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MMMS 10
🕑 Added 2025-03-23 21:39:14 +0000 UTC"God is dead."
When Ryuuto said this, the worm let out a soul-shattering howl. "Oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh!!!" Just like a butterfly bursting from its chrysalis, the creature known as Matou Zouken went wild with joy.
Of course. The age of divinity was long gone—thousands of years had passed since humans entered the Age of Men. What humanity gained after countless seasons and endless years was simply growth as a species.
A mere five hundred years? That was nothing.
How could he have expected to achieve something so miraculous in such a tiny span of time? His dream was far more distant, more brilliant, more noble than that—and would surely be fulfilled somewhere in the distant future. His journey had barely begun.
The worm spoke its final words: "Devour... me... my King! Let my knowledge become your flesh and blood! Turn my obsession into your strength!"
Without hesitation, the evil Beast nodded. "I accept your resolve."
In the next moment, it was as if someone had bent space itself. With a sickening crack, the worm's head simply vanished, leaving only a smooth curved surface where it had been. Then came the second bite, then the third.
And just like that, the last of the original three magi who had sought the miracle disappeared without a trace.
The old magus and his centuries-old dream became nothing more than another part of the Beast of 666.
…
As a Beast that hatched from the Grail, Ryuuto operated by the same rules as the Fuyuki Holy Grail—he needed to devour the souls of seven Servants to become complete. Besides Servants, he could also evolve by consuming humans, though this required a much larger number to be effective.
He wasn't particularly interested in becoming a complete Beast, so he generally kept these urges under tight control. Interestingly, if the beings he consumed were powerful enough, they didn't actually disappear but could continue existing in an altered form inside him.
"Phew."
Having enjoyed a proper meal after such a long time, Ryuuto stretched lazily.
He could feel the power within him growing slightly.
One noticeable change was the increase in his HP.
Putting aside the special abilities and skills he possessed as a Beast, Ryuuto was essentially a walking Holy Grail. He had access to nearly unlimited magical energy and complete dominance over Servants.
While he could effortlessly take out someone like Kirei in the Holy Grail War without breaking a sweat, his actual durability wasn't much better than any ordinary Master's. Forget surviving an Anti-Unit or Anti-Army Noble Phantasm—if some random priest happened to perform a Baptism Rite on him, he would be saying goodbye to this beautiful yet brutal world for good. In other words, Ryuuto was the textbook definition of a glass cannon: devastating offense, pathetic defense.
Consuming souls did give him a slight boost to his health, which was helpful. But more importantly, after devouring Matou Zouken, he inherited everything the old magus knew and gained the ability to use all the Matou family techniques.
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have gained these abilities. While eating human souls would boost his power, it wouldn't typically give him access to their specific magical talents. But the old worm was different. The Matou family's magical Attribute was Absorption, and their Element was water.
It's worth noting that water-element magecraft doesn't mean shooting water blasts or healing wounds. In the Nasuverse, elements represent deeper metaphysical concepts—water, for instance, represents flow and change. With this particular combination of attribute and element, Matou magecraft had the unique characteristic of always cycling results back into the user's own body. Because of this, when Ryuuto devoured Matou Zouken's soul, he also gained the ability to absorb others' abilities. This was actually one of the main reasons he had targeted Zouken in the first place.
While Ryuuto had zero interest in using insects to violate humans and absorb their nutrients like Zouken had, the old worm's other magical tricks still had plenty of valuable applications. Take, for example, that self-preservation technique the death-fearing old man had been using.
It involved separating his soul from his main body—splitting flesh from spirit—and storing it somewhere safe. As long as the soul remained secure, he could be completely destroyed and still come back again and again.
This ability, which resembled a Lich's phylactery from fantasy stories, was something Zouken had mastered better than any other human in the Nasuverse. Though the insects carrying his soul might be dormant elsewhere, his physical body was no different from any ordinary magus's.
Think of it this way: the spirit works like an operating system, the flesh is the hardware, and the soul contains all the character's memory data. Matou Zouken's secret technique was basically the magical equivalent of running a real-time backup and uploading to a remote server in sci-fi terms.
This technique was the perfect solution for Ryuuto's biggest weakness—his devastating attacks but tissue-paper defenses.
Now all he needed to do was find a suitable vessel to store his soul, and he could wander around Fuyuki City without constantly worrying about getting stabbed by some random person. Plus, his mom wouldn't have to stress about him getting erased by a single energy beam anymore.
"Hmm... what should I pick as a vessel for my soul?" Ryuuto mumbled to himself while browsing through Zouken's knowledge, thoughtfully rubbing his chin.
"Looks like I'm not limited to just familiars or living creatures. I could even use something like a sword or a coin to attach my soul to. But there's a problem... if someone manages to steal my phylactery, I'm basically screwed. At least a living being would have a chance to escape danger on its own."
While he mulled over his options, he made his way out of Zouken's hidden Magical Workshop and back up to the first floor of the mansion.
When Ryuuto returned to the living room, he found that the purple-haired young Demon King had already made her way up from the basement.
Kama was sprawled across the sofa, casually flipping through manga she'd pulled from his bag.
Now that she'd fed properly, she could fully manifest herself, even creating clothes out of pure magical energy.
Her porcelain-white skin seemed to glow softly under the fluorescent lights. Her slender, girlish limbs were just barely visible through the semi-transparent purple fabric draped around her—both innocent and somehow seductive at the same time.
As soon as he walked in, she looked up and gave him an annoyed glare from those blood-red eyes of hers.
"Seriously? I spent all that time garnishing my meal, and you went and ate the best part," she complained. "Don't tell me you're actually planning to make the old worm's wish come true, Senpai?"
"Yeah, right... as if." he scoffed, dropping onto the sofa and snatching his manga back from her hands. "Have you forgotten who I am? I'm Satan—the Father of Lies."
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Northern Sword God
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