Chapter 521: A True Predator Has Emerged

“Pandora? Daughter, are you all right?” I shake Pandora’s body—she’s acting strange. We were just talking about optimizing the process so she could produce even more children.

It’s been over thirty thousand years since I obtained her. I’ve had many children, gained a good deal of levels and strength. The two of us have lived happily while I’ve had more and more children with her in every way possible.

But now, while I was giving her a magic lesson because of a question she asked, she turned odd. She started screaming and complaining about a headache, thrashing on the ground.

And suddenly, her power surged—a strange surge—and now she’s staring at me with an empty look. I take a few steps back.

“Pandor—” Before I can finish speaking, she grows so hot in a single millisecond that my hands are carbonized into ash.

“U-Urgh!” I leap away as my hands regenerate, staring at her in confusion. All the tentacles inside her were killed—her body too hot for them to survive, reduced to less than ash.

“Daughter, what are you doing!!?” I ask, alarmed.

“Daughter? Don’t call me daughter, you bitch.” She runs a hand over her forehead, pushing her hair back. Her gaze is so full of hatred and danger it makes me shudder.

“Hmmm… You know what my level is now? Six hundred million. High enough to kill you—exactly what I’ve waited millennia for.” She smiles, a sickly wide grin, and with her words, I realize something.

“H-How are you back? I erased your memories!! I was controlling you!” I don’t understand!! This is Pandora? But how is she “back”? I wiped her memories almost completely! She shouldn’t have had any chance of recovering them!

“I don’t owe you explanations, but I thank you for the vast amount of magical knowledge you gave me. Now I’ll kill you with the very knowledge you taught me… HAHAHAHA!” She starts laughing, her body beginning to grow.

And immediately, I feel suffocated. I clutch my chest, feeling a tightness in my heart as if gravity were crushing me. I watch her body growing, and growing, its shape distorting and remolding into something different.

“…” When I look at her, I realize—this is her true form. She’s transforming. But how? I never taught her about this? What changed? Was it her level? Why can she use this now? Before, she didn’t even know she was using her true form incorrectly, so why does she suddenly know how to use it now?

“…D-Daughter…” I stare at her body—the body designed by the Goddess of the Abyss, but modeled to suit what Pandora truly is. Now Pandora is no longer that weak humanoid I controlled.

I stare fixedly at her. She is now a giant humanoid ten meters tall, with four arms and extremely pale skin, too white for the dark surroundings. She has large breasts and a physique that seems almost seductive from the torso down, but she has no head. In its place is a constantly swirling black spiral.

The black spiral where her head should be oozes a black sludge that drips steadily, while her entire body is streaked with the same black ooze, dripping onto the ground.

A little above and behind, where the abyssal halo once was, now floats a giant eye with a blood-red pupil behind the black spiral. The form is shadowy and radiates a strange power. With each step, that black fluid spills onto the ground. The faceless form makes it unclear what emotion the being before me is expressing.

The giant sludge form I saw in her memories and that she used before was a mistake—too clumsy and chaotic, with an exaggerated mana cost. But her current form is compact, with immense power compressed and controlled—truly an absolute monster.

On her abdomen is a thin black line that opens into a large mouth full of teeth. Despite this, she still retains a strange beauty, and when closed, her abdomen appears completely normal.

“[DO NOT CALL ME DAUGHTER.]” Her voice comes out distorted, like a bizarre, static noise echoing throughout the environment from all directions. Her form is… beautiful… magnificent… divine… and disturbing, all at once.

“[I will kill you, kill you, kill you—I WILL KILL YOU FOR THE HUMILIATION YOU MADE ME ENDURE FOR YEARS!!… You think you can use my body without permission? Hihihi… HAHAHAHA!]” Before I realize it, I’m hit by a punch and sent flying so far I lose all sense of location.

Her oppressive aura shatters my spatial awareness. I’m dazed as I hit the ground. Looking around, I see a black forest, unsure how far a single punch sent me.

“[Doom…]” I hear something—a word—and my body reflexively leaps as high as it can. A red-and-black beam vaporizes and completely erases the forest below, extending across all four points of the horizon, leaving an empty plain.

“W-What the hell!! Since when is she this strong? And what the hell is that magic!? Doom? What’s ’Doom’ supposed to be!?” I see her approaching, her body floating smoothly as if not really moving, yet traveling at an insane speed.

“E—” I try to use magic, but before I speak, she appears in front of me, grabbing me with one of her hands.

“[Pathetic. I can’t believe I spent millennia serving as mother to those trash you produced—having my body call you ’mother,’ being submissive to you. It’s so humiliating. I’m disgusted, truly disgusted by what my body was doing. Urgh, repulsive.]” She speaks in that distorted tone.

