SSS-Class Revival Hunter-Chapter 196: Erosion (1)

Of all the Constellations I had met so far, the most powerful one was definitely Preta, the Demon King of Autumn Rain. The saintess of monsters could pile up a mountain of corpses with a single slash. Under her sword, the continent had been stained with red rain. Mountain ranges had been submerged in pools of blood, and the river streams had carried the strong scent of blood.

It seemed that I was going to have a change of heart today. Uburka’s fist brushed right past my nose.

“Hahaha! Just as expected, Daddy! You just weasel out of everything!”

Boooom!

This was not the sound someone’s fist cutting through the air was supposed to make. Oh my god. Thank god I had been focusing my strength on my legs; otherwise, I would have been sent flying by the gale.

“S-Son!”

“Speak, Daddy!” Uburka guffawed.

“Is it really necessary for us to do this?” I shouted, my tone desperate. “It’s been a while since we last saw each other, so can we spend some time catching up and have a nice conversation like father and son—”

“I can’t be happier than I am right now!”

“Are you planning to kill your daddy?”

“If you die under my fist, it means that was your limit. Don’t blame me, blame your own weakness!”

An explosion erupted. When I looked back, the snow mountain was collapsing due to the aura punch Uburka had thrown.

“The fuck?” I murmured.

I wouldn’t have dared compare it to the level of cutting off the hem of the world like Teacher. Still, the punch was incredibly destructive. What would happen if I got hit by that fist? Considering which was harder, the snow mountain peak or my skull, it didn’t take me long to reach a conclusion.

“Someone save me!” I screamed. “Guys, an unfilial son trying to explode his daddy’s head! I taught him my aura utilization method and also the Demonic Heaven Arts, but this ungrateful rascal is trying to kill his daddy!”

“My fists are my filial piety!” Uburka yelled the bullshit of all time at me, taking his stance. The posture was all too familiar to me.

Demonic Heaven Arts.

First Form:

Starvation Death.

His aura rose from all around and engulfed me. My eyes widened. He was incomparably more skilled at using his aura now.

—Whoa, the Guardian exclaimed.

My perception of time slowed down. The Guardian’s exclamation sounded more like “Whoaaaa” to me. Before his exclamation could be carried out by the snowy wind, I unleashed all my aura.

I’ll lose if I fight head-on.

If I let my guard down even for a second, I would be instantly defeated. An idea crossed my mind as time slowed down around me.

Will it work?

My body responded faster than my mind. I took a step.

Let’s try it.

Rustle!

The snow crunched under my shoes. My aura quickly seeped into the finely broken snowflakes.

Demonic Heaven Arts.

First Form:

Starvation Death.

I didn’t counter Uburka’s attack. Instead, I was going to take over his aura. After all, the Demonic Heaven Arts blazed on the memories and imagery in the user’s mind. Even if an attack had dozens of trajectories, one could tell which trajectory would hit harder than the others. This would be enough to nullify the attack.

The directions vary depending on how much the user understands about the Demonic Heaven Arts.

I quietly looked into Uburka’s fire of aura, which moved vividly before me. He had two main attack routes.

Let’s fight.

On my first breath, I shut down the path where the most violent fire rushed in, the one containing the pangs of hungry children’s screams.

He’s going by the book.

I swiftly performed the form, thinking of a mother who had to listen to her little child screaming, her pain multiplied by her own child’s suffering. My aura grabbed Uburka’s and twisted it, as if strangling it. One of Uburka’s main attack trajectories was sent back to him.

On my second breath, Uburka’s eyes grew fierce. He sensed that I would ask him about the depth of our understanding of the arts, rather than use physical strength to overcome him.

“You still don’t fail to annoy me!” Uburka yelled, infusing aura into his voice.

If an ordinary person had been listening to our conversation, Uburka’s words would have just sounded like ■, a single syllable with no meaning. However, his aura bent and curved, shaping the sound of ■. Only in our little bubble of slowed down time did ■ spread evenly. It was a sound art that required a fairly high level of aura mastery.

“Are you planning to make me look like an ignorant boar who only knows how to charge?!”

I grinned. “That’s right. If you don’t want to lose, you can go ahead and stop using the Demonic Heaven Arts.”

We, the father and son combo, flaunted our elegance in our way.

“Never! I’m going to beat you with these arts at least once! Daddy, you always turn everything in your favor using these arts. Therefore, I’m going to crush you using the very same arts you treasure, send you tumbling down into an abyss, and then make you acknowledge me from the depths of your heart!”

“Shouldn’t you have spent three hundred years learning how to use your aura better instead of falling down a spiral of delusions? Just be quiet and fall at the hands of my demonic arts.”

“Uger!”

In the Terra language, “Uger” had a variety of meanings, such as “No,” “Bad,” “There’s a problem,” “Get lost,” and “You little fu—”

“I’ve waited for over three hundred and sixty years. I can’t lose again!”

“Whether three hundred years, three thousand years, or thirty thousand years have passed...”

On the third breath, I began to take control of Uburka’s aura, like I was coloring his sketch. More precisely, it was as if I was interjecting my improvisation into Uburka’s music.

“Your daddy has no intention of quietly handing over the position of the Heavenly Demon Cult’s leader.”

When Uburka depicted the pain of a child, I portrayed that of the parents who starved themselves to feed their child. Which hunger was more painful? Which was more appropriate to represent the cries of all people? Two Starvation Deaths of the same art entangled.

“Child!”

“What is it?” Uburka snapped.

“Now that you have reached this level, we can have deeper conversations.”

