"Damn it."
Loki slammed Gungnir heavily into the ground, making Valhalla tremble faintly. The lingering ripples of divine power in the air left the guards outside the hall too afraid to speak, even causing them to soften their breathing.
However, he suppressed those emotions after only a brief moment.
Loki was Loki, after all. Although he had not expected to lose so easily, much less expected Marquis Voban's [Godslayer Status] to suppress him so terrifyingly, a loss was a loss. There was no need to find so many excuses for himself.
Strength had never been something fixed and unchanging. It was not as if he had never lost before. He had merely lost once more.
He just needed to find a way to win it back in the future.
He took a deep breath and forced down all the negative emotions churning in his chest. The fingers gripping Gungnir gradually loosened, and his face slowly regained its usual calm.
"The path I took before was not wrong, but it was missing something."
Loki reviewed everything he had done in the past.
He had fought battles everywhere, plundered resources, earned Points, and then invested most of them without hesitation into the [Enlightenment Function], rapidly improving his understanding of Rules and his mastery of Magic.
There was nothing inherently wrong with that path. His strength had genuinely improved, and it was the fundamental reason he believed he had caught up with, or even surpassed, Marquis Voban.
But he had overlooked one thing. Or rather, he had instinctively underestimated it.
Status.
After three Enhancements, Marquis Voban's [Godslayer Status] no longer merely provided shallow effects such as "increased resistance to divine attacks" or "increased damage against deities."
It was suppression on the level of Rules, acting directly upon the very concept of a "deity."