Trash of the Count's Family Vol 2. Chapter 452: …Can I Take It All? (15)

A single thin silver thread was all that linked Cale’s hand to the silver shield.

But the shield moved according to Cale’s will.

WHOOSH—

Shot forward on the wind, Cale spread his arms and swung the shield at the Pope, whose arms were open as if to embrace him.

The shield was not heavy.

BOOOOOM—!

Because the shield that moved according to Cale’s will had not been made from iron, or from any material that existed in this world.

-That’s not what eating is!

The gluttonous priestess.

The shield was the completed form of her power, infused with her will.

SWISH—

The Pope’s arms moved, the two arms he had spread as if to welcome Cale into an embrace.

The silver shield moved again.

BOOOOOM—!

The crossed arms of the Pope slammed into the shield with a deafening roar.

But when they collided, no explosion followed.

Nothing shattered. No dust rose.

CHOMP. CHOMP.

No. To be exact, every time the Pope and Cale collided, the marble floor caved in and broke, and dust should have burst up in every direction—

CHOMP. CHOMP.

—and under the pressure and wind they created, the holy knights had no choice but to retreat.

Yet not a single grain of dust rose to block their view.

CHOMP. CHOMP.

Because the countless mouths surrounding the Pope from every direction—front, back, left, right—devoured all of it.

“Disgusting.”

The Heavenly Demon let that assessment slip out lightly.

“Ghh—”

In the Heavenly Demon’s hand was Head Steward Hitelis by the throat.

“Urk!”

He had shot at her like a flash of light. Hitelis had allowed that first surprise attack, and though she had fought back fiercely, she had ultimately ended up in the Heavenly Demon’s grasp.

The Heavenly Demon was not someone who let go of an opening once he had it.

“......!”

Hitelis twisted desperately, trying somehow to wrench herself free from his grip, but both her arms had already been broken, and dark red aura was constricting her.

“.......”

And the Heavenly Demon was watching the Pope closely.

CHOMP. CHOMP.

Those countless mouths were grotesque, but what draped the Pope like priestly robes, like a cloak, was that many-shaded gray light.

Those gray fumes swallowed the things around them and kept expanding their domain.

“.......”

After observing it intently, the Heavenly Demon shifted his gaze.

“Can’t kill her, though.”

“!!”

Hitelis’s eyes widened at his words.

Their eyes met, and her body began to tremble.

The Heavenly Demon leaned close and whispered:

“Why aren’t you pouring everything out?”

“!”

“Why have you been acting this whole time?”

“......”

The instant the light in Hitelis’s eyes sank—

“Interrogator!”

The highest-ranking holy knight, who had been fighting Sui Khan and Choi Han, shouted.

“His Holiness says you may open your eyes!”

The moment those words were heard—

“!”

The Heavenly Demon had to let go of Hitelis’s neck and pull back.

Hitelis stood there, both broken arms hanging limp.

Her eyes were closed.

“.......”

But on her forehead, a new eye had opened.

A gray eye that had appeared before anyone noticed.

That was not her eye.

“I am one who bears the gaze bestowed by Chaos.”

Keeping only that third eye open, Hitelis spoke calmly.

“No living being can escape the gaze.”

The Heavenly Demon felt something strange.

That third eye.

Everything reflected in it—and he himself, standing at the center of that scene—felt as though it had been caught in a spider’s web.

Like someone reciting a prophecy, she intoned to him:

“From this moment on, what you see will no longer be what you yourself chose to see. You will see only what Chaos grants.”

One of the Heavenly Demon’s brows lifted slightly.

And then—

A grin spread across his lips.

“I don’t know what’s about to happen.”

He had thought this was going to be boring.

Good.

To be honest, the Heavenly Demon was not especially attached to, or worried about, Cale’s companions.

He was fighting alongside Cale now, and he thought fairly well of him.

But the only thing he truly held affection for was the Demonic Cult.

Even so, he had no intention of wasting this moment.

CHOMP. CHOMP.

Those countless mouths on the Pope were disgusting.

WOOOOO—WOOOOOO—

The Heavenly Demon was always thinking about how to use and develop the dark red aura he possessed, the individuality that could become clouds.

And now he had found a clue.

The Pope.

That many-colored gray wrapped around the bastard’s whole body.

The Heavenly Demon looked down at himself.

Instead of the robes he wore back in the Demonic Cult, he was stuck in a crude black outfit meant to imitate this so-called Dark.

He did not particularly miss the majestic robes he had worn as the Heavenly Demon, but—

“I like it.”

If there was no sky in which to spread dark red clouds, wouldn’t it be fun to wrap himself in those clouds and fight?

Then I will become the sky.

Because I am the sky of the Demonic Cult.

