I grabbed the head of the robot as it tried to regenerate its shattered drill, and bit down hard.
A bitter metallic taste spread through my mouth.
That lasted only an instant—the chunks I'd torn off inside my mouth were decomposed and converted into pure energy.
The effect of my Devour Skill was working perfectly within the confines of my mouth.
As long as I got something into my mouth, I could break down and absorb anything into energy, no matter what it was.
That held true even for a robot built to oppose gods.
The energy I could steal in a single bite was minuscule, but it had to be more efficient than pounding away at it endlessly.
I already understood the general design philosophy behind this robot.
A war-of-attrition type, packed to the brim with energy.
It leveraged the sheer volume of its energy reserves to regenerate instantly no matter how many times you brought it down.
Unnecessary functions stripped away, everything honed toward that single purpose.
On top of that, it used a magic-interference barrier and poison gas to wear opponents down.
I see, I see.
Roundabout, sure—but if you're trying to take down a god with the tools available to you, it's actually quite logical.
In fact, even with Humility active, I was still being forced into a brutal fight.
I had no idea whether it would actually work on Gyurie, but one thing was clear:
And precisely because the opponent was me, this was where he would suffer defeat.
I drove a penetrating strike into the robot's torso.
Then, from inside the robot's body, I activated magic.
The magic-interference barrier wasn't all-powerful.
Its effects couldn't reach inside the body of living creatures within the barrier—especially allies whose magic shouldn't be interfered with.
Naturally, since the robot's own regeneration was magic, interfering with that would just turn it into a lump of metal.
I couldn't analyze the mechanism by which White neutralized the magic interference, like she did—but I didn't need anything that sophisticated. I could still cast magic.
From inside the robot.
What I activated was a Level 10 Heterodox Magic spell.
Its name: Soul Breaker.
Heterodox Magic was magic that directly affected the opponent's soul.
And Soul Breaker was magic that destroyed the opponent's soul.
I drove it straight into the robot.
The robot thrashed violently, as if repulsed by it, and smashed a fist into the side of my face.
With a sickening crunch of shattering cheekbone, I was sent flying away from the robot.
I immediately regained my footing and braced for a follow-up attack.
But no attack came. Instead, the robot stood guard, wary and on edge.
It was effective, then.
Well, I already knew that.
Energy resided within the soul.
Without the vessel of a soul, energy would simply leak away.
A god was a being whose vessel of soul was extraordinarily vast.
To kill a god, you either had to destroy the vessel itself—the soul—or force it to expend every last drop of energy it contained.
What Potimas chose was the energy-depletion method.
"Chose" was generous—there was really no other option.
Like I was doing, you could also destroy the soul directly with Soul Breaker.
But that was only possible with the power of the System.
Soul Breaker couldn't be used without the System's assistance.
Even White still hadn't been able to replicate it.
Potimas couldn't replicate it without the System's help, either.
That was why he had no choice but to take a different approach.
It wasn't that Potimas couldn't use Soul Breaker at all.
He could just have the elves learn Heterodox Magic, after all.
But that was a path Potimas would never choose.
Because Potimas didn't even trust the elves.
To Potimas, the elves were convenient tools.
Tools had to be used safely.
So he wouldn't teach them anything that might even conceivably become a threat.
Heterodox Magic was a double-edged sword for Potimas as well.
The fact that my Heterodox Magic worked against this robot was proof enough.
Against Gyurie, having one or two people learn it would be like pissing on a hot stone.
You'd probably need hundreds of people casting it for it to land a meaningful blow.
And if you taught that many people Heterodox Magic, what if they turned on you?
With that kind of worry, you could never bring yourself to resort to that method.
They say kings are lonely, but Potimas's loneliness was a little different.
He chose to be alone.
He was content inside his own closed, cramped little terrarium.
Because inside that terrarium, he could be number one.
Because inside that terrarium, he could do whatever he wanted.
What a small man.
And what a low one.
"Potimas. How many souls did you use to build this robot?"
I didn't expect a coherent answer from Potimas, who was groaning through the speaker with crackling static.
But I couldn't help asking out loud.
Energy resided within the soul.
If it possessed energy, then this robot had to have a soul.
And there was a limit to how much energy a soul could hold.
The very limit that neither I nor Potimas could surpass.
This robot had been given enough energy to take on Gyurie himself.
There was no way a single soul could hold that kind of power.
If it could, Potimas would have become a god long ago.
So this robot had to contain not just a few—but dozens of people's souls.
Souls that had been stripped from their owners and rebuilt into this metal body.
I felt sympathy for them.
But I would not show mercy.
To shatter those souls with Soul Breaker meant they would return to nothingness without ever rejoining the cycle of reincarnation.
A truly heterodox act of magic.
Even so, I wouldn't hesitate to use it.
It wasn't as though I had the luxury to spare.
Devour, Soul Breaker, and the time-limited Humility.
That was how I'd break through.
"I'm sorry."
I offered one brief apology to the souls that had been reduced to pitiful weapons, and I took a step forward.