The last three white monsters fell apart, and Claud watched as they turned into dust. His right arm was throbbing madly, and simply holding his sword was making him feel tingly. Even though he had, in the middle, started to use mana in place of his muscles, the whole ordeal was worse than anything he had ever felt before. It was like an endless session of Dia’s physical training, just that her training involves real weapons and very ugly monsters.

At least, there was Lily suffering with him during Dia’s training. Here, however, was just an insane slogfest where he had to swing over and over again, while mobilising his mana without any pause either. Mana was needed to prevent his sword from slowing down after cutting through one monster; if he couldn’t kill them all in one swift strike, he would be holding himself back through and through.

Rubbing his forearms, Claud sulked for a bit at the fact that he needed to undergo intense muscle training for his right hand. If he had known that the second part of the Trial of Aeons revolved around killing hordes of monsters, he would have chosen to bring artefacts that were explicitly meant for that purpose.

“Hmm. Still, who’s going to complain if I don’t do it, or if I slack off?” Claud muttered, before shaking his head. He could at least sympathise with the intruders that were intending to enter this new world in the making — it was likely that their own world had been destroyed, or they were forced to flee for some reason — but those parasites that seemed so wrong and exuded a violent air of destruction were another thing altogether.

Putting aside Operation Slack Off for a moment, Claud examined himself in detail. The twenty-four hours of constant slashing had helped him to master the horizontal slash, if nothing else. Even when he closed his eyes for a short break, Claud could feel the same movement seizing control of his body, and it took him everything he had to resist slashing out now.

There was something paradoxical about how his body both yearned for rest and to continue slashing from right to left, but Claud’s mind was a bit too eroded right now to think too hard on that subject.

He touched his throat once, and then pulled out a small artefact. Other than a plethora of defensive artefacts, Claud had also prepared a bunch of lifestyle artefacts, just in case he couldn’t relax for a long period of time. In his case, he had a never-ending canteen of water, but it would have been nice if it was a never-ending canteen of fizzy drinks instead.

The waves of enemies had ceased to pop out from the rift entirely, but Claud knew that they could return at any time. Instead of staring at the stupid thing like a lovestruck fool pining for his lover, it would be far more fruitful to just pull out one of Schwarz’s HELPS — High Energy, Low Portion Servings — and nibble on it instead.

Plopping down on the ground, Claud took out one of the bars that Schwarz had innovated long ago, and then stared at the world below. He roughly knew where the Lacuna Dukedom was, so looking at it was equivalent to looking at Lily.

Staring contentedly at the world below, Claud worried about Lily, who was definitely staring at the moon whenever she got the chance. He could see her lying down on the bed, the three little shapes attempting to comfort her by huddling close to her neck, and…

“…If only I can do something to tell her that I’m fine,” Claud muttered, before a small idea appeared in his head.

Was it really impossible for him to do that? After all, Absolute One was overwhelmingly powerful. If he were to use it with Presence Nullification when everyone was tussling with the next wave, and if he chose to fire the tremendous outsurge of mana at an angle where no one taking the Trial could see it…

It was very possible.

After all, everyone was standing on the same floating platform. If he moved to the middle of the spoke and fired at a slightly depressed angle, he could send a gigantic lance of mana hurtling towards the horizon.

Anyone looking up at the moon would promptly see it.

“Hmm. Am I a genius or what?” Claud rubbed his hands. At any case, he had more than enough Presence Nullifications to go around; even if he fired it off, no one would know that it was Claud who did it in the first place.

Biting down on the overwhelmingly sweet bar, Claud shot a longing gaze at the Lacuna Dukedom again, and then turned his eyes to the rift. He was now eagerly waiting for when those monsters poured out once more — he would be able to fire off a nice signal that way.

Chomping down on the sweet bar of whatever, Claud used a Refresher and took another swig from his never-ending canteen. His arms were still feeling like a flattened Moon, but other than that, he was quite fine. The same went for the other Bearers of Destiny and the random extras that had showed up for Phase 2, who had used various means to kill off the tide of monsters.

They were definitely more prepared to kill than Claud…which, considering his ultimate goal here, felt a bit ironic.

Still, would my use of Absolute One tip the other Bearers of Destiny off? If I use it now, would they take measures against it? Of course, they won’t know who did it, but they’d definitely be afraid of such an outburst of mana, right?

He pondered on this very important topic for a few seconds, and then shrugged. At the rate things were going, the other Bearers of Destiny would probably off themselves eventually. Besides, there wasn’t a time limit as to when the Omen Mission expired, so he could probably wait for a few thousand years or something.

Besides, Claud was beginning to think that he didn’t need to kill every last Bearer of Destiny to become a nine-folder. With Crown helping him, he just needed another 1200 years of lifespan, give or take a couple hundred, to attain the majestic heights of a nine-folder.

While such a thought was impossible for many, many people, Claud still had a veritable stash of lifestones and Pure-Life Gems, the latter of which he hadn’t used at all. Pure-Life Gems also increased the amount of lifeforce they harboured with every passing day, turning them into reusable sources of life for him.

There was no need to kill everyone.

Claud looked at his sword for a moment. Was that his logical side speaking? Or was that the side that wanted to make friends with Seven and Thirteen?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out either. What did he want here?

Claud took a deep breath and finished off the HELPS. He was no stranger to killing — he had killed his own fair share of people, especially when he was younger. And yet…

“Whatever.” Claud took a deep breath and took another swig. “I’ll have another eleven days to think about it, yes?”

He got up from the ground as the familiar feeling of something that shouldn’t be there pulsed out from the rift, and white things squirmed outwards a heartbeat later. Claud stared at the familiar composition of white, chitinous monsters for a few seconds, before picking up his sword.

The others did their own pre-battle rituals, but the only thing Claud had in mind was how to send a good message to Lily without everyone else knowing that he was the person behind said message. His plan was quite easy, to be honest.

The first step, naturally, was to wait for the right timing. It would be around twelve hours into the battle or something like that, when everyone’s senses were dulled from the mindless hacking and slashing. He would then use the Presence Nullification skillstrip and Absolute One at the same time. After that, he would form a lance of pure mana, one that was nice, huge and long, and then hold on to it for nine seconds.

After that, at the very last moment, Claud would hurl the spear and resume his slaughter of the enemies. There was a very high chance that someone would only notice the oddity a few seconds after he threw the damn thing far away, which would buy him enough to put on a show…

Of course, for this to happen, he would need to emulate Emperor Grandis and stand in the middle of the spoke or something, but Claud didn’t mind. And to prevent himself from being overrun in the ten seconds — killing or doing anything else would dispel Presence Nullification — Claud would need to set up some barriers to keep those things at bay.

Overall, however, it was definitely a good way of dealing with things.

Rubbing his hands, Claud walked towards the centre of his spoke, the sword in his hand ready to slash out repeatedly once more.