God-Tier Enhancement: My Upgrades Never Fail-Chapter 282: Episode _The Art of the Scam (3)

4.

“Whoa.”

In a way, it was a showdown between two boss monsters.

It was a rare sight, something one would never see in a normal game. In fact, this was a historic battle that not even the in-game NPCs had ever witnessed.

When else would you get to watch the Heavenly King and the Demon King fight live?

Divine power howled, and in response, dark magic raged like a storm.

’Guess it’s true that Fantastic World is all about luck,’ Han Simin thought, nodding to himself. He had put as much distance between himself and the fight as possible and was now just a spectator.

Life was all about timing.

It was a phrase every Enhancer had on the tip of their tongue, and it applied perfectly here as well.

"Kenji’s burning money to wage a war, and I just lucked into the Demon World and get to feast for free."

Of course, he didn’t make the foolish mistake of feeling sorry for Kenji or clicking his tongue in sympathy.

"Even if luck keeps pouring down on me like this, damn it, even if I banked it for a hundred years, I still wouldn’t catch up to the grime under the clippings of Kenji’s toenails in his bank account."

They were in different leagues from the very beginning.

If Simin breathed to make money, Kenji breathed to spend it.

Even if Kenji streamed for free for a hundred straight days and couldn’t match Simin’s revenue, he would walk away with something far more valuable: prestige.

In terms of their in-game circumstances, Kenji couldn’t help but envy Simin, but looking at life as a whole, it was the other way around—Simin envied Kenji.

"If I had Kenji’s money, I wouldn’t be pulling this crap. I’d just be eating well and living the good life."

Lately, though, that feeling had faded a bit.

He had more than enough money himself now.

So, he left Kenji’s stream—where the man was calmly preparing for war with a kingdom—running on the side and focused on filming.

The preparations for a kingdom war were obviously interesting, the kind of user-first content viewers would love. At the same time, the Heavenly King raid he was filming from the demons’ point of view was a concept no one would ever see again.

’He’s our VIP customer, after all. Gotta wish him the best.’

He even cheered Kenji on with genuine enthusiasm.

That was how much more relaxed he had become.

In the past, he probably would have gone live right when the war kicked off in earnest, just to screw Kenji over.

But not now.

There was no need to risk upsetting his VIP customer over something so petty.

Besides, this was the kind of thing where tuning in halfway through would ruin the experience.

“Face the wrath of the Celestials!”

CRACK!

In the Demon World, where it seemed not a single inch of space existed for any god to squeeze into—nothing but pure darkness—a bolt of heavenly punishment came crashing down.

Epia raised her sword in an instant to block the Heavenly King’s skill.

She blocked, then counterattacked.

“Prelude to a Nightmare.”

A deep darkness mixed into the crimson aura spilling from the +15 one-handed sword.

Divine power and dark magic fused, covering a radius of hundreds of meters as their main skills exploded forth one after another.

Neither side yielded an inch.

They fought with the resolve to die here.

You might expect, from reading a novel, that a Heavenly King and a Demon King would subdue each other with nothing but a glance, but in reality, their offense and defense were brutally intense.

As if to prove they had earned their thrones, they dodged and thrust by the tiniest of margins.

’...Can those things even be killed? At this rate, Fantastic World won’t be shutting down for another hundred years.’

He couldn’t even keep up with their movements.

His standards were getting way too high.

The fight was utterly inconsiderate to the viewers; it was the kind of battle that left you feeling hollow just watching it. But the Heavenly King and the Demon King kept clashing regardless.

They fought with a ferocity that made it seem like they could go on for a hundred, even a thousand years.

However, battles between absolute beings don’t last as long as one might think.

They were both so strong that the idea of them fighting for a month straight in some drawn-out war was nothing but a storybook fantasy.

In a real fight, the outcome is decided in a single move.

Even when a world-devouring area-of-effect skill came crashing in from all directions, impossible to dodge, they calmly parried and closed the distance.

They had to pierce the strongest shield on the continent—no, in both the Demon World and the Celestial Realm combined.

Pop—

Epia, who had been watching for an opening amid the storm of divine power, suddenly vanished from sight.

She simply evaporated.

Simin, who had barely been able to track her movements, was startled.

And he wasn’t the only one.

He flinched.

Even the Heavenly King lost her for a moment.

It had only lasted for the briefest instant, a mere 0.01 seconds, but it was no fluke.

If the Heavenly King was fully focused and still lost track of his opponent, it meant that, for that brief moment, his opponent had been faster than he was.

Of course, it wasn’t a catastrophic problem.

It was possible for someone to be faster.

What the Heavenly King prided himself on was not speed, but overwhelming force.

The shield that blocked everything would stand there and silently defend, regardless of how fast the opponent moved.

He would block, then crush the enemy with sheer weight.

All he had to do was keep doing what he had always done.

He quickly regained his composure.

It took him less than a second to do so.

Less than a second for the storm of divine power to grow even stronger in preparation for the Epia it had lost track of.

That brief one-second window was, for Epia, an opportunity.

“Hi there.”

Before anyone realized it, she was behind the Heavenly King, whispering playfully in his ear.

And as she spoke, she did not waste the fraction of a second she had fought so hard to obtain.

Thud—

The +15 sword plunged through the supposedly impenetrable shield as if it were slicing through tofu.

It slid in so naturally it was as if it had always been lodged there.

There wasn’t even time to swing the iron hammer to block.

Before he knew it, the thrusting blade was driving toward the Heavenly King’s left heart.

He gasped in shock.

’If this continues, I’ll die.’

The Heavenly King couldn’t hope for some miracle like being immune to a stab through the heart.

