Yes, Madam Prime Minister

Page 369

Ronan's heartstrings suddenly trembled.

Because Ronan threw away his battle axe, his one-handed sword instantly became a two-handed sword. He was so fast it was as if time had been fast-forwarded. Before Ronan could react, Dinya's hand and shoulder were chopped off by him with a single sword strike.

With a floating shield, armor, a magical defensive membrane, and an internal chainmail formed by interwoven mycelium, this sword strike was as easy as cutting through a caramelized egg pudding with a knife.

Not only has the speed increased, but the strength has also increased, and even the materialized weapon itself has been greatly enhanced.

Dinia reacted quickly, instantly unleashing a storm of red light cannons to avoid Ronan's second pursuit, retreating to a temporarily safe distance while simultaneously regenerating her arms and shoulders.

"It can even get stronger?" Ronan couldn't understand why the other party could get stronger.

Instead of attacking immediately, "Ronan" stopped, looking as if he had seen through Ronan's thoughts. "Everything is in a state of development and change. When change reaches its extreme, it touches on this conceptual realm. I used 'unchanging' to seal the rule-based magic. Only time and space are above this. However, within this unchanging, I can still use 'development'. Simply put, it is to overdraw the future."

"Shouldn't they have been pressing their advantage after catching us off guard? Why did they stop to explain? Only a stupid villain would do that," Ronan joked. Joking aside, he knew the other party wasn't wasting time, but now wasn't the time to rashly interrupt them. He also needed to think about his next move.

"Ronan" was not simply stopping to make a stupid commentary; he was trying to confuse the enemy and buy time.

Unlike Ronan and Dinia, who began their fusion decades ago and maintained a close relationship for decades, and Ronan also possesses a portion of the original power from the same source, Ronan's fusion with Candice was something he accomplished only after reaching an unprecedented level. The two of them did not have such a high synchronization rate, which is one of the reasons why Candice could only serve as the hardware.

However, Ronan's overdrawing of the future for enhancement made the combined state even more unstable, requiring time to adjust.

Ronan has been making continuous adjustments, and he's already exhausted.

If you can't think of a solution, in a battle where you're moving at supersonic speeds from the moment you start, and it's all pure damage, then tactics and strategies are essentially the same.

There's a saying that any skill is futile in the face of absolute power, and at this moment, it's absolute power and absolute speed.

It's normal for Ronan to be numb.

The other "Ronan" has been numb for several hours. As a smart person and a superhuman seeking immortality, how could he be willing to overdraw his future unless he had exhausted all his options? He is not a mortal who will die sooner or later.

"Are we leaving?" Dinia asked.

They want to leave, not that they can't.

“No retreat.” Ronan was very firm. “He was already badly worn down by those Seres. This opportunity will not come again. If he retreats now, he will never be able to win in the future.”

At that very moment, the Book of Destiny appeared.

"A man can be destroyed but not defeated."

"A man can be defeated but not destroyed."

The two sentences on the left and right sides still represent different reinforcements of the tangible object.

Unlike any of his previous life choices, Ronan had no time to analyze the implied meaning of the two sentences or to guess how the two options would reinforce each other. He simply followed his heart and chose the former: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated."

Ronan, a politician, committed the biggest taboo of a politician for the first time in his life: acting on momentary pride and refusing to lose to a version of himself that he did not agree with.

In an instant, Ronan advanced to the seventh rank.

But in that instant, although he did not truly enter the realm of "human is object, object is human" that should exist at the seventh level of manifestation, and give "Ronan" a big surprise like the legless old man Xu Shuji did before, his manifestation was already able to break free from the restrictions of the rules to a certain extent.

His seventh-tier enhancement was simple and brutal: the more he was hit, the higher the sword's attack power became.

In fact, Ronan's attack power has always been his weakness. His sword used to seem to deal extremely high damage because it could ignore defense and penetrate. Its attack power was okay for beating weak opponents, but against Ronan, it was not even a scratch. It only made use of the penetration effect to let Dinia's corrosive parasitic power enter and directly absorb the opponent's magic power and life force, which can be regarded as using absorption as a substitute for attack.

"Can we still fight back against him now?" Ronan asked.

“Yes, but I’ll get beaten up,” Dinia replied.

“You deserve to get beaten up,” Ronan said.

Soon, Ronan finished his adjustments, and the battle resumed.

He's incredibly fast now, so fast that even when Ronan used the Traction spell to its limit of one ten-thousandth of a second, he was still getting hit. But it didn't matter; the moment he was hit was the moment he could counterattack.

After a few seconds of exchange, Ronan realized something was wrong. His opponent's speed and strength hadn't improved, but each of his attacks was stronger than the last.

After another brief exchange, Ronan figured out the new abilities his opponent had displayed.

The lower your health, the higher your attack power.

However, Ronan and Dinia did not dare to deliberately keep their health at a low level. First, losing too much vitality would affect their overall stats, and second, low health was unsafe. Therefore, they continued to maintain a state of constantly regenerating health and mana.

