Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day - Chapter 337: The God Who Eats Is [II]

Chapter 337: The God Who Eats Is [II]

“M‑Michael?” someone gulped in disbelief, probably Ray.

The instant they saw him, they recognized him.

And with that recognition came the memory of what happened on the day of our arrival in this cursed valley.

The floodgates in our minds opened and every detail rushed back with vivid clarity — making us remember how that supposed God had pounced on us from the shroud of darkness while we were at our lowest ebb after Vaeghar… and then how he took Michael away.

It all clicked together in a single, dreadful realization.

Under normal circumstances, such a revelation would have led to confusion. And confusion ought to have demanded an immediate halt for answers.

There was an entire mountain of trauma to unpack here, after all.

But the universe wasn’t in a mood for dialogue.

There was no time for us to process anything.

Because in response to our collective alarm, the God in the sky made his move. He pulled at the shimmering strings looped around the many fingers of his upper-right hand.

The ethereal white thread connected to Michael’s unconscious body snapped taut with a hum that I felt vibrating in my teeth.

Then, Michael was violently yanked upright.

His head lolled back at a nauseating angle and his limbs hung uselessly for half a second before the threads forced them into position, akin to a grotesque puppet being readied for a grisly performance.

It was an eerie sight, seeing a human being we personally knew being manipulated like a toy in front of our eyes.

At first, his movements were jerky and unnatural like a corpse being hauled by invisible hooks rather than a living man standing of his own volition.

His shoulders twitched and his fingers spasmed mechanically.

His neck rolled with a visible stiffness before settling into place, as though something inside him was testing the joints one by one.

Slowly but surely, right before us, the hitching disappeared. His previously jerky and unnatural movements became smooth and fluid and almost indistinguishable from those of a living person.

Beside me, Lily covered her mouth with a trembling hand as Michael’s body convulsed once, then stilled.

Finally, his head lifted and his eyes snapped open… but they were no longer his own.

A dull, ashen light was burning within their depths, making them look empty and distant, as if someone had scraped the person out from inside him and left only a hollowed-out shell behind.

In his hand, gripped with white-knuckled intensity, was the cursed longsword… the Fang of Xaldreth. Its black blade held a devious sheen that seemed to deepen the shadows of this canyon.

I had seen Michael wield that sword hundreds of times, but right now, its edge looked sharper and far more malevolent than I had ever seen it.

A suffocating pressure rolled outward from that black steel, layering atop the God’s own presence, effectively doubling the crushing weight of the atmosphere.

“I…” Vince whispered hoarsely, tightly clutching his own short sword that looked almost comically weak compared to the protagonist’s. “I don’t think we can take him and that creature at once.”

…He wasn’t wrong.

Dealing with Michael alone was a nightmare scenario.

I’d harbored a sliver of hope that he would still be conscious and fighting when we saved him, but it appeared he had passed out mere minutes before I took the God’s mask off.

I could deduce that from the fact that Xaldreth hadn’t hijacked his body yet. The cursed sword had only just begun to exert its full influence. It meant that before collapsing, Michael had likely used the last shred of his will to suppress Xaldreth for as long as possible.

If my memory served me right, the time limit for that suppression was roughly thirty minutes.

In other words — we didn’t just have to defeat a God and a puppet-protagonist, we had to do it in under half an hour before Xaldreth could take over and fully manifest to slaughter us all.

…Not that we were in any condition for a war of attrition anyway, but the sheer scale of the task was insulting.

It was a tall task.

…It was an impossible task.

To top it off, Alexia was written off from this battle, and Kang would have to get her to safety instead of fighting.

We were exhausted and sleep-deprived and starving.

If I’d ever had a doubt about my prophecy of death, it was gone now. This battle really was going to be the end of me, it seemed.

Clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth, I gripped Scorched Oath harder and dropped into a low fighting stance.

The rest of the group followed suit.

As if on cue, one of the God’s three mouths stretched wide in something resembling a smile. The other two resumed their guttural chanting in that alien tongue that gave me a headache the more I tried to listen to it. His arm drew back slightly to pull the shimmering thread seeping from Michael’s chest.

Michael’s lips parted like he was going to scream or groan or cry out a warning, but no sound left his throat.

Instead, a river of twinkling light motes trickled out of his body, coalescing behind his back to materialize into a Card.

Immediately after, a full set of matte-black armor manifested, cladding Michael from head to toe in interlocking plates and chainmails and leather.

With his visor down and that longsword brandished, he looked like a dark knight from a doomed fantasy.

…Then, he simply blinked out of existence.

One moment he was standing there, bending his knees slightly.

The next, he was lunging at us in a blur of black steel and ashen light, his sword pointed forward and inches away from burying itself in Alexia’s midsection.

He moved with such blistering speed that it left everyone wide-eyed and paralyzed, unable to react at all.

…All except one.

—BOOOM!!

Ray drew his hand back and detonated a jet-engine explosion behind him, the force of it propelled him forward like a kinetic slug.

A heartbeat later, his foot was slamming into the side of Michael’s helmeted skull before the cursed sword could find its mark on Alexia.

THWACK—!!

The disastrous impact sent Michael careening through the air like a ragdoll.

His black armor creaked and clanged under the sudden stress, sparks flickering along the edges of the Fang of Xaldreth as he tried to plunge the blade into the ground to arrest his momentum.

But he couldn’t. Not in time.

He tumbled end over end, unable to maintain even a semblance of balance as the cursed sword scraped the canyon floor and left shallow grooves into the stone.

Thwaaam—!!

Michael hit the canyon’s rock face with a thunderous crash, kicking up a dense cloud of dust and loose stone that rained down from the ledges above.

Ray landed low in a backflip.

Lily was the one who had given him the call to intercept the attack before it happened, giving the boy ample time to save Alexia.

I didn’t waste any time going on the offensive either. I wasn’t about to give a God’s puppet a chance to recalibrate.

So I activated my Origin Card at full throttle the second Michael rocketed out of the dust cloud.

The stone wall he had been slammed into practically burst outward due to the sheer amount of terrifying force he must’ve used to kick himself off it.

Chunks of granite exploded into the air as his armored form shot toward us, sword raised for a decapitating swing.

Unfortunately for him, I knew his play. I had him figured out.

He was fast, but he was being piloted by a predator. I had an inkling he’d be gunning for Lily or Vince first to eliminate the support and then go for the heavy hitters.

That made his trajectory predictable.

So, as Michael zeroed in on us, the ground in his path surged upward in an eruption as a colossal hand of packed rocks — its large fingers thicker than tree trunks — clawed its way out of the earth.

It caught him mid-charge, the stone fingers curling around his armored torso with enough weight to crush boulders.

Then, in a sweeping motion, the colossal hand whipped around and flung him overhead like a piece of unwanted trash.

Michael arched through the air in a high, helpless curve before crashing down onto the valley floor several yards behind us.

Before he could even begin to push himself up…

FWOOM—!!

The canyon wall to our right ruptured open.

Stone peeled away in tectonic slabs as a golem emerged halfway from the cliffside itself. Its torso alone was taller than a modern office building, its body was made entirely of rock. In its hands was a ginormous stone club, shaped like a crude, oversized baseball bat.

The golem raised the weapon toward the bleeding moon… then brought it down.

I had never heard a mountain collapse, but I imagined it would sound exactly like the deafening, bone-shaking clamor that followed.

The ginormous club descended with absolute finality to crush Michael into the valley floor like an insignificant insect.

TH-WAAAM—!!!

The entire valley buckled, shaking as if hit by a localized earthquake, and a plume of dust rose to hide the carnage, along with a strong gust.