D.I.O

“A Transcendent Weapon….”

Tan couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. He’d seen various Soul Weapons before, but almost none rose to the level of a Transcendent Weapon. How could just 12 souls form a Transcendent Weapon? Was it possible to create such a powerful weapon without utilizing the souls of an entire species or consuming enormous quantities of magic power and other resources?

‘Even if an Irregular’s soul serves as the fundamental basis for the weapon… This is unprecedented.’

Even throughout the countless years Tan had lived, he’d never seen someone make a Transcendent Weapon without the help of an enormous infrastructure. Since ancient times, only high-level gods or greater had been able to create Transcendent Weapons without consuming an exorbitant number of resources.

‘Did someone intervene and assist him?’

Most people would be surprised if a college student created a groundbreaking computer in their garage. They’d probably call that person a genius.

Yet, what if that same student built a space shuttle from scratch without any infrastructure or prior institutional knowledge? Would people marvel at that person’s creation and call them a genius?

The answer was no. If someone created such a paradigm-shifting creation, which relied on information and tech that didn’t even exist…

People would feel disbelief, not amazement.

‘This can’t be. It’s impossible.’

Similarly, Tan reacted the same way. Even amongst the most unrealistic and improbable scenarios he had prepared for, Tan had never imagined that such a thing could be possible. It was only natural that he assumed Arthur received help from a higher being.

And that was why…

‘Now that I think about it, Jiang Ziya resides on this planet. For the Elohim to keep the Noblesse and me in check, perhaps….’

With this momentary hesitation, Tan had lost his [last] chance to undo his mistake.

Sss.

“Ugh!”

The point of Ascalon’s blade stopped twisting and spinning. Tan felt a strange, indescribable sensation spreading from around his heart.

“How….”

Tan frowned at the eerie feeling, but that was all. Obviously, he wanted to push Arthur away and pull out the sword digging into his heart, but if that were possible, he would have done so already.

‘I… can’t resist?’

Though Tan could still control his inexhaustible amount of magic power, he wasn’t able to generate the [will] to resist Arthur’s attack. This also happened when Arthur stabbed him with Ascalon. Tan had plenty of time to dodge or block the attack, but for some reason, he couldn’t move. Almost like he were bewitched, Tan had watched blankly as Ascalon approached and pierced his chest.

Others would have been confused as to the reason, but a great mage like Tan immediately noticed the cause.

‘The characteristics of the Heavenly Draconic Being he employed are completely hostile to me!’

Arthur could be said to be the strongest user and was acclaimed as a swordsman who utilized light-based sword skills. However, the Noblesse were more interested in Arthur’s talent as a summoner, or in other words, his power as a Heavenly Draconic Being. A Heavenly Draconic Being possessed a soul that was the most compatible, beautiful, and comfortable for dragons, and due to this perfect compatibility, Heavenly Draconic Beings could amplify a dragon’s energy output and vice versa.

The Noblesse called such beings Dragon Lovers, as these beings were beloved by all dragons across the universe. Yet, Arthur had taken his Dragon Lover’s soul and went in the opposite direction, the most detrimental path. This meant that Arthur, now a Soul Weapon, was the most damaging existence to a dragon.

‘Shit!’

Tan’s expression twisted. Similar to how a man physically capable of resisting would not do so when a peerless beauty pushed him down on a bed, Tan clearly saw Ascalon’s sword path as it was approaching him, but his body refused to take any action to block or avoid it.

An ancient dragon such as Tan shouldn’t have been so powerless, but the attractive power of a Heavenly Draconic Being was that overwhelming.

However, if one were to ask if such a thing couldn’t be overcome, the answer was no - it could have been beaten. It would have been difficult for any other ordinary Noblesse member, but Tan had lived through eons.

“Cheeky!”

As a huge magic storm raged around him, Arthur smiled bitterly.

“Gee, you’re extraordinary. Ascalon has a power neutralization function, but you can still output so much strength even though you’ve been stabbed in the heart.”

“You bastard, how dare you….”

After Tan’s anger reached its peak, he started to calm down. Finally, Tan threw away whatever feeling of loss or greed he had regarding Arthur.

“I guess I have no other choice but to annihilate you.”

Whoosh!

Tan’s magic storm raged and blew Arthur away. Meanwhile, Arthur grasped Ascalon’s hilt, but the storm tore his arm off as if it were made of clay, and he found himself rolling on the ground.

“Arthur!”

“Damn it, get into a defensive formation around him!”

The Masters surrounded Arthur to protect him, but in the end, this was a mistake.

Boom! Bam!

Simultaneously, dozens of Masters exploded without even the chance to scream. The remaining Masters hesitated, stunned by their compatriots’ abrupt deaths.

