Everyone there held their breath.
Divine blood, larger than the colosseum itself—
because of the one who called itself the venom-swallowing one.
Alon blankly lifted his gaze upward.
At the same time, he heard the fighters' harsh, ragged breathing in his ears.
It wasn't just one.
Most of the people here, just from laying eyes on the being in front of them, were panting like they'd been locked in a savage fight for hours.
It was deeply strange.
And yet Alon understood why the fighters were reacting like that.
"Kkh—"
Hearing Evan's strangled groan behind him, Alon thought,
'It's suffocating.'
It was truly bizarre.
The battle hadn't even started.
Nothing had changed.
And the anomalous entities that had been attacking them looked like they'd lost the will to fight, bowing as low as they could to the giant spider in reverence.
No—
if anything, it also looked like they were bowing in fear.
Like they didn't want to be chosen.
Nothing in this world had changed.
All that had happened was that Divine blood had appeared.
And yet.
Just that alone was suffocating.
A nasty sensation, like someone was deliberately restricting his breathing, his breath growing tighter and tighter.
Remembering that, Alon forced himself to regulate his breathing and organize his thoughts.
'This is what I wanted.'
In a way, this was the situation he wanted.
To solve what had happened in Colony, he didn't need to kill Karaan—he needed to deal with Divine blood, the root cause.
So just as Alon brought his breathing back to normal and started to move—
[So you are the Star Eater.]
A deep voice suddenly rang out.
A voice so deep it made his brain itch just from hearing it.
Alon immediately called out,
"Penia, Evan."
"Yes."
"Get everyone inside the colosseum. And get ready."
"O-okay."
Penia nodded with effort, then led the fighters into the colosseum with Evan.
But the venom-swallowing one didn't make any particular move.
As if it felt nothing at all about their movement.
Instead, it repeated the same question as before.
[Are you the 'Star Eater?']
A natural hesitation followed.
Should he just affirm it and hear what it had to say?
But only for a moment. Alon answered.
"......Why do you call me that?"
The venom-swallowing one stared down at Alon, then replied.
[So you do not even recognize yourself.]
"What did you say?"
[It is understandable. And yet, it is curious. How does a mere low creature of this world end up spoken of by them?]
"......If I demand an explanation, will you give one?"
At that question, the venom-swallowing one spoke leisurely.
[I refuse. I do not particularly enjoy doing pointless things.]
"Pointless?"
[You will die. If so, explaining would be a useless act, would it not?]
Calmly.
As if it were saying the most obvious thing in the world.
"......For something that used humans to gather faith, you're awfully arrogant."
[So that is how you think. As expected of a human. But do not misunderstand. I did so only because it seemed most efficient.]
"So did it work? Did you get what you wanted?"
[As you can see, it is not particularly satisfying. I realized that unless one reaches creation, it is difficult to gather faith in this manner.]
"You've accomplished nothing."
[Is that the worry of a low creature? You need not. With you here, my actions have become not a useless act, but a not-entirely-bad act.]
"What—?"
Then the venom-swallowing one rolled its dozens of abyss-like eyes here and there—
Chiiiiik—!
and began spewing white threads in every direction.
Threads so thin Alon could barely make them out with his eyes
spread across the entirety of Colony in an instant.
[Fine— I will tell you.]
As if its mood had grown generous, the venom-swallowing one looked down at Alon and said,
['The Rotten One of Eternity' is trying to kill you.]
Alon couldn't understand those words at all.
He knew nothing about the Rotten One of Eternity.
He'd never even encountered such a being.
And yet the reason Alon recognized that name
was because of the information the Wanderer had given him.
The Rotten One of Eternity—
the one who led one of the four greatest factions among Divine blood.
Alon couldn't possibly digest that story at once, but—
[So stop resisting.]
At those words, he lifted his gaze.
"Why?"
[If the Rotten One of Eternity is targeting you, then you will inevitably die. Even if you survive, the road will be an endless field of thorns.]
"......So you're telling me to hand my life over to you, nice and easy?"
[Yes.]
A reply far too calm.
And yet filled with certainty.
But of course—
"No."
Alon refused on the spot.
[Is that so—]
The venom-swallowing one didn't show even a hint of regret at his firm answer.
It simply accepted Alon's refusal without fuss.
And then.
[Then there is no helping it.]
Its muttering echoed.
[I will have to kill you.]
The sky entered Alon's vision.
And then he saw it.
In that brief instant, a massive web that had formed across Colony's sky.
