"Third arrow..."
"Prove it with your heart!"
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One Punch to Blow Welt's Head Off!
The world shattered in an instant.
Like a mirror breaking, like a dream ending—but Jiang Cheng knew perfectly well that all of this was real.
His left hand.
Starting from the end of his shoulder, something rose from the abyssal depths of the part that had long since lost all sensation.
His nerve endings were torn apart, mangled, and burned.
They became a raging heat.
Every inch of flesh burned, every bone was scorched, and every drop of blood boiled. His density surged at a perceptible rate; his muscle fibers broke apart and reformed in an instant, becoming a structure hundreds of times tougher than before.
The essence of his self was rewritten, the foundations of his body replaced.
Beyond science, beyond human intellect, beyond every shore civilization could reach—this was a miracle found only in myths.
An inconceivable thing.
-----It-----
And this was only the beginning. The flames that seemed ready to consume every inch of his body spread uncontrollably, filling him from head to toe.
The faintest sparks leaking from his pores held such concentrated substance and power that they could awaken the most primal fear in any living creature.
"—?!"
Welt's pupils contracted violently.
The fear of a living creature was born of an instinctive awareness of its own inferiority. Like sheep looking up at a pack of wolves, like prey facing a predator—the courage to resist was stripped away, leaving only the instinct to flee.
Impossible to understand.
Those eyes, once filled with arrogance, now held nothing but stark incomprehension—
Incomprehension at how the bug he could crush as easily as a pest only moments ago could give off such a terrifying aura.
And that blood—why had it turned gold?
"You... What did you do?!"
At that moment, Jiang Cheng opened his eyes.
They had turned the color of molten gold, like the blazing sun overhead, like a starry river hanging upside down—impossible to look at directly.
Lowly creature! A being of the lowest order!
He didn't need to respond.
------Kill!!!
"Lowly trash. You wretched artificial human—just wait and see what I do to you!"
Jiang Cheng slowly pulled his left arm free from the distortion of space and time.
The hand that had hung at his side moments ago, necrotic and covered in purple patterns, was now being overtaken by another color—
Gold.
Not flowing gold—that would be sacrilege to this existence. It was something hotter and more turbulent than gold, surging beneath his skin like lava—
Red-gold stripes.
They wrapped around it.
"----What are you doing?!"
Cocolia's voice was still as haughty and self-important as ever, but for the first time, it trembled.
Jiang Cheng looked calmly at the screen.
His gaze was contemptuous and scorching. Cocolia instinctively took a step back. Realizing how pathetic she looked, she grew even more furious and slammed her hand against the command table.
"You bug—!"
"You incomprehensible, great bug!"
"Even now, you still look at me like that—do you think a fierce glare will win you the fight? Do you think this is a fairy tale?!"
"Welt—"
"Do as I say. Attack!"
Not even bothering to keep up her pretense, Cocolia issued the order without mercy.
Almost the instant her words fell, Welt, who was bearing the brunt of that pressure, instinctively launched an attack—
Ignoring the limits of his body.
All traces of contempt vanished.
From his fingertips flashed a black stream of light, real and nearly congealed into a liquid.
It was a force powerful enough to warp light and tear space-time apart.
"—A hundredfold gravity! Dieeeee!"
Without a doubt, this was an attack that would terrify any carbon-based life-form. Every cell was subjected to a hundred times the pressure—even a tenth of that would rupture the internal organs of a fighter pilot wearing a pressure suit.
No matter how sturdy the bones or how resilient the skin, the organs inside would always be the most fragile.
A pulpy mess. Liquid.
That was the inevitable end—
"----?!"
The pupils surrounding the shattered gears shrank abruptly.
Welt stared in disbelief at the figure still standing where he was, without even the slightest tremor—
A human?
"No..."
"Impossible!"
"I'm the First Herrscher! The leader of Anti-Entropy! My power can kill even the strongest Valkyries!" His eyes bulged as if they might pop out of their sockets.
"You—just die already!"
"A hundredfold gra—"
"------Bang!"
Before the words could leave his mouth, Jiang Cheng's fist broke the sound barrier as it swung forward.
The laws of physics? The limits of carbon-based life?
At that moment, Jiang Cheng tore every rule, every law of science to pieces with unparalleled violence.
The sonic boom exploded with enough force to make every physicist go mad, as though it would shatter eardrums. Unmatched force slammed into Welt—
"Shhhhhhhh—!!!"
The air split apart, space was pierced through, and only the fading echo remained, reverberating without end.
There was no chance to fight back. The very first instant his knuckles struck Welt's face—
The arrogant, powerful, self-important blue-haired young man who had been casually wielding gravity went flying like a rag doll.
There was no arc.
No downward fall.
He shot forward in a perfectly straight line like a bullet, crashing into the mountain in one clean, uninterrupted trajectory.
Then—
"Boom—!!!"
—the mountain itself was pierced through!
A massive hole opened in the imposing rocky peak, large enough to see straight through to the other side.
"----!"
Cocolia's pupils shrank until they seemed ready to shatter.
"How is this possible... He's the First Herrscher! Welt, who commands gravity and fought the Bishop of Schicksal!"
No one paid any attention to the clown's wails.
His anguished, confused cries were music to their ears.
The others present stared blankly at the sudden reversal of the situation.
Raiden Mei's eyes reflected the golden figure. Her hand tightened around her katana, trembling slightly.
She watched him, the man who had been helpless just moments before, slowly walk through the endless clouds of dust toward the hole pierced through the mountain.
Welt was embedded deep in the rock, barely managing to prop up his ruined body by forcibly squeezing the last of his life from himself. His face was contorted with rage.
"Anti... you..."
His words came out in a breathy slur. His teeth were gone, his cheeks swollen grotesquely, and even ordinary conversation was an impossible luxury.
His lungs had been all but blown apart.
His chest could no longer rise and fall.
It was only because his body was that of a clone, and because Jiang Cheng had deliberately held back, that he was still clinging to life.
Perhaps by that point, an ordinary person would have dropped to their knees and surrendered without hesitation. Even knowing they might not survive, they would still kneel and beg for mercy.
But Welt's eyes were still bloodshot as he glared at the figure before him, blazing like a flame.
"—How dare you?!"
"How dare you hurt the leader of Anti-Entropy!"
Physically Crush Welt's Head
Most of his white robe had been torn away, leaving his upper body nearly bare. What remained was soaked in blood.
But the blood that should have been scarlet had, at some point, all turned gold—burning like flames and enveloping him, dyeing his robe a brilliant gold.
Now he was walking toward them step by step, each footfall shaking the ground like an earthquake.
—Damn it.
—Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it!
Welt gathered all his strength once more.
Even as the blood vessels in his arm burst, he seemed not to notice, forcibly gathering more power. The glow in his palm even faintly traced the shape of a blurry black sphere.
He stared at Jiang Cheng as he slowly approached and laughed wildly.
"D-die, you d-disgusting bug!"
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