I am the Heavenly Demon.

WOOOOO—WOOOOOO—WOOOO—

As the dark red clouds of the Heavenly Demon let out a shallow moan and slowly began to change shape, no one else could hear that tiny sound.

BOOOOOM!

The silver shield Cale swung slammed into the Pope again with a deafening roar.

SKRRAAASH!

And the Pope’s body, which had been blocking with crossed arms, was shoved backward.

“......”

The Pope looked at the distance he had been pushed back.

“I was pushed back—”

But he could not finish.

BOOOOOM!

Because the shield flew at him again.

CHOMP—!

The mouths that had opened—

BOOOM!

—had to close, if only for a moment, when they crashed into the shield.

-Cale, you’re fast.

Just as the Ancient Tree said, Cale was moving quickly now.

The wind was in his feet.

And his whole body—

-I’m fine!

The crybaby old man was exerting himself more than ever.

-I’m still fine!

At his words, the Ancient Tree fell silent, and without saying a word Cale swung the shield at the Pope again.

BOOOOOM—!

The Pope kept getting driven farther and farther back.

BOOOM!

No one came near Cale and the Pope.

They could not.

The forces both of them were using overwhelmed everything around them.

-Why!

And the silver shield was gleaming more savagely than ever before.

The gluttonous priestess was still furious.

No, she was only getting angrier.

-Why!

Her feelings were not that different from Cale’s.

BOOOOOM!

-Why won’t you close your mouths!

BOOOM!

By now, the Pope’s crossed arms were wrapped in a barrier made from gray fumes.

That gray only thinned for a moment when it collided with the shield. It never disappeared.

And those countless mouths only shut briefly before opening again.

Then they ate anything at all.

The air around them.

The flying dust.

The broken chips of marble.

Anything and everything, if only a little.

-That’s not what eating is.

The gluttonous priestess did not hide her fury.

But her voice was beginning to grow faint.

“.......”

Cale’s expression gradually hardened.

The Pope, on the other hand, remained at ease despite being driven back.

His chaos had not been sacrificed in the slightest, and those countless mouths were still hungry.

“A shield,” the Pope said. “What a foolish weapon.”

It could not shatter.

It could not cut.

Cale’s shield did nothing but come smashing in stupidly, again and again.

“It looks delicious.”

The Pope smacked his lips as he watched that power.

From that shield came the scent of a forest beyond mere wood, the fragrance of nature.

I can feel vitality too.

He could feel the life force of a beating heart.

It was deeply tempting.

If he could absorb that and later offer it to the God of Chaos, {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} how pleased the god would be.

“Ah.”

The thought alone filled the Pope with bliss, and a smile spread across his face.

CHOMP.

More mouths began to appear.

Denser and denser.

Even if it made him look more grotesque, the Pope did not stop eating.

-Cale.

Then the Water that Devours the Sky spoke in a hardened voice.

-There’s no way to grasp that chaos right now.

The energy the Pope possessed.

The stingy old man continued:

-Mm. To purify it, you’d have to touch that chaos first.

Cale did have the skill Purification of Chaos, but that power purified things tainted by corruption of chaos.

It could not purify that fundamental “chaos” itself.

And that chaos was different from the God of Chaos’s chaos.

It was the Pope’s own chaos.

BOOOOOM!

The shield and the Pope’s chaos collided again.

-......

The gluttonous priestess fell silent.

The silver light dimmed a little.

“Your momentum is fading.”

The Pope’s relaxed voice brushed Cale’s ear.

“It seems those swordsmen would be better suited to facing this power.”

The Pope’s gaze flicked past Cale’s shoulder for a moment.

He meant Choi Han and Sui Khan.

Cale did not look back.

He simply lifted the shield again.

-Human, want me to help?

Raon’s question was answered with a silent shake of Cale’s head.

Whether it was Choi Han, Sui Khan, Raon, or the Heavenly Demon—

any one of them would only become food for the Pope’s power.

Without quite meaning to, Cale realized there was only one way to deal with the Pope.

Something that won’t be eaten by that chaos, by those mouths.

That alone.

Get close to the Pope without being affected by that chaos.

That was the answer.

Once more, he raised the shield.

“Aren’t you tired of this yet?”

The Pope asked the question with a benevolent smile full of amusement.

Cale answered by moving the shield.

BOOOOOM—!

The roar echoed out again, and in that instant Cale turned his awareness inward.

My heart’s fine.

Vitality overflowed through his entire body.

Well, it wasn’t as if he had used any huge power. He was just swinging a shield. He wasn’t going to pass out from that.

-......

The gluttonous priestess said nothing.

The silver light dimmed.

“You’ve grown weaker.”

