Volume 6 Chapter 11 The Golden Palm and the Yielding Beast
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
Silence.
But it was not a peaceful one. It was the ringing, hollow void that precedes the air being sucked out of a vacuum-sealed room.
In the center, a sound of destruction that assaulted the eardrums echoed outward.
Crr-r-rack. A wet, sodden sound—like a heavy-duty vice crushing a soaked rag. The bundles of muscle that Gauz had boasted were stronger than steel were now failing, rupturing beyond their limits, collapsing like spun sugar under the strain. His spine, already forced into a quadrupedal stance, was being bowed in the opposite direction by the crushing weight from above. His ribs buckled, pressing inward toward his internal organs in a sickening display of structural failure, leaking the sound of crunching bone into the heavy, stagnant air.
Before my eyes, Gauz’s body was being ground into the earth, pressed into the shape of a mortar by an invisible, gargantuan hydraulic press.
”Ghh… Gaa… hhh…” Gauz wheezed, the sound bubbling up through his throat.
It was not a voice. It was the sound of air forced from lungs under immense compression, the remaining breath scraping through his windpipe. The internal pressure in his eyes exceeded the limit; the whites vanished, instantly stained a deep, blood-shot red. Tears, mucus, and saliva—overflowing against his will—were caught by gravity before they could even hit the ground, sucked straight down into the dirt.
His brain was likely failing to process the sheer volume of pain. All that remained was the visceral, soul-crushing despair of physical collapse: the skin of his entire body stretching to the point of tearing, his bones shrieking in protest, and his organs slipping from their natural moorings.
I looked down at him.
I was close enough to reach out and touch him. The space around us rippled like a heat haze, the scenery twisted by the gravitational distortion centered on my position.
Contrary to the roiling rage at the bottom of my gut, my thoughts remained ice-cold. I wasn’t looking at his expression of agony. I was simply measuring the tightening—like turning the handle of a vice—calculating exactly how much pressure was needed before the subject ceased to function entirely. I moved my extended fingertips down just a few millimeters, like sliding a fader on a console.
BOOM!
The atmosphere shattered with a low-frequency roar. I heard the chain-reaction of his ribs, finally reaching their limit and pulverizing.
”Guh… bwaaah…!?” Gauz choked out, the contents of his stomach surging upward.
They didn’t even get a chance to spray outward. The dark-red liquid and fragments of organ overflowing from his mouth were instantly smashed against the base of his chin by the hyper-gravity, plastering them into the mud of the earth. The scent of dry soil vanished, replaced by a thick, metallic stench of rust, the sharp, stinging odor of stomach acid, and the stinging ammonia of involuntary urination.
His convulsions stopped.
The sound of his spine grinding was the only thing dominating the interior of my skull. With eyes bulging and bloodshot, he looked up at me, standing at the edge of his flickering vision.
He wasn’t begging for his life.
It was the look a dog gives its pack leader after exposing its belly.
”…Guh… ah… I… yield…” Gauz wheezed, his voice a struggle.
The words spilled out from between his shattered back teeth, mixed with bloody foam. It wasn’t a shout. It was a faint, struggling noise, nearly swallowed by the storm of gravity.
”…Boss…”
…Boss, he said?
My eyebrows twitched, despite the proximity. Had he just acknowledged me as a superior entity?
Still, I did not ease the pressure. The debt for what he had done to Sylvia was not yet settled. My innards were still churning.
”…The strong male… leads the pack…” Gauz rasped, his eyes fixed on me. “…Take my neck… take the women… take my thirty thousand soldiers… do with them as you please…”
Click. Reflexively, I locked the gravity output.
(…Thirty thousand?)
My thoughts ground to a halt for a split second. Thirty thousand soldiers? I thought I had misheard him, but even in his hollow, dying state, his eyes were lucid. The number was too specific for a deathbed bluff.
Thirty thousand beastmen.
If that number was real, it was a staggering scale. This village didn’t even have a hundred elves combined, and he was claiming a force three hundred times that size.
I clicked my tongue internally.
Killing him was easy. If I pushed my fingers down another few centimeters, he’d be nothing but mince. But what if he really was the leader of a thirty-thousand-strong army? If the beastmen lost their head, would they run wild, leaderless, and descend upon this village in search of prey? I could handle myself, but I wasn’t sure if I could protect the villagers. It would be like a locust plague.
…Honestly, I couldn’t believe a muscle-brained idiot like this could command thirty thousand, but…
I looked down at the beastman crawling in the mud. He was covered in horrific lacerations and burns. A normal person would have been dead from shock long ago. Yet, even while suffering these grievous wounds, he had continued to fight without a second thought.
Conversely, if I kept him alive…
The power that had pushed a fighter as skilled as Sylvia to this point was the real deal. If I could utilize that strength, throwing it away here might be a significant loss.
He was waiting for my judgment. He had completely surrendered his life and death to me. If he was unusable, I could just throw him away. Scrapping a broken tool was always an option.
I moved my fingertips up just a hair.
Whoosh. The pressure on the beastman’s shoulders lightened. However, I didn’t release him. I simply adjusted the output from instant-death to a lingering, agonizing state of life.
”Hhh-ugh… Kaha…! Gekho…!!” Gauz coughed violently, gulping down muddy water as air flooded his lungs.
