Chapter 922: An Encounter that Caused an Unconscious Breakthrough.
Kali, who was meditating in silence, suddenly opened her eyes when she felt a disturbance in Nightingale's space. Even though Victor had suppressed almost all of his power, such a significant presence that influenced so many things around could hardly go unnoticed by Kali, who had even more abnormal senses than her fellow gods.
The obvious change in 'nature' with the arrival of two true dragons was too significant to escape her notice.
"They have arrived."
"Yes, indeed," Dun Scaith nodded. Unlike the powerful woman next to her, she didn't sense the arrival of the two true dragons but rather the approach rune she had given to her disciple.
'She still uses that gift, huh... That's sweet,' Dun Scaith thought with a gentle look, but at the same time, confusion arose in her mind. 'If she's using that gift, how couldn't I sense her exact location before?'
Dun Scaith's doubts didn't linger for long when she heard a voice.
"Darling, you came too?" Aphrodite asked.
"Uh-huh." A confirming sound was heard.
"Aphrodite, let me go!" Scathach growled.
"Oh... Sorry, Scathach."
"Tsk, how can you be physically stronger than me?" Scathach couldn't understand this.
"It's because I'm a goddess," Aphrodite boasted proudly.
"That doesn't explain anything."
"In fact, it does," Victor spoke. "As I mentioned, dragons are compatible with all creation, especially divinity, so since her divinity is of a higher level, this status also applies to her physical body. After all, divinity nourishes the body, and since there is no incompatibility between body and soul, both become stronger."
"... Does that mean you're completely broken then?" Scathach commented expressionlessly. She didn't doubt Victor's words because he was the progenitor of her race and knew more about it than she did. But this specific doubt couldn't help but surface in her mind. If the level of physical strength was equivalent to his divinity, wasn't Victor completely overpowered then? After all, he had several things inside him that boosted his physical body.
"I mean... Yes?"
"What's your level of strength now?" Scathach asked.
"I honestly don't know, but if I want to, I can lift several dense stars with just my physical strength," Victor replied absentmindedly. He had never tried it, but thinking about it, he couldn't say it was 'impossible' for him to do.
"... That's ridiculous," Scathach muttered.
"Indeed... I understand using your power to do that, but lifting it with physical strength alone?" Aphrodite also couldn't believe it.
"Hmm, why don't we test it now?"
"... What are you going to do?"
"Just an experiment." Victor created a massive earth sphere in his hand and then used his control over creation to add more 'weight' to the object.
"1,000... 2,000... 10,000... 1,000,000... 100,000,000,000... 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000..." Victor's face was slightly contorted, and he began to visibly exert himself to lift the object with one hand.
He used his other hand to support it, and as he felt his muscles tense as if he were holding something extremely heavy, he stopped.
"969,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons is my limit without using energy." Victor's body emitted a faint glow of both negative and positive energy, and he held the object in front of him as if it weighed nothing.
"With my energies, I can hold even more," Victor spoke as he played with the sphere that weighed more than the entire planet.
"... Once it goes beyond 12 zeros, the number becomes irrelevant, Victor. You can literally hold a planet in your hands if you wish," Scathach shook her head at this absurdity.
"Well, that's true..." Victor recalled that he once held the sun in the palm of his hand, though he was using his powers at the time.
"Don't forget the fact that you're not using your divine authorities to enhance your body or even in your dragon form."
"Hmm, that's also true, although, in my dragonoid form, I have the same physical strength as in my human form. But in my dragon form, the energy pulses more uncontrollably, so I must have more physical strength in that form," Victor deduced based on his previous experience of assuming his dragon form. He not only felt at ease with his energy in that form, but that energy was constantly surging within him like an inexhaustible battery. If he used all that energy efficiently... he had truly become a force of nature, huh?
"Only a few beings can handle me in this sector now, and I haven't even fully trained my divinities yet," Victor couldn't help but wonder how strong the beings in the next sector would be.
"Please stop playing with that ball. If it falls on the ground..." Aphrodite was sweating nervously as she watched Victor playing with that supermassive ball.
"Nothing will happen. It's just supermassive earth... Probably, there will be a hole, and the ball will pierce the planet in half, but..." Victor let the sphere fall to the ground, and it plummeted at an astonishing speed, but the moment it hit the ground, nothing happened.
