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Chapter 467

The contamination that had fallen as the rift tore apart lingered throughout the Heavenly Palace, continuing to spread corruption.

“It smells terrible.”

“Leon. It’s going to take a bit longer.”

“Why?”

“That contamination. It feels like it’s blocking any path leading outside from this Heaven itself.”

At those words, chills ran down my spine.

“No way back to Cascadia?”

“I don’t know about that…… but at the very least, we can’t cross over in this state.”

I examined the flow of mana, aura, spiritual energy, necromantic mana—every kind of energy around us.

Fortunately—or perhaps not—there was a faint flow of mana and spiritual energy leaking outward from this space, and I could also see mana of unknown origin flowing into me.

The fact that my warning artifact hadn’t activated meant Cascadia hadn’t been attacked.

“It looks like Cascadia is still safe.”

“That’s a relief…….”

Just then.

Elpiria, who had been sleeping in my arms in place of Luna, shifted uncomfortably, and at the same time, a mass of pure white light rapidly approached us from afar.

In an instant, the being that found us was none other than Gabriel.

Even though we had hidden ourselves with a sealing barrier, unlike the other archangels, he quickly forced his way in.

A more troublesome ability than expected.

“You hid yourselves quite well. If it hadn’t been me, no one would have found you.”

Srrrng…….

As I naturally drew the divine artifact Pragarach like flowing water, he raised his hand to stop me.

“Please calm yourself for a moment. I did not come to fight, nor did I come to take that child.”

“You talk too much.”

“Please, hear me out for a moment. This concerns something important related to that child.”

Archangels were irritating for that very reason.

They acted without hesitation, even knowing what consequences their actions would bring.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand utilitarian behavior itself, but it wasn’t something I was willing to tolerate.

“At the very least, I will say this first—Michael will no longer try to awaken that child into an archangel.”

“Now, all of a sudden?”

“It is a conclusion reached now. There is no reason for Michael to turn a child who is not an archangel into one.”

At those words, I carefully set Elpiria down from my arms and walked toward him step by step.

Then, before he could even react, I drove my fist into his cheek.

“Ugh!!”

With a pained groan, Gabriel was sent flying and collapsed.

“You’ve grown much stronger than expected.”

After receiving the Hall of Spears, my aura had surpassed a certain threshold, and the new synergy born from it had brought about a surge in power even beyond my expectations.

Rising slowly while touching his cheek, he asked,

“If you’ve vented your anger, will you now answer what I asked—khk?!”

My fist struck Gabriel again, sending him tumbling across the ground once more.

Before he could even get back up, I mounted him, infused my fists with aura, and hammered down a barrage of blows.

Bang!! Bang bang!!!

With tremendous crashes, Gabriel could only groan, unable to resist.

“Leon! Calm yourself for a moment!”

At that, Luna approached and grabbed my arm to stop me.

Was it because he had once been family to her?

A faint sense of disappointment flickered within me.

But.

After pushing me aside, Luna stomped hard on Gabriel’s solar plexus and, in my place, began beating him senseless.

Ah.

You wanted to hit him?

The disappointment vanished instantly.

Even after the prolonged beating, Gabriel never retaliated.

Instead—

“Ah! Ah! Wait! Luna! Stop!”

“You damn pigeon bastard. Move your hand. Want to die, or not moving?”

“Ugh!! Kgh!!”

Thud!! Thud thud!!

Watching that, I felt like even if Luna and I ever had a marital quarrel, it would be best for me to just keep my mouth shut.

Completely battered and covered in blood, he groaned in pain.

Even for an archangel, being attacked defenselessly by Luna—one of the three great archangels—and me meant he couldn’t possibly remain intact.

Clicking her tongue, Luna healed him just enough so he could speak.

Gabriel gave a bitter smile.

“It would have been nice if you healed me completely.”

“If you want to die, keep running your mouth.”

“I’ll just stay like this.”

“When this is over, tell that bastard Michael to be ready too. He’ll end up the same.”

At Luna’s words, Gabriel laughed pleasantly.

“That would be quite satisfying for me as well. To be clear, I no longer intend to follow Michael. Even if that child truly is an archangel. There is no need to consider the Perfect Archangel.”

At Gabriel’s answer, Luna asked,

“Why? Aren’t archangels just supposed to maintain the world, no matter what?”

“That’s right. But there are many methods. And you know well that we are not so wicked as to deliberately choose the worst one.”

“Another method?”

Luna tried to press further, but he did not elaborate.

