The Butterfly Effect

A hint of anxiety flickered in Yuseong’s eyes as he scanned through Dragon’s Claw’s information.

While suppressing the riots caused by Ten Swords and those across Japan, he had roughly confirmed Dragon’s Claw’s capabilities.

However, there was just one thing he couldn’t verify – the Dimensional Slash skill that required a whopping 3,000 magic power points. He hadn’t dared use it because he had no idea what might happen.

‘Dimensional Slash. I can roughly guess its ability from the name, but I’m not sure exactly what it does. If I’d known this would happen, I should have tested it once.’

Yuseong bit his lip slightly.

Though he felt uneasy about betting on a skill he’d never used before, there was no other option available right now.

“Damn it, it’ll work out somehow.”

Even if Dimensional Slash didn’t work, in the worst case he could use nuclear bombing, Dragonia’s meteor strike, or Kasim’s grand magic.

Of course, that would wipe out not just the World Tree but Tokyo as well.

Whoosh!

When he infused magic power, a blade of flames rose up above Thousand Hands.

Though he had met the minimum conditions to use the Dimensional Slash skill, Yuseong didn’t stop there.

‘Dragon’s Claw’s cutting power increases infinitely the more magic power you pour in. Since I don’t know how tough the World Tree is, I need to maximize the attack power as much as possible.’

Though his current maximum magic power output in one go was over 10,000 points, Dragon’s Claw had the ability to accumulate magic power.

Yuseong poured all the magic power he could recover into Dragon’s Claw while operating Infinite Origin Force and White Tower’s Mana Training Method at full power.

Whoosh!

The flame blade infused with magic power blazed fiercely, gradually changing to different colors.

The blade that had shifted from burning red to orange, from orange to yellow, from yellow to white, soon changed to a deep blue.

“Are you not done yet?!”

“Already at your limit?”

“I’m fine, but the others are at their limit!”

Bruce, Kasim, and Kang Changseok.

The three users were fighting hard but it was impossible to hold back Carlos who was receiving backup from the World Tree.

An immortal monster that wouldn’t die even when killed, ignored injuries, and kept charging with reckless abandon.

They had barely managed to hold out this long because Alice and Dragonia were handling Lorraine and the World Tree. Without that, the battle would have been decided long ago.

“Almost done!”

This much magic power accumulation should be enough.

All that remained was using karma.

Theoretically, anything is possible using karma.

You can resurrect the dead, manipulate time, and even create life.

Of course, such feats require a correspondingly massive amount of karma.

‘I don’t have much karma right now. What I can do with this is…’

Lost in thought, Yuseong infused karma into the flame blade and shouted.

“Olga!”

The ice fortress that had been withstanding the World Tree’s bombardment disappeared.

Letting out a light breath, Yuseong swung his right hand toward the World Tree.

In that moment, the flame blade vanished and five black lines appeared in the air.

And then the lines melted into space without leaving any trace, as if they had never existed in the first place.

“Did it fail?”

The World Tree was still spewing deadly light and Carlos was overwhelming the users.

Seeing no changes, Olga’s expression twisted slightly.

Yuseong slowly shook his head and said.

“No, it worked.”

Crack!

A cutting sound so sharp it raised goosebumps.

At the same time, everything caught in the lines’ trajectories was sliced apart.

Starting with the wire fence of the building in front of Yuseong, telephone poles, thick concrete buildings, tall skyscrapers – everything collapsed simultaneously.

Power equal to or greater than Bruce’s sword strike earlier.

At this astonishing sight, everyone stopped fighting and looked at the World Tree.

“……”

“……”

Disappointment crept onto the users’ faces as they saw the World Tree showing not even the slightest movement.

However, shortly after, the users realized something was strange.

“It stopped?”

The flowers weren’t spewing beams and all the branches that had been thrashing wildly were completely motionless.

Like time had stopped.

And the moment the mass of vines Alice created collided with the World Tree, time began flowing again.

Rumble!

“Nooooo!”

With a heavy sound, the World Tree began collapsing.

Carlos screamed and tried to stop it, but it was physically impossible to prevent a tree reaching the heavens from falling.

“W-why isn’t it regenerating…?”

Lorraine manipulated the World Tree’s roots to absorb energy from not just the Kanto region but all of Japan.

However, despite absorbing massive amounts of energy, the severed parts showed no signs of reattaching.

This was because Yuseong had overlaid a law stating that anything cut by Dimensional Slash cannot regenerate.

On top of that, there was also the matter of elemental compatibility.

The wood attribute the World Tree inherently possessed and Dragon’s Claw’s fire attribute were the worst possible match.

This alone would have been fatal, but the corrupted World Tree also contained the demonic attribute, which was incompatible with Holy Avenger’s Evil Destruction attribute.

The fire energy and Evil Destruction energy that flowed in through the cut surfaces were eating away at the World Tree’s interior like poison.

‘This isn’t quite enough.’

Yuseong’s eyes gleamed as he watched the collapsing World Tree.

Though he had cut down the trunk, the World Tree’s roots were still absorbing the Earth’s energy and sending it to Carlos.

To end this definitively, he needed to destroy the roots too.

