Chapter 340: Self-Destruction
The lake detonated with a deafening roar. A massive geyser of water erupted high into the sky, tearing through the tranquil surface and sending a torrential downpour over the surrounding town.
Jackal, caught completely off guard by the blast, was instantly drenched. He stood there looking pathetic, his yellow hair plastered to his skin like a drowned rat.
Yet, as the chaotic spray rained down, a bizarre phenomenon occurred. The cascading water stopped completely, suspended in mid-air, just millimeters before it could touch Ren's clothes.
Not a single drop stained his pristine attire. It was as if an invisible, impassable wall separated him from the rest of the physical world.
"This guy..." Jackal muttered, his slitted eyes narrowing in sheer disbelief.
The demon's expression was grim, and his palms were trembling uncontrollably at his sides. If he hadn't reacted on pure instinct, using his Curse power to redirect the kinetic impact of the explosion just a moment ago, his internal organs would have been liquefied.
"I can't let this guy keep attacking," Jackal thought, grinding his sharp teeth together. "I need to turn him into ash right now!"
"Explosive Spiral!" Jackal bellowed, his voice raw with demonic fury as he violently swept his hand forward.
Boom—!
The very foundations of the street ruptured violently. The ground directly beneath Ren's feet erupted in a blinding detonation, forming a massive, twisting spiral of concussive force.
Scorching heat and shattered cobblestones were whipped into a deadly vortex. The blast wave devoured everything within a thirty-meter radius, turning the beautiful lakeside promenade into a smoldering crater.
Bang—!
A secondary shockwave spread out from the center of the fiery explosion, kicking up a thick cloud of dust. Jackal sneered, expecting to see charred remains.
Instead, as the smoke slowly cleared, Ren reappeared. He was casually standing in the exact same spot, his posture relaxed, completely unscathed.
"You...?" Jackal gasped, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. "How is this possible? Why weren't you injured by my explosion?!"
"It's simple," Ren replied, his voice calm and entirely devoid of exertion. "Your explosion didn't hit me."
"Impossible!" Jackal barked, spit flying from his fangs. "I saw it engulf you!"
"You don't believe me?" Ren smiled faintly, lifting his arm. "Then reach out your hand."
Ren held his open palm forward, casually inviting the demon to strike. Sensing that Ren had no intention of dodging or setting up a magical trap, Jackal's eyes glinted with malice.
He slowly brought his own palm closer, gathering highly condensed, volatile Curse power in his fingertips, fully preparing to launch a point-blank sneak attack.
Just as he was about to make physical contact and detonate the mage's arm, he realized something was dreadfully wrong. His palm stopped abruptly in mid-air, hovering just an inch away from Ren's skin.
"What's going on?!" Jackal roared, pushing with all his monstrous strength.
It was like wading through rapidly hardening concrete. No matter how much force he applied, his hand refused to close the final gap.
"This is my Limitless Cursed Technique," Ren explained leisurely, his eyes locking onto the struggling demon. "It's not that I'm standing still. It's that as you get closer to me, your speed becomes slower and slower."
Ren slightly tilted his head, watching Jackal strain against the invisible barrier.
"It decelerates until your movement is imperceptibly slow," Ren continued. "So, while it looks like your attack hit me from a distance, there's actually an infinitely small space between us. It is a chasm you can never cross."
To emphasize his point, Ren lazily wiggled his fingers, completely unfazed by the deadly Curse power sparking right in front of him.
Jackal's face suddenly became horribly distorted. The veins on his forehead bulged as his pride as an elite Etherious shattered.
"I don't believe it!!" the demon shrieked, his voice distorting into a guttural, beastly howl. "A mere human dares to think he can surpass us demons!!"
A suffocating aura of malevolence erupted from Jackal's body. His physical form began to swell rapidly, thick, coarse yellow fur violently sprouting across his expanding skin.
Bones cracked and realigned as he grew significantly larger. In an instant, the humanoid demon transformed into a massive, muscular, bipedal yellow wolf, radiating a terrifying amount of murderous intent.
"W-What is that?!" Michello stammered, his legs giving out beneath him.
The former Magic Council member and his granddaughter, Michelia, were both terrified, clinging to each other as they witnessed Jackal's true Etherious Form. The sheer pressure of the demon's aura made it hard for them to breathe.
"Disappear!!" Jackal roared, his massive, clawed fist tearing through the air to deliver a devastating punch straight at Ren.
Ren simply stood still, his hands resting comfortably in his pockets.
