Chapter 145: 145. “Let the Judgment begin.”

Arima absorbed restlessly. He had lost the count ages ago. He didn't know if it had been days, weeks, months, or even years since he began. He wasn't able to concentrate on that as each time he would take one orb, he’d experience an entire lifetime.

This kind of thing couldn't really be measured but it was like Arima had lived tens of thousands of years already and had also acquired the equivalent quantity of knowledge.

"How long?" In the end, one day, Arima asked his soul companions since they were able to keep their focus in here. His voice sounded a lot colder and darker than before and it could have been worse if Night and Karma hadn’t done their best to ‘reroute’ him.

"{…eleven years,}" Night answered with a solemn tone.

"{I think you integrated with almost seventy million of them,}" Karma added and Arima groaned. "{If we take an average of eighty years per life, you assimilated…}" She paused. The number she was about to give was too shocking, even to the point she wondered if she had messed up in her calculus.

"5.6 billion," Arima muttered and Karma fell silent. He looked at the orb he had in his hand and then looked around him. The only light was coming from the sphere he was holding in his hand and nothing else. "So this the last one, huh?"

"5.6 billion years…that's just what was poured in my head, not what I managed to keep. But I still gained colossal knowledge and inherited a hefty load of emotions and memories," Arima uttered and crushed the orb before absorbing everything in it.

The next instant, his vision warped and he ended up in front of Triens again. Malum was also beside him. But now, both of them were far from being as casual as they were at the start.

Even Malum who knew that he had absorbed more spheres than Arima wasn't happy at all about the result. Only Triens was looking at them with a friendly smile. "Congratulations, you finished the first step," he announced.

"Let me reassure you, this was the longest part of the Life Judgement. But keep in mind though," he paused. "It's definitely not the hardest," he said and the two in front of him didn't react well. They spent eleven years under constant mental strain and that wasn't something they wanted to hear.

"Now, what will come next is quite special," Triens continued. "I think you realized something by now. What you went through is not something that needs you to be oblivious about it.”

"What will come next is the reason why the people around you kept the Life Judgment's steps a secret," Triens revealed and snapped his fingers. Beside him, the figure of a woman slowly started to appear and continued to become clearer and clearer until her appearance was fully materialized.

Both Malum’s and Arima's faltered when they saw her. That sweet smile was something that neither of them could ever forget. She was one of the persons who affected Arima's life the most.

Scatha was the one standing in front of them.

After her, it was Tieria's turn to make her appearance. But this wasn't all of it. A lot more people materialized within this dark dimension. Each one of them was emitting a light that pierced the darkness.

Men, women, children, the elderly, and even pets. That immense group was continuously growing in number; thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions... At that point already, both Arima and Malum were feeling extremely agitated. They felt crushed by their own emotions.

Sadness, anger, pity, regret, fear, hope… All of these people in front of them, they recognized every single individual. They were all lost dear ones from the parallel lives they had just absorbed.

Arima shed one tear. This reaction alone showed how powerful the emotions he was feeling were. Malum wasn’t an exception. He was gritting his teeth so hard that it sounded like his jaw was going to break.

Even if he was a counterpart made of a dark side, he still had a human mind. Truthfully, his whole being had been born from Arima’s past grief. Each time he looked at Tieria and Scatha particularly, his entire being threatened to collapse.

It was also without counting the millions of people around. On top of that, both Arima's and Malum's memories were connected together. So, even if they collected the orbs separately and one of them was now stronger than the other, they both had the same memories.

Thus, they were feeling the exact same magnitude of pain. The joined pain of millions of different versions of them.

"I'm sorry," Triens surprisingly apologized. "Not for what I just did… but for what I'm going to do."

His smile had faded and it was now replaced by an expression of genuine empathy.

He walked past Arima and Malum before vanishing. Just as his figure disappeared, he whispered one thing, "Let the Judgment begin."

After he said that, the millions of people started screaming and die one after the other in nasty and cruel ways. Beheaded, stabbed, killed, from diseases, even accelerated aging and suicide.

Arima and Malum witnessed everything with a vacant expression, unable to do anything, they were both standing on the line between madness and despair. But when they saw Tieria and Scatha smile at them, and die in the next instant, the world they were seeing turned into pure darkness.

They had lost their minds.

*****************************************

In Hell, in the battlefield welcoming devils and gods, everything froze. A deafening noise boomed from the sphere of life force and in the next second, cries and screams of despair resounded.

It was the fusion of Malum's and Arima's voices of agony and sorrow. Everyone stopped moving, no matter who it was, they felt the despair of that howl penetrating their minds.

Lilis and Lanya lowered their heads and covered their mouths as tears fell down their cheeks. But although they were the most affected, they were not alone.

"Huh?" Gabriel exclaimed as she touched her tears with her finger. Michael also had covered his face and most of the other angels, who were very sensitive to emotions, were crying unconsciously.

Even Utain wavered. "Fuck!" He cursed and shook his head to get those feelings out.

