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A few minutes ago—
Asakura, whose Curse was almost exhausted, breathed a sigh of relief after confirming that the evil god in the sky had been completely melted by the composite Curse [Scale], then his legs gave out and he collapsed onto the ground.
"Ugh, I used Truth Vision too much, my right eye is a bit..."
But he quickly realized he had relaxed too soon.
The sky cracked open, and the entire space was on the verge of collapse.
Of course, this situation was not a problem for Asakura. After dealing with the evil god Kuri Tia, this Mirror space had already completed its mission, and it didn't matter if it collapsed.
But the problem was that there were still many children abducted by Slender Man in this space.
Although limited by time, Asakura hadn't been able to carefully check their condition, he could at least confirm that these children were still barely alive.
If they were left in this space, they would most likely be affected by the spatial collapse. Considering they were all in a state of suspended animation and completely unable to avoid danger without consciousness, describing their survival rate as nine out of ten would probably be considered high.
He had to rescue them all.
Asakura slapped his face hard, cheering himself on.
"No problem, I'm the strongest..."
He struggled to stand up. Before he could move, he saw the 'corpse' of a black-haired girl lying on a large foam board, which was originally supposed to be used as sound insulation material in the middle of a wall, floating on a chaotic, pitch-black sea not far away.
Asakura instantly recognized her: it was that unfortunate child whose body had been possessed by the evil god's subordinate before...
Speaking of which, the entire upper half of Chiba Port Tower had been shattered in the previous explosion. It was a miracle that the girl, who was so close to the epicenter, wasn't blown to death.
Asakura found a stick, presumably from some building material, and hooked the boat-like foam board the girl was lying on towards him.
After rescuing the girl from the foam board, Asakura discovered that she wasn't completely unaffected by the explosion. At least her plain-looking dress hadn't survived, it was now tattered, exposing large areas of her skin to the air. Coupled with the girl's pale face, she unexpectedly had a fragile, sickly beauty about her.
Although he couldn't use Truth Vision now, when he touched the girl's skin, Asakura somewhat understood why the girl could withstand the impact of a close-range explosion, at least on the surface, she seemed fine.
During the period of being possessed by the evil god's subordinate, the girl, as the vessel of its will, could control nearly a thousand Human-Faced Sore and ghosts. The life force passing through her was like a continuous stream of water. Even a negligible small portion was enough to significantly enhance her body's performance, giving her body stronger resilience compared to a normal person.
This resilience didn't mean that the girl's body was like those martial arts masters in Eastern martial arts novels, whose entire bodies were muscular and hard as rock to the touch. Instead, it was an improvement in her fundamental life essence. At least at this moment, the girl's body still felt soft like a normal girl's.
When Asakura carried her on his back, the elasticity and softness from the two substantial mochi on her back, relative to her age, made him understand this point very clearly from the bottom of his heart.
"Dispel distracting thoughts..."
Asakura mumbled, trying to squeeze out the last bit of Curse left in his body, wanting to return to shore as quickly as possible.
However, at that moment, he noticed something was off.
After fighting all out with the evil god Kuri Tia's embryo, his Curse was almost depleted. The extent of its exhaustion had already prepared Asakura for the Curse to fail.
Yet, the Curse succeeded. What surprised Asakura even more was that he barely felt any Curse consumption from this Curse—admittedly, simply activating Cursed Flame Scale Armor to burn a portion of the space in front of him, creating a short-range teleportation-like effect, wouldn't consume much Curse, but it should still be about one standard unit.
But at this moment, he should have been almost completely exhausted, even squeezing out one unit of Curse should have been extremely difficult...
"Could it be..."
Asakura subconsciously directed his mind towards the Nameless Magic Book in his mind.
Ever since he transmigrated, this thing had been playing dead, only occasionally pretending to be a system to issue him tasks. However, today seemed to be different.
The pages that were originally unreadable now, with Asakura's thought, lightly turned to the next page.
It was a page filled with content resembling crests and also Curse circles.
However, all the crests were presented in shadow form, except for one in the upper right corner that glowed with a faint white-gold light.
It was a sun crest.
When Asakura focused his mind on it, its corresponding description immediately appeared.
"Fourth Authority: Sun"
"Limited Infinity: An authority obtained after defeating or repelling 'Great Light Kuri Tia', a first-class perpetual motion machine. Your Curse can be used infinitely within a limited range."
Asakura's eyes welled up with tears.
After a year of transmigrating to this world, he could finally bid farewell to the predicament of having no Curse, no longer having to constantly mooch Curse from girls, and could now produce it himself.
However, after a brief study of this so-called 'Limited Infinity,' he couldn't help but frown again.
Just as the literal meaning suggested, within a limited range, he had infinite Curse, but this 'limited' extent was very narrow.
If compared to a game, treating Curse as the game's mana bar, then the past Asakura's mana bar had no upper limit, but his mana supply relied entirely on others, and once used up, it was gone.
Now, he was like someone who had activated a cheat, locking a portion of his mana bar so that it would never disappear no matter how much he used it.
The only problem was that the length of that locked mana bar was very short, probably less than one standard unit.
This meant that if Asakura wanted to cast a Curse spell stronger than one unit, he would still have to consume additional mana. However, abilities that required less than one standard unit of Curse, such as commanding Snakes through Snake, using [Candle] as a lighter, or creating a temporary foothold with "Scale" under his feet, would essentially consume no Curse.
Of course, 'Limited Infinity' could be upgraded.
There was only one upgrade condition: to fight Great Light Kuri Tia again. As long as he could defeat it, he could once again seize its power to upgrade 'Fourth Authority: Sun', making the locked mana bar longer.
