5. Hey, Sokomadeda.
“Oh, I messed up.”
Just as everyone was dazed by the sudden turn of events, Malcolm or whoever it was, drew the sword from his waist and lunged at Yudahee, but…
“You’re the one who attacked first?”
Splat, a line of blood appeared on Malcolm’s neck, and soon he tumbled down.
An unremarkable blow to the casual observer.
It was the unimpressive end for an SR-ranked fighter.
But even after causing all that, Yudahee tilted her head as if something was off.
“Hmm… this tastes a bit different.”
It felt like stopping in the middle of taking a dump.
Yudahee, with the blood-dripping hand axe, wiped it on the fallen Adikia or Academia or whatever it was, and then went to return it to the dwarf.
No matter how much she wiped, the sight of blood dripping along the handle was not pleasant.
“…Should I have it dry cleaned?”
“Should have asked before taking it away.”
“My head’s pounding, I wiped it roughly, but um… charge the cleaning fee to Dike.”
“Fine.”
Dike, with sweat dripping from his forehead, gave the dwarf a nonchalant look… with a face like a cone.
“Alright, just take it. Looks like you’ve found your owner.”
“Uh… Really? That’s an item made through the inheritance of Parashu!
Suddenly standing up, Dike, who had hidden behind Yudahee, was looking at the axe as if to ask when that had happened, with a glint in his eyes.
“An item that can’t be bought even with divine power…! It’s the item among items that won’t be sold even if thousands of planets are brought…!”
“Oh? Can I just take it?”
“Well, other guys can’t even use it. Instead of using it, they’d probably just drag it around and end up lying on the ground. My disciples might say something, but well, I’ll just listen with one ear and let it go.”
He was quite a cool dwarf.
I’ll have to talk more to understand, but maybe I can build a good relationship.
“More importantly, it’s about time.”
“What… Oh.”
Yudahee, who didn’t understand the dwarf’s words, turned around and then realized.
The face of the goddess, split in half, returned, and Malcolm’s head, rolling on the ground after being cut off, turned into powder and disappeared, then began to regrow from the neck.
“Immortal?”
Dike was finally looking at them with an expression that said they had finally arrived.
“In the arena, no one dies… It’s a space made for that purpose from the beginning.”
“So they don’t die even if they’re killed?”
“I-Is that so?”
While talking with Dike, Adikia, who had suddenly stood up in place, was once again piecing her face back together.
Even so, her moving mouth was still incredibly eerie.
“Amaz-ing!”
“Fascinating.”
The regeneration different from the immortality of foreign news.
There is only one way to kill such an immortal.
Kill until they are dead.
Crush, tear, grind, burn, pulverize, and divide until the opponent can no longer regenerate, until their soul gives up…
The immortal dies eventually through repeated actions without caring about the time it takes.
There is no true immortality without conditions – that’s the truth of this world.
Knowing this well, Yudahee, holding the axe given by the dwarf, Parashu, stepped forward.
A true healer doesn’t just heal damage but seeks and eliminates the root cause.
In other words, it would be right to deal with that goddess and the guy named Malcolm in this way again…
“H-Hold on…”
It was Dike who stopped her.
“If you cause a disturbance here… you’ll get a penalty…”
“What penalty?”
“The penalty you’ll carry in the arena, you son of a b-“
Adikia, whose face had completely regenerated, raised her left hand shining with a bluish-red color, as if she was about to do something, and at the same time, Yudahee’s Parashu flew again.
[Dice roll…!]
[Setting the criteria for critical judgment.]
[Rumble… 1D20 is rolling.]
[The critical judgment for the goddess Adikia is 4.]
[Drip… The 1D20 rolls again.]
[…4!]
“Oh, critical hit confirmed.”
With Yudahee’s words, Adikia’s palm, raised in response, split with a thud, turning into two branches. Parashu pierced through the arm and shoulder, then descended, exiting through the right hip.
A perfectly clean diagonal split.
And additionally, the swinging axe sliced through neck, arm, leg, and more in succession.
Even slicing green onions wouldn’t be as clean; the goddess, now worse than chopped vegetables, once again slumped to the ground with a solid thud.
Dikey’s face briefly returned to normal color, only to be engulfed in a grayish hue moments later.
“Hieeek! Th-that’s… not…”
“No, this is definitely a reflex action. You can’t just stand still and let the opponent do whatever they want.”
Waiting for a transformation like a fool and just watching when the opponent is preparing something is enough for TV animations and old-school stories.
“I don’t really want to interfere if I stay still… Look, there, that Malcolm is just standing still, right?”
Malcolm, who had his neck severed for a brief moment, now stood silently with a slimmed face.
Feel the difference in intensity just once and see how crumpled he is…
Perhaps Malcolm recalled the primitive exhibitionism that Dikey mentioned being SSR, and suddenly thought it might not be so groundless.
“Dammit…!”
If that’s the case, it’s only natural that he, who betrayed Dikey, would be relentlessly dealt with in the arena.
No matter how much he doesn’t die, fear and pain don’t just disappear.
“Keh, you damn bastard! Malcolm! Tear that bastard apart!”