“What? What just happened?”

“Hey, why isn’t the whisper function working?! No, more importantly, those Masters who just exploded have completely disappeared from my Friends’ List….”

The Masters had been able to maintain a relatively equal battle with Tan not just from their collective strength but also because of their unique characteristics as users.

In other words, they could contend against Tan because users possessed immortality.

It was the single most important characteristic for the users. Since their main body was located in a safe location, even if they died in battle, it was not a real death.

Due to this, the gathered Masters unhesitatingly attacked Tan, who possessed absolute power over them. Even if they died, it wasn’t death in the normal sense. A user might face a slight penalty from the DIO system, but for all intents and purposes, they would continue to survive.

However, when Tan attacked in earnest, the situation drastically changed.

“Since I’ve been dragged this far down… I’ll have to bear some losses.”

Tan still considered the souls of the Masters as his [property] and was reluctant to damage them. Despite killing them, Tan had made sure he didn’t hurt their souls.

Now, though, Tan lifted that self-imposed restriction.

Boom!

Again, several Masters exploded. It wasn’t a physical explosion but more like a complete [deletion], as there was no corpse or any traces left behind.

As a powerful tank on the frontline, Adol was fully exposed to Tan’s attack, so he had to face it head-on.

Pop!

“Ugh… Ack!”

The strongest tank in DIO, Adol, was evaluated by many users to be one of the top Masters after the Heaven above the Heavens in terms of defense. Yet, he rolled on the ground as he felt a pain in his heart; it was as if someone or something was trying to rip out the organ. There were no visible wounds on his body, and his gear was also intact and undamaged, but Adol knew he had suffered an irreversible blow.

“He’s employing Soul Extinction!”

“Argh. After all, he was DIO’s past operator, so he can evade DIO’s defensive Marduk System….”

“Retreat!”

The Masters, previously attacking Tan without fear, quickly stepped back. If they were being affected by a powerful, overwhelming attack, that was one thing, but just by being near Tan, all the Master tanks had perished except Adol.

“Oh, my… to take such a drastic action against lowly humans. Aren’t you ashamed of calling yourself a great dragon?”

Arthur gave a snarky smile. He knew that Tan had exploited a loophole in DIO’s user protection system; Tan knew of this because he had previously been the main operator of DIO.

DIO’s Marduk System possessed a powerful defensive function that protected users from mental interference and spiritual attacks. Of course, as with all systems, it wasn’t absolute, but at the very least, it should’ve prevented a Soul Extinction skill from erasing the Masters’ souls like Tan just did.

This result occurred because Tan was aware of the gaps in the Marduk System through his experience running DIO.

“Hmm, you’re really getting on my nerves to the very end.”

With Ascalon still stuck in his heart, Tan looked at Arthur. Since he’d already consumed his soul to create Ascalon and was now a Soul Weapon, Arthur wasn’t affected by Tan’s Soul Extinction spell. In truth, Arthur was only a phantom shell maintained by fragmentary thoughts.

“Well, even so, my deep-seated resentment has faded considerably. As expected, it’s bullshit whenever people say revenge is futile.”

While floating in the air, Arthur met Tan’s gaze as the latter looked down at him. Arthur’s body gradually faded and grew more and more translucent.

“… What are you talking about?”

Arthur laughed after hearing Tan’s confused voice.

“I’ve successfully taken my revenge.”

The madness in Arthur’s eyes, which had engulfed and consumed him until now, disappeared. Arthur seemed extremely calm and stable, almost tranquil. At this, Tan suddenly burst into laughter.

“Hahaha! What? You got your revenge? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah.”

“By sticking this sword through my heart?”

“That’s right.”

Arthur nodded, not paying any heed to Tan’s blatant ridicule and sarcastic remarks. And just then…

/Crack!/

The sound of something hard, like rock or steel, being crushed rang out so clearly and loudly that it seemed to enter the minds of everyone nearby. The reverberation was so intense that even the Masters surrounding Tan from a distance trembled unconsciously.

Of course, the sensation that Tan felt was on a completely different level.

“… What?”

The initial shock and bewilderment Ascalon caused when it initially stabbed Tan were because a mere pseudo transcendent had successfully struck him. Though he was surprised, Tan didn’t feel a sense of crisis. His current human body was illusory. Even if he couldn’t remove Ascalon immediately, the situation would be resolved once he left the planet, allowing him to depart with only minor injuries. As long as he didn’t die instantly, he could escape.

Currently, Tan was a transcendent being with the authority of an intermediate god.

The moment the Earth God’s penalty dissipated, this minor injury wouldn’t even be considered a wound. Regardless of whether Ascalon became a Transcendent Weapon or not, it was insufficient to kill an intermediate transcendent god in one blow.

