Chapter 68

Flauros hadn’t heard about the Apostle of the Outer God until what felt like a relatively recent past for a demon like her.

The first rumor came when a castle in the neighboring domain had mysteriously collapsed.

In the Demon Realm, it was only natural for one who gained new power to trample over another of their kind. Yet this event happened during a time when open challenges for power were rare. After all, most Archdukes had turned their attention elsewhere—toward new lands and resources in other dimensions.

Fulfillment dulled ambition, while hunger sharpened the spirit. To Flauros, who sought only strength, their complacency was beyond comprehension.

So when the Archdukes who once ruled proudly began to fall one by one—crushed by that man’s tentacles…

When they fled their domains in terror, or came crawling to her, begging for mercy…

She could only laugh. Perhaps she even felt a kind of vicarious thrill from it.

At the same time, her anticipation grew.

When would he come for her?

Would the Apostle of the Outer God one day stand before her blazing fortress and plant the banner of his god atop it?

Her fighting spirit burned hotter with each passing day, and her strength grew along with it. ut no matter how long she waited, the Apostle never came.

Though now an Archduke, she had once been nothing more than a small flame given form. nd if it meant tasting the ecstasy of a battle that danced between life and death, she would gladly play the challenger again.

So when she finally heard that the Apostle was near, she could no longer wait. She marched for dozens of days—heading in the opposite direction of every fleeing demon—until she reached him at last.

And what she heard atop the corpse of the colossal Tartaruga still echoed in her mind.

“You’re not qualified.”

Those were the first words he said as he roasted bits of tentacle over the beast’s remains.

“Not strong enough, maybe? You don’t have what I’m looking for.”

“Wha— What do you mean, not enough?” she demanded.

“I mean something more… tangible than enlightenment. If you don’t get it, go beat up a few of the high-rank ones first.”

“You— wait, so you did like the fight?” she pressed.

“No, I mean you ruined my meal. Do you know how much trouble I got because of you? Ugh, whatever. Why’d you show up while I was eating?”

Even now, she could still see him spraying ink everywhere in irritation as he escaped into the sky.

Then, a year later, he returned—this time on his own.

He smashed her domain, struck her down, and demanded her Dimensional Core… then sat on her fallen body and cooked his damn tentacles again.

The humiliation she felt that day had no equal. Especially the moment after her resurrection—when he had bound her naked form with those tentacles to “restrain” her. That memory alone became the eternal scar she called hatred.

Judging from his reaction earlier, he clearly didn’t even remember their first meeting. How could he? He didn’t even know her name back then.

But now, none of that mattered. If he couldn’t remember her before, she’d carve herself into his memory now—forever.

“I’ll make you regret it.”

Rising to her feet, Flauros immediately took stance. Having fought him once before, she knew exactly what to expect.

The tentacles were the greatest threat—summoned and controlled in countless ways. Some were useless in combat, but others were bizarre enough to trouble even an Archduke. And beyond that… he was a master of both Black and White Magic.

Both had been honed to the seventh rank, high enough that a single opening would drown her in sheer magical force.

She had never seen him use a personal extreme technique like other great mages did,
but she knew of a different power he wielded instead—Extreme Magic.

Each spell of his bore strength equal to a transcendent’s ultimate move. Even an Archduke could lose their life in the blink of an eye if they let down their guard.

Seven such techniques were said to exist. Flauros had seen only three.

And the most lethal of them—the Apostle’s signature move—now flared before her eyes, cutting off her path.

“Extreme Magic — Grave of Stars.”

A whirlpool of void that erased all matter within its range.

No matter how many there were, the two seconds it took to cast that spell felt like an eternity for someone like her.

And as a martial fighter, she couldn’t rely on disrupting the formula. All she could do was strike.

If she took even one hit, it was over.

Yet Flauros calmly clenched her fist and threw a punch straight toward the singularity.

“I told you, didn’t I? I don’t lose three times.”

“…Huh?”

Frost-laced flame.

The little chill that bloomed from her fist pushed away the fire long enough to erase the void the Grave of Stars was about to create.

Flauros had changed since their last fight—not just from training and stewing over defeat. She’d absorbed the Incarnation’s ability from Lin Xuefei (Ice Ghost), a cold-manipulating Black Mage, and reborn that power as her own.

When she revealed a method to counter the Apostle’s Extreme Magic, the corners of his mouth twitched in surprise. It wasn’t enough to erase every singularity he threw at her—she’d need more than two hands for that—but it bought her a defensive foothold.

“Thirteenth Tentacle — Deluge.”

Before she had time to catch her breath, a swarm of tentacles as large as houses crashed down. Still, she met them calmly, bracing a hand on the ground.

“Flame Edict.”

