[You have accidentally created your most powerful and highly taxing Skill yet!]
[What would you like to name the Skill? (I suggest pretty, pretty, rainbow explosion—)]
"Pearlescent Divider," Cassius said, interrupting the System's nonsense. "That is its name."
Even the Heavens seemed to rejoice at the grand name chosen for a Skill just as grand. Moreover, the naming caused the line attached to Lilith to increase in width yet not reduce in quality, which improved its destructive power manyfold!
[SSS-Rank Attack Skill 'Pearlescent Divider' created!]
However, Cassius was still not done!
He raised Mora up to Lilith and copied over the colorful line blazing out of her. This, of course, made his Mana reserves deplete by even more astronomical amounts—sending him dangerously close to 0%—but the trade-off was well worth it.
Cassius positioned Lilith vertically and Mora horizontally. Then, with a wide smirk etched across his face, he sped up his advance and let loose the two |Pearlescent Dividers|. Mora's pierced through the walls of the Boundless Abyss, digging into them for who knew how many thousands of miles. Lilith, on the other hand, cleaved countless dark clouds in half.
Both of them closed in on the massive Tri-Elemental Gorgon. And with them covering all sides of escape, the Gorgon had nowhere to run; it was trapped.
In one last attempt at preserving its life, it activated high-level barrier Skills en masse. Furthermore, it uniquely utilized its now-restored |Stone Sight| Skill to turn several of the barriers into an extremely robust stone. A stone material that wouldn't easily bre—
In the last few moments before contact, Cassius unequipped his Newbie 10 Equipment Set and took his Newbie 10 Sword off his back before putting it into his Inventory. This urged his speed to achieve levels that normally would've only been possible in the lesser-restricted world of Humanity Tower's 0th Floor.
As a result of this sudden speed increase, the Tri-Elemental Gorgon wasn't even able to register its death before being sliced into four different pieces…
Furthermore, it wasn't just its physical body that had been cleaved in four—it was… everything. Its soul, its Bloodline, even its Inner Nightmare Space!
The Tri-Elemental Gorgon was as dead as they came. Dead, deader, and deadest.
And surprisingly enough, the damage to the surroundings was kept to a minimum. Because of how slim, controlled, and condensed Cassius's |Pearlescent Dividers| were, only two very thin lines were carved into the walls and floor of the Boundless Gorge. This also meant that the corpse of the Tri-Elemental Gorgon was very well preserved.
It was just too bad that its Nightmare Essence extraction and subsequent devouring would make Cassius's perfect kill seem kind of meaningless…
Though, speaking of the Nightmare Essence from the kill, it arrived. And along with it came various System Notifications, each one doing well to satisfy his boundless greed.
[You have slain a Mid Rank 4 Nightmare 'Tri-Elemental Gorgon' and absorbed its Nightmare Essence!]
[Acquired massive amounts of Nightmare Essence!]
[You have broken through into the 5th Stage of the 2nd Class Slayer Rank from the 4th Stage!]
[Your Battle Power has tremendously improved!]
[You now possess the approximate strength of something in the SSS-Rank!]
"Good," Cassius said, stroking his chin in satisfaction. "I managed to reach this amount of strength without needing to undergo my Job/Class Awakening Quest. But perhaps I should still do it soon anyway—maybe after I make it a bit further?"
He spoke those words while peering past the Tri-Elemental Gorgon's corpse, his striking blue eyes zooming into the endless darkness. Even now—with all his newfound power—he could sense the presences of beings that made him feel insignificant, like an ant.
"I still have a couple months' worth of Nightscare Shards left," Cassius mused while pretending to do some calculations. "Well, whatever, I'll just continue progressing until I run out of Rebirths."
As he made the decision to ceaselessly descend the abyss, the Idle Evolution System was secretly thanking itself for teaching the Ignorant One the ways of Character Development.
To actively pursue pain and death were the peak traits of an ideal Character Developer!
'It' taught the Ignorant One well, yep, yep.
[I'm so awesome that it's genuinely painful…]
While the Idle Evolution System was arrogantly buttering itself up, Cassius trudged onward.
He killed, he died, he died again, he killed again, he died some, and he killed some more.
1000 kills… 3000 deaths…
50000 kills… 60000 deaths…
Millions of kills… Millions of deaths…
Cassius had long since surpassed his previous death record. And yet this time, he did not break. Slowly but surely, his emotions and sanity diminished, but he refused to lose himself like he had the last time.
Every so often, something inside him would begin to snap; he would then consider escaping. However, as if the notion of perpetually battling had been engraved into his very core existence, he refused to succumb to such cowardly desires.
With that battle-craving and death-seeking kind of mindset, time marched forward enough that Cassius was now nearly out of time.
With his long raven-black hair stained in blood and sprawled out behind him, Cassius sat leaning up against a wall of the Boundless Gorge. Scattered in front of him and in both the left and right directions were Nightmare corpses—each one insurmountably bigger than he was.
Peak Rank 4 Nightmares—all without life signs.
"Who… Who am I again?" Cassius asked himself while listlessly staring at the limitless skies above. "A name… My name… What was it?"
Just then, with the forceful teleportation by the System as a wake-up call, everything that he was or had ever experienced came flooding back to him. His eyes widened as he snapped back to reality—an event which coincidentally coincided with his reappearance on a certain mountain peak in East Asia.
Cassius had returned. After months away, he found himself on Earth once more.
"...For me, it has been months, but for everyone here," he said, feeling a cooling sensation when the late-summer-time wind brushed past him. "For everyone here, it has been but mere minutes…"