In other words, although Tan was taken aback and had his pride hurt by Arthur’s powerful attack, based on the result of their battle, Tan judged that, as a trade, he had obtained a Transcendent Weapon for relatively free.

However, Tan suddenly realized he had made a grave mistake.

“Do you know why I chose Ascalon instead of Excalibur as the basis for my soul-based Transcendent Weapon?” Arthur asked.

“… You bastard.”

Crack!

Crack!

Ascalon was solidifying its grip around Tan’s heart. Arthur grinned at Tan, who was baffled when he realized that he couldn’t stop this process.

“A Master Weapon is a summoning-type weapon that manifests for a certain period of time. So, using Excalibur as the base for my Soul Weapon, which is created by training one’s soul, was possible. Since my Transcendent Weapon is based on my soul, and my soul reflects the characteristic of photonization, Excalibur and its lightning and light attributes matches better with my personal qualities than Ascalon. After all, the latter has the metal and water attributes. It would have been more natural and logical to choose Excalibur for the basis of my Transcendent Weapon.”

However, Arthur picked Ascalon rather than Excalibur despite the risk that the overall strength and power of his Transcendent Weapon may be weaker. Tan realized that Arthur had made this conscious decision for a reason, and he recalled Ascalon’s second name.

“… Dragon slaying sword, Ascalon.”

“Right. I chose Ascalon because it’s a dragon-slaying sword.”

Ascalon was an SS Rank magic weapon and one of DIO’s strongest weapons, said to have been named after the holy sword that defeated a dragon. Arthur had obtained the sword after battling Zygmunt in the Seadragon’s Temple found within the deep sea.

At that time, Zygmunt had given Ascalon to Arthur and told him about the sword’s origin. Due to his position within DIO, Tan knew of this transfer and of the sword’s qualities and background.

‘A sword made by an ancient species who were destroyed by dragons; it contains the vengeful yearning of their species.’

Even though this ancient species completed Ascalon, they were eventually defeated and had their existence completely annihilated from the universe. However, instead of being lost, their masterwork sword found its way into DIO as just another one of the spoils that the draconic species and the Noblesse had gathered over the years and invested in the DIO project. Although it was explicitly produced to kill dragons, the Noblesse decided to keep the sword instead of destroying it because of its expert workmanship. To put it another way, they decided to keep the sword as a sort of trophy.

/1. Dragon Slayer

2. Apocalypse Tree

3. Pacific

4. Dragon Extermination/

Even the dragons couldn’t find fault with this collection of four spells, which were created and imbued into Ascalon to harm the dragon species. Considering that dragons were acclaimed throughout the universe as the masters of magic, if they saw Ascalon in this light, one could tell just how highly they thought of the sword and how much hatred its creators had for dragons.

And now, that sword…

Crack! Crackle!

Ascalon firmly lodged itself in Tan’s heart and took root. Tan’s immense output of mana became Ascalon’s fuel source, so Ascalon’s bond with Tan strengthened as time progressed.

“Until the day you die, that sword will never fall out. Ascalon has anchored to your soul, so even if you survive this battle, the wounds and pain you suffer now will be with you forever.”

As he heard Arthur’s words, Tan desperately tried to resist the magic power Ascalon exerted on his heart, but it was already too late. Tan could’ve possibly dislodged the blade if he had immediately driven it out with all his might, but his arrogance and prejudice eliminated that possibility.

“Hahaha! The likes of you… a mere worm… you dare!”

Rumble!

As Tan contorted his face like a wicked demon, the space around him roared like a living beast. The rushing momentum was so terrifying that the surrounding Masters found themselves unconsciously crouching down for cover. However, Arthur wasn’t affected by the vibrations.

‘Mother….’

Arthur’s body started turning into particles of light starting from his fingertips. His soul had been consumed as the main raw material to complete the dragon-slaying sword, so his dispersion was a natural result.

‘Mother….’

As Arthur’s consciousness and vision became increasingly hazy, he started seeing a figure. Uld, having already melted into his soul, smiled and took his hand.

‘Let’s go, Arthur- no, Seyoung.’

‘Yeah….’

And finally, Arthur’s figure disappeared without a trace. Ascalon was the only thing left, remaining embedded firmly in Tan’s chest.

“Arthur… you bastard! Arthur!”

Though Tan roared with anger and madness, Arthur was no more.

The bright existence known as Arthur, the one who brightened the future of humankind as a good filial son, a hero of humankind, and even a god of humanity, was finally extinguished.

Though his physical presence was no more, memories of his life and achievements remained vividly in the minds of many beings…

… like a flash of light.