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[FMMISM] Chapter 10: I am Satan
🕑 Added 2024-06-26 01:07:29 +0000 UTCImmediately after Ragna declared 'God is dead', a roar echoed through the void as if tearing apart Zouken's soul.
"OOOOOHHHHH—!!!"
Like the moment a caterpillar became a butterfly, Matou Zouken, in the form of a worm, danced with manic joy.
Yes.
Ever since humanity ascended to the Seat of Primacy, bidding farewell to the gods that had taken thousands of years to form, beyond countless cycles of seasons and across the vast expanse of time, humanity as a species had grown.
Five hundred years meant nothing.
With just this much time spent, how could miracles ever be achieved?
Wishes of his and his friends were even more distant, dazzling, and noble, certain to be fulfilled somewhere in the future.
He realized that this journey was just beginning.
Zouken believed it to be so.
"Eat... me... the king I've been waiting for! Let my knowledge become your flesh and blood! Let my obsession become your power!"
Understanding Zouken's wish, Ragna nodded without hesitation.
"Very well, I accept your resolve."
Crack!
In an instant, the head of the worm that housed Zouken's soul disappeared, leaving only a smooth arc at the torso.
Crack! Crack!
A second bite, a third.
With this, the last of the three seekers of miracles vanished without a trace.
Matou Zouken, driven by a long-desired wish, became a part of Beast VI.
...
"All the gods are dead—now, we must live like overmen! Let this be our final testament in the hour of greatness! Thus spoke Zarathustra."
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
...
As a Beast hatched from the filthy, negative Grail, Ragna operated on a principle similar to the Holy Grail of Fuyuki.
By consuming the souls of seven Servants, he could achieve his complete form.
However, aside from devouring the souls of Servants, consuming the souls of humans could also allow him to evolve, although that required a significantly larger number. However, since he wasn't interested in becoming a true and complete Beast, he refrained from doing so in this regard.
Additionally, if the consumed entity were powerful enough, it wouldn't actually disappear but could continue to exist in an Alter form.
"Hahh..."
Ragna sighed after finishing the long-awaited meal.
He felt a slight power increase within him.
One aspect was the improvement in his health, or in gaming terms, his HP.
Ignoring the abilities and skills normally possessed by Beasts, Ragna himself was akin to a walking Holy Grail. He possessed nearly limitless magical energy and absolute dominance over Servants.
While it was child's play for him to swiftly kill Servants in the Holy Grail War, his endurance was not much different from that of an ordinary Master.
Forget about enduring an attack from an Anti-Unit or Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, even a passing priest could give him a cleansing chant, and Ragna would bid farewell to this beautiful yet cruel world forever.
In summary, Ragna was something one would call a glass cannon.
Consuming souls could slightly boost his health, which was one thing, but more importantly, after devouring Zouken's soul, he inherited everything from Zouken and gained the capability to use his abilities.
Normally, Ragna wouldn't have had this capability.
While consuming a human soul could amplify his strength, it didn't grant him the abilities of the target.
However, Zouken was quite a special case.
His family's thaumaturgical attribute was 'absorption', while its element was 'water'.
Note that the water element didn't mean it could launch water element attacks or heal injuries. In the Nasuverse, elements were more metaphysical concepts, where water signified flow.
With this attribute and element, the magecraft of the Matou family had the feature of 'binding something to one's self'.
In this way, after devouring Zouken's soul, Ragna could absorb his abilities.
In truth, this was one of the reasons why Ragna chose to devour Zouken. Although he had no interest in using insects to invade humans and absorb nutrients, the other abilities left behind by this old man had their merits.
For instance, there was the ability Zouken had just used—separating his soul from his body, placing it somewhere safe. As long as his soul was safe, no matter how many times he got beaten to a pulp, he could resurrect again.
Ragna couldn't help but feel that this ability somewhat resembled the supernatural abilities of liches in fantasy novels, undoubtedly one of the best abilities in the Nasuverse.
Although the worm with Zouken's soul was sleeping elsewhere, his human body was indistinguishable from an ordinary human being.
In simple terms, Zouken's soul was the operating system and the character's data, while the body was the hardware. It was also akin to the real-time backup and save data of characters in games.
It could be said that this ability perfectly complements Ragna's high attack but paper-thin defense. Later on, as long as he found a suitable vessel to store his soul, he could freely roam around Fuyuki without worry.
Of course, it also meant that his mother didn't have to worry about him getting blasted away by someone.
"Hmm... What kind of vessel would be good for housing a soul?"
Ragna muttered as he searched through the knowledge left by Zouken.
"It seems that it's not limited to just familiars or creatures. Even objects like a sword or a coin can be used to attach a soul..."
"No, now that I think about it, if someone steals my vessel, at least living creatures have a chance to escape while dead objects can only wait for death, right?"
Pondering this, Ragna made his way back from Zouken's secret magic workshop in the basement to the first floor of the mansion.
===
When he returned to the reception room, he found that the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, Kama, had already left the worm pit.
Kama was lounging on the sofa, flipping through a manga from Ragna's personal bag.
Having eaten and drunk her fill, she could now fully manifest herself, even using magical energy to weave her own clothes.
Her snow-white skin glowed with a creamy sheen under the fluorescent lights, while her slender figure was partially visible through translucent purple clothes, undoubtedly alluring and seductive.
As soon as Ragna entered the room, Kama looked up with immediate displeasure in her crimson eyes.
"Seriously, after all that preparation, you just had to eat the most delicious part? Senior, you're not really planning to fulfill that old geezer's wish, are you?"
"Tsk, as if."
Clicking his tongue, Ragna sat down on the sofa and casually took the manga from her hand.
"Have you forgotten? I am Satan."
