Chapter 1081: Chapter 1081

“Ugh, she's a walking disaster,” Daphne said with a heavy sigh. She clicked her tongue as Goddess Freyja silently played with a butterfly made of light resting on her fingertip.

It had been some time since the avatar of Goddess Freyja had taken a spot in the Saint Sanctuary. For them, a divine being settling in wasn't exactly new.

“Are you really just going to leave him alone? With something that serious, shouldn’t you be stepping in yourself?” asked Odin, who had somehow soundlessly approached with a small fishing rod slung over her shoulder.

Goddess Freyja, who had been playing with the butterfly, turned her head toward her. She typed out a phrase on her tablet.

“Yeah, right,” Odin scoffed. “At least make your lies believable.”

Odin stared coldly at the Goddess Freyja, unimpressed by the way she wrote such words without even a hint of fear on her face, before turning away.

“Get it together. This whole mess is because of you,” she icily snapped.

Goddess Freyja silently watched from behind as she left, then quietly looked down at her tablet.

She gently placed her hand on the screen for a moment, then lifted it away.

A photo began to pop up. It was a picture of an expressionless Goddess Freyja and Davey, who looked visibly annoyed, sitting side by side and bickering with each other.

Davey watched as the boy positioned himself a distance away. The power that the mystery “boy” wielded was bizarre beyond words. It felt almost like he had leapt through space.

“Ugh.” The boy stumbled, looking like something had seriously unsettled him. “What the hell? That hurts, damn it!”

His face was twisted in a mixture of frustration and confusion. Genuine bewilderment filled his eyes. “How did your attack hurt me? What are you?”

In response, Davey simply took a step forward.

The boy flinched and stepped back, his face crumpling into a deep scowl. “You think you can just look down on people and treat them ?!”

Davey had no idea what exactly had set him off, but the boy suddenly vanished, reappearing a short distance away. It wasn't teleportation—it was more akin to time manipulation.

He kept flickering, there one moment and gone the next.

“Argh! I'm so pissed off!!”

His rage spiraled out of control, making it seem as though he would burst an artery right then and there. His eyes betrayed his killing intent as he disappeared in another flash.

Davey heard the barrier of divine power that he had put up being violently scratched.

Since Davey's spell had frozen the mana in the surroundings, the only powers he could use efficiently couldn’t involve mana. Of course, it was undeniable that he had been relying heavily on divine power recently anyway.

When another attack flew in, Davey slowly reached out his hand to grab the boy. However, he heard the sharp scratch from behind instead. The divine barrier shuddered fiercely.

“Why?! Why isn’t it working?!” the boy screamed in frustration, vanishing and reappearing over and over as he kept launching attacks.

Unfortunately, he couldn't land a hit. Truthfully, anyone without Davey’s powers would have no way to defend against his special attacks; they would easily be completely overwhelmed.

“Guess I should do a little investigating.” Whatever the case, Davey wasn’t about to just let someone walk away after agitating him.

He quietly watched the boy charging around and screaming in rage. Then, the moment the boy reappeared to strike, Davey took the attack head-on and grabbed his arm, causing a flurry of sparks to fly off.

It was a reckless move that cost a huge amount of divine power, but even with that special strength, the boy still couldn’t reach him.

The formless energy within him began devouring something inside the boy.

“Aaaah!!!” The boy started thrashing violently, letting out a horrifying scream. Though he looked human, he was actually a spiritual entity. Thanks to the characteristic of Predatory Assimilation, the effects were transferred directly to him.

“This one’s useless.” Once the madness of starvation, which devoured the mind, began to affect Davey, he immediately discarded the energy without hesitation. He then approached the boy, who had collapsed on the ground groaning, and raised his fist.

“D-Don’t come any closer! Stay away!!”

When one’s attacks didn’t work and they couldn’t figure out why, fear naturally followed.

The terrified boy screamed and scrambled backward as Davey calmly walked toward him, pulling a brass knuckle from his Pocket Plane and sliding it onto his hand.

“Yes,” Davey replied succinctly.

Now that he knew physical blows worked even against spiritual entities, there was no reason to hold back.

Davey watched the boy, who was now knocked out cold. Unable to hide his fascination, he muttered, “Interesting.”

“Master Davey, survivor confirmed.”

Just then, Rinne approached, dragging a man along in one hand and a water pouch in the other. It was Fogg, the boss of the mountain fortress. While the others had been killed instantly, Davey had deliberately spared him.

“Nice. We don’t need anyone else. Gnoass,” he shouted, “bury the rest! And Rinne, stay here and finish checking.”

Rinne quietly nodded with her usual expressionless face.

When Davey returned to the territory, the first thing he saw was the complete wreck it had become.

“Damn it,” he couldn't help but curse.

The guards who spotted him came rushing over in a panic. People were lying all over the place, groaning from their injuries.

“Give me a proper report, Monmider.”

Startled by his cold tone, Monmider weakly answered, “Five dead, seventy severely wounded, and over five hundred with minor injuries.”

“Five dead, huh?” Davey muttered icily, and Monmider lowered his head in shame. “What about the damn lizards and Constellation Taurus? What were they doing?”

“Well, it's thanks to their help that the casualties were this low.”

Without their assistance, the damage would’ve been catastrophic.

