Chapter 424

Kwaaaaaaaaaa!

The vortex wreathed in blue flame devoured everything in its path.

Ruined buildings with shattered concrete and bare steel frames. Human and monster corpses strewn together throughout the wreckage.

The ultrahigh heat burned and melted countless things.

All but one.

“Blink.”

All but him.

Beep.

System

• Skill One Annihilation has been used!

• All internal energy has been consumed!

• Everything comes at a price. Despite your severe injuries, you have expended an excessive amount of power.

• The status effect Exhaustion has been applied!

• Strength, Stamina, and Agility have temporarily decreased drastically!

I felt the strength drain from my entire body. I could barely hear the System notification drilling into my ears—or the Skeleton Warlord’s shouts from inside my Inventory.

My body felt as heavy as waterlogged cotton, and only one thought kept circling through my cold, numb mind.

That was my last chance.

Why? Why hadn’t I known? Why hadn’t I guessed?

The Arch Lich had clearly said he had watched me through Familiars planted throughout the battlefield.

Then I should have accounted for the fact that I had used One Annihilation against the Liches and Death Knights on my way here.

Even if I could not be certain, I should at least have suspected it.

Idiot.

A self-deprecating laugh escaped me. I had sworn not to let my guard down… yet at the most important moment, I had made my greatest mistake.

Having no other choice was no excuse. A fight was not about the process, but the result.

And this was what letting my guard down had earned me.

Clang!

The iron spear slipped between my fingers and rolled across the ground. My legs, drained of strength, slowly gave way.

As I sank to my knees and lowered my head, a deep darkness fell over me.

“You, human. How does it feel to pay the price for your reckless bravado?”

I barely managed to raise my head and met a pair of burning red eye-lights. A voice squeezed through my cracked lips.

“Of course it feels like shit, you fucking bastard.”

“It was a fearsome strike. I shall commend you for that much.”

The Arch Lich’s voice was steeped in triumph.

Even his teleportation magic had not allowed him to evade One Annihilation completely. His left arm was gone.

But in the end, he was the one standing here as the victor.

The red eye-lights looking down at me, kneeling like a criminal, glimmered with joy.

“I waited until the very end. I restrained myself and endured the humiliation of suffering at a human’s hands. And at last… victory belongs to me.”

Smart. Cunning.

Just as I had thought, he had been waiting for me to use One Annihilation from the very beginning.

Earlier, I had swept away the Liches and Death Knights with One Annihilation, then recovered my stamina by leveling up. But the Arch Lich had not missed the fact that the attack had exhausted all my strength in an instant.

“Do you understand now? This is your limit. The limit of humanity.”

Limit.

That one word pierced deep into my chest.

The limit called F-rank, which I had been unable to escape no matter how hard I worked. The very limit I had continued to break through day after day after obtaining the System.

Is this really as far as I go?

I had worked myself nearly to death. For my own sake, and for the people I loved. No matter what danger came at me, I gritted my teeth and fought my way through it.

That was how I had lived.

Every step had been part of breaking through my limits.

“It’s not… over yet.”

The voice that slipped between my lips sounded like it belonged to someone else, utterly devoid of life.

I looked up at the Arch Lich through hazy eyes.

“What?”

“I said it’s not over yet.”

A life-and-death duel ended only when one of the two combatants fell.

So this fight was not over.

Only when one of us finally died would whoever remained standing be the victor.

I mumbled in my dazed state.

Inventory open. Summon.

One of the spears stored in my Inventory appeared in my hand.

No—I thought I had caught it, but it slipped from my grasp at once.

Clang!

The truth struck me again.

I no longer had the strength to hold a spear, much less the energy to swing one.

“Kehat! Kahahahah!”

The Arch Lich burst into wild laughter at the sight of me.

But I did not give up.

I couldn’t.

Inventory open. Summon.

I kept summoning weapons.

Clang!

And kept dropping them.

Inventory open. Summon.

Clang!

“Human. You foolish, stupid human!”

Even as the Arch Lich mocked me, I never stopped.

The courage to humbly accept death? If that was what people called courage, I would rather be a coward.

I would… survive. No matter what.

I believed that was the final courtesy I owed the life I had fought so hard to live—and the right answer.

Inventory open. Summon.

At that very moment—

Ding.

System

• Endurance has increased drastically.

• The attribute Endurance has changed into Will!

• Those with strong wills are not easily broken, nor do they fall. They will keep their will burning until the very end and fight with every ounce of their strength.

• A strong will can sometimes produce the power to transcend one’s limits!

• The special effect Indomitable has manifested. All attributes temporarily increase slightly, and fatigue is reduced!

I felt warmth spreading from deep within me.

Compared to the power I had once possessed, it was infinitesimal. Yet somehow, it was warmer than anything else.

It was the System’s answer to my desperate plea.

My final chance.

With my hand still trembling, I tightened my grip around the cold spear shaft.

“You…”

I was not the only one who noticed the change.

