Ch.86The End of the Battle (1)

“As expected… even the undead don’t seem to be made normally.”

Frey’s cold gaze pierced through the black death created by Reisen and struck him like a dagger.

In Reisen’s eyes, Frey’s body had been sufficiently weakened by the consecutive battles.

The wounds remaining on her body from combat revealed without filter how rough and desperate this battle had been.

The cracked breathing sound heard with each breath indirectly indicated that Frey didn’t have much strength left.

Normally, she should have collapsed long ago given her physical condition.

But Frey, far from weakening and collapsing in the continuing battles, grew increasingly stronger.

As if she alone was free from the laws of this world, no matter how tired she became, she unleashed attacks stronger than one second before.

Slash-

In the blink of an eye, Frey’s sword sent the heads of two undead flying through the air.

The headless bodies collapsed to the ground, turned to powder, and eventually shattered completely, disappearing with the wind.

Witnessing this scene, Reisen expressed his anger at the absurdity unfolding before his eyes, grinding his teeth so hard they might break.

“Even that dragon who soared without knowing how high the sky was, even the foolish king of the dwarves, they were all mortal in the end…!!”

“I don’t understand why you’re suddenly saying that.”

While incomprehensible to Frey, these were natural reactions from Reisen’s perspective.

The space where Frey now stood was a space of death itself, created using souls he had devoured and collected over a long time.

Therefore, it was normal for any mortal exposed to death within it to naturally decay and die.

Until now, no one who faced this technique could escape the death that approached everyone equally.

But within it, Frey emerged as an exception.

Death could never approach Frey, who was emitting her own radiance.

To Reisen’s eyes, it seemed as though death could never invade the existence known as Frey.

Reisen, who had fled from death for a long time, couldn’t accept this fact.

That’s why Reisen pushed himself to raise the concentration of death to its limit.

As if the Evil God himself was answering Reisen’s prayer, death penetrated Frey’s aura and approached within 10cm of her.

But that was all—a meaningless struggle.

“I wish you would just die quietly…”

Frey’s face grimaced only momentarily before she quickly adapted to the new space and resumed dispatching the undead.

Now to Reisen, Frey was a monster that deviated from the world’s standards.

To Reisen, Frey had become an incomprehensible, unknown monster beyond understanding.

She was a monster who, with just two swords, ignored the limits of stamina and species, broke through the walls of time and years, and crushed laws with her own power.

Slash-!!

With Frey’s final strike, the barely surviving undead shattered and disappeared.

An absurd result occurred where a living being, not the dead, remained standing in the space of death.

“Just die already, damn it!!!”

In a voice now close to pleading, Reisen pounded the ground with his staff.

The death energy condensed in the ground exploded all at once.

Boom-!!!!

The explosion, using over a thousand souls as material, boasted destructive power so strong that the sound tore even Reisen’s eardrums.

This should surely have killed that monster.

Just as Reisen smiled with certainty of victory, Frey emerged through the mist raised by the explosion.

“I really thought I was going to die that time.”

* * *

“I really thought I was going to die that time.”

I conveyed my words plainly, without any pretense.

This seemed to make Reisen view me even more as a monster, but I was being sincere.

Caught in that explosion, I felt like I was performing acrobatics on a line as thin as fishing line, suspended between life and death.

To put it in gaming terms, it felt like I had exactly 1 HP left.

In that situation, with a second explosion about to occur, I felt the fishing line I was barely standing on was about to break.

‘If I hadn’t used the barely cooled-down instant teleport, it wouldn’t have just been a threat—the line would have really broken.’

I smiled bitterly looking at the items that were completely half-destroyed in the explosion.

Since I had worked hard to collect these items in a short time, I couldn’t help feeling they were a waste.

“Well, what matters is that I survived, right?”

“Damn it…!!”

Reisen, upon seeing that I had survived, threw himself backward onto the ground while cursing, rolling across the floor.

His actions revealed his intention to create as much distance from me as possible.

Of course, being the leap of a magician without proper physical training, it wasn’t very effective.

Tap-

In terms of time, 0.5 seconds.

In terms of steps, the distance was perfectly closed with just half a step more from me.

Arriving right in front of him, I looked down at Reisen with a sneer.

“Rolling on the ground with a body like that will damage your bones.”

“Damn it…! Why is this happening…!!”