“aaah! Please, please!”
The memory of the moment when his throat tightened at once comes back to him.
He had encountered other SSRs in the arena before, but that wasn’t unusual given the nature of the arena where a hundred participants joined at once.
However, compared to those he had met back then, Malcolm found Yudahee now more frightening.
The light disappeared between the eyes that met.
As if those were not human eyes, resembling the vast emptiness of the universe, they were abyssal pupils that allowed nothing.
Internally pleading desperately for the insane command to stop, he bit down hard on it, but there was no way around it.
The power of Adikia entrenched in Malcolm’s body compelled his actions.
Drawing his sword and about to rush at Yudahee with all his might—
[That’s far enough.]
“Oh, Socomadeda…!”
Yudahee exclaimed in admiration at the command that resonated through the space like a squeezed breath.
Malcolm’s sword came to a halt.
“Th-thank goodness… Hooeek!”
Mumbling something about being thankful, Yudahee’s axe blade was under Malcolm’s chin.
The well-sharpened blade, comparable to the sword, was slightly cutting Malcolm’s skin, and a drop of blood trickled down his neck.
If he had been even slightly slower, his throat would have flown once again.
Malcolm’s spirit was completely broken by Yudahee’s movements that he hadn’t seen or felt.
“We will not permit any further disturbance beyond this point, sanctioned by the administration.”
Calm words resounded in all directions as someone began to descend from the air.
It was the Archangel Michael, a member of the Celestial Management Bureau, with twelve pure white wings spread out like gently falling snow. At her gesture, the sword and axe returned to their places, and Adikia, who had been writhing in pain, was restored.
While Adikia’s return to agitation seemed natural, when the angel turned her face towards her, she slowly took deep breaths, repeated the process, and then gritted her teeth, wrinkling her face.
Even the goddess could not ignore the authority of the Celestial Management Bureau.
“Now, it seems to have quieted down.”
The gaze of the archangel swept through the scene of chaos, then settled on Yudahee.
“The contractor of the goddess Dike Astraia, Yoo…”
Twitch-.
“…dahee.”
Though Michaela seemed to scrunch her eyes as if something was odd, she quickly brushed it off.
“You clearly caused a disturbance in the sacred arena. Do you admit to it?”
“Objection!”
Yudahee shouted with a raised index finger, “I object!” But…
“Do you deny that you were the first to swing an axe at the goddess Adikia?”
“W-well, no, but…”
It was the truth, so there was no way to refute it. However…
“It was Adikia who initiated it first.”
“Adikia! That damn primitive brat!”
“Adikia or Akidia, that’s the point.”
It starts with ◇ and ends with ◇, isn’t the difference negligible?
Considering that the head, torso, arms, and legs are all separated, it wouldn’t be a problem to call her the goddess Exodia.
“This arena strictly prohibits any physical altercation between participants before the start of the match, regardless of the cause. And it is a principle to impose significant penalties on those who cause such incidents.”
Is this the penalty that Deke mentioned?
“Do they not have something like probation in the arena law?”
I come from South Korea, where even if you cause a fatal accident by hitting someone while driving, if you’ve been drinking, you at least get probation before going in.
Yudahee whispered quietly to Deke.
“Deke, do you have any alcohol by any chance…?”
Why, isn’t there such a thing? If you think you might get caught for drunk driving, at least turn off the car and pull out a bottle of soju from the trunk.
If you say you drank and did it in the heat of the moment, maybe it’ll be somewhat lenient.
“…I have it in the truck… soju…”
Asking jokingly while poking his side, but it turned out to be true.
“Did you hit me after drinking?”
“…..”
What does this silence mean?
From Noble mtl dot com
Damn it.
Anyway…
He swung the axe, but since there was no death? victim, isn’t it considered justified?
“Considering the harm inflicted on the goddess Adikia and her contractor Malcolm… but taking into account the fact that it was your first participation in the arena, we will impose a penalty.”
“Taking into account! He repeatedly tore me apart!”
Adikia protested or not, Mikael began to do her job.
As she lightly flicked her finger, a ring of light was formed and stuck to Yudahee’s right wrist.
The strange light, with no apparent mass, slowly tightened around the wrist, leaving a small mark before disappearing.
A tattooed lettering that encircled the entire wrist.
Yudahee, being human, couldn’t read the divine language, so Deke took a look and tried to explain.
“It says, ‘[You can only use your main weapon once in this match],’ for this match, right?”
Yudahee was quick to respond.
“W-What’s wrong with it?!”
“It’s just simple divine language. They wrote the meaning in cursive to make it look complicated, but it’s just that.”
Deke’s eyes, looking at Yudahee as she spoke nonchalantly, were filled with an indescribable curiosity about the unknown.
What in the world is this?
He was glad to have a golden returnee and didn’t bother to properly investigate before ramming the Isekai truck, but he hadn’t really looked into it.
A human who can read divine language and press a goddess with an axe.
He couldn’t possibly be ordinary.
What in the world is his contractor… a returnee from what kind of world?
Deke’s mind was filled with confusion.
seems like a returnee from lovecraft