Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.
With every sword that was added, the cut areas multiplied.
As one blade gashed a shoulder, two blades sliced his back, and three blades tore through his flank simultaneously.
The World-Eradicating Demon Lord's skin seethed every single time it was cut, and it healed back to fullness just as quickly as it seethed.
Then, the bladed weapons would double the injuries again. In the meantime, the crimson aura filled the flesh back into those wounds.
Redoubled.
"Ku, kuhaha! Yes! Yes! This is it! This is what I am talking about!"
The more he was cut, the more the World-Eradicating Demon Lord laughed.
Even amidst this, before the severed pieces of flesh could scatter anywhere into the void, the area was immediately mended. Now, the amount of that flesh was so vast that it felt as if interstellar matter made of blood and flesh was spreading across the entire void.
Even so.
Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.
The Super True Energy Field still did not halt its blade dance. Added and added, thousands of swords and bladed weapons now tirelessly hacked, sliced, and clawed at the World-Eradicating Demon Lord.
"...."
Even in the middle of this, Dong Bong-su did not stop his mind calculations.
Just moments ago, the wounds etched upon the bastard's body consisted of 1,712 minor wounds and 2,555 major wounds. And now, the wounds that were completely filled and healed were 1,707 minor and 2,602 major wounds.
Earlier, there were places among the major wounds that were not fully healed, but that deficit was filled during this iteration.
'His regeneration is almost constant.'
However, almost meant it wasn't perfect.
Hwiryu-ryu-ryu-ryu-ryu.
He floated even more blades.
Broken sabers, chipped daggers, and even those left with nothing but handles that had been shoved at the absolute bottom of his inventory were all dragged up and placed onto the Super True Energy Field. He did not care whether the edges were intact. They just had to cut. Even the sharp pieces among the bones of the corpses were fully mobilized.
As thousands became tens of thousands, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's flesh did not have a single intact spot for even a fraction of a second. Yet, the mending speed itself did not drop.
Even if it wasn't perfectly constant, the amount that filled back up each time was almost identical to the amount that had been cut away.
Even if he added a hundred more swords, or a thousand more swords, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's recovery magic followed and filled that increased amount.
Hwiryu-ryu, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.
"Good, good. Let's see who wins, you or me! Keep it coming! Because I'm still perfectly fine."
Yes, he was fine. He appeared so.
But there was no way he could be fine. Clearly, the physical laws of Earth and the Murim were different, and just as this void presented yet another set of physical laws, the established physics differed wherever one went in the world.
However, mathematics had to be the same anywhere, in any dimension. Adding one apple to one apple must equal two apples. Subtracting one apple from two apples must leave one apple.
The bastard endured for as long as his wounds were mended by the number of cuts sustained. But enduring meant that somewhere, there had to be a negative balance corresponding to that amount of mending.
Increasing the swords indefinitely and slashing infinitely might not be the correct answer, but the bastard's bottomless-looking dantian that filled up infinitely would eventually hit a limit as well.
Just like his Super True Energy Field, which would eventually face its point of offensive termination alongside the limits of his stamina and concentration despite drawing upon natural energy.
Without withdrawing the floating swords, Dong Bong-su continuously studied the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's magic.
The reason it filled back up no matter how much it was cut. Where that endlessness magic originated from.
'The source of that mending is definitely magic.'
He either had to empty that source until not a single handful remained, or the cutting side had to finally outpace the filling. It had to be one of the two. However, that 'outpacing' seemed difficult to achieve by simply increasing the number of swords further. Because they were already continuously engaging in a clash with the World-Eradicating Demon Lord with almost no empty space or empty time.
Instead of swelling the quantity, another single move that surpassed this mending of one blade strike was required.
He decided to test the lighter option first. Without withdrawing the sword in his left hand, a single dot of white light materialized at the tip of his right hand.
Fwoosh—.
A single white spark grazed the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's flank. The grazed area gouged out, rising with white smoke. Since it was flesh that had surrendered its body to evil, the spot touched by the light collapsed doubly.
However, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's magic immediately surged into that gouged area. Crimson smoke overlaid the white smoke.
It seemed insufficient to outpace the bastard's mending with a single sip of Divine Qi.
Then, what if it wasn't a single sip?
