Chapter 378: A Future Without Me (6)
Balt unleashed a flurry of sword strikes at Thanatos. Thanatos, who hadn’t even blinked at Keter’s attack, raised her sword and responded. With clean, efficient movements without any flair or excess, she deflected every strike.
Balt’s expression twisted. These weren’t probing attacks; each strike had been delivered with full intent. And yet Thanatos, her head still lying on the ground, blocked them with absurd ease. As if to show that having her neck severed meant nothing, a new face formed instantly at the cut surface.
Balt glanced down. The tips of his fingers had turned black.
I can’t last long.
Thanatos was death given form. Simply standing before her meant he was constantly dying.
At most, ten minutes. If Keter doesn’t find the exit by then, I’ll die here too.
Balt had reached the sixth floor before Keter thanks to the Godfather through a hidden passage that led directly from the first floor to the sixth. Back then, the Godfather had warned him.
“Since you insist on going, I won’t stop you. But know this: there’s no secret passage that lets you return from the sixth floor to the first.”
He seemed to be concerned for Balt’s life, but Balt had understood then.
I’m no longer useful to him.
In the past, whenever Balt ventured somewhere dangerous, the Godfather would always provide something—trusted allies, powerful artifacts, even top-tier elixirs without hesitation. But this time, he had sent Balt empty-handed.
Before coming here, Balt had bowed deeply to him.
“Please create a world where everyone is equal.”
The Godfather had only given a slight nod. It was a faint response, but it was enough for Balt.
He didn’t mind dying. Changing the world wasn’t something he could do anyway. He was someone who knew nothing but the sword, so how could he reshape the world? However, the Godfather could. He was someone capable of truly changing everything.
Countless lives would be lost. Still, there were two people Balt wanted to survive above all else. Stella, the woman he had loved all his life, and Keter, the one he had regarded as a younger brother.
The reason he had come to Liqueur this time was to protect Keter from the Godfather. Of course, Keter would never understand that, which was why Balt had tried to subdue him by force.
Forgive me, Keter. This is the only way I can protect you.
Balt had planned to seal Keter away for a hundred years, then report to the Godfather that he had killed him. That would be the end of it. A hundred years later, Keter would awaken in a world of equality—a world where he could live happily.
But everything had gone wrong because of Thanatos, the Ruler of the sixth floor. On the surface, it looked like Balt and Thanatos were evenly exchanging blows, but their expressions told a different story. Balt’s face grew darker by the second while Thanatos smiled.
“Huff…”
His breathing grew ragged, and his lips dry. Still, Balt’s sword only grew faster, pressing Thanatos harder. She matched his speed effortlessly.
Keter, I believe you can do this.
Balt trusted the man behind him. If there was one person in Liqueur—no, in this entire world—he could rely on, it was Keter. Keter had never been to the sixth floor, and he didn’t even have any clues at all, but Balt believed Keter would find the answer. He always did.
Then Keter shouted, “I got it!”
“Well done. Where is it?”
“There’s no exit here.”
Balt briefly considered slashing Keter.
* * *
Keter, who had been observing the situation, finally joined the battle. His left arm was gone, and Amaranth—who had been with him for so long—had been erased. Yet Keter acted as if nothing had changed.
Replacing his arm with one formed of mana, he began firing arrows. Strangely, however, half of them had no effect on Thanatos at all. Keter understood why, at least in theory. It was because his attacks carried killing intent.
However, completely suppressing that intent was nearly impossible against an opponent like Thanatos.
“Keter. Don’t give up and look for the exit again. I’ll hold her off as long as I can,” Balt said calmly.
However, Keter only fired more arrows as he replied, “I’m not giving up. Like the fourth and fifth floors, there’s a condition we need to fulfill to get out. Until I figure that out, I need more time.”
“Then at least imbue your actions with will. That’s the only way to fight a god.”
“I’ve been doing that since forever.”
“It’s similar, but different. In my case…”
As Balt tried to explain, Thanatos suddenly accelerated her attacks. Enraged by their defiance in the face of death, she swung her sword. With a single motion, thousands of sword auras surged like a storm.
Even grazing them meant death, so Balt and Keter wrapped themselves in Ein Sof. However, even that was rapidly being worn down, so they had no choice but to grit their teeth and slip through the gaps in the barrage.
Balt had no time to speak. Thanatos pressed relentlessly, leaving him no room for advice. He was too busy just staying alive. However, her attacks toward Keter were noticeably lighter.
Keter didn’t rush in to help. Instead, he carefully observed the fight between Balt and Thanatos. Balt’s sword strikes affected her. His arrows did not.
