Chương 335: Shadow of a God

Dinner with Erza Grimhart was over. Luke lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying everything he'd learned: Divine Orders, factions, kingdoms, nobility, and atomic bombs. Erza's words still echoed in his mind.

"Be ruled by a god, or stand beneath one's wings and be protected." While he was stuck inside this so-called tutorial, a race was unfolding across his planet. People were fighting for divinity. The atomic bomb comparison had never felt so fitting. Just like in the Second World War, whoever built the bomb first would dominate the world. Only now, the bomb was a person, someone with the power of a god. A hundred years had passed since the System arrived. By now, humanity must be far along in that race.

Luke's thoughts drifted to the families of the World Government and everything he'd learned along the way. They weren't simply powerful System clans maintaining global order. They were people who had joined Divine Orders not to worship blindly, but to claim power. These families had become factions, alliances of high-level beings all working to elevate their leaders to godhood. They must be unbelievably strong, and barely human anymore. At least, not in Erza's or Allison's generation.

They were half-magical hybrids, their bloodlines crafted for power. Immortality, strength, divinity, that's what they chased. Eventually, there would be many gods on his planet. It was only a matter of time. He sat up, unable to sleep with the weight of all that in his head. For the first time, he didn't feel small because of the vastness of the multiverse, but because of something closer. Just one planet. His own. Damn it, that woman's a hell of a recruiter.

She hadn't tried to convert him with sermons about faith or obedience to her god. She'd made a deal, offering logic, protection, and the power of a faction. She never once mentioned how powerful the God of Assassination supposedly was. No divine promises of strength, classes, or rare items. She hadn't even explained how her Divine Order functioned. Every word had been calculated, pragmatic.

She talked about Earth, about the world's decline, and only afterward let her Order slip into the conversation like an afterthought. And she's completely right. If she'd tried preaching about how wonderful Lakarion was, I would've stopped listening halfway through. Luke lay back down, eyes tracing the ceiling's faint cracks. He thought of the kings of the world, imagining their strength, their deeds, the sheer scale of destruction they could unleash. Some were probably far ahead in the race.

Maybe one of them was even close to crossing that final threshold. But as long as the others existed, they'd never let it happen. They'd smile, clasp hands in false alliance, and sharpen their knives behind each other's backs, waiting for the moment one finally ascended and left the rest behind. He wondered what kind of people these kings truly were. What kind of world it would be if one of them turned out like Paul or Kruger. What would Earth look like, ruled by a divine version of either of those maniacs?

The thought chilled him. His planet was already at their mercy, really. Those same kings had ended humanity's wars long ago. Now he understood how. The System had created a power gap no army could compete with. A small handful of people, the first generation of System users, had faced down entire militaries and won. That was how they'd become kings. And now, they were racing to become gods. He replayed Erza Grimhart's words in his head:"Be ruled by a god, or stand beneath one's wings and be protected."

Two options, she had said, not for him but for the entire planet. Everyone would be under a tyrant's thumb, including his adoptive family. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. With a thought, Luke summoned a kukri from his inventory.

"I'll take the third option," he muttered. He flicked his wrist and hurled the blade at the ceiling. The kukri embedded itself in the wood with a muted thud. A moment later, he extended his hand and it snapped back into his grip, pulled by magnetic force.

"I don't trust any of these kings in the race," he told the empty room. Rising from the bed, he crossed to the balcony and stared down at the Safe Zone below. Let my planet be ruled by a psychopathic, superpowered version of Paul as a god? No. If he hated every contender in this race, there was only one way to make sure someone he trusted reached the end: he would have to win it himself.

"I can't believe I'm really thinking about this," he said, gazing over the sleeping city as the night wind stung his face. He hurled the kukri again, this time into the sky. It streaked upward, farther and farther until it vanished into the dark. The magnetic return enchantment scaled with his perception now. The blade had gone so far it was like throwing it into another world.

"No one good becomes a god…" he murmured, recalling Allison's words long ago, her dream of divinity, and the grim truth behind it. To become a god you had to take lives. You had to grind experience, level up, kill stronger and stronger beings without stopping. His thoughts slid to his family and his old goal. When he first accepted the System, it was to learn the truth about his mother. But now that he had seen the System's path up close, he couldn't help asking himself: and after?

After he got his answer, would he leave his family at the mercy of someone else? Would he let himself be ruled? Would he wait for someone's pity? Would he stand in front of a hungry lion and hope it didn't act according to its nature? No. The thought echoed like iron in his skull. The kings of the world were predators. They would do whatever it took to reach their goals, innocents be damned. You couldn't expect mercy from a predator. By nature, it would bare its teeth and crush the weak beneath it.

But when Luke chose his current class, he had made himself a silent promise. If he had to walk a path where killing was inevitable, he wouldn't hunt the weak. He wouldn't cull the good. He would focus on one target alone: the predator of predators. He extended his hand into the darkness, and the kukri answered his call. It came streaking back, deadly, precise, lethal, and at the last instant softened into obedience, fitting perfectly into his palm.

"Predator of predators…" Luke murmured, stepping back into the room. He had once read something online: a predator sits at the top of the food chain, feared by those below it. That select group of predators were the kings of the world. But above predators, there was something else, something rarer. An Apex Predator. One that fed on the others. One with nothing above it.

"It's time I joined the race," he said. He hadn't come to that decision in a single instant; it had been growing inside him for a long time. Ever since he fell into that dungeon and found himself trapped with the other prisoners, he'd learned to get stronger, to become their predator. Thrown into that world, every new trial had forced him to surpass himself. Over time he realized he no longer wanted to keep stumbling into dangers just to survive.

He would not let anyone come and take what belonged to him the way they had taken the second fortress. Nobody would come and steal from Erza Grimhart's keep while she was away. That was the difference between them: not raw strength alone, but authority, presence, sovereignty. People feared Erza without ever seeing her draw a blade or cast a spell. Her presence was enough. That was the kind of power Luke wanted. He wanted the predator's power.

You don't need to watch a tiger strike to be afraid of it; its very presence is intimidation. He wanted to be that kind of terror. He would enter the race, but it would be a personal race to reach the absolute limit of himself. The enemies he wanted to surpass were no longer the captains and wardens of his past, not the orc captains, not the Midnight Warden, not the Beast Lord. The foe he sought to outgrow was himself. If he was strong today, he intended to be stronger tomorrow.

He wanted to be the great feline at the top of the food chain so that no one would dare try to take what was his, because anyone who even thought about it would regret it. It wasn't dominion he craved for its own sake; it was the freedom to never be ruled. He wanted rulers to tremble at his presence, to make their ambitions hesitate. He wanted to be the nightmare of every power hungry fool who mistook arrogance for inevitability.

That deep, private craving, the same source that had made him refuse poison, was the hunt for his highest inner power, his fullest potential. He would not only run the divine race; he would hunt anyone who stepped into his path.