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[Crossover] Ch 228: A Suicide???
🕑 Added 2025-08-31 16:56:21 +0000 UTC— — — — — —
The sudden appearance of the war god Verethragna made it clear to everyone—battle was inevitable.
Even Athena pulled back, along with the others, leaving the battlefield to Ryo and the God of Anti-fate.
Verethragna's gaze flicked toward Athena. As a god, he saw through her in an instant—she wasn't human, but a Mother Earth goddess.
As the steel-born hero, his very purpose was to slay earth goddesses.
But right now, that mission barely mattered to him. Compared to the unprecedented threat that was Ryo, Athena was nothing more than a snack before the main course.
Without her trinity restored, she was something Verethragna could crush without effort. Steel heroes naturally countered Earth Mothers.
Ryo, however, was different. Even Verethragna couldn't see a single chance of victory against him.
"Because you killed the boar, my ten avatars aren't complete, and I haven't reached my peak. But that's fine."
In his hand appeared a golden sword—the God of War's sword of wisdom, meant to challenge the gods themselves.
To reveal it at the start was a mark of respect toward a true opponent. Against Ryo, Verethragna didn't dare hold back.
He laughed loudly. "Overcoming the strong with weakness—that's what I do best!"
Ryo raised an eyebrow, letting the boast echo. He wasn't planning to interrupt.
Instead, he was thinking about how he could also turn this into a fight of "weak against strong."
Yes. He had to. According to Athena, Pandora's ritual of Usurpation forbade simply crushing the opponent with overwhelming power. A Campione always had to win from a disadvantage, overcoming impossible odds.
With that in mind, Ryo decided to test the waters by opening with a simple move.
But the instant he made the decision, Verethragna suddenly roared: "Raptor!"
In the past, he might have chanted a spell to strengthen his power. But not this time.
That brush of death across his cheek—he knew it wasn't an illusion. If Ryo attacked, he would die.
That was the battle instinct Verethragna had honed through countless wars, and he trusted it without hesitation.
Verethragna’s Authority of Victory had ten incarnations. However, he possessed a secret method he had never used — the ability to channel all ten incarnations into a single one, pushing it to its peak and unlocking a hidden, overwhelming power.
So he invoked his Raptor authority.
That power guaranteed absolute first strike. Against any high-speed enemy, Raptor let Verethragna move faster—always one step ahead.
In an instant, his body turned to light.
Across from him, Ryo's eyes widened, genuinely surprised that Verethragna could match his speed. He lifted his hand to counter—then froze, his expression going odd.
In Ryo's vision, Verethragna had just launched forward in a blaze of light. And then—
Thud!
The war god collapsed, clutching his chest, blood spraying from his lips.
Ryo fell silent.
Not far away, Liliana and Erica stood dumbfounded.
Erica's expression twisted. "Wait… gods can… fake accidents?! They know scams?"
The scene looked exactly like one of those roadside scams where an old man throws himself in front of a car.
The fight hadn't even started, yet Verethragna was already on the ground, clutching his chest. It wasn't heart disease… right? If it wasn't that, then wasn't this just straight-up faking it?
Athena, however, saw through it at once, though even she looked a little awkward.
"I see. So it's the side effect of his power."
Ryo glanced her way, puzzled. He could see Verethragna's condition clearly, but that only made it stranger.
How could his heart just shatter like that the instant he moved?
Athena explained, her tone wry. "Verethragna's Raptor authority guarantees absolute first strike. But the price is that his heart takes on the burden."
"Just now, he boosted his speed to an unprecedented level, so…"
She didn't need to finish. Ryo scratched his head. "So that's why he suddenly went faster than me. Figures."
At Verethragna's usual level, breaking ten times the speed of sound was easy. With Raptor, twenty wasn't out of the question. His heart could handle that.
But light speed?
That wasn't ten or twenty times faster. That was eight hundred thousand times.
No heart could survive that.
And so, Verethragna's heart had burst.
Ryo stared at the body for a long moment before asking flatly: "Would Pandora even count this as a victory?"
"Probably not," Athena said with an odd look.
What could you call it but… suicide?
Liliana and Erica were completely lost.
What the hell was this?
Weren't they supposed to be witnessing an epic clash between god and godslayer?
Instead, Verethragna had tried to drag race Ryo—without a license—and killed himself on the spot.
Everyone stood frozen, the air thick with awkward silence. They all wanted to laugh or curse, but no one dared. Not when Ryo and Athena's expressions were that dark.
Still, something had to break the deadlock.
Erica finally stepped forward. "Lord Yagami… what now?"
To be honest, she was feeling conflicted.
Was slaying gods always this easy? You didn't even have to lift a finger—the opponent just took care of it themselves?
If that was how it worked, maybe Duke Voban and Salvatore Doni weren't so crazy after all. If weaklings could be picked off this easily and each one gave you a new power, who wouldn't go hunting?
Ryo gave the "corpse" another glance and sighed. "He's got a resurrection authority. Let's just wait."
And so they waited.
For thirty whole minutes.
.
.
.
Comments
Ophis
Man, first that nonsense with Erica and now this with Verethragna... It completely killed my motivation to keep reading this. That's not how the Raptor works at all. First off, it's not an ability to guarantee first strike, it's an ability to move at god speed. Also, the heart pain and other side effects of Authorities is something only god slayers have, the original gods have no such thing upon using their own Authorities. Second, god speed is the ability to move from point A to point B in the shortest time possible, so it's more of an ability to manipulate time than actually increasing your speed. So yeah, even if Verethragna did have the heart pain downside, he still wouldn't suffer from it by matching the MC's light speed. Last of all, the thing about Pandora is also wrong. Even if the god slayer does steamroll a Heretic God and gets an easy win, they'll still get a random Authority from said god. The only cases you won't are if you kill a weakened god or gang up on them alongside other fellow gods or god slayers.