"My runes will cancel the gravitational effect."
Aphrodite looked at Victor with an accusatory look. One day, this man would give her a heart attack. The level of irrational things he was doing was becoming ridiculous. She looked at the sphere again and thought of something.
Then Aphrodite crouched down and tried to pick up the sphere. She narrowed her eyes when she couldn't pick it up with one hand and became even more frustrated when she couldn't pick it up with both. She covered her body with divinity and managed to lift it... But it was incredibly heavy even for her.
"This is ridiculous," Aphrodite said as she dropped the sphere on the ground.
"Ugh, now I'm sweaty, and my arms hurt." Aphrodite then muttered some draconic words, and her body returned to its normal state.
Scathach stared at the sphere for a long time.
"... Can we make a gym with this?"
"I mean, it's possible..." Victor spoke as he waved his hand to dispel his creation.
"Is this really necessary? Won't our physical strength increase as our divinity becomes stronger?" Aphrodite remarked.
"We can't ignore our bodies. After all, we are alive, and even we have muscles, so it should be possible to train those muscles," Victor said.
Aphrodite rolled her eyes. "You guys just want to sweat and feel the pain of training your muscles, you masochists."
"Even if the gym is built, I won't participate," she scoffed, not wanting to exert such effort when she would naturally grow stronger.
"It's alright; you don't have to," Scathach smiled as she leaned on Victor.
"Let me take care of that with Darling."
Aphrodite narrowed her eyes at Scathach's affectionate gesture, and then her mind went into the gutter as she thought about Scathach and Victor engaging in sinful acts with their sweaty bodies.
Her body began to heat up as this image shifted, and instead of Scathach, it was she herself in that compromising position.
"... Actually, I think I should train too... I don't want to get out of shape," she said as she leaned on Victor as well.
Scathach rolled her eyes. As dragons, their bodies would always remain healthy no matter what they ate, so Aphrodite's excuse was invalid.
On Kali and Dun Scaith's side, the two women squinted slightly when they heard the group's conversation shift into an incomprehensible language.
Even for them, who practically knew every language.
"... Draconic language, huh," Dun Scaith deduced. There was only one language she couldn't understand, and those were the supernatural languages exclusive to races, with dragons being one of the most challenging she had encountered. After all, when a dragon spoke, it was, in a way, imposing its will on reality.
Just hearing the incomprehensible babble of the three conversing among themselves, several ideas began to form in Dun Scaith's mind.
The door opened, and when the two women saw the group, they opened their mouths in shock.
Dun Scaith was shocked by how beautiful Victor, Aphrodite, and Scathach were and shocked by how much her disciple had changed. Both externally and internally.
Kali was surprised by something entirely different: it had nothing to do with the group's beauty because she didn't care about that. It was how her energy was perfectly synchronizing with Victor's energy.
"Oh?" Victor raised an eyebrow when he felt his negativity and destruction divinity merging with the energy emanating from Kali's body.
Unconsciously, Kali's energy began to leak from her body, and her clothes started to tremble, indicating that they were on the verge of breaking at any moment. If that happened, everything around her would be completely destroyed, leaving nothing.
Victor floated in Kali's direction and did not stop his divinities from acting as they pleased.
As he got closer to her, the energy became more controlled, and after so many years, Kali finally managed to relax her mind and body so that her body's energy wouldn't destroy everything around her.
"Hmm... This is unexpected," Victor said as he looked up with his draconic eyes. Everyone could clearly see the two energies merging and flowing into each other's bodies.
Victor was literally acting as a filter for Kali's divinity so it wouldn't overwhelm her body.
"I made a breakthrough..." she murmured incredulously when her previously stagnant divinity began progressing again. It was slow as a snail, but she had been stuck in this state for so long that she noticed immediately.
"Of course you did. Didn't you hear the saying that too much power unused is a bad thing?" As always, Victor had strong social skills and could talk to anyone as if they were old friends.
"Energy should be allowed to flow like water, especially for beings like us who are connected to many things," one reason Victor wasn't like Kali was that he had Roxanne inside him, managing his energies and Nightingale and his own personal world to nourish with his energy.
"Let the water flow, let the water fill every corner of your being, don't hold the water back as before... Let it flow."
