Chapter 377: A Future Without Me (5)
In a land of death where even Transcendentals struggled to endure, a gentle nun appeared. By all logic, it was clearly a monster in disguise and should have been attacked immediately, but Keter did not move a single inch. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t even think—his gaze remained fixed on the nun because both his body and soul were screaming a warning that the slightest wrong move would mean death.
She looked harmless. But the mere act of her lips parting made Keter feel as though his heart would burst from tension.
“You are a being that should not exist in this world.”
“…!”
The moment she finished speaking, Keter clutched his neck in agony. His face turned pale in an instant, as though something were strangling him. Yet nothing was there. No one was gripping his neck, nor was he doing it himself. It was her will. With nothing more than the words “should not exist in this world,” she was guiding Keter toward death.
Keter raised his hand and pointed at her. Hundreds of Tusks, each possessing overwhelming piercing power, shot forward. But they passed straight through her body.
Is she nothing more than an illusion?
“You cannot kill death.”
The nun stepped closer and gently brushed Keter’s cheek. The faint warmth of her touch made his mind reel. If his concentration faltered even slightly, he felt certain his very soul would be erased.
Looking at him, clinging on with sheer will, she spoke softly, almost tenderly.
“Death is natural. Do not resist it.”
She acted like she was soothing a stubborn child, but black blood began to trickle from Keter’s nose.
With a single suggestion of death, she could kill any living being because she was the Ruler of the sixth floor, Thanatos—death itself.
Keter had already realized who she was; the problem was that knowing it changed nothing. Joyray had said Thanatos was a being one had to seek out, but for some reason, she had come to him. Plus, the moment they met, she tried to kill him. He didn’t understand why, but her words angered him.
“Not wanting to die is natural, too!”
Thud!
Keter’s palm struck her chest and pushed her back, unlike before, when his arrows had passed through her. She only stepped back a couple of paces, but her expression showed genuine surprise.
“Remarkable adaptability. You’ve accepted that you cannot kill me.”
Because she was death itself, any intent to kill her was nullified. But if one abandoned the very notion of killing, then it became possible to physically touch her.
“Ha… ha…”
Keter gasped for breath. The sensation of being strangled hadn’t disappeared, but it had eased slightly. It felt like breathing through the eye of a needle while he was being weighed down with iron, but he still looked straight at her.
“Thanatos. Give me the Mirror of Truth.”
According to Joyray, she should have handed it over without resistance, but Thanatos shook her head.
“I cannot.”
“…Why?”
“Because you have the potential to become the most dreadful existence in this dimension.”
“That’s a pretty convincing reason.”
“You intend to resist. But listen, there is a reason you must die.”
She showed no intention of fighting, but the very act of speaking hastened death. This was no comfortable reception room; it was a land where even Transcendentals perished. It was not a place for calm conversation, yet refusing to talk wasn’t an option either. There was nowhere to go, no visible exit.
In addition, Thanatos appeared instantly. This entire domain was effectively in her palm. Running away to avoid conversation would be foolish.
Besides, Thanatos had driven countless adventurers on the sixth floor to suicide. Even Transcendentals with godlike willpower had taken their own lives after hearing her whispers.
And now, from her lips, the truth about Keter was revealed.
“Keter. How much do you know about yourself? Do you realize that your body contains the information of all living beings? From single-celled organisms invisible to the naked eye… to the genetic essence of the largest giants in existence. You wear the form of a human, but you are not human.”
* * *
Keter had always believed his misfortune was ordinary. In the Lawless City of Liqueur, abandoned orphans were nothing unusual. Death was more common than air in that place, and Keter had clawed his way through life just to survive. And along the way, a thought had occurred to him.
Am I… kind of amazing?
Out of a hundred children abandoned and left to fend for themselves, ninety would die before reaching adulthood. They would starve, be beaten, become sick, or be killed for amusement.
Then, did the ten who survived live because they were geniuses? Because they were strong? No. Among the ninety who died, there were often smarter children and even those born with special abilities.