Jackal's massive fist ground to a sudden halt exactly twenty centimeters in front of Ren's face. The kinetic force generated a gust of wind that rustled Ren's hair, but the physical blow never landed.
No matter how hard Jackal pushed, his bulging, fur-covered arm remained motionless, utterly unable to advance a single millimeter forward.
"Die!" Jackal snarled.
Boom—!
A violent, catastrophic explosion erupted directly from Jackal's fist, activating his Curse at point-blank range. A massive sphere of fire and destruction swallowed them both.
As the smoke from the explosion cleared, Ren was still standing there. There wasn't even a speck of ash on his clothes.
"I told you, you can't touch me at all," Ren sighed, looking almost bored by the display. "If I hadn't been unfamiliar with your Curse at first, you wouldn't have even earned the right to scratch me."
"I don't believe it!!" Jackal roared again, completely abandoning all reason.
He swung his massive fists at Ren repeatedly, launching a relentless barrage of strikes. Lefts, rights, hooks, and overhead slams rained down upon the young mage, but to no effect whatsoever.
Ren simply stood there in the center of the storm. Jackal's rapid-fire attacks continuously struck the invisible infinity, never once reaching their target.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!!!
Explosions erupted continuously, chaining together in a deafening symphony of destruction. Jackal was burning through a massive amount of his Curse Power, desperately trying to break through the anomaly.
The surrounding ground was blasted entirely beyond recognition. Buildings were reduced to rubble, and the earth was scorched black, yet Ren remained entirely unscathed in the eye of the inferno.
Pant, pant, pant!
Jackal finally stopped, his massive chest heaving as he gasped for air.
"Who... who on earth are you?" Jackal demanded, staring intently at Ren with a mixture of hatred and newfound dread.
As an elite Etherious demon born from the Books of Zeref, he had slaughtered countless humans. Yet, he had never encountered such a bizarre, terrifyingly untouchable opponent.
"As expected of Mr. Ren! He's amazing!" Michelia cheered from behind the safety of some rubble.
She already greatly admired Ren for stepping in to save them, and seeing him effortlessly humiliate the monster only deepened her awe.
"Incredible! Truly incredible! He really is the First Seat of the Ten Wizard Saints!" Michello exclaimed, tears of relief streaming down his wrinkled face.
Seeing Ren withstand so many of Jackal's devastating attacks without lifting a finger, Michello knew his life was finally safe. The old politician couldn't help but cheer loudly, his previous cowardice momentarily forgotten.
"First Seat of the Ten Wizard Saints?!" Jackal's expression drastically changed upon hearing those words.
The Ten Wizard Saints were officially recognized by the Magic Council as the ten strongest mages on the entire continent of Ishgar.
Although the demons of Tartaros looked down on humanity as fragile insects, even Jackal had to admit that the Wizard Saints were the elite of the elite. Each one possessed formidable, world-altering magical power.
And the young man standing so casually before him wasn't just a member; he was the absolute peak. The First Seat.
"So you're the First Seat of the Ten Wizard Saints of Ishgar," Jackal growled, his breathing ragged. "It seems my utter defeat here wasn't in vain."
A twisted, fanatical smile slowly spread across the demon's canine face.
"But kid, don't think you've won yet. I'll take you down with me!!"
Suddenly, highly unstable magic fluctuations emanated from deep within Jackal's body. Complex, glowing golden beams of light shot up into the sky, creating massive explosive arrays that lit up the entire ruined town.
"What... what's happening?!" Michello shrieked, the color completely draining from his face.
The hum of the gathering energy was suffocating. It felt as if a miniature sun was about to detonate right in front of them.
"Quick! Kill him now! Stop whatever he's doing!" Terrified, Michello immediately began frantically urging Ren to finish Jackal off.
"It's useless!" Jackal laughed maniacally, his body glowing brighter by the second. "This is a self-destruction! You, this whole town, and everyone in it will die!"
Jackal threw his head back, embracing his impending death with fanatical glee. "And once my body is destroyed, I will undergo Rebirth in Hell's Core!"
"Self-destruction?!" Michello and Michelia were both frightened out of their wits, huddling together as the golden light grew blinding.
"In my presence, you don't even have the right to choose self-destruction," Ren said coldly.
Ren raised his right hand, casually crossing his index and middle fingers.
Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void.
In an instant, Ren expanded his innate Domain. To Michello and Michelia, the world suddenly warped.