Reisen gripped his staff tightly, lamenting the fact that he was being treated this way and regretting the past.

He seemed to think that if he had made different choices, this outcome wouldn’t have happened.

Of course, in my opinion, it was just a difference of sooner or later—the result wouldn’t have been different.

“Don’t you think it’s time to end the denial and accept that your time has come?

After killing so many, surely you didn’t think your turn would never come?”

“You… do you think you’d be any different…! Having transcended the wall of time and even species, does everything seem ridiculous to you!? Your sword is also covered in blood…!! The same fate awaits you in the end!!”

Perhaps thinking there was no escape route left, Reisen began hurling curses at me.

Of course, since most of his curses stemmed from his own inferiority complex, there wasn’t much that resonated with me.

“You seem to be the one who thinks I’m special. I don’t think I’m special. So yes, someday when the time comes, I’ll die too.

But at least not right now. I have no intention of dying pathetically before killing the Evil God.”

I brought the God-Slaying Sword to his neck to finish Reisen off.

There were still dozens of lives remaining inside Reisen, but with the help of the God-Slaying Sword and my elevated status as a Sword Saint, I could cut through them.

At least now, I could cut the very connection between Reisen’s life and death.

“It seems like you have nothing more to say…”

“…”

I looked down at Reisen, thinking he might say something at the last moment, but Reisen remained silent.

It was contrary to how he had been spewing curses just moments ago.

But the gaze that still viewed me as something special remained unchanged—he was still the Reisen I knew.

“Anyone watching might mistake me for your god rather than the Evil God.”

With those words, I beheaded Reisen.

Slash-

The sword swung smoothly, and accordingly, Reisen’s head separated from his body and fell to the ground.

I watched Reisen’s corpse for a moment, wondering if he might revive again, but there was no sign of that happening.

“Haaa…. I think I cut well…”

Reisen was dead.

Having confirmed this fact with my own eyes, I could finally release the tension in my body and collapse to the ground.

From the beginning, my body should have been torn to shreds by the explosion I was caught in.

No matter how I managed to survive without dying, my body couldn’t possibly be in normal condition. In fact, I was in a state where I felt like I might lose consciousness at any moment.

Near death.

There probably wasn’t a more appropriate word to describe my physical state.

Yes, I was now in a near-death state.

But since not everything was over yet, I simply couldn’t collapse.

“■■■■■■–!!!”

“It seems Lady Cecilia has resolved her situation well too…”

In the distance, I could see the zombie dragon falling with a terrible scream.

It had been disgustingly persistent, refusing to die, but it seemed to finally exhaust its vitality and collapse.

As for the Titan that fell into the Evil God’s hands, I believed that Vulcan, Alan, and Leon would handle it well together.

So the only remaining problem was one:

To remove the prince who was still hammering away in the succession chamber.

Stagger-

As I tried to move toward the succession chamber, I momentarily felt the world spinning.

It was a sensory illusion coming from severe fatigue.

My body, which I had been forcing to endure, was now sending me emergency signals as if it had truly reached its limit.

Seeing this, Lilly and Kitsune approached me and gave me concerned looks.

“I can finish this for you, do you really have to do it with that injured body?”

“We are more than capable of handling this much.”

“Even if it doesn’t mean much, I think it’s better to bury someone from your hometown yourself.”

As if the weapon-making was nearing its end, the sound of hammering gradually came to a close.

Bang-! Bang-! Bang-!

Within the rhythmically ringing hammer sounds, a very deep longing was embedded.

Although I knew nothing about hammering, my widely expanded senses clearly felt the emotions conveyed through the action.

Bang… Bang.. Bang.

Eventually, all hammering ended, and the dwarf prince raised the weapon with a voice full of joy.

And as his goal seemed close to success, the prince’s true feelings, which he had been hiding all along, burst forth.

“Ha… haha…! Finally! Now I can go home too…!!”

That true feeling was a very modest wish that should have been modest—one he couldn’t tell anyone for a long time.

And breaking that modest wish was precisely my job.

“Unfortunately… that wish won’t come true. I have a new entry here. An entry that your weapon can’t surpass.”

The prince looked at me with very resentful eyes.

While his appearance was certainly that of a mature young man among dwarves, the look in his eyes as he gazed at me seemed very childlike.

I found that childlike gaze to be the most painful wound I had received today.