

And the power of Elegy of the End, which she wielded, lay in severing the root of all this—declaring, on a conceptual level, the end of all logic and the falseness of all desire.

She had seen star gods who fought for glory lay down their weapons beneath her song and allow their divine kingdoms to collapse.

She had also seen elves born for love forget their own names beneath her gaze and turn to dust.

Existence needed meaning.

And she was the ender of meaning.

But now, she faced a kind of "meaning" she had never encountered before—one so utterly unreasonable that it bordered on barbaric.

The sizzling grilled meat formed from illusion rapidly lost the very concept of "deliciousness" under the erosion of her laws.

Its aroma faded, its color turned gray and lifeless, and the enticing steam became cold mist.

It was becoming a meaningless, two-dimensional painting.

Yet rather than plunging the beast into nothingness, this only ignited a fuse that was even more primal and violent.

De Ba De's golden slit pupils locked onto the piece of grilled meat as a dangerous rumble rose from deep in his throat.

In his world, logic had been simplified to its utmost extreme.

One, I'm hungry.

Two, there's food over there.

Three, something is making my food taste bad.

Conclusion: kill that thing.

This was killing intent beyond anger and hatred, the purest kind, born from biological instinct.

It was the instinct to guard one's food.

The confusion on Elegy of the End's indistinct face deepened.

She tried to increase her power and completely blanket De Ba De's senses with the concept of nothingness.

"Flavor is false, hunger is weakness, satisfaction is fleeting..."

Her whisper turned into invisible threads of law that pierced toward De Ba De's soul.

But to a soul starving with hunger, those words were nothing but nonsense.

I'm fucking starving to death, and you still dare to tell me this?

Then I'll kill you first!

De Ba De moved.

He did not pounce or tear with his claws.

He simply opened his mouth and, from across the vast distance, made a biting motion toward where Elegy of the End stood.

Boom!

That bite did not land on any physical entity.

Yet Elegy of the End, formed from the fusion of two great deities, let out a shriek more piercing than she had under any previous attack.

It was a violation at the conceptual level.

A desecration unlike any before it.

Her divine authority as Elegy of the End, capable of stripping all things of their meaning of existence, was at that moment given a new "meaning" that she could neither understand nor accept.

—"Edible."

She felt part of the laws of her divine authority get forcibly "bitten" off by an outrageously unreasonable power, then forcibly analyzed, tasted, and chewed by the other party's will.

She was no longer a deity high above all else.

She had become a dish.

"Th-this is fucking..." Xiao stammered over the communication channel. "This guy... he's actually treating gods like food?!"

Song Ling said nothing, but the black frostflames of annihilation surrounding her flickered unsteadily for the first time.

She could erase all things.

But this man before her was tasting all things.

On the battlefield.

After taking that distant "bite," De Ba De suddenly stopped.

He tilted his head, his enormous orc-like body assuming the posture of a wine taster as though he were savoring something.

His golden slit pupils looked toward the figure made of black gauze again. There was no longer only hunger in his gaze; it now held a trace of discernment.

Like a diner examining a menu.

"So that's what it tastes like..." He smacked his lips, his voice low and raspy. "The appetizer's bitter and astringent. Not much chew to it."

He extended a thick finger and pointed at Elegy of the End.

"But the flavor of the main course should be hidden deep inside."

"Interesting."

Elegy of the End's long black gauze dress, woven from countless weeping souls, began to tremble violently.

Fear.

Pure fear—the fear of being targeted by a natural predator—completely drowned the divinity she had built from sorrow and despair.

Her laws had become a joke before him.

She tried to use Utter Despair to strip away his will, but his will contained only the simplest two words—"eat food."

This fundamental logic, simple to the extreme, could not be stripped away at all!

She could not stay any longer.

If she continued to be "tasted" like this, her divine authority would be eaten clean!

"You cannot devour 'nothing'!"

Elegy of the End let out one final shriek.

She made a mad decision.

She disintegrated.

The magnificent Gothic cathedral, the black gauze dress woven from souls, her indistinct figure, and the entire divine kingdom filled with sorrow and despair all collapsed inward at the same instant.

All matter, all laws, all concepts abandoned their own existence.

They did not become energy, nor did they return to particles.

They became the purest, absolute "nothing."

At the center of the battlefield, an absolute void appeared—an area that could not be captured by sight or sensed by the mind.

It was as though a piece had been forcibly gouged out of the canvas of the universe.

All attacks directed at it would fail because there was no target.

All logic attempting to comprehend it would collapse because there was no point of reference.

She had turned herself into an absolutely safe, untouchable "nothing."

The suffocating atmosphere weighing on the members of Peak Squad instantly vanished.

"She ran?" Xiao stared at that patch of void in astonishment.

But Di Jia Ling Yu's expression turned grave.

"No, she's still there. She merely... deleted all of her 'attributes' and became an absolute 'nothing.'"

This was even more troublesome than running away.

How were they supposed to attack an enemy that did not exist?

"How are we supposed to fight this?"

Xiao's voice was full of helplessness and irritation.

"Throw skills at the air? My blade doesn't even know where to strike!"

He swung Mekong Jaw Blade, but its sharp edge cut through nothing but meaningless air that was gradually losing its color.

That region of absolute nothingness hovered silently at the center of the battlefield like an unhealable scar upon the universe.

It did not attack, move, or emit any aura.

Its very existence was the strongest defense—and the most vicious taunt.

You don't even have the right to attack me.

Di Jia Ling Yu looked awful. She maintained the crystalline zone beneath her feet to prevent the concept of "nothing" from spreading any farther, but she knew full well that this was only a temporary measure.

Her opponent had turned herself into a paradox, a dead knot in logic.

An enemy that did not exist.