Every living being dies when its heart stops.

That was simply how things worked.

The Heavenly King twisted his body in that instant.

He had never imagined that the one exception to his impenetrable shield would be the Demon King Epia.

Her sword was stronger than he had anticipated.

It was inevitable.

+15.

That level of enhancement produced a terrifying power that had never factored into the Heavenly King’s calculations.

He had been forced to focus all his strength on defending a single point, and still lost track of his target.

Of course it would be pierced.

Even in that inevitable moment, he twisted his body to survive, no matter what.

Perhaps it was divine favor for having served the gods all this time.

Epia’s sword stabbed into the Heavenly King’s back, but instead of driving in deep, it merely sliced flesh and skimmed past.

Blood sprayed, and his holy wings were torn.

But that was all.

His heart was intact.

In a battle like this, such a wound was undeniably critical, a serious injury that would tip the balance in the opponent’s favor.

“Tch.”

Epia clicked her tongue and hurriedly leaped away.

BOOM!

A bolt of lightning slammed down where she had just been.

“As expected.”

He truly was someone worthy of having held the Heavenly King’s position while Demon Kings had come and gone.

You could feel that he hadn’t kept the title by winning at rock-paper-scissors.

To instinctively dodge in that split second.

Epia’s body was covered in small cuts from the raging storm of divine power, yet she licked her lips with a sultry smile.

This was fun.

Her dress had long since lost any meaning as clothing, and the blood only heightened her excitement.

The Demon King didn’t spare a glance for her own wounds.

The Heavenly King’s wing, however, had been torn at the base.

After trading blows, the two of them entered a brief lull.

It was not a break.

“Not bad.”

“Dodging that in the moment? This is getting fun.”

They were simply resetting.

And to reset, divine power began to move again.

Heal.

That was why the Heavenly King had sacrificed his wings just to keep his life.

To Celestials, wings were more precious than life itself, but compared to one’s actual life, they were still infinitely less important.

So he had been able to give them up.

He could just heal them later.

The Heavenly King had that much power. Divine power gathered around his wounds.

“Not happening.”

Watching him, Epia murmured softly, then swung her sword with a seductive smile.

It was the signal.

KRA-KRA-KRA-BOOM!

It signaled the activation of a special option attached to the Epic Legendary-grade one-handed sword—a special option that only a +15 weapon could have, and that had appeared thanks to sheer luck.

“Wow. Holy shit.”

Simin, who had been munching on popcorn, let out a breath of admiration.

The sight was that astonishing.

How to put it?

It felt like watching a bugged item being used to take down a busted boss monster that could heal infinitely back to 100% HP as long as it didn’t die in one shot.

*

[+15 Awakened Soul Sword of the Succubus Queen]

Grade: Epic Legendary

Equip Level: 300

Equip Requirement: Succubus Queen

Attack Power: 3,900 (+42,141)

Option 1: Attack Power +7% (+33%)

Option 2: Critical Hit Damage +14% (+42%) against Charmed targets

Special Option 1: On hit, Charm chance +7% (+22%)

Special Option 2: A weapon imbued with the soul of a master. It cannot be destroyed or annihilated.

Awakening Option 1: When dark magic is infused into a bleeding area, it explodes and applies an unhealable curse.

This option hadn’t existed before.

However, as compensation for having lost one of the twin swords and revealing its true form as a single one-handed sword, it was an excellent option, more than worthy of the trade.

An unhealable curse.

For the Celestials, the natural enemies of the demons, it was an option that basically told them to hand over their limbs one by one.

Especially when combined with the second special option, it was practically a Celestial-slaying weapon.

And its effectiveness had just been proven.

He fell silent.

“Hehe. What’s wrong? Can’t heal?”

Its power worked even on the Heavenly King.

They would have to keep fighting to see how long the curse would last, but there was no doubt that such an annoying option would be a huge help in a battle between the Heavenly King and the Demon King.

Epia relaxed and started to tease him.

It had been a strike she could be confident in.

Of course, failing to pierce his heart had been unexpected.

But that was fine.

She had gained this much of an advantage from a single weapon option.

If she added in another burst of that sudden speed she had shown earlier, she could probably predict the outcome without having to see the fight through to the very end.

Even if she couldn’t completely dismiss the possibility that the Heavenly King still had a hidden card to play.

As long as she didn’t let her guard down, she would win.

“Wait, so the Demon King’s winning?”

“Guess a +15 sword really is busted.”

“What happens if the Demon King wins?”

“If she wins, that’s good for us. She’s on our side.”

Even the Specialists, who had just arrived, could feel it.

Anyone could see that barring some major twist, victory would ultimately fall to the Demon King.

“It still feels off, though. Like, is it really okay for justice to crumble this easily?”

“When you think about how much hell Simin went through to make that +15, it’s only natural, right? If BetaGo has any sense, it would have made the Demon King and Heavenly King roughly equal in strength, but there’s a huge stat gap in the weapons they’re holding.”

“True.”

And what would follow would be chaos.

The impact on the continent would be...

“I wonder how bad it’ll get.”

He couldn’t even imagine it, but in any case, there was no way the outcome of the war between the Demon World and the Celestial Realm would turn out well for the users.

In that battle racing toward its conclusion—

Pop—

He looked confused.

—a variable appeared.

[’Sanctuary’ removes all status ailments.]

[’Sanctuary’ increases the effectiveness of all Holy-attribute effects by 30%.]

[’Sanctuary’ decreases the effectiveness of all Dark-attribute skills by 30%.]

[HP is restored.]

[MP is restored.]

Every gaze turned to Han Simin.

*