To this, Asakura confidently stated: Can't do it, this is fine as is, goodbye.
He could probably understand that the so-called Fourth Authority was likely the power held by the evil god named 'Great Light Kuri Tia'.
In other words, that evil god was the true terrifying existence with 'infinite energy.' If it truly descended into this world through 'birth,' it could probably transform this world into an evil god's paradise through infinite energy.
His ability to repel the opponent this time was purely due to the home-field advantage, the fact that the opponent was still in an embryonic state with only a fraction of its strength, and the composite Curse [Scale] also had the characteristic of 'absorbing the opponent's power as fuel, burning brighter with more power, and ultimately releasing a stronger force,' which perfectly countered the evil god Kuri Tia. This was how he successfully accomplished the great feat of repelling a god, allowing the Nameless Magic Book to usurp the god's authority.
Thinking of this, Asakura's attention involuntarily fell on the unlit crests on that page.
He roughly counted them. Including the sun, there seemed to be a total of twelve crests.
If he hadn't misunderstood...
Evil God Kuri Tia: There are eleven more awesome evil gods like me!
Asakura forced himself to calm down.
Reality was not a novel. Even he, although knowing the existence of the multiverse, understood that there could be almost infinitely many worlds like his own. A mere twelve evil gods, theoretically, the probability of them finding this world again before he died of old age was almost zero.
As for what happened after his death, that naturally had nothing to do with him.
Asakura finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Anyway, this evil god repelling battle was quite successful, unlike the previous Mount Kumotori fire which was a huge loss. Not only did he escape unscathed (if you don't count being bruised all over and his temporarily blind right eye), but he also gained the power of 'Limited Infinity', which was like a timely help. Even if he encountered similar situations in the future, he should be much more at ease.
Asakura swayed.
A Curse is a Curse, but neither physical wounds nor mental exhaustion can be easily recovered with a Curse.
He shook his head, trying to make himself more alert.
The collapse of the Mirror Space became even more apparent.
As Asakura moved, he pondered for a moment and then contacted Napoleon through the Curse [Snake]. This method consumed a lot of Curse, with just a few sentences of conversation depleting one standard unit of Curse. One should know that the same amount of Curse could transform an ordinary person into a Snake, so in the past, he usually chose simpler and cheaper ways to send messages.
Like using a mobile phone or something.
"Hello, hello, can you hear me?"
Through Napoleon, the surprised calls of the girls came from the other side.
It seemed their spirits were still good.
Asakura immediately felt relieved.
After all, although the Mirror Space had not been dispelled and large areas of the sea were still mirrored, confirming that nothing had happened to the two, many Slender Men had gone to chase them earlier. Asakura was still somewhat worried.
After confirming that the two were fine, Asakura instructed them to try their best to maintain the Mirror Space for as long as possible.
Although it was a bit much to ask, lives were at stake, and Asakura still wanted to do his best within his capabilities.
However, just as he was about to tell the two about his plan to rescue people, the fleshy lump on his back suddenly moved, and a slightly numb breath by his ear made Asakura subconsciously let out an undignified cry.
"This is…"
The girl's voice sounded a bit groggy.
This was quite normal; anyone who had been unconscious for several days and then woke up to find themselves on the sea would feel disoriented.
But Asakura always felt a bit strange. For some reason, he felt as if he had hallucinated Yukinoshita Yukino's voice (Note).
It must just be a misconception.
The two substantial soft masses on his back further solidified his thought.
"Don't worry, it's fine to sleep a little longer. You'll be home and reunited with your family soon. Just treat everything you encountered here as a dream."
As Asakura gently comforted her, he couldn't help but marvel inwardly.
As expected of a child whose life level had been elevated, not only was she unharmed after directly facing the explosion, but she also woke up so quickly.
However, with such a high life level, even if she were to marry an ordinary person in the future, she probably wouldn't be able to have her own children due to reproductive isolation.
As soon as Asakura finished speaking, the girl's eyes widened, and the sleepiness in her pupils instantly vanished, replaced by the joy and lingering fear of surviving a disaster.
"I, I remember!"
Asakura first explained the situation to the two pink-haired girls through Napoleon in his mind, then asked curiously, "Remember what? Oh, by the way, I'd be very happy if you could loosen your arm a bit. If you keep this up, you're going to strangle me…"
It's worth mentioning that because the connection through [Snake] and Napoleon was a mental one, what others said on Asakura's side would not be transmitted to Napoleon's side.
The girl's arm relaxed a bit, but before Asakura could feel happy, she started to grope around on him.
This made Asakura, who was having a mental call with Yuigahama Yui and the others, lose his composure and blurt out his thoughts.
"Am I dreaming… those monsters…"
The girl's voice from behind sounded very pitiful and helpless. The groping just now seemed to be an attempt to find a sense of reality, which made Asakura let go of some of his reservations.
After all, the girl's voice sounded very real, completely different from Chihaya Anon's cutesy, high-pitched voice. And no matter what, Asakura was a man, so being touched by a girl didn't seem like a particularly disadvantageous situation…
"The monsters have all been dealt with. No, this isn't a dream, don't worry, it's all over now."
He comforted her softly.
"Um… thank you very much. If it weren't for your help, I don't know what would have become of me… Every time I recall that moment, I still feel like I can't breathe. But thanks to you, I was able to wake up from that nightmare. Although it's a bit embarrassing to say this… to me, you are truly a very important person…"
The girl behind him murmured softly.
For some reason, Asakura subtly felt a sense of gravity. A cold sweat trickled down his forehead: "Sis, we're just strangers who met by chance, no need to make it so heavy, right?"
Meanwhile, the two pink-haired girls were still desperately rushing over.
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