Fortunately, Yuseong still had his left hand.

“Ugh! That bastard! Stop!”

Boom!

Sensing something ominous, Carlos abandoned other users and launched himself toward Yuseong.

The distance of several kilometers was closed in the blink of an eye.

However, no matter how fast Carlos moved, he couldn’t be faster than an arm swing.

Yuseong gave Carlos, who had approached right in front of him, a bright smile as he swung his left arm down.

Crack!

Once again lines appeared and disappeared, leaving an endless long scar on the earth.

Earlier when he had swung horizontally, it had taken some time for things to collapse, but this time since he swung vertically, the reaction was instantaneous.

Everything in front of Yuseong began collapsing in an instant.

——!

‘Come to think of it, maybe we could have just used nuclear weapons or Kasim’s grand magic.’

Between Bruce’s sword strike, the artillery exchange between the World Tree and Dragonia, two Dimensional Slashes, and the World Tree collapsing in six pieces, Tokyo had become so devastated that it might have been better off taking a nuclear bomb instead.

As Yuseong looked around the ruined Tokyo with empty eyes, Carlos’s voice reached his ears.

“You, you…”

Splat.

Carlos, who had been glaring at Yuseong with hate-filled eyes, died instantly without even finishing his words, spilling blood and internal organs on the ground.

Even with an infinite supply of life force, it was impossible to resist the laws.

“…Is he dead?”

“Yeah.”

Looking down at Carlos’s corpse, Olga sat down on the rooftop with a dejected expression.

It was an anticlimactic death for someone who had caused a massive incident that endangered not just Japan but the entire world.

‘Oh right, speaking of which…’

Suddenly remembering something, Yuseong took advantage of Olga looking away to discreetly search Carlos’s corpse.

Though the chances of him directly carrying it were low, and the chances of it surviving the attack just now were even lower, if by some miracle it was intact…

‘Found it!’

After finding what he wanted in Carlos’s possession, Yuseong quickly put it into his subspace.

Then he stepped back and maintained a calm expression as if nothing had happened.

And so, without anyone knowing, Yuseong obtained another pair of goggles.

* * *

In a room decorated with all sorts of jewels and artworks to the point of gaudiness.

Inside, two men were watching hologram footage showing the state of Tokyo.

Watching scenes of users crossing the city center, Carlos and Lorraine overwhelming multiple users, and Bruce’s move ending in failure, Lucifer wore a satisfied smile.

“I didn’t expect much but he’s doing far better than expected.”

“He was once users powerful enough to be compared to the Three Strong. Though he fell after getting foolishly entangled with some elf, even a fallen star retains some of its shine – that saying exists for a reason. Rather, it would be troublesome if he didn’t perform at least this well.”

“That’s true, but still, isn’t this going a bit too far?”

Watching the rain of death pouring from countless flowers, Lucifer muttered in a worried voice.

Carlos’s role was to create as much chaos as possible to draw the world’s attention and prevent people from paying attention to what was happening in China.

For that, he needed to show some measure of restraint and give the impression that victory was possible, but right now Carlos was showing too overwhelming a performance.

“What if the users give up on Japan and our plans are disrupted?”

“That will absolutely never happen, so don’t worry.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because the World Tree keeps spreading zombie spores. Since the spores could ride the wind across the sea, Korea absolutely cannot give up on Japan, and with Korea having risen to become a core nation in the current world, other countries will have to follow whether they like it or not.”

If there was absolutely no possibility of victory they might give up, but they wouldn’t make such a decision overnight.

At minimum, they would spend a few weeks racking their brains trying to solve the Japan problem.

And that much time was more than enough for Lucifer to regain his power.

‘Soon now.’

Even a transcendent being cannot protect the entire Earth alone against endlessly appearing monsters.

But protecting just China is more than doable.

Of course, as time passes the monsters will accumulate and their attacks will grow fiercer so they can’t hold off the attacks forever, but they should be able to endure for at least 10–20 years.

‘With that much time, whether escaping to space or moving to another dimension, we should be able to find a better solution than the ridiculous method of creating transcendent beings to protect Earth.’

Changwei watched the fighting users with dispassionate eyes.

With destruction already certain.

He couldn’t understand why they were fighting so hard in other countries when they could barely look after themselves.

“This seems like a waste of time now. I think I’ll…”

As Changwei was about to get up from his seat watching the users helpless against the World Tree’s bombardment, he suddenly stopped moving.

A massive island appearing in the sky exchanging fire with the World Tree.

That wasn’t particularly surprising.

After all, that island had appeared once before during the European undead incident.

What surprised Changwei was something else.

“That’s…”

The giant humanoid weapons launched from the island.

The form of those humanoid weapons looked oddly familiar.

At that moment, a monotone mechanical voice rang out from somewhere.

[Demon race’s large mobile weapons. Black Slayer, Death Baptism, Mad Titan confirmed.]

[98.5% probability of being demon race civilization, 99.9% probability of being related to demon race]

[Activating main system.]

“…It moved?”

Changwei’s eyes filled with shock at the sight of Vimana’s main system activating, when it had shown no signs of moving despite spending astronomical karma points to obtain it.