God-Tier Enhancement: My Upgrades Never Fail-Chapter 280: Episode _The Art of the Scam (1)

1.

Was it really a coincidence?

That question seemed to warrant some deeper contemplation.

“Ugh. Brutal bastards. War or not, slaughtering civilians is too much,” Simin muttered.

“Those are Celestials,” Epia replied. “No different from demons.”

Because their decision to "go meet the Heavenly King" had been pure coincidence.

No one knew when Han Simin’s enhancement would end, and the side-story sequence that followed had taken quite a while.

After that, they had come up from the underground storeroom, the Demon King had heard the news and, without any particular calculation, said they should go right away.

That was simply her confidence in the weapon; it didn’t look like she had factored any of this in.

And yet, what was the scene before them?

It was uncannily, exquisitely timed.

You could easily believe this was the kind of setup you only saw in dramas or movies.

Why wouldn’t you?

For the past few weeks, the Celestials had done nothing but dog the demons’ heels in search of Aria. Now, just as Epia arrived with Aria in tow, they had begun massacring demons who were, for all intents and purposes, civilians.

It wasn’t as if they had been watching from afar and waiting for the right moment.

They had simply flown here at top speed.

Which was why Han Simin, riding on Epia’s back, found it all the more baffling.

Her speed hadn’t dropped for even a single moment.

And yet, the timing was perfect.

Whether this was a coincidence or a carefully staged scene didn’t really matter.

“...Heavenly King.”

“Aria.”

A fateful encounter.

Such meetings always carried a strange, charged atmosphere.

Of course, this wasn’t a situation where the Heavenly King ought to feel particularly guilty or caught off guard.

Not only the Demon King Epia but Aria as well knew perfectly well that this was the nature of the relationship between demons and Celestials.

They also understood that, once war broke out, situations like this were bound to occur.

In that sense, it might not have been all that shocking.

However, Aria was no longer the high-ranking Celestial she had once been.

She was no longer the kind of angel who would throw herself into the flames for the Heavenly King and for God, ready to burn to death alongside the demons.

“How could you...”

It felt alien.

And cruel.

She couldn’t help but wonder if these were really the Celestials she had known.

She, too, had fought demons on the continent hundreds of years ago and killed them brutally, but this was different.

Demons who couldn’t even put up the slightest resistance were being slaughtered in utter misery.

None of them begged for their lives, yet the Celestials were massacring them without a shred of hesitation, inflicting the greatest possible pain.

There was a vast difference between knowing something intellectually and seeing it with your own eyes.

Especially when you were already as shaken as she was now.

“Epia, did you set this up?” Han Simin quietly asked.

“Hmm? Let’s say half and half.”

This was a situation he hadn’t anticipated either.

Even without orchestrating a scene like this, Aria had already been halfway to their side.

And yet Epia had gone and painted this picture for him.

Watching her stand there with her arms folded, eyes half-lidded, and an amused smile on her face, that “half and half” line sounded like a blatant lie.

Perhaps she had already known.

And then used it.

She might have been waiting for this very moment.

No, perhaps from the instant she heard the Heavenly King was coming to rescue the high-ranking Celestial Aria, she had been envisioning exactly this kind of scene while stalling for time and setting her trap.

’Wow. Holy shit.’

A chill ran down his spine.

So this was a Demon King.

Programmed by BetaGo.

A level of demonic thinking a human brain couldn’t even begin to conceive.

Who would ever think of breaking a single Celestial in this way?

No, not just one.

This trap included the Heavenly King and all the Celestials who had come with him.

“Celestials are fools. They’re stupidly strong, but their blind faith in their god is far too easy to exploit. We believe in an evil god, too, but we don’t worship him. A god is just a god. He observes, but he doesn’t help us live.”

“...Could you maybe not say things like that with such a straight face? It’s incredibly unsettling.”

Unsettling was putting it mildly.

His first thought was relief that he hadn’t broadcast this footage live.

Not that it really mattered.

They were just in-game characters, and it wasn’t as if they could hear whatever the viewers might say.

Still, how should he put it?

Even as the slaughter of her own kind continued, with demons screaming in agony, the Demon King was completely relaxed. She paid it no mind at all, instead seeming to enjoy the awkward reunion between Aria and the Heavenly King...

’This might actually be a jackpot.’

It was a kind of charm that could never exist in reality.

Maybe meeting Epia—no, being dragged into the Demon World thanks to Aria back on the continent—was one of the top five strokes of luck in Han Simin’s entire history with Fantastic World.

Satisfied, he stepped forward.

Whatever the case, Epia had created an excellent opportunity for him.

It was like he had been shooting a little graduation film meant only for his private collection, and someone had suddenly brought in a world-famous star for a cameo.

If you had an actor of that caliber in the lead, then of course you had to revise the story.

Han Simin walked up to Aria, whose eyes were trembling as she stared at the Heavenly King.

The two of them said very little.

There wasn’t much to say.

From the Heavenly King’s point of view, Aria’s failure to understand was what made her strange, and Aria knew him just as well.

There was no way she didn’t.

She hadn’t been brainwashed.

Which was why this next part was so important.

From here on out.

Han Simin cleared his throat, patted her shoulder, and smiled with the most serious expression in the world.

It was a warm, benevolent smile.

To a Celestial’s eyes, that level of gentleness would have made him look, if not like a god, then at least like a son of God.

“Aria, you can go.”

She looked at him, confused.

And then he dropped a line straight out of a tearjerker.

Aria, who had been staring blankly at the Heavenly King, too stunned to even begin sorting out her feelings, turned to Han Simin with a puzzled look.

Not that looking would change anything.

His face was already plastered with a thoroughly fake smile.