I could see his brain rebooting, accompanied by a tingling, numbing sensation as oxygen returned. Keeping my cold, dismissive gaze on the loser groveling at my feet, I spoke.
”…You said thirty thousand. I’ll have you explain that in detail later.”
I stepped down on his line of sight, my voice flat.
”…For now, stay there and crawl.”
I shifted my gaze away, as if I had already lost interest. I was already standing right next to Sylvia. I had been standing that close to stop the beastman in order to protect her.
I knelt and wrapped my hands around Sylvia’s scorched right hand. The whites of her eyes, staring back at me, were stained bright red from burst capillaries. Sylvia, despite being barely conscious, was ashamed of her unsightly state and tried to pull her hand away.
”King… I am… so sorry…” Sylvia whispered, her tone brittle with pain and deference.
”Don’t speak. …It will be over in a moment.”
I narrowed my eyes and poured my Mana into her.
It was a hell of a mess. Her skin had melted, fusing with her glove and the leather of the hilt. Her nerves were shredded. I would make sure to heal her. The point was to remove the useless junk and reconnect her with new parts so she would function again. It was the same principle as sanding down the seams on a plastic model kit. I had no medical knowledge. I only had a simple, brutal theory of restoration: if something is broken, you fix it.
”‘Regenerate.’”
In an instant, a golden flash, blinding and brilliant, erupted to dye the world white.
Crack-crack-crack-crack!!
Intense sparking sounds detonated inside my brain. It was the sound of shredded nerves being forcibly reconnected and bio-electrical currents being pumped through.
Within the light, the charred flesh was broken down into granular particles, bones reconnected in reverse-motion, blood vessels surged back into place, and transparent, pristine skin covered everything. Once I finished healing her entire body, I squeezed Sylvia’s restored hand firmly, just once, confirmed her pulse, and gently placed it back onto her chest.
”…We’re going home. We’re done for today.”
I picked Sylvia up in a light, effortless princess carry.
Then, I cast a sidelong glance at the beastman, who was still pinned to the ground.
”Hey. …Can you walk on your own? Bring those females over there with you.”
The beastman stood up, staggering. There was no defiance in his eyes. What remained was complete, absolute devotion to a new boss, and the biological relief of being brought under the umbrella of such unreasonable power. The happiness of being allowed to live, rather than being killed.
”…Yeah. I understand, Boss.” Gauz muttered, his voice gravelly and broken.
Hearing those words, I completely canceled the gravity magic.
I walked over to where the other elves had fallen. Still carrying Sylvia, I looked down at the prostrate elves and poured the light of ‘Regenerate’ over them one after another. The dying elves gasped for air, coming back to life, looking up at me with tears in their eyes.
”Can you walk? If not, I’m leaving you behind.”
I said it shortly, then started to walk away.
—
Summary:
Ryuichi exerts absolute, crushing gravity on the beastman Gauz, reducing him to a state of total submission. Upon learning of Gauz’s thirty thousand soldiers, Ryuichi decides to spare and utilize the beastman as a strategic asset rather than killing him. Ryuichi then heals the severely injured Sylvia and the other elves using his ‘Regenerate’ magic before departing with them.
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Trivia:
The protagonist views healing magic through the lens of mechanical repair, lacking medical knowledge.
Gauz’s submission is biologically driven, recognizing the protagonist as a new apex predator.
The village’s small size, less than one hundred, makes the prospect of thirty thousand enemy troops a significant existential threat.
Notes:
• Gauz – A golden-eyed, steel-furred lion beast-man with a massive mane, dense muscle armor, and a bored, arrogant confidence. Now a charred, runaway-tank figure with log-like limbs, he undergoes a forced transformation. As leader of a 30,000-strong beastmen force, he wields the battle-axe Agito, crushing structures and treating elite foes as mere monster meat to consume with brutal strength.
• Sylvia – A voluptuous, white-blonde elf with porcelain skin, Crimson Lotus is a Silver-rank vanguard, lethal shield, and mentor. Encased in a dense, dark-red Spirit Shroud, she wields a bow and a white-hot longsword with immense strength and reflexes. Now heavily scarred, exhausted, and sporting a scorched hand from a desperate battle against Gauz, she remains a devoted confidante to Ryuichi and highly regards her leader, John, Nier, and her King.
• King – A powerful, authoritative male lead who possesses immense physical strength and magic. He commands absolute loyalty and submission from the inhabitants of the Silver Moon Village.
• Man – A roughneck wearing a hat who participated in a group assault. He suffers the loss of his right arm and later his left arm during an experiment by the protagonist before being stored.
• Ryuichi – A 40-year-old, plain-looking Spirit King with black hair, a beard, and Japanese past-life memories. Ruler of Grimm mansion and an elf village, this weary, analytical protector commands god-like mana, interdimensional magic, gravity manipulation, and regeneration. He exerts crushing invisible pressure and treats enemies as tools with cold, clinical pragmatism. He provided the essence for the women and built the vitrified waterway, though his current absence has spurred an intimacy between Nier and Helga.
• Ryu – A man with Interdimensional Magic who leads a growing household. He acts as a provider and protector for his slaves, while maintaining a pragmatic and blunt personality.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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