"Holy shit!?"
Thousands of miles away, in Bell's hometown, the spectators were utterly stunned. Especially when they saw Bell personally dig out Thanatos's Divine Core—their eyes bulged like fried eggs, practically jumping out of their sockets.
Even Hera, who already knew this was meant to be a godslayer act, never imagined Bell was doing it for real. He was genuinely planning to kill Thanatos right under the gaze of every god watching.
"Wait—what about the Authority? That thing is bound to a god's soul. Even that kid said it himself: a god's immortality comes from the connection between their soul and their Authority. Now that he wants to kill Thanatos completely, he has to sever that connection."
"But… how could that even be possible?"
Hera couldn't imagine any way such a thing could be done.
Yet just as she spoke, Bell on the projection detonated the words:
"But at this point, it's not impossible to clean them up."
"Just like the God Ikelos I killed before."
BOOM!?
These words struck Zeus and Hera like a thunderclap.
So before Thanatos, there had already been a precedent—Ikelos.
Hera stared blankly.
"Is something like that… really possible?"
The death of a god was no joke.
This wasn't the same as killing a god on the surface and sending them back to Tenkai. This was true annihilation—body and soul alike wiped out.
And in truth, it wasn't only Hera and Zeus who were unsettled. Every god atop Babel Tower was asking the same question.
"How did that child pull this off?"
How could someone kill a god when the soul and Authority were directly intertwined?
"He just said it—he killed Ikelos before."
"Ikelos is truly gone. Even in Tenkai, there's no trace of his soul. That is death in the truest sense."
Ikelos's death was a shock of unprecedented scale to the gods of Orario.
A true god had died—completely, soul and life extinguished together. In the past hundreds of millions of years, such a thing had never happened.
"So how did this child sever a god's soul from their Authority entirely?"
On this matter, even the gods were clueless.
After all, the bond between a god's soul and their Authority was unimaginably tight. Even gods themselves could not alter it.
So how could a child of the lower realms accomplish what even gods could not?
"He killed Ikelos…"
An overwhelming unease spread across Thanatos's soul-form.
"That kind of thing… how could it be possible…"
"Hm~ As expected of God Thanatos. It's true that killing Ikelos involved a bit of luck. But his existence did help me answer a question."
That incident had been a stroke of luck. At the time, Bell's suspicion about the identity of "the World" was only a guess.
But Ikelos's death confirmed Bell's theory.
Which was why Bell said Ikelos's death allowed him to verify his assumptions—
And finally deduce the identity of "the World."
"The connection between a god's soul and their Authority gave me quite a headache at first. But back then, I also came up with a far more extreme method."
Every god listening sharpened their attention as Bell continued.
"I… at that time, guessed the true identity of the 'World.'"
"And my guess—my hope—was heard. The 'World' responded to me directly. That was why I was able to truly kill the god Ikelos."
"But this time, I don't need to use such extreme means, nor do I need the 'World' to help me in that way."
"After all, isn't there a much simpler way to force an Authority to separate from a god's soul?"
Bell spoke with a faint smile as he looked at the blood-soaked Divine Core in his hand.
"A god's soul was never immortal to begin with. The part that's truly indestructible is the Authority. If a god's soul isn't connected to its Authority, then it, too, can eventually be destroyed."
"So what actually keeps a soul from dying is the Authority. And because Authority is part of the World itself, it's something that cannot be allowed to fail."
"Well~ destroying an Authority outright isn't easy, and honestly, I wouldn't bother with something so exhausting and pointless. If I actually tried, a certain someone might punch me square in the face."
Thinking of how he used to get scolded as a child in his previous life, Bell instinctively rubbed his head, a faint phantom ache surfacing.
"If destroying the Authority is impossible, then we just make the Authority sever its own connection to the god's soul."
"Envy."
At Bell's voice, a layer of pitch-black mist formed around the blood-stained Divine Core, beginning to corrode it.
In just a blink, the Divine Core had already been fully corrupted, and that corruption started spreading toward the god's soul.
"Wait… what is this!?"
Thanatos immediately sensed something wrong inside his soul.
A black substance began crawling up his soul, eating through it far faster than he expected.
But once the corruption reached about one-third, the speed noticeably slowed.
Thanatos could tell the black substance was devouring his soul, and although he had no countermeasure, seeing the pace slow let him relax—just a little.
But that relief didn't last long. Bell's voice made his soul clench in fear once more.
"Still not enough?"
"Gluttony."
The slowed corrosion suddenly surged forward, devouring Thanatos's soul even faster than before.
"Wait!"
"Wait—stop—!"
Once more than half of his soul had been consumed, Thanatos knew he was in danger.
His mind was filled with violent envy toward the other gods, and a ravenous craving for the fragile souls of ordinary mortals.
Thanatos knew this was bad—disastrous—but he couldn't suppress the emotions flooding his mind.
As sin consumed Thanatos's soul, the Authority connected to him sensed a kind of threat.
But unfortunately, this was not a threat to its existence, so the Authority could barely interfere.
And emotions were something it couldn't eliminate. That lay far deeper than anything Authority could reach. Faced with the state of Thanatos's soul, the Authority was utterly powerless.
But when the Authority sensed that Thanatos's soul was on the verge of being completely corrupted, it could no longer remain idle.
As if reacting to some built-in safeguard, the moment Thanatos's soul threatened to contaminate the Authority itself, the Authority automatically detached from him.
Bell immediately reached out and seized the severed Authority.
"See? That's all it takes."
...
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow me on p-@-treon.
[email protected]/PinkSnake (100 Chapters Ahead).
You can also follow as a free member to read a few advanced chapters.