It looked like a massive, pitch-black sphere centered on Ren was rapidly expanding outward. The dark barrier swallowed the ruins, the glowing arrays, and Jackal himself, stopping mere inches before it could consume the cowering grandfather and granddaughter.
"What is this?!" Michello whispered, staring at the swirling, cosmic surface of the black sphere.
Inside the Domain, the world was a vast, terrifyingly beautiful cosmos.
Jackal floated in the endless void, suddenly feeling an infinite stream of information flooding directly into his mind. He saw the birth of stars, the concept of a single atom, the entire history of the world, all crashing into his brain simultaneously.
The sheer overload caused his brain to completely freeze. The volatile Curse power—which had been mere milliseconds away from triggering the city-wiping self-destruction—stopped immediately.
"What happened? My Curse stopped?" Jackal tried to think, his consciousness struggling to process the infinite stimuli.
"I can't see anything... I can't feel anything... No, I can see everything. I can feel everything."
Jackal's eyes rolled back. The information was endless, a torrential flood of absolute knowledge. Because his brain was processing everything in the universe at once, his body couldn't execute a single command. He was entirely paralyzed.
Clap!
Ren stepped casually through the cosmos and placed his hand gently on Jackal's frozen shoulder.
"This is the inner side of Limitless," Ren spoke, his voice echoing from everywhere and nowhere. "'Perception' and 'Transmission' force you to perform infinite operations just to complete the basic act of 'living'."
Ren looked down at the drooling, catatonic demon with a gaze devoid of pity.
"It's ironic, isn't it? You've received everything the universe has to offer, but now you can do absolutely nothing. You can only slowly wait for death."
Ren's eyes glinted with a calculating light.
"But you're still useful to me, so you get to live. If not for that, I would have erased you from existence long ago."
[Target Incapacitated: Jackal of the Nine Demon Gates.]
Whoosh—!
With a thought, Ren deactivated the Domain. The infinite cosmos shattered like fragile glass, and the black sphere vanished into thin air.
Ren reappeared in the clear sight of Michello and Michelia, standing over Jackal's unconscious, twitching body. The deadly golden arrays that had threatened the town were completely gone.
"Mr. Ren!" Michelia cried out, shedding tears of joy as she saw her savior unharmed.
"Is... is it over? Ren, what's wrong with this guy?" Michello asked, slowly crawling forward and looking at Jackal's motionless body with deep caution.
"It's nothing," Ren replied, rolling his shoulders to loosen up. "I'm just letting him rest for a bit. His brain is fried. He won't be able to move for a long while."
"What? This guy isn't dead?!"
Hearing that Ren had actually spared the terrifying demon, Michello's brief moment of gratitude completely vanished. The old politician immediately began jumping up and down in a demanding frenzy.
"What are you doing?! Hurry up and kill him! Kill him! I command you to kill him right this instant!" Michello screeched, pointing a trembling finger at the defeated Jackal.
"Shut up."
Ren didn't yell. He didn't raise his voice. He simply turned his head, and his cold, piercing gaze swept over Michello.
The sheer, overwhelming pressure behind those two words felt like a physical weight. Michello immediately snapped his mouth shut in absolute terror, his heart skipping a beat.
Under that chilling stare, the old man suddenly remembered his current standing. He was no longer an elite Magic Council Member who could wield unchecked authority, pull strings from the shadows, and mistreat guild Mages at his leisure. He was just a helpless old man.
"I'm returning to my guild now," Ren stated, his tone brooking no argument as he easily hoisted Jackal's heavy body over his shoulder.
Ren looked back at the terrified duo. "I'll give you two choices. One: you come with me back to Fairy Tail for protection. Two: you run away on your own."
Ren turned away, preparing to leave. "However, if you choose the latter, I won't care what happens to you after that. Choose for yourself."
"I... I... I choose to go to Fairy Tail..." Michello stammered out quickly.
Deep down, Michello absolutely loathed Fairy Tail. To the Council, they were always a bunch of destructive hooligans causing trouble and giving the magical authorities endless headaches.
But at this moment, staring at the ruined town and the unconscious demon, he had to swallow his pride and bow his head. He had witnessed this young man's monstrous strength firsthand.
If Tartaros sent another assassin and he was found alone, there was zero chance of survival. It was infinitely better to follow Ren. At least this mage was undeniably powerful, and those demonic assassins were clearly no match for him.
Despite his arrogance, Michello was a politician. He could easily distinguish which was more important: his pathetic pride, or his life.
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