Unconsciously, Kali closed her eyes, and her entire body began to glow with pure destruction energy. Her appearance started to change as her crimson hair turned into pure energy, her eyes took on the appearance of a galaxy of pure crimson, and her skin began to turn into pure energy.
Eventually, it was no longer just a god in front of everyone... It was something more, something close to a primordial, but soon the effect was undone, and Kali's appearance returned to normal.
Kali opened her eyes, and they didn't return to their previous state, remaining a crimson galaxy.
"I see... That's what was missing... As expected, coming here was not a mistake."
"The mistake of foolish gods is that they overthink something simple. Power must be controlled? Yes, but it must not be prevented from flowing."
"Every corner of your existence must embrace your power." Slowly, Victor's appearance began to change as well, and just like Kali, his entire body was covered in black, violet, and crimson.
Soon, what was in front of everyone was... Something unknown. It wasn't a god, a dragon, or even a primordial; it was something more... Something terrifying, something that should not be allowed to exist.
"Ugh," Dun Scaith closed her eyes and placed her hand on her head in pain. It was as if the very existence in front of her couldn't be comprehended with her senses.
Ironically, something similar happened to Aphrodite and Scathach.
"Be Water, My Friend." Victor smiled with a grin full of sharp teeth that divided his entire face as violet-crimson eyes opened all over his body and looked in Kali's direction.
Kali opened her eyes widely when she saw this being in front of her. Before she could even realize it, the clothes that controlled her power were completely destroyed and replaced by a long red dress that was her divine robes created with her own power.
Even in this state, her power did not leak and continued flowing towards Victor. Because of this connection, she could 'see' Victor's essence, and she could see why he was called the god of chaos. That pure, chaotic energy within him was pure madness, and even she knew that if she kept looking at it for too long, she would go crazy.
Therefore, she closed her eyes, and three seconds after that, she opened them, and Victor's appearance returned to normal.
"...I never thought Bruce Lee's words would be used in such a terrifying way," Aphrodite spoke while controlling her body's breathing and trying not to feel afraid of her own husband. "Just what was that, Darling?"
Scathach, like Aphrodite, just kept looking at Victor. Waiting for his answer, she didn't blame Aphrodite for her reaction; after all, she felt the same thing as her now.
"What are you talking about, Honey? That was me." Victor smiled slightly.
"...I see... It seems like I should get used to it."
"Don't worry, today was special. I won't use it much; I don't want to scare everyone after all." Victor spoke with the same smile on his face.
Aphrodite just nodded. She felt a little bad that Victor wasn't showing another part of himself to everyone, but in this case, it made sense. This wasn't something that should be shown to the family but to the enemies.
Victor looked back at Kali, raised his hand towards the goddess, and said: "Nice to meet you, Kali. My name is Victor."
Kali looked at Victor's hand for a second. Normally, she would deny the handshake; after all, with just that handshake, she could destroy a being unconsciously, but when she remembered what happened and who this man in front of her was, she didn't care.
"Nice to meet you, Victor." The moment her hand touched him, her divinity of destruction took effect in full force, but nothing happened... No burst of power, no side effects; it just flowed naturally between the two.
'How long has it been since I touched someone?' Kali wondered. It had been so long that even she didn't remember.
"The pleasure is all mine." Victor smiled gently, and then he let go of her hand, turned around, and floated toward his wife's back.
The moment he moved away from Kali, the connection was severed, and the goddess's power exploded around her, destroying everything around her.
Immediately, Kali controlled herself and tried to seal her power, but remembering Victor's words, instead of sealing her power, she let it flow into every corner of her existence.
Then her body was covered in a red energy of pure destruction, but the power didn't leak; instead of relying on clothes like before, she was doing it with her pure skill... A skill she already had but just wasn't using correctly.
Kali looked at Victor, and when she saw the amused smile on his face, for a moment, she felt like she wanted to punch his face, but she didn't know why she felt that way; his smile was just annoying like that.
'Why did he move away...?' She felt dissatisfied with him moving away from her. The feeling of having her mind calm and body relaxed was something she had forgotten, and the moment she got it back, it was quickly taken away from her, not to mention that the feeling of being connected to someone and touching someone's hand without them being destroyed was something that wasn't exactly bad.
"... You've definitely found an interesting partner, Siren."
Scathach's attention left Kali and Victor and went to the woman with long brown hair, as she growled, "Don't call me by that name."