The heat she’d spread across the earth condensed in an instant, spiking the temperature across a two-hundred-meter radius.

No matter how hardy the tentacles or the monsters that lived in any environment, they could not withstand that blaze. The Deluge tentacles withered like paper, and a paw—like a leopard’s—snatched and pulverized them.

A tail flicked out from the back of her Chinese-style fighting robe. Half-beast, half-human, she shimmered—covered in beautiful, living fire. Part of Flauros’s true form had manifested.

“Your precious tentacles don’t work in here. What will you do now?”

Even in air hot enough to singe the lungs, he didn’t flinch. He formed hand seals with one hand, and the flames withdrew into a ring around him.

The second Extreme Magic—one that stretched space and gave infinite distance to incoming attacks—took shape.

“How am I supposed to talk if you burn the air and I can’t breathe?”

“……”

“Is that all you’ve got?”

As long as that absolute defense held, not even the Apostle’s sleeve could be brushed. Seeing a smile curl at his lips stoked her fighting spirit.

Flauros snapped the red-flame necklace she wore and gripped it in her hand. Then, unleashing an inferno on a scale far beyond before, she began to burn the entire city.

“You’ll see—doing only that won’t save you.”

The heat haze that warped space began to encroach on him, but it didn’t break his magic. Outside the ring of fire, countless tentacles still sprouted, weaving seals and casting spells—Black and White Magic alike—designed to target flame. Extreme Magics multiplied.

The land was gouged as if someone were cutting tofu; the damage was enormous, yet Flauros pushed forward bit by bit.

With every step closer, the Incarnation’s body cracked under the pressure until it started flaking away. By the time she could almost reach him, she no longer had the strength to throw a single punch.

Still, she bared her teeth at the Apostle for the first time and said,

“If you don’t want to die, bite down tight.”

“What?”

“I’m going to cram a Gate into your mouth right now.”

Before he could react, purple dimensional cracks blossomed from the tips of her fingers.

She’d gained the ability to tear the invisible walls of space and break the Endless Outer Path—another power she’d developed since coming to Earth. In the Demon Realm, a Dimensional Core was meaningless except as domain currency—but on Earth, she could rip open a Gate.

A wound in the air split open, and a hungry, tearing portal began to form at her command.

At the exact coordinates, she summoned a small Gate—instantly.

At the same moment, she struck it from the outside at a precise point, collapsing it in a split second.

The result was the same as when Norkel had shattered the ground earlier: the Gate’s unstable contents poured out, detonating in a violent burst of mass and energy.

When Flauros’s fist tore through the rift that had opened just meters ahead and drove toward the Apostle—

KWA-A-A-AANG!

A colossal explosion of flame erupted, vast enough to wipe out the surrounding district.

Magic, fire, shockwaves—

Everything vanished beneath the blinding light and roaring sound.

The ring of fire snapped apart, and all the outer tentacles disintegrated in an instant.

The earth had melted entirely, leaving no solid ground—only a sea of glowing magma.

Standing tall amid the molten red, Flauros opened her eyes and surveyed the wasteland.

“Not bad.”

Using a Gate to disrupt Endless Outer Path had proven effective.

One of her arms was gone, blown off by the blast, but the Flame of Restoration slowly began knitting it back together.

Her long, disheveled hair she tied back with a strand of scorched wire as she searched for any trace of the Apostle.

Even an Archduke wouldn’t survive a blast of that magnitude… but she doubted he’d die that easily.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long before she found something her flames had failed to completely incinerate.

At the crater’s center, buried several dozen meters deep, a massive tentacle lay scorched black but still pulsing faintly with life.

It twitched, and a sticky liquid poured out as a man emerged from within—the Apostle of the Outer God himself, covered in slime.

“Good work, Digestion.”

“Kkiiiieeek…”

“No, really. Did you think I buried you underground by accident? You saved my life.”

“……”

He gently patted the complaining tentacle, his tone casual and unhurried. Not a single wound marked his body.

Flauros stared in disbelief. Had he hidden a tentacle deep underground in advance… just in case?

“You’re getting sharper,” he said easily. “That one actually stung a bit.”

“You monster…”

“Still, we can’t have this mess spreading outside Daegu. Gotta seal it.”

Muttering something incomprehensible, he lifted a pristine white tentacle in his left hand and kissed it lightly.

Flauros didn’t wait. Before he could activate any ability, she slammed her newly regenerated arm into the ground.

Scorching Flame.

Hundreds of serpents wreathed in fire erupted across the ground, slithering and swelling as they split the burning earth.

But just before their fanged maws could sink into his neck—

“Seventh Tentacle — Purgatory.”

The air itself trembled as a swarm of tentacles burst upward from every direction, devouring the flaming serpents whole.