"… He could really die… I could really kill him… I can watch his death! I can be the one who kills him!"
The voice became more and more distorted. In the end, his words devolved into a conniving laughter.
The other two voices remained completely silent. Their deranged companion of so many years rarely hit such severe lows. To them, this child couldn't be that man. He was simply a youth who happened to inherit the same abilities. Yet, this alone was enough to set their companion off to this degree.
Dyon slowly rose from the ground. Despite his bloodied appearance, his visage kept an indifferent look even through the curtains of blood that drenched his forehead, cheeks and chin.
"So annoying… What a lunatic."
The voice wasn't coming from Famine. In fact, Dyon had no idea where it was coming from. It just seemed to project from everywhere, but there were no obvious arrays anywhere.
Dyon wasn't one to feel despair, so he didn't have any fierce reactions to what was happening. In fact, he was still inexplicably confident in his victory. He was only calmly analyzing the information he did have.
'This world didn't allow [Titan Emperor's Will], but it did allow the burning of my soul… The pressure didn't increase after I began to burn it, but rather, lessened…
'This qi seems to be perfectly fused with a form of Faith… No, a will…? Maybe something in between…?'
Dyon was slowly coming to understand why this qi was so powerful. In his world, qi started with having many branches, each with their own special uses. However, as time went on, it became streamlined, becoming known as 'conventional qi'.
It seemed that this world went in the complete opposite direction. Instead of fusing their qi as one to create a jack of all trades, they became more and more specialized, eventually creating this higher-level qi that threatened even Dyon despite only being of the Lower Celestial Grade.
When Dyon connected the existence of this horseman to Famine, he suddenly understood something else.
This qi was tied to the 'Faith' of hunger and starvation. This was the best way Dyon could put it. It was as though it had gathered up all negative emotions of famine and concentrated it into the form of this qi!
This was why Dyon felt it felt like a 'will' at the same time!
'Qi like this can be created too…?'
Faith had always been an enigmatic concept… It could decide everything from the strength of a constitution based on the feats of its previous owners, to even the strength of a nation… But what if one tapped into the essence of famine… or the essence of war… of death… of conquest…?
Thinking about the countless iterations, the countless thoughts, the countless feelings combined into one… Dyon almost broke out into a cold sweat. If one could tap into such power… Just how strong would they come to be?!
Endless possibilities spun in Dyon's mind, but unfortunately, he couldn't execute any of them… Because he couldn't wrap his head around how this qi worked! The worst part of it all was that his Immortal Sense had been severely downgraded to the very first moment he awakened Divine Sense. He couldn't analyze this qi down to its purest form at all.
"This world suppression pisses me off…" Dyon mumbled under his breath.
As though he didn't notice the charging Famine, he stripped the top of his robes from his body, tearing them apart and letting them fall to the ground.
Because of the odd nature of this famine qi, his clothes were completely unscathed. However, they had become nothing more than a hindrance to him.
His clothes were created to withstand battle between Higher Existences, yet he didn't even have the strength of a powerful celestial right now. Why waste his stamina carrying them around?
In a moment, he had morphed from an Emperor in embroidered robes, to a lax young man wearing a pair of black sweatpants.
He suddenly felt incredibly comfortable, a smile playing his lips as though this was the only state he could relax in. For an instant, he couldn't even bother to care that his skin was visibly greying before his eyes.
"Alright, Famine." Dyon's bȧrė feet stretched across the marbled floors, feeling the ancient runes etched in silver glide along his soles.
His sword was brandished before his, his demeanor incomparably calm and confident. One would think he hadn't spent the last ten minutes being savagely beaten.
In an unknown space, the three voices trembled once more.
"Those weird lower garments… It can't…"
If such a scene was shown to others… The sight of three rulers of a world trembling at the sight of what amounted to a few threads of fabric formed into a comfortable pair of pants… maybe it would be seen as a joke.
Such powerful beings, cowering at the sight of sweatpants. What else could it be if not a joke?
But, for them, it felt as though time had slowed to a crawl. Even the voice constantly calling for Dyon's death truly did not dare to utter a single other word.
Dyon, however, couldn't be bothered to care about their weird actions. His sights were set on cutting Famine down.