And—
Tuk— tuduk— tuk—!
venom dropping from the sky—no, from between countless strands of webbing.
[Then let us watch.]
In my home—how long you can survive.
Alon silently stared at the sky.
A ceiling that hadn't existed a moment ago had formed, scattering venom across the ground.
Chiiiiiiik—!!!
A pungent stench rose as a glob of venom landed nearby and melted the earth.
Alon frowned behind his blank expression.
It looked lethal enough that if even a single drop touched an ordinary human, their body would melt away and vanish on the spot.
And that wasn't all.
The anomalous entities that had been frozen in reverence, bowing their heads to the venom-swallowing one, suddenly began rushing toward the colosseum.
The situation was bad.
But—
"Seollang."
"Yeah."
"Protect the colosseum."
"......Okay, Master."
Even so, defeat didn't form in his mind.
Bzzzt—!!!
Behind Alon, Seollang—standing calm—turned into golden lightning in an instant and began wiping out the anomalous entities charging the colosseum.
All that remained wherever that flash passed was the corpses of anomalous entities.
Nothing else.
In the midst of that, Alon let out a deep sigh and looked back up at the sky.
At first, only one or two drops of venom had fallen—
but as time passed, it was pouring down more and more.
The venom melted even Alon's barrier instantly, as if it meant nothing—and it was lethal even to him.
Seollang might be able to manage, but Alon wasn't nimble enough to dodge venom falling endlessly from above.
Alon kept staring at the sky.
Venom he couldn't avoid in time began falling toward him.
It was too close—so close he couldn't dodge even if he threw himself aside right now.
And there wasn't nearly enough time to cast magic to block it.
Yeah.
If it had been the Alon from before, that would've been the end.
"Hoo—"
A small sigh slipped out of Alon.
At the same time, as if they'd been waiting, six ice puppets formed behind him—
and the moment the falling venom reached right in front of Alon's eyes—
the small sphere in Alon's hand flickered in and out of existence.
And then.
Kkrrrrk—!
The world froze.
The venom that had been falling.
The anomalous entities that had been sprinting toward Alon past the colosseum—
all froze at once.
For an instant, 'the venom-swallowing one' showed surprise with its dozens of eyes.
But the frozen wasteland that had locked everything around it in ice
climbed upward along the venom that had been falling to the ground, then began freezing the webbing stretched across all of Colony.
[What—]
In the moment the venom-swallowing one voiced its confusion, it could see it—
a star beginning to rise in the web-filled sky.
From all over the venom-swallowing one's body, threads began spewing out.
They wrapped around the all-freezing ice.
And in the blink of an eye, Alon's ice, wrapped in those threads, began melting away under the venom.
The venom-swallowing one melted all of the ice away completely, all while spewing thread without stopping, scanning the ground with dozens of eyes.
From the moment high-ranking Divine blood had taken interest, and because of the unknown aura faintly leaking from Alon's body, it had already judged it needed to be careful, in its own way.
Even so, the reason the venom-swallowing one had deliberately left an opening was curiosity.
It wanted to know why a low creature was hated so fiercely by high-ranking Divine blood.
And on top of that—
if high-ranking Divine blood was interested in him, then besides joining a faction, surely there was something it could gain.
With that in mind, it meant to keep him alive and study him.
But in this moment, the venom-swallowing one realized it.
The suspicious low creature radiating that strange aura wasn't someone it could take lightly.
The instant it recognized that, it decided to kill Alon for sure.
Its power wasn't suited for keeping something alive.
But killing was far, far too easy.
Once it erased the option of sparing him, there was no longer any reason to hide its strength.
So as it rolled its eyes in thought, the venom-swallowing one suddenly noticed something odd.
Alon, who had been on the ground just a moment ago—
no matter how it searched, was nowhere to be found.
The instant it froze—
Fwoooosh—!
The single star in the sky spread out in an instant, becoming a Milky Way.
The venom-swallowing one reflexively sent a few eyes upward—
then immediately snapped them down to the ground,
more precisely, to the spine-chilling mana it felt directly beneath itself.
And there, it found Alon.
Holding an amount of mana so vast it made your skin crawl—packed into a ring—
"Just like I thought. Summoning it with mana takes too long."
'The Star Eater' stared up at the sky with an endlessly calm expression.
And then—
the venom-swallowing one saw it.
[My sworn ally, manifest.]
With that small mutter, the guardian deity that manifested in this world—
the descent of Basiliora, the recipient.

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