The survivors all had one thing in common: a patron. They all had someone who helped them live—someone who protected them. They could be as insignificant as a homeless wanderer or as powerful as the Godfather of Liqueur. However, without someone’s protection, no child could survive in Liqueur. Talent meant nothing.
And yet, Keter broke that rule. He chose no patron. He bowed to no one. Everyone believed he would die, but strangely, he didn’t. The people of Liqueur, who killed for sport, never touched him. Or rather, they didn’t bother him first, but if Keter provoked them, they showed no mercy.
And this was where his memory had been distorted. He believed that he was beaten half to death, but survived through sheer grit. However, that was wrong. He hadn’t been beaten half to death—he had simply died. He was beaten to death, stabbed, and slashed. And then, after some time, he came back to life. And each time, he thought that he was just tough. Each return from death made him stronger and sharper. That was the law of Liqueur—survival of the fittest.
But no matter how strong he became, he could never avoid death entirely. There were countless beings stronger than him, as Liqueur had more powerful beings than grains of sand on a beach.
So, everyone realized that Keter was different. Of course, he still felt pain, yet he fought even when he didn’t have to. He was insane.
Eventually, even Keter understood that he was different from others. This wasn’t about perseverance; it was something deeper. His very bloodline was different, but he never cared.
“The blood of parents who abandoned me doesn’t matter to me.”
He lived by instinct. Fun was the only purpose of his life. That began to change when he learned of Sefira—its fall, revenge. Then, regression happened, along with the journey to save his family.
During all that, he could no longer ignore the truth of his bloodline, especially when multiple fathers appeared. None of them were mere peasant farmers, but the most powerful figures and Transcendentals in the world. Only a fool wouldn’t find that strange.
And now, from Thanatos came the truth he had always sought: the truth about himself.
“You are all things, and yet one. One, and yet all. A being created by a god with purpose—and I can assure you, that purpose is not for the peace of this world.”
“Sounds cool. So I’m like some ultimate weapon?”
“Do not misunderstand. You have no choice. You are a tool. And there is one who intends to use you—to shatter the balance between life and death. That is why you must die.”
Keter smiled faintly.
The word “tool” made him think of Akrah, his mother. She hadn’t given birth to him out of love but to use him. He was merely a vessel containing the genetic essence of all living beings—the seeds of the strongest and most intelligent.
Of course, it stung, but that wasn’t all he felt.
“Guess this gives me leverage over the emperor, too.”
“…Even knowing this, you still choose to live.”
Thanatos could tell whether someone wished to live or die. Keter wanted to live. There wasn’t even a trace of a death wish within him. The oppressive force of death that had been crushing him began to fade. His will to live surged, making him seem more alive than ever.
“It’s been a long time,” murmuring softly, Thanatos extended her hand.
From her shadow, a sword rose. It was a sword of absolute black from edge to hilt. It was so dark it seemed to swallow light itself.
“I do not normally interfere with life and death directly. But this time, I will for the sake of the world’s balance.”
“That’s a long way of saying you’re going to kill me.”
Though she could kill with mere intent, that only worked if the target accepted death. Keter refused death itself, so she would have to kill him directly.
She held the sword awkwardly, like someone who knew nothing of combat, but Keter tensed. That clumsiness only made her more terrifying.
A fight against something that can’t be killed…
His condition for victory was simple: descend to the seventh floor. However, he didn’t know where the entrance was. There could be conditions, just like before. Figuring that out in a land of death was already a trial in itself, and on top of that, he had to fight the ruler of the Sixth Layer.
“What a pain in the ass!”
It wasn’t a complaint. If anything, there was excitement in it.
Crack!!
That was when the sky fractured like glass. Thanatos looked up calmly.
“So the contract with Liqueur has finally come to an end.”
The signs of the collapse Amon had warned about had begun to appear. As if the situation weren’t already dire enough, a time limit had now been added.
“Mandala.”
Keter activated it immediately. He had already used it once, so there was no reason to hold back now. Time slowed to an extreme, and Thanatos appeared frozen. Countless choices lay before him, but running wasn’t one of them.
If I can’t kill her, I can seal her.