Ronan wasn't without a way to deal with it, which was to attack a few times, slow down the pace, and wait for Ronan's passive state to subside before starting to attack again.

However, this resulted in a stalemate where the damage exchange ratio was almost identical for both sides.

Once a stalemate occurs, Ronan will be at a disadvantage.

The battle continued, and both sides, in a state of extreme concentration, barely noticed the passage of time.

When I slowed down again and started paying attention to the time, I realized it was already midnight.

"It can't be delayed any longer."

Ronan's mind was completely occupied by this thought, but he was no longer able to improve his strength.

“Use Burnout again,” Candice said, explaining that activating the irreversible Burnout state would further enhance them.

"no!"

Chapter 855 Sacrifice, Burnout, Growing Stronger - Who is Stronger?

Ronan firmly rejected Candice's proposal, leaving no room for negotiation.

Candice is not Phoenix from mythology; she is merely a high-ranking demon spirit. Each irreversible rebirth after burning out is simply a further step towards death.

If she uses the "burnout" technique again, she will die.

He didn't want her to die.

Ronan felt that Candice was being too impulsive and impatient. They still had time, plenty of time, and there was no need to gamble everything.

However, at this moment, some voices began to echo in Candice's heart: "Forgive me for not supporting your decision this time," "No, we will all die," "Your life has just begun," "If someone has to die, I hope it is me," "Your best moment is in the future, while my best moment is in the past, when I met you," "If everything could be done over again, I would say that I didn't understand your dreams at all," "Actually, I still don't understand now," "Farewell, Ronan." These voices should have been spoken, but they were not.

Candice, once like a little wild animal, chattered incessantly in Ronan's ear like a babbling human child, even though she couldn't speak clearly. Now, she had grown up, and in the final moments of her life, she didn't want her words to become a psychological burden for Ronan, so she chose to remain silent.

In silence, she began to burn out, an unstoppable and irreversible process.

As that burning heat returned, yet the soul suddenly calmed down, Ronan instinctively cried out in his heart, "Stop, stop!" Knowing what it was, knowing that it couldn't be stopped, Ronan still cried out in his heart.

He then fell silent, suddenly stopped, and then fell, like a dried-up, hollow piece of dead wood, drifting to the ground in the wind.

But the instant he landed, flames blazed, and in a flash, he had already grabbed the combined Ronan and Dinia.

Just as they were grasping, Ronan and Dinia felt a fear of impending death.

In a counterattack, he struck Ronan with his sword, the blade cutting directly into his temple, inch by inch, slicing through horizontally, breaking bone, severing brain, and even splitting his eyeball in two.

However, this did not affect Ronan's movements at all, and he plunged his sword into Dinia's chest.

Immediately, "Ronan" became even more intense and dazzling, his entire back exploded and spewed flames, which flew hundreds of meters and burned everything behind him into nothingness. At the same time, "Ronan," who had grabbed the combined Roddy, also suddenly accelerated forward.

We will never let Candice's sacrifice go to waste.

The ever-approaching fear of death caused Ronan and Dinia to lose their minds, and they began to struggle and attack frantically.

In its combined state, Ronan used Burnout. Every second, Ronan's strength increased dramatically, and every second of burning reduced more of Ronan and Dinia's magic and life force to nothingness.

However, even when Candice burns out, it no longer brings about the restoration of life and magic.

Meanwhile, as his life force rapidly diminished, Ronan's attack power also increased rapidly. Under the pressure of the fear of death, he was left with only the most primal will to survive, completely losing his reason and going completely mad, violently unleashing attacks on everything around him.

The attacks from both sides were increasing violently, and the lives on both sides were rapidly being lost.

Did Candice burn out first, leaving only snow-white ash as the flames of "Ronan" extinguished? Or did Ronan's attack surge and then stall, causing Dinia's sea-like vitality to dry up and wither first, leaving only a trace of red?

Ten kilometers away.

The seventeen people standing at the pinnacle of the Seris cultivators were completely speechless, because from this position, it was difficult to describe in words the scene that resembled a mythical descent.

Is the newly born sunbird about to devour a giant red star?

Or will the lava monster, which is constantly releasing black light, completely annihilate the ever-burning flames?

At this very moment, under the collision of the two forces, this far north, which is still in the long night, seems to be welcoming the dawn, or even about to quickly enter noon.

"Ten kilometers is no longer safe."

Ten kilometers was not enough to make even the seventh-level fighter feel safe, so he had to retreat to a greater distance.

But the next moment, they abandoned the idea.

Because the intense white light suddenly erupted again.

The anger born of his own powerlessness and the calm brought about by his resolute killing intent, the joy of seeing the dawn of victory and the sorrow of losing his beloved—all these emotions, which were growing wildly in Ronan's heart because of walking on the brink of death with Candice, became the real fuel that propelled him at this moment.

