THE GOD EATER

On the other hand, Black Chain had to worry about what to do. At this point, his greatest challenge was reducing incoming Entropy.

He didn’t want to lose any more pathways, but in his current situation, losing pathways is not exactly the worst thing possible. The worst possible outcome in his situation is gaining enough Entropy to kill his true body even with all of his pathways intact.

In the bid to avoid incurring more debts of Entropy, he had to stop accepting more Entropy from his avatars. This was why he gave up on the Forging Pathway.

Of course, he had hoped that by giving up on the Forging Pathway, he would be able to recruit Tepid Scholar and have the other Dao Lords help. But the main reason he gave up on the Forging Pathway was that he needed to give up on something, so he chose to give up on a Grand Dao in favor of losing a Cosmic Dao.

As it turned out, his choice was the wrong one. Tepid Scholar refused to help him, and it seemed he would still lose the Cosmic Dao.

Right now, the black monkey is the greatest source of Entropy. The amount of Entropy produced from the death avatar was the combination of the Entropy from the forging avatar and one other avatar.

This wasn’t just because the dragon, who was beating the avatar, was twice as powerful as Tepid Scholar and one other Dao Lord. It was mainly because the Devouring Supreme Metac, which the dragon was using, had a size of 81 units, while Tepid Scholar and the others were using Supreme Metacs with a size of 49 units.

Now that the Forging Pathway was gone, he had indeed stopped taking on more Entropy from Tepid Scholar. But the dragon was still pounding away and causing Entropy to pour into him.

His existence is a pristine machine made of interlocking gears turning and moving in sync with each other. Entropy is like sand pouring into the teeth of the gears. The sand is causing friction, which is causing wear and tear in his system.

Once the wear and tear reaches a certain limit, the gears will become misaligned or even stop turning with each other. At that point, he will become useless and die.

As he thought of these things, time seemed to slow down around him. This was not an illusion. His thoughts have actually run faster than the speed of light, so while thinking, the whole world will stagnate around him.

While he was thinking, he thought to himself, ’I don’t want to die, so the smart thing to do is cut off another pathway. The pathway to cut off is the most problematic one, which is the Death Pathway.’

’But I don’t want to lose my one and only Cosmic Dao. So what should I do now?’

He agonized over this decision for what felt like days. When he eventually came to a decision, he said to himself with bitterness, ’I regret it. I regret all of it. How I regret it so badly.’

He regretted trying to enslave the will of the Blessed Heaven. He regretted not becoming a full Dao Lord when he had the chance. He regretted using his power to bully others, thereby incurring a lot of Entropy before this moment.

He also regretted participating in this fight even when he knew that everyone would attack him. Then he regretted not believing Sword Maestro.

He sighed in defeat as he thought, ’If I had believed Sword Maestro at that time and tried to save him, maybe the two of us would have been able to take the dragon now. At least, two people would be better than one.’

Finally, he regretted trying to kill the dragon and not running away when he had the chance. Unfortunately for him, it was too late to have regrets now.

Down below, in the third dimension, the dragon was still fighting the black monkey. The golden dragon had dragged the monkey down from the sky into the first dimension and was beating him within the black hole.

The black hole devoured everything around it while also trying to rip the black monkey to pieces. This ensured that Loki’s lifespan continued to increase in battle instead of reducing.

The black monkey, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. Its lifespan was falling through the life as if it was a dam that had burst open.

Most of the lifespan that was drained from the black monkey went into Loki. So Loki was more like a vampire sucking away the lifespan of his enemy than a brute trying to turn his enemy into meat paste with his fist.

In one last-ditch effort to turn the tide, the black monkey used its rank 9 ability on him. It said to Loki, ”Die!!!”

This was not an ordinary utterance. The black monkey had used the Death Declaration Ability on him. So the words that were spoken were a curse.

The curse latched onto Loki and began burrowing into his existence to take root. If it succeeded in taking root, it would grow. After growing, it would bear the fruit of death.

The fruit of death is literally his death. The effect of the curse is as simple as that.

It wouldn’t matter how much lifespan he had. The fruit of death would render his lifespan useless, so he wouldn’t be able to regenerate. He would simply die just as the black monkey had said.

However, the process of the curse taking effect was not so simple. The first step is looking for a weakness in his existence to use as a point of ingress into his existence.

The curse roamed around his body in an invisible state looking for that point of weakness. It was invisible and didn’t look like something that Loki could defend against. Like breathing in air, the curse was inhaled into his body even though he didn’t need to breathe.

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