Seth had assumed that the carapace was a different entity than Augie, that it was an armor of sorts. He soon realized his thinking was completely wrong, the carapace WAS Augie. The two weren't separated, Augie wasn't controlling an armor suit to fight, he was the armor suit. Seth's plans changed a little after his enlightenment. He couldn't strip the carapace off of Augie, so instead he would try something completely different.
Seth zoned out for a second, only to be blasted away from Augie at very high speeds. In just a few seconds, the clamor stopped and the castle fell silent. Seth felt as if time was starting to rewind, he knew that his master had taken action once again. Seth didn't dare move as his master rewound time a few hours, even undoing Augie's consumption of elementals from before. Seth felt that he knew now, the height that his master had reached, to even be stronger than a prince of Hell.
Seth woke with a start, he just felt his body being taken over and darkness. The last thing he remembered was getting the notification from the system to stop Augie. Now he appeared in the black space that he remembered so clearly. His master had summoned him.
"Seth, you need to stop doing this. I know that if you fail your mission you will be handicapped. But you just need to trust me, your master." The old man wasn't even sitting right now, he was standing up with his hands behind his back, his long white beard flowing in a non-existent breeze. Seth felt as if he was watching an immortal descend upon this mortal plane. The old man stopped talking and disappeared after he had gotten Seth's attention. Only to reappear a few seconds later, with a few shining objects in his hands.
"These are elemental batteries, they each store more elements than this entire world thousands of times over. These should be able to delay the destruction of this world as you find a way to stop him. If Beelzebub gets too strong for you then I will turn back time on everything until you are able to defeat him. Hopefully, you will gain enough combat experience from this to match your strength." Seth finally realized what this was, it was a power-up arc because his leveling was too slow for the story. His brother wasn't a main character, he was just a remedial villain for the first arcs of the story.
There was literally no way for Seth to lose, none at all. With his master backing him, he felt that even the gods would be no match for him. All of this begged the question: who was his master? Seth had no idea whatsoever. His master was even stronger than an ancient demon, so he should at least be stronger than a divinity, right? Seth became lost in thought. As his master was about to let him loose on Beelzebub, he suddenly spoke.
"Wait, if you can remove Beelzebub's memories, then how come you couldn't remove mine?" Seth's master paused for a moment before answering.
"You... you will come upon the answer to your question when you are ready." Seth appeared back in reality moments later.
Seth looked around, he was back in his room. The elementals were slowly being drawn to Augie. His stats were slowly increasing as the elementals disappeared into the void that was his body. Before Augie could do anything, Seth punched out towards him. The walls that were in the way crumbled instantly, Augie's room was entirely destroyed and he was thrown through the wall behind him. He got up and dusted himself off, ready to fight.
---
Augustus Berner (Beelzebub)
Higher Mortal (Peak ******)
(protagonist)
(heaven swallowing physique)
(hungry(eating))
(cursed)
(blessed)
(light's apostle)
(lucky aura)
Intelligence [82,385](**********)
Body Strength [84,192](**********)
Vitality [83,441](*********)
Soul Strength [83,287](**********)
Luck [3,790](1,374)
Magic [79,605](**********)
Magic Regeneration [78,917](**********)
[skills]
---
Augie's stats were much lower than before because Seth had attacked him earlier this time. Seth's mouth stretched into a grin as he took his dagger from his inventory. He charged Augie and attacked, stabbing the boy straight through the shoulder. As the black carapace wriggled its way around Augie's body, Seth pulled the dagger out and stabbed it back into his brother's body. Augie was stabbed seven times before he was fully consumed by the carapace. Unluckily for Seth, that wasn't enough to kill him.
...
In a certain divine kingdom, a group of divinities felt that something was a little off as they watched Seth fight Augie. They all felt as if they had missed something, as Seth seemed to have already made his plan of attack. They also wondered what happened to Augie, for him to be so strong. They had never heard of such a thing happening before. Still, they watched, hoping to see anything that Seth could do. They were hoping to form a plan to kill him using Augie as a baseline for his strength.
...
In another kingdom, Spencer Moore felt that the heavens were against him. He had just been beaten black and blue by his father, who was sparring with him. Now it was as if time had reversed and now it was before the fight. He would have to get the shit beaten out of him again, and he couldn't do anything about it. He cursed at the one responsible for time reversing and slowly trudged his way into the sparring ring.
...
Very much unlike Spencer, Seth was having a great time fighting his opponent. Seth was just slashing at Augie with his dagger, but he felt happy doing it. Augie's carapace was much weaker than before, the dagger was actually scratching through it a bit. Augie was also doing something much different than last time, he wasn't attacking Seth at all. Instead, he was running away and trying to devour all of the elementals he could. As a result, his stats were slowly increasing and his rate of consumption was increasing.