Given that dragons, who relied heavily on mana, couldn’t have been much of a threat to the attackers, he figured they had focused on defending.

For the constellation Taurus, however, it should have been different.

“There's no way that it should’ve been pushed back.”

“I beg forgiveness, Your Highness! Punish us! We failed to protect the peace of the territory you graciously entrusted to us!”

“Please punish us, Your Highness!”

When the soldiers all bowed their heads in unison, Davey suddenly shouted, “If you’ve got time to spout crap like that, go check on the wounded first, you idiots!!”

After watching them quickly scatter, Davey grabbed Monmider by the scruff of his neck. “Monmider.”

“Ugh!! Y-Yes, Your Highness?”

“What about Perserque?”

Seeing his face darken, Davey’s expression twisted with ferocity. “Speak up!”

“I’m sorry, Your Highness...”

Hearing confirmation, Davey’s blood boiled in fury.

When Davey returned to the lord's manor, the first thing he saw was Perserque, her arm wrapped in bandages; and Illyna, sitting silently with her head bowed and resting against her hand.

She flinched at the sudden noise and turned to him.

“Where are you hurt?”

“Worry about Illyna, not me.”

Startled by her words, Davey immediately turned to Illyna, who slowly raised her head. Thᴇ link to the origɪn of this information rᴇsts ɪn Nov3lFɪre.ɴet

“I'm sorry, Davey... I let her get hurt.”

He strode over, grabbed her arm, and pulled up her sleeve. There he saw a deep, savage scratch across her wrist.

“Who's the bastard that did this?” he said in a cold and sharp tone.

“She already ran away.”

Davey recalled the boy that he had captured and how he had mentioned that his comrades had attacked the manor.

The Heins Territory was usually protected by various mana-based defensive spells. Unfortunately, the invaders were unaffected by those defenses. No, to be more precise, they were somewhat affected, but the effectiveness was drastically reduced.

That sounded eerily similar to what Davey had experienced while fighting in the Abyss. It didn't mean they were related, though.

The ones that Davey had encountered were all spiritual entities composed of the material that made up this world. It wasn’t that the attacks didn’t work; they simply weren’t included in the standard parameters and laws governing the world.

“They ran away, huh?”

“Yeah. Looks like someone even attacked Aeria. And uh, the white rabbit...”

“Right. Killer Rabbit and Evangeline managed to hold them off, but it was a close call.”

“How are Evangeline and Aeria?”

“Evangeline’s helping move the wounded, while Aeria’s receiving treatment.”

Davey slowly infused healing magic into Illyna’s arm. There was some resistance at first, but the wound gradually started to heal. Once her arm returned to its flawless, pale state, she stood up and suddenly pressed her lips against his.

“I'm just glad you're not hurt.”

“Were they strong?” he asked.

“They weren’t exactly strong, but... how do I put it...”

“They just didn’t match up, in a weird way,” Perserque commented.

From her words, Davey realized that the invaders who had attacked the territory were the same type as that boy. If they were spiritual entities twisted from ordinary logic, even wielding the Continuum-Attacking Blade wouldn't guarantee an easy fight.

After healing Perserque’s arm the same way, Davey pondered for a moment. Finally, he said, “You’re watching all this, aren’t you? If you don't want to see someone explode, you better show yourself right now.”

At that moment, the large wardrobe that had seemed empty moments before suddenly creaked open a little. From inside, a woman with blue hair and a blank expression slowly peeked out.

“What the hell are those things?”

She hesitated for a moment.

White blood cells were supposed to exist to catch anything wrong within the body and strengthen the immune system. They were especially important when fighting cancer cells.

[But twisted white blood cells.]

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? They were built to combat leukemia? Are you kidding me?” he replied sharply.

She hesitated a little before quietly holding out her tablet. On it was a drawing of an emoji depicting Goddess Freyja bawling and begging for forgiveness.

“Oh, I'm mad, alright! Get over here!!” When Davey shot to his feet and yelled, she flinched and quickly retreated back into the wardrobe.

“Davey, that's enough. No matter what, that’s still pretty blasphemous,” Illyna scolded, making Davey sigh deeply.

“So. Why are they coming after you?”

Goddess Freyja then slowly poked her head out again.

[Because I’m the cancer cell, and the ones who twisted those white blood cells... are you and me.]

For a moment, Davey couldn’t comprehend what she meant. He struggled to come to the conclusion that it was really possible to call Goddess Freyja, who formed the very foundation of this world, a cancer cell.

“You and I made them?”

[Because divine judgment was not delivered, the accumulated hatred over a long time couldn’t be purified, and it lost its place.]

Davey pressed a hand to his forehead. “My head hurts.”

The butterfly effect from his past was finally catching up to him. “You said it’d be a better future. Is this really a better future?”

Davey lowered his head. “I don’t know anymore.”

After swaying his head a couple of times, he continued, “Then who's creating the chaos right now? Those white blood cells?”

She lowered her gaze slightly in response, then looked back at him. Clutching the door with a small hand and peeking out just a little further, she showed the answer that she had typed out.

[The laws that sustain the world.]

It was the system that worked alongside Goddess Freyja to build the world—the very foundation itself.

The system thought something was wrong with Goddess Freyja.

Davey felt a sharp pang inside his skull.