Chapter 413: Luke: Goddesses Are Just a Bunch of Idle Women!
"Death, huh… Well, from your perspective, I suppose I should be dead."
Luke rubbed his forehead and looked helplessly at Amane, who had completely lost his will to fight.
"You wished for my heart to stop, right?"
Although phrased as a question, Luke had understood the nature of the death causality from the beginning.
Had he not realized it merely stopped his heart, he would never have deliberately taken the attack head-on.
But if it was only cardiac arrest, there was nothing to fear.
"My heart really has stopped. It's your ability, so you should be able to sense whether it worked."
"In your eyes, someone whose heart has stopped is dead. So I suppose you aren't wrong to consider me a corpse?"
"…"
Amane stared blankly at Luke, who was lively enough to call himself a dead man, and had no idea how to respond.
He wanted to praise Luke's absurd logic, but after thinking carefully, that truly had been what he imagined when activating his power.
No, none of that mattered.
The important question was why someone could remain alive after their heart had stopped!
As though seeing through Amane's thoughts, Luke pointed toward the electronic display board floating above the arena.
"You really don't pay attention to anyone else, do you?"
"I'm fairly famous now. Haven't you even checked my ability ratings?"
Amane unconsciously followed Luke's finger. The audience also looked toward the display.
Although they could not hear the ordinary conversation between the two, the situation was easy enough to guess.
Luke was clearly explaining why he remained unharmed.
Everyone who looked up saw the conspicuous S beneath Luke's portrait in the physical ability category.
Many people already knew about that rating, but only now did they truly understand what such an extraordinary evaluation represented.
S-rank physical ability—
A monster who would not die even if his heart stopped!
For a Level Five First-Class Adventurer, especially one like Luke with absurd Endurance, the heart could no longer be considered a fatal organ.
As everyone gradually comprehended this terrifying fact, the entire venue fell into stunned silence.
This was already beyond their understanding.
It was not an ability, but pure physical strength. The audience no longer knew how to describe such an abnormal existence.
Amane was equally dumbfounded. He stared blankly at the S-rank evaluation for a long time without recovering.
However, the silence made Luke feel slightly bored.
This match was already tedious enough, yet now everyone seemed determined to waste even more of his time.
With his patience running low, Luke looked at the dazed Amane and asked in a dissatisfied tone,
"Aren't you going to surrender?"
"Huh? Surrender?"
"The ability you were so proud of has already become useless."
"Unless you have another trump card, you should surrender now. If you make me attack again, I won't hold back."
Luke's words pulled Amane from his daze. Once he understood them, his face instantly turned pale.
"I lost? The goddess lost?"
"How could that be possible…"
Amane could not accept the truth.
Before he could become hysterical, however, several of Luke's words caught his attention.
"An ability… I was proud of? A trump card?"
"Y-You… Were you actually fighting me?"
"If you defeated the goddess, doesn't that mean everything is already over? I… a trump card… How could I have one?"
"The goddess's power was supposed to be invincible…"
Watching Amane's thoughts descend into confusion, Luke silently sighed in relief.
It did not matter how disordered his thinking was. As long as Amane was no longer completely unwilling to listen, that was enough.
"First, let me tell you again that the invincible goddess you speak of has already lost."
"Second, if I'm not fighting you, then who am I fighting? Am I supposed to wage a battle of wits against the air?"
"The referee won't declare me the winner unless I cut you down or you surrender."
Luke's words left Amane speechless.
He naturally understood the conditions for winning a match, but that was not what he meant.
"Isn't the one fighting you supposed to be causality… the goddess?"
"Tch. Don't misunderstand."
Luke was beginning to grow annoyed.
As expected, he disliked troublesome brats who refused to understand simple reasoning.
Had it not been for Edelweiss, he would already have struck Amane with his sword.
"What goddess would be bored enough to personally cause trouble for me? Wouldn't she rather hold a banquet somewhere?"
"What terrible crime did I commit that would make causality voluntarily stop my heart?"
"Isn't all of this happening because you've been causing trouble for me?"
After complaining briefly, Luke paused and continued in a calm voice.
"Stop imagining your ability is more powerful than it really is. There are countless people in this world stronger than you."
"So-called goddesses are merely a group of idle women who spend every day seeking entertainment and holding banquets to escape their boredom."
"You are the one who uses this power."
"Whether you use it, how strong it becomes, and whether it serves good or evil—all of that depends on your own decisions."
"You have the right to complain that heaven treated you unfairly. You may even complain that your family was not happy or complete."
"But the one thing you have no right to resent is the ability that made you superior to ordinary people from birth."
"Complaining about that is the greatest disrespect toward every powerful person who was born ordinary and struggled to move forward."
"I've met more than one person with a life more miserable than yours. Stop treating yourself like the sole protagonist of a tragedy."
Luke was not deceiving him.
He had indeed met more than one tragic person.
There was Ophelia in Asterisk, Ais in the Dungeon, and even Ikki in this world. Every one of them had suffered a painful past.
Yet none of them had deliberately chosen evil—not even Ophelia, who had already given up on herself.
Compared with them, Shinomiya Amane was truly nothing more than a particularly rotten brat.
Luke's words were like a sword, mercilessly cleaving apart the self-deception Amane had maintained for years.
Now that his goddess had been defeated, the weight of Luke's words increased without limit.
Looking at the completely unharmed Luke, Amane finally realized that he had failed to injure him in the slightest.
He had not even managed to damage the corner of Luke's clothing.
'I'm nowhere near Ouma's level…'
At that moment, Amane suddenly remembered something Ouma had deliberately told him before the match.
"Sometimes, fate can be overcome surprisingly easily."
…
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