Hwirooooong!
Tens of thousands of blades poured down simultaneously. Broken sabers, chipped swords, handles left bare, and even sharp bone fragments.
All the chunks of iron resting upon the Super True Energy Field formed a colossal steel vortex and dropped toward the solitary figure of the World-Eradicating Demon Lord. It was a whirlpool of steel light with a single human at the dead center. Into that very midst, the black line of his left hand dug in, dragging darkness like a black river, and the white light at the tip of his right hand poured down together as a white blade along the edges of that black waterway. The swallowing river, the cutting blade, and the ten thousand iron pieces struck the World-Eradicating Demon Lord as a single mass.
Distorted like a failed experimental subject in an animation, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord laughed and spread his two arms wide.
"Splendid. This is what it's about!"
Then, he halted his recovery. The magic that had been mending the cut areas simultaneously reversed its flow and poured outward.
Krududu.
Every single tissue across his entire frame ruptured completely. Skin, hair, internal organs, and bone marrow alike. The torrents of magic that had been seething beneath the skin erupted like a dark-red volcano, pushing back against the iron pieces on all sides. A blood-red pillar of fire, bloated to dozens of times a man's height, attempted to swallow the steel vortex whole.
Faced with that eruption, the tens of thousands of dropping blades—
halted in midair, and at that very spot where they stopped, they began to melt.
Sssss—.
The bladed weapons ran down simultaneously. The iron that touched the dark-red Magi softened one by one, flowing down as molten metal. As hundreds melted and scattered, Dong Bong-su spewed out another heap from behind them, and even those corroded and dropped the moment they made contact.
The halted molten metal splattered across the void like black rain. A section of a half-finished mountain ridge floating weightlessly far off was struck by that rain, rotting and collapsing from its upper portion.
The dirt and rocks that broke off were sucked into the blood-red fire pillar, instantly melting away into nothingness.
The magic did not stop there. With the momentum that had thoroughly melted the iron, it surged toward the black river and the white light.
The black river swallowed that magic power mouthful by mouthful. The black maw bloated by the amount it swallowed, and more magic power filled back into the bloated areas, pushing the sword away.
Conversely, the white pillar of fire burned the attacking magic power. New magic power welled up at the burned sites, gnawing inward to corrupt the white entity into a dark-red stain. Accordingly, the edges of the white blade festered black and scattered away.
"...."
Dong Bong-su brought his two hands together. The black river and the white blade clashed from the left and right, becoming a single black-and-white spear, and he drove the tip of that spear straight into the dead center of the blood-red volcano.
Kwayyyyung—!
The dark yet divine light and the dark-red magic collided at a single point. At the contact site, magic power was simultaneously swallowed and burned away, while the white energy was corroded and chipped. Neither side backed down.
Rather, the void caught in between could not withstand it and warped. The unfinished fragments floating without weight—the bare fortress wall, the buildings with only outlines traced, the trees without leaves—were swept into the aftermath, shattering and fluttering away as if torn apart. An entire fortress wall tilted fully, being sucked toward the blood-red side, and upon touching the white light, half of it rotted away black and half of it was scorched white.
In the space that lacked up or down,
fractures extended, and black rifts tore open wildly and randomly in all directions.
Wwooooong.
A streak of fresh blood flowed down the corner of Dong Bong-su's mouth as well. Even if he was someone who had transcended the limits of a mortal, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's magic was powerful enough to force him to exert himself to an extreme degree.
Even so, Dong Bong-su pushed and pushed again. Still accompanied by an expressionless face that harbored the absolute peak of 'Nothingness.'
Swallowing another mouthful of Magi, pouring new light into the chipped white blade to erect it once more, he pushed the black-and-white spear block by block, steadily into the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's direction.
Karrrrrrrng—!
The forced volcano shoved back into the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's body. The erupting blood-red fire pillar bent inward, and the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's skin was scorched from within by the white light. The dark-red patterns turned off one by one, rising with white smoke.
"Heok—."
Enveloped in molten metal and gray steam, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord was pushed back a single step. The erupting blood-red column subsided to half its height.
Yet, even in the dead center of that dying state, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord laughed further.
"This is it... This is the one!"