And though she says she was disgusted, her voice and body express nothing—as if saying she was disgusted were just information, not a feeling. Irritated, I expand my body, trying to grow, but before I can, she crushes me, mashing and molding my body into a deformed lump of flesh.

“[Fight back. Don’t die so easily. I, the Goddess of the Apocalypse, want to see you suffer much more before erasing your existence. Don’t make me turn you into cosmic dust so soon.]” Her giant eye staring fixedly at me terrifies me. I slip out of her grasp.

“Y-You damned thing! I just need to control you again!” I regenerate my body completely, point at her, and use one of the strongest spells I have.

“[Dimensional Shredding Nova Ray.]” As I cast it, her body is hit by countless slashes, slicing her into hundreds of pieces—a spell that ignores resistance. But instead of falling apart, her body remains “intact,” her now completely black blood holding the severed parts together.

“[Is that all?]” Her distorted voice carries no emotion. I don’t know if she’s mocking me, belittling me, or just disappointed. But she does something with her hands, and immediately, my body is split in two.

“I-Is this… nothing?” My body doesn’t regenerate. I try to rebuild the lost flesh, but as if the concept of the lower half has ceased to exist, my body registers it as “nothing is wrong to fix.” I quickly fly away, putting some distance between us.

“Y-You aberration! Hahahaha, you’re insane! Since when do you have all this power!?” I say, irritated, frustrated, and also impressed. She never seemed this strong and imposing before.

“[Doom: Physical Sacrifice = I sacrifice the fingers of my lower right hand and the movement of one of my legs until the end of this battle, in exchange for wounding my enemy’s soul, damaging their mana pathway.]” She says something strange, her voice so noisy I can’t make out the words.

I try using magic against her again but receive a blow—a punch that engulfs my whole body. Immediately, my entire soul trembles. I feel a crack in my mana pathway, mana beginning to leak out.

“!!!” I decide to flee to another body. This one is going to lose anyway.

“[Doom: Temporal Sacrifice = I sacrifice the concept of time around us. Even if we remain trapped for billions of years at this point in reality, in exchange, all of my enemy’s children shall die.]” She says something I finally understand.

Time around us seems to stop. Nothing moves anymore—not even the ambient mana has motion. It’s impossible to know what this will do to us, but immediately, all connections to my children are severed.

I see their vision—they’re fragmenting into red dust, their existences consumed. I look at this aberration before me. She’s frozen—time still affects her, so she can’t move. I can’t move either, but we can see, speak, and feel.

“Y-You damned thing!! YOU KILLED ALL MY CHILDREN!!” I scream in terror. Without them, I have no escape, no new lives. That means… this current body is my last one. If it dies, I die.

“[I will kill you. I will make you pay for using my body. This is the price for having children with the body of the Goddess of the Apocalypse. I want your end. I want to destroy everything you have.]”

“[Hahahahaha.]”

“Y-You lunatic! We could be trapped here for eternity! You—”

“[Wrong. I will move, soon, very soon. You, however, might not be so lucky.]”

“…I-Is this about what I did? I-I’m sorry, okay!! I-I didn’t imagine that… that…”

“[That I would take revenge? That I could regain control? You imagined wrong, you needy bitch. This is the price of your foolishness. You talk too much. You told me exactly how to use magic in the Abyss.]”

“[This is the fruit of your lessons. Be happy. You’ve just turned me into one of the top predators in the Abyss! I’ll only be below my mother’s strongest servants, and even they wouldn’t dare challenge me!!]”

“[But don’t delude yourself. This power is and always was mine. You merely taught me something I would have learned on my own.]”

“H-Hey… P-Pandora, let’s reconsider this! W-We can be allies!! The two of us could rule the Abyss together!! With your strength and m-my strength combined…”

“[I don’t need that. I only need to devour your body. I want to devour you completely. I want to hear your screams. I want to tear your flesh and savor your blood.]” Her tone is that of a true monster of the Abyss.

“!!!”

“[You’re a pathetic bitch who depends on other beings to be strong. And I… I am a goddess who will reach the top alone…]” Her hand moves. Even with the concept of time gone, her right hand moves.

“…” I stare at this thing moving. She begins to twist and move forward, as if reality can no longer hold her still. Every tiny movement brings her closer to me, while I remain static.

“[You’re afraid. I love seeing the fear in your eyes… Once I erase you from existence so you won’t even have a chance to exist again, I’ll go after my real mother—the Goddess of the Abyss.]” The mouth on her abdomen opens.

Its sharp teeth seem to gleam amid the nothingness. The darkness inside is terrifying as she licks the air as if already tasting me.

Watching this aberration begin to approach, I can only wonder—when did she become a monster? When did she finally become a true monster of the Abyss? Before, she still acted like a being from outside the Abyss, but now she behaves exactly like a real predator.

And I—a false predator who depends on my children—could never directly defeat solo predators who possess pure individual power.

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