"The Cry of a Life Hunter…" Baphomet mumbled. His expression didn't show any changes but he had to admit that his mind was being affected. "But…"

"This one is too clamorous,” Hades said. "A Life Hunter's Cry is when he begins the main part of the Life Judgement. It is supposed to prove to the world that nothing can lead them astray; because a Life Hunter’s pain is greater."

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"But this is way too much," Poseidon spoke. "I can't even fathom how overwhelmed this Hunter's spirit should be right now. No matter how strong one's mind is, I can't believe that there is someone who is able to get through this," he stated.

“He is doomed to fail."

"This…" Karaskan was aghast. Even he couldn't smile or laugh under these crushing feelings. "This is too odd," he muttered and suddenly looked behind him. Miles away, the temple holding Pandora, shined strongly.

"With the Cry alone… Pandora is satisfied?" Karaskan was stunned. When the Cry finally stopped, Karaskan gasped and smirked before flying away. "(Who is he?)" He wondered.

"That was unexpected…" In the center of his volcano, Ifrit murmured to himself.

Chulainn retrieved his breath when Arima's voice faded away. "…I don't have words for that."

Lilis wiped her tears and looked up with a dark countenance. "This is the beginning of the Judgment. It will test him to see if he can survive. Firstly, comes the strongest pain; what Arima is going through right now. Secondly, comes the strongest… rage."

Lanya also looked up with worried eyes. "So that's why we couldn't tell him?" She asked out loud.

"…Of course," startling her, Utain answered her question. "If he had known it beforehand, he would have either refused to go through the Life Judgment, or his mind would have been destroyed by his parallel timelines while he was collecting them," he explained while glaring at the formation in the sky.

"I know this well. The trial of rage is the main reason why a Life Hunter should stay ignorant. Because a test simply becomes flawed when you know about it. If you had told him, he would have failed the Life Judgment with a hundred percent chance," he added and looked back at his three opponents with a smirk. His fangs were sticking out.

"But now, considering the Cry we just heard, he is likely to die anyway," he cackled. "In any case, you made me use my Manifestation. I’ll be sure to kill you," his tone darkened considerably.

At one moment, he was standing on the ground and in the next, he was kicking Chulainn in the stomach. The massive Hellhound coughed blood and even lost contact with the earth.

Utain scoffed and his claws were coated with wind blades. He struck Chulainn with them and provoked a huge explosion of which the shockwave sent Kerberos flying.

Right after, Lanya and Lilis appeared behind Utain and attacked him at the same time. But the werewolf didn't even look behind as the blows landed on his back. They hadn’t even scratched him. He grabbed the two girls and flung them toward Chulainn.

He then planted his claws in the ground and infused his mana into it. His veins bulged and his legs were helplessly buried under the pressure. Ten miles away from him, the ground started cracking.

Utain used even more strength and the ground began to rise. After a moment, a ten-miles-wide 'boulder' was pulled off the ground, singlehandedly carried by Utain.

He smirked before throwing the giant rock at Chulainn, Lilis, and Lanya. The strength with which he threw the stone was enough to ignite it as if it was a meteorite. Additionally, a magic formation was hidden inside of it, ready to explode and destroy anything it would touch.

"Lanya, Lilis! Help me out!" Chulainn shouted and started chanting something at high speed. Lilis and Lanya then began to chant something else while supporting him with their mana.

"(My Soul Manifestation isn't enough to block this. Same for Lilis'. We can only gamble.)"

"[Ipsum clauderent] (Close yourself)," Chulainn started chanting for one really dangerous magic.

"[Captionem frangere solvere eliminare] (Trap, crush, destroy, eliminate)."
"[Origo tantum perdere] (Your only motive is to destroy)."
"[Esses nisi quod ad rem] (Your existence is only for that purpose)."

Chulainn huffed as he was about to say the keyword. His whole body was aching but he was doing his best to not lose control. He gave one last effort and concluded the incantation.

"[Second Destruction Art, Cavum Nigrum] (Black Hole)."

A dark purple marble formed in front of him and quickly flew toward the boulder which Utain had thrown.

The marble promptly shattered. A strong attraction immediately commenced. Lilis and Lanya immediately cast their magic to shield themselves and retreat.

The black marble became a towering black hole within a second. When the 'meteorite' was inbound, the Second Black Art was already bigger than it. The mountain-like rock was sucked in by the vortex and crushed in a matter of seconds. Even the explosion that was supposed to occur was entirely suppressed.

"What?" Utain exclaimed in shock.

The black hole was still drawing in everything around it even after the meteorite had been dealt with. Everyone on the battlefield felt the vacuum pulling them. Not only that, the black hole did something extremely perturbing. It changed shape to resemble a sort of humanoid creature.

It then disappeared and reappeared in front of Utain as if it had teleported. It extended its ‘hand’ and Utain was instantly caught by the attraction, and no matter how much he resisted, he was slowly getting closer.

"Why is it so strong?!" He shouted and then howled as he faded inside the black hole.

"{Hey! Stop this quickly!}" Gabriel protected her weaker troops from the gravitational field and then bellowed directly inside Chulainn's mind.

When the Hellhound received the instruction, he stuttered, "{I-I can't stop it…}”

"What?!" Gabriel completely forgot about the telepathic link and shouted out loud.

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