He poured out his Magi once more. Dong Bong-su poured bladed weapons down again to overlay it, and as the black river swallowed and the white blade burned, he drove it another block forward. The World-Eradicating Demon Lord was pushed back another half-step. The blood-red column grew a span lower with each exchange.
Dong Bong-su's black-and-white spear advanced forward by that exact amount.
Little by little.
However, it was still insufficient. The flesh touched by the white light collapsed, but the dantian beneath it had still not revealed its bottom. Even when chipped and chipped again, the magic leaking from the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's center and the magic power of unknown origin emanating from every single cell still welled up endlessly.
New blood-red energy seeped up from beneath the chipped sites, propping the column back up.
It felt like it was still insufficient to muzzle it with Divine Qi. Yet, he could not stop and convert to another direction either.
Because the moment he stopped, he would conversely be swallowed whole by the pressure of that magic volcano.
He could push it back, but he could not perfectly burn it away into nonexistence.
"Kekeke! At this point, there's nothing left to save."
magic seethed simultaneously across the entire frame of the World-Eradicating Demon Lord, who had already completely lost his human shape. Something gathered through reduction and condensation began to strip away even the human colors from the inside of the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's body.
"It's only right that it doesn't end."
The skin that used to be blood-red, down to a single piece of cell, shriveled into a gray ruin. Except for the outer wall that maintained the struggle of strength against Dong Bong-su, the seething magic all turned off strand by strand, gathering into the dead center of the World-Eradicating Demon Lord.
It was the final remaining move.
Sizzle, sizzle.
Excluding the sound of energies burning and leaking at the boundaries, a complete silence befitting the void flowed.
Simultaneously, the light subsided.
Now, the only thing left to the World-Eradicating Demon Lord was pure intent to kill. The rest was completely erased.
A mass of will united by the single-minded focus to swallow, crush, and digest Dong Bong-su without thought, without pattern. Cramming all the essence of malice and magic accumulated in the martial world in a twisted state into that single handful, he crashed against Dong Bong-su.
In response, Dong Bong-su's left hand harbored blackness. Darkness spread along the sword blade. An energy that swallowed anything it touched without leaving a trace behind, the Omni-Devouring Qi.
However, as he was about to raise his left hand, he lowered it.
The body shriveled into a gray ruin from cramming the final hand. Looking quietly at that, he ultimately halted the fingertips he had been raising. Because the space emptied clean through without leaving a single grain of anything to fill back in was exposed right there.
Subsequently, the [Eye of Faith] scanned across it. It was a vessel whose bottom could not be grasped until just moments ago. The dantian that had lost its bottom, filling back up even when drawn down. That endless place now clearly revealed its absolute bottom.
The bastard probably didn't know, and probably revealed it thinking it was his final move, but...
"....."
He had finally seen it. The bastard's bottom, the hole in his demonic power.
That relentless energy that had caused him to fill back up when cut was now no longer left. It was because he had drawn and poured every single thing within himself to forge the essence of his intent to kill.
Since there was nothing left to draw down, there was also nothing left to mend.
The thing that had never been emptied even a single time throughout this long battle. That place was empty for the first time, rushing toward Dong Bong-su in its vacant state.
Then, it wasn't something to be cut.
If it was something he couldn't withdraw because it couldn't be cut, when the place to withdraw was empty, it wasn't a matter of cutting—he just had to fill it.
Filling it up, and ending it from the inside.
The black color subsided. The darkness of his left hand quieted down in a single breath, and his right hand came up instead. A second sword rose from his inventory once more.
The Evil-Warding Sword. A faint light filled the sword blade. That white light that had gathered at his fingertips moments ago now completely engulfed an entire sword this time.
When it connects with the Divine, evil scatters. Furthermore, if it was a body that had surrendered its entire essence to the demonic, it was bound to collapse doubly at every spot it touched.
Piercing through the intent to kill that sought to swallow Dong Bong-su as well while encroaching upon the void like a mass of storm clouds, he pushed the white sword inside.
It was the moment the white sword touched the location where the core of the bastard called the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's body resided.
The final handful exploded.
Kukwaaaaaaaaaang—!
Right before perfectly swallowing Dong Bong-su, the intent to kill that had lost its destination bloated and detonated at its own spot.
