Chapter 1533 - 218 - An Upcoming Storm (2)
"I can’t allow you to do that, Beelze," Lucielle said, her voice remaining calm despite the growing tension.
"So you’re really going to fight me?" Beelzebub asked, looking at Lucielle with a hint of skepticism on her face. Judging from the expression she wore, she clearly didn’t believe Lucielle had enough courage to actually stand in her way. It almost looked like she found the whole idea amusing.
I honestly had no idea who was the strongest among the Seven Deadly Sins or how their hierarchy of strength actually worked. If I had to make a guess, Asmodeus was probably one of the weaker members, while Satania was almost certainly the strongest out of all of them.
As for the other three, I still hadn’t met them yet, so I couldn’t really judge where they stood. Even so, it felt safe to assume that both Beelzebub and Lucielle were stronger than Asmodeus. Between those two, however, I had a feeling that Beelzebub still held the advantage.
At this point, I simply couldn’t get a proper read on any of their actual strength. Their mana alone was enough to make guessing almost pointless, especially when none of them seemed to be fighting seriously yet.
"I understand how much you love Mother, Lucielle," Beelzebub said. "You were the very first one she personally took care of. You have to understand something, though. Mother doesn’t actually want us. She only uses us whenever it benefits her. That’s exactly why Satania did what she believed she had to do."
"You don’t understand a single thing about Mother," Lucielle replied firmly, her expression never wavering for even a second.
The moment she finished speaking, she began gathering dark magic once again without the slightest hesitation.
An overwhelming amount of mana started concentrating around her body. The energy she was accumulating became so dense that it genuinely felt as though it would explode in her hands at any second. Somehow, despite that ridiculous amount of power being compressed into a single point, it remained perfectly stable without showing any sign of bursting apart.
That amount of mana was far beyond what she had poured into the orb before. Just watching it continue to grow made my skin crawl from the pressure filling the surrounding area.
"Huh... what is this?" Lucielle muttered quietly, sounding genuinely confused by what she was feeling.
Even Lucielle herself sounded genuinely surprised by the sudden and unexpected change.
Rather than me becoming stronger, it looked like she was the one who had received the increase in power because of the sex. That was honestly the complete opposite of what I had been expecting to happen.
Without wasting another second, she hurled the dark orb straight toward Beelzebub with everything she had.
Beelzebub didn’t even seem to notice the difference at all.
She didn’t bother moving out of the way and simply remained standing where she was, almost as if she believed the attack wasn’t capable of hurting her in the slightest. The confidence she showed made it look like she had already decided the outcome before the attack had even reached her.
Then the orb finally reached her exact position without slowing down.
The instant it made contact, it exploded with terrifying force that shook everything nearby.
The blast was incomparably stronger than before. Everything around us seemed to fall silent for the briefest moment before the explosion erupted with overwhelming force, expanding outward like a miniature nuclear explosion. The delay somehow made the explosion feel even more terrifying once it finally burst outward.
A massive shockwave tore through the surrounding area, completely obliterating everything on the ground in its path. The destructive force was so overwhelming that anything standing at the center of the explosion would have been completely disintegrated without leaving even the smallest trace behind. Trees, rocks, and the earth itself vanished beneath the overwhelming surge of power as though they had never existed in the first place.
I immediately activated Guardian, completely surrounding us with its barrier so the incoming blast wouldn’t reach us. The protective barrier rose in front of us and stood firm against the roaring flames and violent shockwave rushing toward our position. Even then, the impact rattled the barrier hard enough to remind me just how ridiculous that attack really was.
"D-Did... that really come from me?" Lucielle asked in complete disbelief, staring at her own hands. "H-How? I was sure I wasn’t capable of causing that much destruction."
Hearing her say that honestly answered the question I had been asking myself all this time.
I finally understood what Lilith had meant when she said I could win if I had sex with her. Her words hadn’t been referring to me becoming overwhelmingly powerful all by myself.
Instead, because of my semen, which contained an absurd amount of life force, Lucielle herself had become dramatically stronger. Somehow, the power had flowed into her instead, giving her far more strength than she normally possessed.
"Is it because we had sex?" Lucielle asked, still sounding unable to believe what had just happened.
"Well... that has to be the reason," I replied after thinking about it for a moment.
After the explosion finally died down and the destruction it had caused settled, we turned our attention toward the place where Beelzebub had been standing just moments earlier.
Absolutely nothing remained where she had been except the devastated landscape around us.
It was safe to say that her entire body had been completely disintegrated by the blast beyond recognition.
Still, I highly doubted that had been her real body. Someone like Beelzebub wasn’t the type to risk her original body so carelessly in front of enemies.
"If my power has become strong enough to completely disintegrate her body, then even if that was only one of her copies, it must have hurt her," Lucielle said. "Even if she can multiply herself, those copies are still created by separating pieces of her slime body from the original. Destroying one completely instead of merely damaging it should still affect the real Beelzebub to some extent."
That explanation honestly made a lot more sense the longer I thought about everything.
If all of her copies were created directly from her original body, then completely annihilating one before it had any chance to return would naturally damage the original as well. Even if the injury wasn’t fatal, losing an entire copy like that couldn’t have been completely meaningless for someone whose ability depended on dividing herself apart.