I deflected Uburka’s punch with the back of my hand without using any force. By predicting the trajectory of his attack, I was already ready to dodge. The deflection was merely my final move before I dodged his attack.

“Ugh!”

Uburka got infuriated and rushed forward.

“A martial artist is a job, especially for a demon of the demonic cult. If you just want to contemplate the suffering of the world, you can become a monk and move to a temple. The Demonic Heaven Arts is the will to stay among pain and people.”

Every time Uburka threw his fist, a piece of the snow peak shattered, but none of the blows landed on me.

Rumble—!

Avalanches broke out from the north, south, east, and west with the two of us in the center. A flower of blood bloomed from our fight.

“Oh my god...” the Black Witch muttered, standing twenty steps away from us. Was she surprised by Uburka’s incredible power? Or maybe she was impressed by my exquisite skill in handling Uburka.

Without paying much attention to her, I said, “Uburka, you have to be careful. At any time, our demonic cult could easily be reduced to an exhibition that boasts about pain.”

“An exhibition that boasts about pain?”

“I’m saying don’t fight over who is more hurt. Reflect on yourself over and over so that your actual pain doesn’t become your power. I know you’re not like that, but I’ll tell you this anyway.”

On my fourth breath, I successfully took over all of Uburka’s attack trajectories. Although Uburka was still moving, only a little bit of space was left for his aura to spread. He clenched his teeth, his red aura burning fiercely in an attempt to somehow push into my own space, but I skillfully pulled out the end of his blazing aura and let it flow in the direction I wanted.

“If you endure the pain alone, the people around you will wither away. The more someone cherishes you, the more likely they are to wither away. They would want you to stop, but what can they say when you’re willing to shoulder the pain of the world? If pain is proof of being a proper individual, then you are the only one like that.”

Was Uburka following what I was saying? I wasn’t sure. Nonetheless, I continued handling the fire. Maybe he was unable to understand my advice yet, but as the Black Witch had stated, it was far better to be too early than too late.

“Don’t get your priorities wrong and make your people miserable by saying you’re doing it for the sake of the world. Find a companion. Persuade people about your resolve. If you have climbed the mountain and achieved enlightenment, it’s now time to come down. Find people you’ll entrust your heart to and who will share your ideals. Talk to them. A lot. If you want to become a proper individual, you have to do that alongside them.”

“Those people—”

“They already exist.”

On the fifth breath, I sent his aura flying in all directions.

“Child!” My eyes reflected in Uburka’s as if we were two mirrors endlessly reflecting one another. “Why do you think I told you about my resolve?”

Aura exploded, but not my own. I simply controlled the torrent of aura that Uburka unleashed.

“It’s to both stand under the same sky!”

I drew the landscape I had dreamed of for a long time with my red brush strokes. Uburka was endless paint, and I was a brush. A feat that could only be achieved with the same aura utilization method, the demonic arts, and the same imagery descended on the white ridge.

Demonic Heaven Formula Arts.

First Form:

Playhouse On Fire.

After six breaths, the area around us changed. Red aura swirled, taking the form of various shapes. Candle sconces. Lit candles on the candle sconces. Candle wax melting from the candles. Gorgeous floors and stairs. Every possible decoration in the mansion.

The Black Witch was shocked. She recognized this place. “Wait a second. This is...”

Hundreds of candles were burning with shadows of aura were hidden between each sconce.

—Hahahaha.

A familiar laughter melted like candle wax.

—Are you...

—Who...

—Can you...

Everything collapsed. The scene probably lasted only about three seconds. Uburka had an enormous amount of aura, but it wasn’t endless. There was also a limit to my exquisite aura mastery. With just the two of us, it was difficult to sustain such a memory with all the people and sounds faithfully replicated.

However, we still did it even if it only lasted for about three seconds. I succeeded in recreating the Infernal Mansion.

Uburka looked around, dazed. We were back at the snow mountain, but we all knew that what we had just witnessed wasn’t a hallucination.

I gathered up what little aura was left within me. “Uburka, this is the formula arts I told you about three hundred and sixty-three years ago. The technique isn’t simply about shooting out your aura based on the imagery in your mind. It’s about actualizing the imagery with your aura.”

I had taught Uburka the Demonic Heaven Arts and popularized Cavefire plays among the Terras to bring our own realm into their world. It was impossible for me to achieve this on my own.

“No matter how much I struggle, I can’t make it last for even a second on my own. I’ll run out of aura in an instant, and the realm will perish before I can spread it to a ten-meter radius. Even with our auras joined together, I only managed to maintain it for three seconds. But what if we had twelve more warriors?”

Uburka joined in, his eyes shaking as he thought about it. “What would happen if twenty-four, hundreds, or even a thousand Terra warriors came together to use formula arts?”

“Doing all that might just be impossible, but the Terras have shared and polished the images over the past hundreds of years. We’re musicians who have access to the same music sheets. We’re the only ones in the world who can do this.”

“We...” Uburka trailed off. “We shall sing about pain, but—”

“But it’ll be beautiful.”

“Ugor, it will be beautiful.”

How exciting. I smiled.

“Let’s go down the mountain together with me. Even if we sing about pain, we’ll still be happy.”

“Strange. How is that possible?” freeωebnovēl.c૦m

“Your daddy is a great guy, and so are you. We acknowledge each other. How can I not be happy when someone like you, who has made it to the very top, acknowledges and likes me?” I offered my right hand to Uburka. “I’ll be a little happier thanks to you, and you’ll smile a little more often because of me.”

I smiled at him again. Uburka stared at my hand before taking it.

“Let’s go down, my immoral son.”

[You have created a new Skill!]

[Creating a Skill Card]