It was a mass crammed with the essence of demonic power without leaving a single grain behind. As it released in all directions, it upended the void entirely. The mountain ridges, the fortress walls, the buildings with only outlines traced....
This time, they didn't merely shatter; they flew away without leaving a trace. The space that lacked distinction of up, down, left, or right split as if light was seeping through, and those split cracks split once more. The void itself fractured. Creeping rifts extended across the darkness beyond one layer, and beyond yet another layer.
Dong Bong-su stood at the dead center of it.
Crack—.
His left arm tore away from the shoulder. A beat late, the area below his left knee was crushed and swept into the light. Even though he had lost the foot to stand on because of that, his body did not tilt. It didn't matter anyway, and gravity did not exist.
The dark-red epicenter passed through, slicing his flesh and grinding his bones.
Even so, he did not withdraw the white sword in his right hand.
There was no reason to withdraw it. The light had already entered inside that bastard. An arm, a leg?
They were merely detached for a brief moment anyway.
Dong Bong-su did not even look back at his fallen arm. Planting his single intact leg onto the floor of a meteor-like fortress wall to hold his ground, he merely pushed the white sword embedded in the empty dantian further inside to gouge it out.
It wasn't a cut from the outside, but from the very inside. Traveling along the emptied dantian, along the vacated path, the light seeped into every single corner of the World-Eradicating Demon Lord's entire body from the dead center of his frame. There was no demonic power left to block it. There was also nothing left to mend it.
Wherever the filled light reached, the flesh surrendered to the demonic and the bones surrendered to the demonic lightly burned away from the inside out. Down to every single cell without exception.
Krrrrrrrrr...
At the dead center of the epicenter, in the middle of that very fracture he had caused, the World-Eradicating Demon Lord..... no, that entity which was now left as nothing but ash, laughed.
— …Splendid.
Miraculously, the ash laughed and the intent to kill fashioned a sound.
In a way, he was an extraordinary living creature.
Something like this.... is a first. But you, you too.... an arm and a leg.... a gift.... splendid, splendid.... I'll be waiting...
Dong Bong-su did not give any answer or any words. Because there was no longer any reason, necessity, or value to do so.
The light multiplied from the inside. The more it had been consumed by the demonic, the faster and deeper it burned. Since there was no energy left to replenish it, it simply died down. The ash, that handful of ash that had surrendered its entire body to the demonic, finally fluttered and scattered here and there into the void.
The divine cloud also vanished alongside it. Even that relentless energy that had endlessly incinerated the demonic power lightly went out from the inside.
And.
At the exact same time.
This time, light filled and came out from inside Dong Bong-su.
It was now time to be settled for the price of sending an arm and a leg along as a gift on the bastard's final path.
Swoosh.
Once.
Swoooosh.
Once more.
Swooooooooosh.
Without a moment to halt, the light extended into all directions of the void in succession.
That light first flowed toward the limbs that had been torn away from Dong Bong-su's body.
Light gathered at the spot of the detached left arm, and from the shoulder down to the fingertips, it sprouted anew. The area below the crushed knee welled up again, filling down to the tips of his toes. The sliced and ground areas healed without a single trace remaining.
Of course, Dong Bong-su felt no inspiration. It was something that had always happened, something that would always happen, and something that had been entirely calculated.
Around the time the divine light subsided, Dong Bong-su finally lifted his head.
The fracture that the World-Eradicating Demon Lord had torn open was still not fully mended. The crack in the void hung suspended on all sides in its open state.
Different lights lingered within each of those gaps.
In one rift, two moons floated in a black sky. In another rift, endlessly lined spires were burning. In yet another rift, a place filled with nothing but light without even a single drop of water existed, and in the rift right beside it, the sight of a colossal something swallowing a star was displayed..
"Are they worlds?"
'They could be dimensions.' he thought.
He had surmised that this void was a tunnel connecting world to world, and it truly might be the case.
Seeing the sight of such rifts unfolding endlessly right before his eyes, that is.
However, even at this vantage point of glimpsing the secrets of the universe, Dong Bong-su was seeing something distinct from an ordinary man.
Because a deeply moved impression that countless worlds, countless hunting grounds, were facing him beyond each individual fracture was what came to his mind first.
Dong Bong-su took them into his eyes one by one.