Mushoku Tensei: A different path

(Rudeus POV)

How?! After all the times he made my blood boil by reminding me of who I was before, that fat loser is back at it again.

'Oh, you know you need me right now.'

'Yeah right. The best thing you could give me is another aneurysm.'

'Which might just be the key.'

As much as my disgust clouds me, the thing about my anger made sense to me. Just like the first time at Shirone, my anger was the initial trigger that got me semi transformed.

Only that flashback of my past trauma gave me enough to cause the true unleashing.

'Meh. You could've done better.'

'I blew up a large chunk of a mountain. There were probably people around.'

'And did it kill Orsted? Nope. And the same will happen again with Death God.'

'I'm not fighting him anymore. And even if we manage to defeat these two creatures, I will just run away with Sara and Soldat.'

'There you go again. Not facing the problems head on unlike with those assassins.'

'That was the curse's influence making me kill them. Unless it was you.'

'Have you ever considered that you might just need something to let out all that accumulated anger?

It's one thing to use those powers for your own survival, but it's another thing to save innocent lives and redeem yourself because of your inheritance you never desired.

And once again, your past wrongdoing in this life is poised to result in the loss of the lives of those whom you had been close to, due to your selfless deed of being hesitant to fully commit to your prowess.'

'You cannot possibly imply that I am holding myself back from this.'

'I'm not just implying, I know you could do better than this. And I am willing to provide assistance for something in exchange.'

'What could you possibly want? You are a figment of my traumatized past that haunts me in this second life.'

'Kill Death God and claim his title.'

Okay, that was random. Going all out would give me the necessary needs to kill him. But is killing him necessary?

'Think about it. Even if people don't believe that you are the next Death God, the rumor will surely spread around like a bonfire for anyone to hear.'

'I see your point, but I don't see the benefits that you would get out of. What are your hidden motives here?'

'Those will stay hidden until the right time.'

This again. It's just like the times talking to Hitogami. I'll have to be careful.

Yet, the situation isn't making it easy on me. I need that power now.

Killing a person who's already poor life state became more miserable by my harsh choice of wording is above excessive.

And murdering a blood thirsty man whose had his spirit reawakened is putting the icing on the cake.

It's settled. I will keep the last part in mind to help me get over the fact in return for getting the powers unlocked I need.

'I'll do it. Now unchain those two beings within me before it's too late.'

'I said I would assist you in that, not do it for you.'

There we have it! The good old stab in the back dilemma. What a surprise.

'You don't seem to understand it. I can't unlock that power. It's in your control, and you have to set it free.'

'... so you are saying I can't use it because subconsciously I don't want to?'

So that's what he meant with hesitant to use my prowess.

Unless my curse does the push I need, I won't be able to want to use it.

'Don't worry. I have something prepared for situations like these.'

'You what?' My vision started to get blurred.

It was similar to the Goddess's visions, but with more pictures, this time. Awful ones of people dying.

Some had their skin and flesh liquified, some were missing limbs or got diced in total.

There were even pictures of people I know of in Rosenburg. Like the people from [Counter Arrow] and [Stepped Leader].

I tried looking away, but my eyelids were frozen in place, only my eyeballs could move.

At every angle, I would end up seeing a new horrifying image.

At the last one I set my eyes upon, it showed Sara, getting half her body dissolved and reaching out her hand to me.

Blood flowing from her eyes instead of tears, making it evident that her state was impossible to escape.

If I could, I would cry myself from all the horror that I experienced by watching these.

'What are you gonna do now? Are you just standing around, letting people die you easily could save? Or will you get that cowardly attitude from your own self away and do something against it with your bare hands, grabbing fate by the strings?'

Fear was still evident within me, paired regretfully over my lack of self awareness in my powers.

So long I have kept myself locked away in my room, weak to step out, weak to face my fear, weak to do something about it.

And now, even when I try to do something, it's still not enough.

What does the world want to tell me? That my effort would have been futile from the start? That this second life is just a means to make that evident to me?

A surge of anger erupted within me, and I felt my body fire up.

'I… have... had-'

"ENOUGH!"

The end of my sentence was said in the real world, time back to its pace and me suddenly engulfed in flames.

With a backhand slap of concentrated Wind Magic, I smacked the tentacles away from Soldat and Sara.

The impact was strong enough to cause a wide crater.

While all eyes were set on me, only the growling from the monsters vibrated through the air.

Evidently enough, I had a lot of things at once going through my head when looking down at my hands.

I felt powerful yet uncontrolled. Relieved yet disgusted. Confident yet frightened.

Damn it. Puberty sucks. No wonder my lack of social communication with people outside the internet hasn't broken me more than it already did.

The sight of the sea creature elicited a ferocious sensation within my physical being.

In return, it swung its tentacles at me, its fear coming out of its body in the form of slime.

After breathing in, I soared forward and spun like a drill. I shot multiple [Flame Slice] spells at the tentacles and cut them into tiny pieces as I made my way to the head.