“I’ll release you. I won’t restrain you anymore, so do whatever you want. The Heavenly King himself came all this way, risking his life to save you, and because of you alone, innocent demons are dying. What’s the point of me holding on to you like this? I think at this point, letting you go would be better for Epia’s demons and for the Celestials as well.”

Aria remained silent.

He even let out a sigh.

A perfect performance.

He was pretending he had no choice but to let her go of his own free will, while heavily implying that it was all her fault.

There was no way she wouldn’t feel guilty.

How could she not?

Even now, the Celestials were still massacring demons because they hadn’t received an order from the Heavenly King to stop.

Of course, now that the demons who had arrived with Epia were mixed in, not every demon present was completely defenseless, but from Aria’s perspective, who had seen it from the very beginning, those scenes kept replaying in her head. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

The thought that it was all because of her became a heavy burden, even for one as willing to embrace death as Aria.

And at that moment, he undid the collar around her neck.

“Go on. Go.”

He said it coolly, as if he didn’t have the slightest lingering attachment.

He turned his back on her without so much as a glance.

Aria, whose collar—once something she had come to think of as almost a part of her—had suddenly come off, touched her own slender, snow-white neck with a dazed expression.

Was she really free?

Truly?

This human?

Her hesitation lasted only a moment.

Aria began walking toward the Celestials.

Shaken as she was, she was still a Celestial.

Questions like why they had done this, or whether they truly had to, could wait until she returned.

No matter what, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life with a human who had joined hands with demons.

Han Simin didn’t stop Aria as she slowly walked away.

In fact, he didn’t just refrain from stopping her; once he turned his back, he didn’t look at her even once.

He simply waited.

To craft a truly moving story, you had to wait.

In a way, it was a gamble.

But Han Simin had faith.

Not in the Heavenly King.

Not in Aria, either.

He believed that she would eventually try to go back.

He had already predicted at least that much.

Why wouldn’t she?

No matter how much time they had spent together, no matter how much his speeches had shaken her beliefs, the values that had been etched into her very bones over hundreds of years would not crumble so easily.

Even if she couldn’t live the rest of her life with that same certainty, if she was given a chance to return, she would go back out of sheer inertia.

Han Simin believed in the Heavenly King, who would be there to receive her when she did.

“Wait. Aria. Stop.”

Aria paused, bewildered.

Human, Celestial, even Heavenly King—it was all the same.

Any living, breathing being would naturally harbor doubts and questions.

Thoughts that no thinking creature, not even a Demon King, could escape.

He trusted in that.

“Do not move a single step from there.”

Thus began the train-wreck melodrama.

*

“Heavenly King...”

“Aria, do not come any closer.”

Aria bit her lip in silence.

What more needed to be said?

The Heavenly King blocked Aria’s path with a wary, suspicious gaze. Flustered, Aria looked at him with pleading eyes, desperate to prove her innocence.

However, once a mind had turned, it could not be turned back.

Doubt.

In that dam that had seemed so solid, so unbreakable, a hole the size of a fingernail had already opened.

Even so, Aria took another step forward.

This time, the Heavenly King didn’t tell her to stop.

Instead, he drew his weapon.

It was an unmistakable warning.

And a declaration.

He would no longer acknowledge her as a Celestial.

He could entertain doubts, but the current situation was far too dire.

The crisis facing the Celestials was too great for him to take his time doubting her, only to calmly assess the situation later.

The Demon King had appeared.

Any thought that some great upheaval in the Demon World might present an opportunity had long since vanished.

The Demon King was alive and well, radiating a presence so overwhelming that even the Heavenly King couldn’t easily ignore it.

It was only natural that one should hide one’s strength from the enemy.

Yet she was flaunting such a powerful presence, which meant she was that confident.

Or it meant that even while exuding this much, she still had power she was holding back.

Which only made it all the more necessary to be cautious.

What if Aria had already gone over to their side?

What if she was being handed back to the Celestials at no cost?

What if it was all to stab them in the back?

What if they were ambushed mid-retreat, when their guard was down?

The Heavenly King bore responsibility for the lives of the thousands of Celestials here.

Naturally, he wanted to take his cherished high-ranking Celestial with him; indeed, he had come all this way for the sake of bringing her back, but he had changed his mind.

This situation was too dangerous.

As long as they weren’t annihilated, they could still hope for the future. But if they suffered catastrophic damage here, not only the thousands of mid-rank and higher Celestials but the Celestial Realm itself would be in danger.

That, at least, had to be avoided.

He fell silent.

Thus he made his decision.

Even after coming all this way.

Aria understood as well.

She knew what the Heavenly King was thinking.

She knew why he was doing this.

But she didn’t want to accept it.

Over something this obvious?

He was doubting her? ’Her?’

One step. Two steps.

She kept walking despite the clear threat.

And the moment she stepped into the Heavenly King’s range...

He swung God’s Iron Hammer without the slightest hesitation, without even a hair’s breadth of doubt.

As if he were delivering God’s judgment upon a demon.

Aria closed her eyes.

Han Simin had been right.

Celestials were not the race of God.

They were just another race created by a god.

Enlightenment always comes too late.

And a late enlightenment was something you couldn’t handle alone.

Especially not when it came to the Heavenly King’s iron hammer.

WHOOSH.

In an instant, the hammer reached her, flying toward her head with brutal force, as if to smash her skull to pieces.

TING.

However, that hammer could not deliver God’s judgment.

Because it was blocked, almost casually.

“Hands off, bastard. She’s mine now.”

He spoke with shameless bravado, as if he had personally blocked the Heavenly King’s attack.

In reality, it was Epia who had stopped it.

Han Simin was just standing far in the back, acting like he had done something.