From the look of it, unlike the other archangels, Gabriel seemed to be hiding some kind of scheme.

Soon, touching his cheek, Gabriel slowly rose to his feet.

Then he asked what had happened when Elpiria had taken on the appearance of a fourteen-year-old back in Cascadia.

Brushing off her hands, Luna carefully lifted Elpiria and answered,

“Creation. Transformation.”

“…I see. That’s why it wasn’t recorded even in Kalidel’s scripture…….”

At his mutter, Luna turned her head sharply and stared at him coldly.

“What are you trying to say, Gabriel?”

“It is close to a guess, but… perhaps that child, Elpiria, is not an archangel, but the now-silent Creator God.”

At his words, Luna frowned.

“Nonsense.”

“This situation itself is beyond even our comprehension. Even Uriel could not provide a clear answer, and neither can I.”

At that moment—

—Ahahahahahahaha!!!

At the sudden burst of laughter, our gazes turned.

It was my pendant.

Lucifer’s laughter.

—You speak amusing nonsense. No one can deal with a Creator God, you brat.

At the mocking tone, Gabriel stepped forward.

“Then what is that child? That power was never permitted to anyone except the Creator God. Now that the Creator God is silent, for a child possessing that power to be born means……”

—Power that has lost its place will wander in search of a master.

“…What?”

It made no sense for a being with the Creator God’s power to be born.

Unless the Creator God had entered eternal rest and a new one had been born.

Gabriel knew that as well, which was why he seemed even more unable to understand the situation.

But Lucifer only chuckled mockingly.

—Well, that was entertaining. That’s all the hints you get.

Suddenly, a thought crossed my mind.

Wasn’t Lucifer… surprisingly kind?

He pretended not to care, yet gave explanations; he acted like he would kill everyone, yet showed more mockery than hostility.

Despite still possessing that level of power, he showed no intention of breaking his seal—rather, he even lent his strength to Luna.

“Lucifer.”

He didn’t respond, but the thought came to me anyway.

“…Are you actually tsundere?”

At my question, Luna let out a stifled snort of laughter.

—You’d do well to shut your mouth. That was more irritating than you think.

Clearly struck, the pendant’s light faded.

It meant he wouldn’t say anything more.

After that, Gabriel turned away.

“I should report this first. If this is true, then Elpiria is not someone we should awaken into an archangel……”

“An object of worship.”

At Luna’s cold interjection, he did not deny it.

“Archangels protect and regulate the world, but above all, they are beings who obey the Creator God. If the Creator God has, for some reason, shared that power with that child…”

With the Creator God silent, it meant she would become the one the archangels must protect above all else.

What an absurd situation.

The kidnappers who abducted a child suddenly changing their attitude and treating her like a god.

Yet Gabriel showed neither dissatisfaction nor confusion.

At that moment.

A sudden distortion, like static, flickered across Gabriel’s halo and wings before they collapsed.

[Translator - Night]

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“Khk?! Kgh!!”

It wasn’t from Luna’s beating.

I could see pure white divinity visibly draining from his body.

Seeing that, Luna and I stepped back warily.

The immense power emanating from Gabriel was visibly weakening.

What was happening?

As I wondered that, I suddenly turned to Luna.

“Luna. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

That was, at least, a relief.

Whether it was something affecting only Gabriel or not, as long as Luna was fine, that was enough.

Then Gabriel suddenly grabbed my arm.

Sweating coldly, he spoke with difficulty.

“Take… the key… Heaven……”

With those strained words, he handed me a key formed of light and collapsed, as if losing consciousness.

His body dissolved into light and disappeared.

It didn’t seem like death—an archangel wouldn’t fall so easily.

Soon, Grivy, who had been outside, rushed in in a panic.

“Father! Outside! Outside!”

At her shout, I walked out.

A completely different sight greeted me.

The clear blue sky was slowly being dyed purple.

And in the distance, a pillar of purple energy was rising from the far end of the Heavenly Palace, staining the sky in real time.

The ominous, flickering purple pillar shot upward, and the contamination it carried dyed the sky, corrupting the entire Heavenly Palace in real time.

Only the Outer God Yog could do something like this.

Though it had been driven away, the clumps of contamination it had forced in still remained.

I hadn’t expected the Outer God’s power to have recovered to this extent. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

It was a careless misjudgment—and poor timing.

“That direction… is where the end of the Heavenly Crystal lies.”

Luna muttered, frowning.