The Pope said it, and his benevolent smile turned just a little more sinister.

Cale lifted the shield again and swung it.

To anyone watching, it was a motion that looked not just stubborn but reckless, pointless even.

And yet he continued it.

BOOOOOM!

And then—

“!”

The Pope faltered.

Seeing that, Cale opened his mouth.

“Hungry?”

As the Pope lowered his trembling gaze to his own arm—

more precisely, toward his wrist—

the gluttonous priestess replied quietly.

-Yeah. Hungry.

Then the stingy old man and the Ancient Tree shouted:

-Just as I thought!

-Right! You ate vitality too!

While they cheered—

-Slurp.

The gluttonous priestess gave her low assessment.

Her verdict on the taste.

-It tastes worse than dead-mana dirt.

A grin tugged up one corner of Cale’s mouth.

To others, his movements may have looked reckless.

But through them, he had found the answer.

“......”

The Pope looked down at his arm.

More precisely, near the wrist.

The gray there had gone pale.

It had not simply been pushed back by the shield.

It had vanished.

No—it had been eaten.

“...How can this be—”

The Pope stared in shock.

“...How can you imitate my power......?”

The words came not merely in astonishment, but in outright disbelief.

Cale let out a scoff.

“Hah.”

“What are you even talking about?”

He was dumbfounded.

How could he not be?

“This thing’s always eaten.”

Cale looked at the heart engraved into the shield and crooked one corner of his mouth.

In a somewhat different way than now, the shield had eaten—no, held—the vitality of the heart.

While saying it was hungry.

Cale did not want the Pope to take anything from him.

And he also wanted to understand the Pope’s chaos.

The Water that Devours the Sky spoke.

-Damn it! That chaos is different from the God of Chaos’s! I need time to analyze it!

It needed time.

And the gluttonous priestess had kept saying the same thing.

-That’s not what eating is.

Right.

Like this.

This was what eating was.

For the gluttonous priestess, eating had never been about taking things away the way the Pope did.

The dead mana that had nearly swallowed the jungle.

The dead mana that had nearly turned countless places into lands of death.

The gluttonous priestess had consumed it through trees.

WHOOSH—

Wind gathered around Cale’s feet once again.

-I can’t eat much. If I eat it wrong, I’ll get sick. This isn’t like dead mana.

Listening to the gluttonous priestess, Cale kicked off the ground.

-I might get corrupted.

The gluttonous priestess had died shoveling into herself the soil of land stained by dead mana.

-I’ll endure it!

But unlike then, the gluttonous priestess had the crybaby old man beside her now.

-And I can purify it! Cale has Purification of Chaos!

What the crybaby old man said matched exactly what Cale was thinking.

-Of course, it’ll hurt you like hell, Cale.

The crybaby old man knew what was in Cale’s heart too.

-But you’d rather be the one in pain than let someone else be, right?

Cale did not answer.

He only did what he had been doing all along.

BOOOOOM!

He swung the shield.

BOOOM! BOOOOM!

Unlike before, without even more pause.

BOOOOM!

Relentlessly.

BOOOOOM!

And then—

“Ghk!”

The Pope could see his chaos, his gray, growing thinner.

And the shield was losing its silver light.

No—

gray was beginning to stain the silver.

And—

-Cale, it’s getting tainted!

Gray began to creep across Cale’s hands as well.

Even so—

A grin spread across his face.

-I can eat more!

Strength was returning to the gluttonous priestess’s voice.

BOOOM!

BOOOOM!

The shield kept moving forward without breaking, even as it lost its shining silver and became covered in dark gray.

One step.

Then another.

By now, Cale was no longer even using the wind.

He simply advanced on foot.

“Ghk!”

And at last—

the Pope lost the gray wrapped around both his arms.

The membrane that had formed over them, like the one now coating Cale’s shield—

it was eaten.

And when the countless mouths that had been in that membrane fled toward the Pope’s other gray chaos—

there, in that instant, a gap appeared.

“!”

Even then, the Pope saw the shield still advancing toward him with stubborn, unwavering force.

He hurriedly wrapped chaos around his arms, but the shield was a little faster.

Because it had not stopped.

“Ah.”

The Pope saw the chaos he was hastily wrapping around his arms get eaten again.

The shield lost a little more of its color, but—

“!”

—the shield came crashing down precisely toward the arm that now had no chaos on it.

BOOOOOM!

“Urk!”

With that explosive roar, a groan tore from the Pope for the first time.

The Pope’s two arms were crushed into unnatural shapes and broke.

And as pain forced him to his knees, he looked past the shield and saw Cale staring down at him with cold eyes.

Then Cale opened his mouth.

“That’s one.”

The Pope had only just now taken a single hit.