Thanks to Kron, the Mad Saint King, he knew that even divine beings could be sealed. He didn’t know the method, but he thought he could at least try. After all, he was of the Yaksha tribe, a group that had sealed gods since ancient times.
When Keter desired for the way to seal gods, the method naturally surfaced in his mind.
I have to first weaken her.
Divine power was said to be infinite, but it wasn’t; it was just vast.
This was the land of death. This was no place to hold back, so Keter unleashed everything.
Limitless Archery, Fifth Form: Kaleidoscope, Nayuta.
Panels of acceleration, refraction, and movement scattered outward. If Kaleidoscope, A Myriad of Sand Crystals, spread with hundreds of panels to cover a single village, Kaleidoscope, Immunerable expanded with tens of thousands to envelop an entire city.
And the next stage above that, Nayuta, unfolded into tens of millions—enough to envelop an entire nation. In his previous life, Immunerable had been Keter’s limit, but in this life, he shattered that ceiling and deployed Nayuta.
On top of that, Keter created the very arrow that had once finished off Eslow.
Limitless Archery, Second Form: Milky Way, Goodnight.
This was the arrow that was so overwhelmingly powerful that a single shot made the entire world feel its vibration. One appeared, then two, then three… A total of five arrows were nocked on Keter’s bow.
It was a reckless attack since explosions did not distinguish between friend and foe. The distance between Keter and Thanatos was no more than five steps. If Goodnight detonated at this range, Keter himself would not come out unscathed. But if he had feared death or sacrifice, he would never have come this far. There was no hesitation as Keter released the bowstring.
The arrows did not fly directly toward Thanatos. Instead, they were fired into the kaleidoscopic panels that surrounded the space. The arrows accelerated through the panels. Then, the acceleration layered through refraction.
Keter wasn’t just attacking; he was aiming to obliterate the entire space itself. And yet, Thanatos’ response was utterly indifferent. It was as if she were a naive onlooker who had no idea what was about to happen or simply didn’t care. She did nothing, merely standing there with her sword in hand.
The same composure Keter had always shown against countless enemies was being shown to him by Thanatos. A cold sweat trickled down Keter’s back. He could almost empathize with his past opponents.
This feels like shit.
He hadn’t fired just one, but five arrows that were powerful enough to kill even a Transcendent like Eslow. On top of that, they were further amplified through the Kaleidoscope.
I can’t picture this working at all.
It wasn’t that Keter didn’t trust his techniques, but the presence of Thanatos herself was eating away at his trust in himself.
That was when Thanatos raised her sword.
“How noisy.”
It was a slow, downward swing. It was too slow to cut anything, yet Keter’s heart dropped. He redirected all five arrows at once and reinforced himself to the limit with the Terra Ring’s power.
Whii….
His vision turned white, and there was ringing in his ears. Keter suddenly felt like something was empty on his left. He slowly turned his head and saw that his left arm was missing, as if it had never been there to begin with.
And it wasn’t just his left arm that had vanished.
“Agh…”
From afar, Amaranth, who had been hiding, let out a scream, only to turn to ash and vanish in the blink of an eye. Keter could feel it—the Amaranth that had resided within his left arm had been erased.
At the same time, something like powdered glass began to fall from the sky. They were the fragments of the shattered Kaleidoscope panels. There wasn’t even a trace left of the five Goodnight arrows. All that remained before him was Thanatos, looking faintly disappointed.
“You were saved by a fragment of another soul.”
She raised her sword again. Keter trembled. Thanatos was a true god; human techniques didn’t work on her.
Only one option came to Keter’s mind: Misteltein, the god-slaying arrow. It was the trump card he had originally saved for Queen Lillian. Just as Keter became certain that using it was his only choice and moved to draw Misteltein…
Thud.
Thanatos’ head fell from her body. There was no blood. Her severed head looked upward at the person who had attacked her.
“Do you even understand what you’ve cut?”
“A woman,” Balt answered simply.
Then Balt walked over to Keter and smacked him on the back.
“Temporary alliance. Find the exit.”