“The contamination has reached the core of the Heavenly Palace. If this continues, archangels who cannot receive power from the Creator God will be rendered powerless all at once.”

In other words, Gabriel collapsing meant the contamination had reached the source of their power.

I looked at the key Gabriel had entrusted to me.

“…Ignore it?”

“Impossible. If we don’t remove that contamination, we can’t leave either. And more importantly—even if they’re damned bastards—without the archangels……”

They wouldn’t be able to protect the remaining two Lazeroth dimensional cores.

“Leon. We need to go to the end of the crystal.”

Of course, the end of the Heavenly Crystal had its own purpose.

To free Isna.

And to break through beyond the Grandmaster level.

There was no need to hesitate long.

The only concern was Elpiria.

I considered moving alone while leaving Luna behind, but after a moment’s thought, she suggested we all move together.

“Why?”

“It feels like we should.”

At that, I didn’t argue further and followed her judgment.

The Heavenly Crystal was like a vast bridge in the sky.

Passing beyond the place where I had fought Michael earlier, an even more grand and mystical passage appeared.

Normally, the entrance would have been tightly sealed, but the key Gabriel gave me opened it instantly.

And when we reached a vast chamber with a gigantic sun-like sphere of energy floating at its center—

I saw an armored archangel, unmoving, with a spear embedded into a mass of corruption.

“Michael?”

At my call, he slowly turned.

Through the gap in his helmet, his eyes flickered.

Then—

Creak.

He began to move slowly.

“Raphael…… and Leon Cascadia.”

He didn’t even use the word “mortal” anymore.

His voice was broken, cutting off.

I motioned Luna behind me with one hand.

With the other, I formed the divine artifact Pragarach into a spear.

He staggered forward a step.

“Before it’s too late… I sealed the source of the contamination within my body.”

“…What?”

“My mind will not last long. There was… no other way.”

He took another step.

Where his greave touched the ground, the color drained as if it had died.

Even so, he threw a mass of light he held in one hand toward me.

The moment I caught it, it resonated with me and poured some kind of power into me.

It felt immense, but not something I could absorb quickly.

Moreover, it was much smaller than expected, and things were unfolding differently than I had anticipated.

“Luna. Do you know what this is?”

“What you was searching for. The means to sever Isna from the Outer God… and to maximize Leon’s power.”

At Luna’s words, I became certain that what Michael had just thrown me was exactly what I had come to Heaven to obtain.

“Mortal… Leon Cascadia. The Heavenly Crystal… will open… the path. Escape from here. If you do not lose that… you can protect the core.”

He had entrusted me with the most important energy sphere in this situation.

Unable to remove the contamination after being caught off guard so severely, he had chosen himself as a sacrifice without hesitation.

“Go. And do not return.”

With those words, he planted his spear before him and fixed it in place, drawing up his weakening power to resist the contamination.

Whatever it was, the contamination had exceeded the archangels’ expectations by a wide margin and had already begun to affect their power.

The power that had flowed out from Elpiria’s body had expelled the Outer God through Heaven’s self-purification, but it hadn’t been an intentional act.

Because of that, Heaven had fallen silent once more.

Michael made his choice.

To prevent the worst-case scenario if they were neutralized, he entrusted the most important core of Heaven to me and sent me away.

In the process, he chose to sacrifice himself—but Michael had never hesitated over such things from the start.

At that moment, light began to glow from Elpiria’s body as she slept in Luna’s arms.

“Elpiria?”

Now, of all times?

Her body suddenly grew.

Just like before, her physical form changed in an instant.

In no time, Elpiria took on the appearance of a fifteen-year-old and collapsed onto the ground, opening her drowsy eyes and looking around.

Then, as if she had realized something, she stared at Michael and broke into a bright smile.

Fwoooosh!!!

As if reflecting her emotions, pure white light began overflowing from her body, wrapping around Michael.

At once, the contamination that had been devouring him burst and evaporated.

It was incomprehensible—its total volume immeasurable, its structure impossible to understand—yet undeniably divine.

Not quite creation, but the same power Elpiria had shown when she touched objects—transformation.

A miracle that defied all physical laws, occurring without any cost.

Just like when Elpiria, saying she was hungry, had filled the Cascadia estate with bread.

It was a power not permitted to living beings.

What was absurd was that Elpiria had no idea what she was doing—she simply showed kindness to Michael, just as she liked people.

“…My God.”

Kneeling, supporting himself with his spear, Michael muttered in a dazed voice for the first time.

Our kid really is something else.

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