Seth's attacks were doing less damage with each strike. Soon, they would only leave a light mark. Seth was getting impatient, he knew that this run would be a failure, but he still wanted to drag it out because it was fun to hack at Augie with a dagger. He eventually stopped hurting Augie with his blows, and Augie just punched at him. Seth heard a crack and he felt a searing pain on his face, the pain disappeared soon after though, and his head became numb. Augie punched him once again, and he appeared in his room like before.
Seth felt that he heard a string of curses fly past his head, but he shook them off. This time, Seth had a better plan. He would destroy Augie's head before he could even begin to use his carapace. Seth would just need to act fast and catch Augie off guard. Seth decided that punching through all of the walls before he could even get to Augie was a bad idea. Seth would try to sneak up on Augie, then attack his head with all of his strength. He wouldn't use his dagger for this because that would cut too cleanly, and he felt that Augie would still be alive and able to regenerate afterward. Seth also really wanted to crush someone's head in his hands for once, rather than being the one whose head was crushed.
Seth silenced the guards that were sent to follow him before speeding through the halls towards Augie's room. When he reached the room, Seth silently snuck around Augie. When he was behind his brother, Seth reached out with both of his hands on either side of Augie's head and slammed them together. Augie had no time to react and use his carapace before he was hit. Augie turned to look at Seth, blood running down from his ears. Augie's eyes were shaking and bloodshot as he stared Seth down.
"S-sethy? W-wh-what are y-you d-doing here?" Augie's voice was wavering, threatening to break under the slightest pressure. Seth didn't answer his brother, he only grabbed his head with both hands. He didn't know what to do with Augie's seemingly fragile head, so he just brought it to the floor and hammered it into the ground. Seth felt a light spray of blood coming from the ground being smashed with Augie's head. under the spray of blood, Seth's lips unknowingly curled into a toothy grin. When he brought Augie's head back up, it was completely disfigured, it didn't look human anymore.
The black carapace had almost fully consumed Augie as well, Seth had still failed to kill him before the carapace appeared. Seth punched Augie's face as much as he could. He jumped on top of Augie to hold him down, before trying to get a few more hits on his brother. Still, Augie survived, once the carapace reached his head, it started regenerating and went back to normal after just a second. Seth was tired, but he had gotten further this time than before. He let Augie kill him this time, he was far too tired to continue.
Seth heard the curses once more, a little louder this time, but he ignored them like before. His last plan didn't work very well, but it was still his best shot. Seth copied what he did last time, but this time he aimed a lot of his strikes toward Augie's neck rather than his head. Seth was hoping to break his neck or spinal cord and paralyze him. He failed once again. Seth wasn't able to do enough damage to Augie before his carapace fully enveloped him. Seth was slowly running out of ideas, but he was still having a lot of fun bashing Augie's head into the ground.
Seth kept hearing faint curses shouted at him every time he failed, but he ignored them, they were probably just part of his imagination. His number of trials slowly racked up and eventually reached tens, then hundreds, Seth had almost been killed by Augie a thousand times. He was at the ends of his ropes, he didn't know what to do anymore. He had done hundreds of experiments with infusing elements and using magic to fight Augie, he had found that magic alone wasn't useful but infusing elements into his own body helped a lot. The great enjoyment he had once felt when bashing Augie's head in had dimmed long ago, becoming mere coal of the fire it had once been. Seth was getting bored.
Seth realized the problem with the time loop as he was twisting Augie's head for the nth time. It was that he had no time to rest, he was stuck in a loop of doing the same thing over and over again, and he had no way out. Seth died once again when Augie's carapace appeared, he couldn't do anything. Seth ran over to Augie, completely disregarding all the obstacles in the way, and punched him in the face. He tried to disfigure Augie in as many ways as possible before the carapace appeared.
...
In a certain kingdom far away, a boy with bruises all over was crying to himself. Spencer had had enough, he was going to get stronger and kill whoever decided it would be a good idea to make him go through this. No matter what he did, he couldn't escape his father's well-practiced martial arts. Spencer was completely at the mercy of both his father and the mysterious bastard that was turning back time.
...
Seth looked at Augie, he felt like it had been years since he started fighting him in the time loop. Seth didn't know what to do, he was completely outclassed. Augie's carapace never appeared too late for him to die and it was invincible, even after all of the experiments. Seth was literally unable to compete with it. Seth just wanted to give up and let the world be destroyed, as long as he didn't have to fight Augie anymore. This time around, Seth was going to do what he had always done before, beat Augie as much as he could until the carapace comes or he dies. Seth infused all of the elementals in the house into his body, the most he had ever done before. He bounded through the walls in a single leap and kicked at Augie.
As Seth kicked right through Augie's chest, a bright light flashed that even Seth could see and time completely stopped.