The night sky grew brighter, and a hand that had begun to lose its shape gripped Dinia's throat, while a sword that was now just a flaming blade pierced her chest. Ronan sped forward.

The fiery path swept across the snow, the beach, and the sea. As the flames, carrying an ever-growing red and black hue, crossed the Bering Strait and crashed into the Alaskan glaciers, sending huge shards of ice and rocks flying everywhere, in the distance, the charred carcasses of marine animals slowly rose from the boiling seawater that had just passed by.

After the glacier was carved into a wide and increasingly deep ravine stretching for tens of kilometers, the light finally stopped shining brightly. "Ronan" also stopped in the ravine, which was tens of meters deep, and tremblingly raised the sword, which no longer had a trace of fire left, but whose temperature had reached an immeasurable level.

He was desperately trying to command his body and his soul, but he was still trembling and not fast enough.

Because Candice was already dead, all the pain and injuries that had accumulated were erupting, trying to make him lose consciousness.

In the midst of the struggle, this final sword was still swung.

The next instant, he was sent flying.

This was Ronan and Dinah's final, extremely close-quarters attack, coming right up to death.

Crossing glaciers and straits, struggling to muster his last shred of consciousness, he plunged his sword into the ground, carving a crooked trench several kilometers long before finally stopping. He leaned on the longsword, gray and cracked like a burnt-out branch, seemingly about to turn to ash in a gust of wind. Ronan was still barely standing, but his snow-white gray body, like parched earth, was peeling away piece by piece, turning into white sand the moment it hit the ground.

Did you win?

He didn't know that it was far from over. The last blow from Ronan and Dinia was too strong, almost exhausting his life force. He wasn't dead yet, but the Seres were still there. If they joined forces, they could kill him now.

Ronan straightened up, picked up his longsword, and glanced disdainfully at the empty surroundings. "Come on."

Having the ability to kill him doesn't mean you can actually do it.

Just then, he suddenly felt a gust of wind pressure coming from behind him, and another layer of skin on his back peeled off.

When he turned around, a being that looked humanoid yet not humanoid, resembling a mass of red threads, appeared in his sight. The red threads had no hands, just a few threads, which bound a longsword and a warhammer.

Chapter 856 Victory, Defeat, Morality, Death?

A humanoid figure made of tangled, sparse, and soft red thread walked step by step.

Skin, muscles, tendons, organs? There's nothing there; it just looks like something drawn randomly on paper with a red pen.

At this moment, the fire on Ronan's body disappeared, and the world returned to darkness. In the darkness, the red monster appeared especially terrifying.

Those legs were weak and light, unable to leave footprints on the remaining snow and sand, not even a sound. The sword and warhammer held by those "hands" swayed precariously, showing no sign of being able to be wielded, yet they exuded an extreme sense of oppression.

"Ronan" looked at Ronan and Dinia, "You're still alive?"

After Candice activated the incineration, the damage from the flames became more ferocious and terrifying every second than the previous one. Ronan and Dinia's life force, which was like an ocean, was about to be evaporated.

“I should be the one asking that question,” Ronan said, recovering from his madness.

The moment he spoke, the oppressive feeling dissipated.

Ronan was absolutely certain that his opponent did not possess the same profound and expansive life force as them. Moreover, his output was constantly increasing as his own life force was depleted. The final strike was so terrifying that it jolted Ronan out of his madness. Even so, his opponent was still alive.

Ronan gripped his longsword tightly with both hands. "During that process, I improved not only my speed and strength, but my overall abilities."

His defenses were also constantly improving; otherwise, he would already be dead.

“However, your all-around buffs are now rapidly diminishing,” Ronan said.

Ronan, who had been seen through, didn't care at all. "You're the same." As soon as he finished speaking, he activated it again. He still had a chance before the buff wore off. Once the effect was over, he was doomed.

Ronan and Dinia also moved. They knew very well that if they could hold on, they would win, because they could still continuously replenish their magic and life force.

One minute later, "Ronan" stopped.

The past minute was the longest minute of his life. More than forty years had passed since he transmigrated to this world, and his life had been replayed in that minute. Over the past forty years, he had fought hundreds of battles, big and small. He had not been without defeats, but in the end, he was the victor.

But what did these victories bring? It seems only power.

When Candice chose to sacrifice herself, he felt intense love, but also a deep weariness.

She didn't actually want to grow up; she just wanted to be a naive child. So, she was tired.

"Sigh, I'm tired. Come closer. I'll leave the method to surpass the seventh rank to you."

Ronan spoke softly, his eyes filled with endless sorrow.

As the combined Roddy drew closer, a sizzling sound filled the air as blades clashed. Ronan blocked the attack. "I knew it," he said. "The saying 'a dying man speaks good words' doesn't apply to you. No matter what, you're always thinking about turning the tables, and leaving any benefits for others is out of the question."

As Ronan swung his sword, Dinia reacted instinctively, striking him on the head with a hammer.

This swing of the hammer was not only a heavy blow, but it also created wind pressure.