What’s the difference? And what was Balt about to say?
There was no time to calmly analyze. In a land of death, dodging attacks of death, he forced himself to think.
Crackle…
Even Keter’s body began to break down under the influence of death. Yet he didn’t so much as blink, continuing to study Balt’s sword. Until suddenly, his eyes widened. As if realizing something, Keter unfolded his Arrow Wings. Two hundred Milky Way arrows formed the wings. They were powerful, but nowhere near enough to affect a god.
Still, as if testing a hypothesis, Keter fired them at Thanatos. She didn’t even spare them a glance. As expected, the arrows passed straight through her and exploded in the sky.
Boom boom boom!
A magnificent explosion lit the sky, but it had no effect on her whatsoever.
Seeing Keter’s diminished attack, Balt grew anxious.
“Dracula!”
Balt had already unsummoned Dracula when he saw Amaranth vanish, but now he could no longer afford to hold back.
Summoned again, Dracula looked displeased, but it was forced into battle since summoning was compulsive. Yet Dracula’s blood magic was rooted in life and was completely opposed to death. All of its attacks disappeared within moments, but it bought Balt a brief moment.
He used it to shout, “Don’t focus on what the opponent is; impose your will upon the world! That’s how you fight a god, and how you become one!”
Balt’s sword could affect a god because it carried conviction to set the world’s order right through the sword.
If I can change the world, I would cut down anything.
That belief gave his sword the power to cut even gods.
Keter glanced at Balt once, then fired again. This time, a single Milky Way, Goodnight. He had used so much Heavenly Strength that he could only fire one instead of three.
Armed with Balt’s advice, Keter shot again, without any concern for Balt being caught in the blast. But before the arrow even reached Thanatos, Balt knew.
It won’t hit.
Thanatos didn’t defend against it, which meant either Keter hadn’t understood, or his conviction wasn’t strong enough to reach a god.
As expected, the arrow passed through her and exploded in the sky. Its power surpassed the earlier two hundred arrows, making the sky tremble as if collapsing. But the one affected wasn’t Thanatos but Balt. Instead of helping, Keter was becoming a hindrance.
Then Thanatos said, “How pitiful.”
At the same time, she stopped attacking. Normally, Balt would have taken it as an insult, but now, he simply caught his breath.
“If you pity us, why not let us go?”
“I refuse. But I will tell you how to leave. It’s simple. This land rejects the living. If you die, you’ll naturally be able to leave.”
It sounded like wordplay, but Balt understood immediately.
If death were truly the condition, there was no way information from survivors who had returned from the sixth floor would circulate on the surface. For a moment, he wondered if they would be able to resurrect after dying, but he knew that kind of trap would be too good to be true.
“So it doesn’t have to be your own death,” Balt said.
Thanatos smiled.
“That’s right. As long as someone dies, the exit will open.”
This meant that if one came alone, they would die without exception. But if there were two, one could live at the cost of the other. And right now, there were only two people here: Keter and Balt.
Thanatos spread her arms.
“If Keter dies, you can live, Balt. I’ll even send you back to the surface.”
“…”
“I’m not asking you to kill him yourself. Just step aside. It won’t take long. At this rate, you’ll both die anyway.”
She could kill them both. It was only a matter of time. The sixth floor was collapsing. Whether due to Keter’s attack or not, the collapse had accelerated. Now, cracks in space itself had now crept right up before them.
Balt couldn’t answer immediately. Knowing that it was to stall time, Thanatos pressed him.
“If you’re stalling to recover your strength, it’s pointless. This world will soon collapse completely. After that, even I won’t be able to send you out.”
Just as Balt was about to respond, Keter cut in.
“What about the other way around? I want to live.”
Thanatos looked at him with genuine disgust.
“How pathetic. No matter what, I will kill you with my own hands.”
“Can I trust that?” Balt asked, his voice trembling slightly.
Thanatos smiled benevolently.
“I swear it on my name.”
For a god, swearing on their name meant absolute certainty.
At that, Thanatos judged that Balt would no longer interfere and moved to turn her gaze back to Keter.
At that moment…
Thud.
Her head was severed again.
“But I refuse.”
Thanatos, now beheaded twice, shouted in fury. “Dragging this out won’t change anything! You will both die!”
It wasn’t a curse. It was simply the future.
However, Balt said with certainty, “Keter isn’t the kind of fool who attacks knowing it won’t work.”
Even though Keter had just tried to sacrifice him, Balt trusted him. And Keter answered that trust.
“You know me too well. It’s kinda creepy.”
His voice had changed. It was filled with confidence, like someone who had finally found the answer.