The instincts of the marine creature swiftly responded, and it evaded my assault by utilizing its remaining tentacle to propel itself to the left before I tore it apart too.

Despite the creature having less than a quarter of its body remaining, it was still breathing.

Steam was coming out of my mouth as I exhaled. This brings me an idea that could possibly get me in a better mood. As a dragon, I believe that this subsequent attack would be highly fitting.

After taking a deeper breath, I filled my lungs with mana and concentrated Fire Magic inside my mouth.

Once I exhaled, scorching flames came out and became a wave that consumed the ocean creature's living remains within it.

This attack turned out to be more powerful than I expected as it advanced beyond the monster and burned the forest behind it as well.

Having fully exhaled, I watched as the burned carcass was moving no more.

Smoke rose from the corners of my lips as I felt the inside of my mouth cooling down just a little.

It entirely slipped my mind to lessen the ambient absorption mana boost my body naturally puts in. This perhaps has caused my attack to go up to Saint class in terms of mana input.

With an overcharged [Blizzard Storm], I put out the ensuing fire before it could do anything else.

That proved to be much more problematic as it instead became a giant glacier.

My output has become so much easier that I have a bit of trouble regulating it.

Whatever. I'm not in the mood to think about that right now.

Signals of fear approaching me kicked me out of my apathetic mind.

The one that mattered to me was the one coming from the Black Dragon. It was running away in the opposite direction, but I caught up to it by combining my Touki and Gravity Magic for greater speed.

Once I stood right before the canine like creature, it used one of its strong front legs to swipe at me with sharp claws it was equipped with.

I know for a fact that blocking that will be a death sentence, since the poison of those claws can dissolve the mana from both Touki and Barrier Magic.

So instead, I pointed my finger at the right leg that was about to hit me and instant cast a [Rock Bullet].

Impressively, the claws excreted their poison and lessened the effects of my spell.

The damage, however, cancels the attack, and damages the… paw? I can't get the image of the gatekeeper out of my head. But it's still missing the third head and some chains.

Since it was wailing about the attack having been easily intercepted, both its heads started going for an acid-shot.

I intercepted and cut both of its throats with the side of my hands. Acidic fluid melted my hands a bit, but they were still on.

Before I could heal at least one of them, the flesh seems to have regenerated already.

This was certainly a new discovery that made me even more afraid of what I have become.

The attack from the dragon was cancelled and blood mixed with its own acid flowed out.

Having this arsenic fluid damage its own wound even further, the Black Dragon was shaking around, helplessly trying to escape this self-inflicted torture.

I assisted it by giving it an upper cut with [Specter Force] on both chins.

The punch was so strong that it backwards on it back.

Jumping on top of its chest, I put both hands on the open wound at the neck I had caused.

Freezing the liquid while it was still flowing out, my spell was directed deeper into the monster's body and froze the remaining blood within it.

This, of course, caused the liquid inside to harden and stagnate the creature and grow crimson and purple icicles from the nose, mouth, ears, eyes, and new opening all over its body.

Every sign of life vanished from it, finally announcing its existence has been ended.

I removed my hands and stood up straight, facing the sky, to avoid further watching what I just did.

Part of me wasn't happy with the slow and painful method, and the other wanted to make this kill one to remember about. No clue where the latter came from, but it undeniably did make itself clear.

I re~ally left an impression on myself today. Well, time to clean up.

With [Specter Force] I picked up the tentacle pieces and froze them before putting them into my pocket dimension.

Surprisingly, the arrow-headed scales went into my pocket dimension without problem, making me wonder if there is a mana input mechanism that caused them to go through my defense.

Next was the Black Dragon corpse, which was already frozen enough as it was, so I put it in as soon as I was stepping down from it.

The day wasn't over just yet. There was one more opponent left for me to defeat.

Just as I agreed with Kagami, I will fight Death God, ironically, to the death.

The weird thing is, the guy was looking at me with blood thirsted thrill.

'What… have… I… done…'

"You have my gratitude for keeping our promise until the end. As we agreed, you will have your fight against me."

"You sure you're not tired? Those attacks must've blown out massive amounts of mana." He snickered.

For an apostle, he isn't well-informed about my abilities yet.

True, I was about 15% on my total manapool thanks to using Gravity Magic for such a long suspense and putting too much into the fire and ice spells. Besides...

"I have more than enough to fight you. On another note, aren't you exhausted yourself?"

"Hmph. Don't humor me. I haven't gone rusty enough to let a bit of warm up get to me."

While he said that, there was barely any emotion coming out of him besides the sound in his voice showing confidence.

Interpreting that as anything but that doesn't matter to me.

When he got ready by going into some weird stance, I looked over at Sara and Soldat, still wide-eyed before my form.

I have no choice but to explain this after I'm done.

Death God saw this as an opportunity to give me a surprise attack, but I had seen this coming and used Wind and Gravity Magic to blast him away from here, away from the last two members of my squad and the glacier.

"K-kid?"

"I'll get you two later."

I spread my wings and pulled them down with a lot of force before flying off into the direction I threw Death God at.

Round two is about to start.

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