The Arch Lich had been watching me as though I were a monkey in a zoo, but now his eye-lights widened. At that moment, I gathered every scrap of strength I had and hurled myself forward.

In a world slowed to a crawl, I thrust the spear toward the Arch Lich standing tall before me.

Fwoooooosh!

As the spearhead tore through the air with a piercing shriek, I saw it clearly.

The Arch Lich’s eye-lights curved like crescent moons.

He was mocking me.

“Blood Explosion.”

Boom!

An explosion.

Then a shock tore through my entire body.

My body, hurtling forward with every ounce of strength I possessed, abruptly locked up. The spear slipped from my hand and buried itself diagonally in the ground.

I blinked with both eyes, their tiny blood vessels burst. In a world dyed entirely red, something sticky and wet fell from the air and touched my face.

Drip. Drip-drip-drip.

…Ah.

Blood.

Blood had erupted from my entire body like a fountain and was now raining down around me.

I raised an arm that trembled like an aspen leaf and saw ragged flesh and stark-white bone.

Blood Explosion.

An explosion of blood.

Beyond my fading consciousness, I heard the Skeleton Warlord cry out.

“…Human!”

How long had he been shouting?

I wanted to answer, but all that spilled between my lips was blood mixed with bits of my organs.

“Cough.”

My vision spun.

I reached toward the Arch Lich, barely visible through the blood covering my face, but I could neither touch him nor reach him.

Perhaps I never would.

“Get a hold of yourself! You have to live!”

Like that needed saying.

Of course I did.

I had to survive, defeat the Arch Lich, and return to the place where I belonged.

But…

Could I really do that?

At that moment, the world slowly began to tilt.

No. The world was still.

I was the one tilting.

Unable to withstand the unending blood loss and injuries, my body was finally giving out.

No. If I fall, it’s all over.

I forced my already broken ankle to hold me upright.

The faint pain, no sharper than a thorn prick, was proof that I was dying. The Skeleton Warlord’s shouts, breaking through the static like a bad radio signal, were proof that I was still alive.

“…do it, human! Hurry!”

Do what? What?

“Summon me right n—!”

My ruptured eardrums and fading consciousness could not make out the Skeleton Warlord’s words.

Even if I had heard him clearly, I could not have stopped what the Arch Lich did next.

“You possess an interesting item.”

At some point, a familiar object had appeared in the Arch Lich’s hand.

White Flame, my beloved spear that had accompanied me through countless battles, flared in a stranger’s grasp.

But even as his finger bones burned, the Arch Lich merely laughed.

“I have received an extravagant gift. I should return it to its owner now.”

The Arch Lich drew back his arm. Powerful mana suppressed White Flame’s flames and surged toward the spearhead.

“Farewell, new Adversary—or perhaps merely a foolish human who might have been the Adversary.”

Fwoosh!

The sound of the spear cutting through the air was brief.

The moment felt eternal.

I silently watched White Flame streak toward me like a flash of light. Countless possibilities raced through my mind before I finally reached a conclusion.

I can’t dodge it.

Then only one ending remained.

Death.

I had fought countless battles over the past seven years, but never had the word death felt so close.

All I could do was watch it approach.

Yeah. It’s over.

The instant I calmly repeated those words to myself—

Crack!

White Flame’s spearhead shattered bone and punched through the center of a chest.

My eyes flew wide, and I froze.

Not from pain.

From shock.

“You…”

“What?”

Unable to find the words, I stared at the blue eye-lights flickering inches from my face.

The Skeleton Warlord, previously no more than a skull the size of a soccer ball, now stood two meters¹ tall. He spoke in his usual gruff voice.

“Do not ask how I managed to come out on my own. This commander has no idea, either.”

“Then why? Why did you…”

I looked at him as I asked.

The spearhead had pierced the Skeleton Warlord’s back and chest, stopping exactly one handspan away from me.

If no one had blocked it, it would have killed me and then some.

The Skeleton Warlord had thrown himself in front of me and saved my life.

“…I do not know that either. Damn it. I do not know anything anymore. Perhaps this sword bewitched me.”

Only then did I recognize the sword in the Skeleton Warlord’s hand.

“Hero’s Soul.”

Lei Fei’s only remaining keepsake.

A sword that could not even be held by someone unworthy of becoming a hero.

That very Hero’s Soul was now in the Skeleton Warlord’s hand.

In the hand of a Named Monster that was not even human.

“Hero’s Soul. That is a decent name for something named by humans. No, to be honest, it is cool. It is a shame I was too late to swing it properly…”

The Skeleton Warlord’s voice faded.

The light was slowly disappearing from his blue eye-lights, which had always shone so clearly.

I knew what this meant.

Erasure.

There was no doubt.

Even now, the Arch Lich’s mana carried within White Flame’s spearhead was rapidly eating away at the Skeleton Warlord.

“You…”

“Say no more. I already regret this enough as it is.”

I did not believe him.

His words were gruff, but I heard the quiet laugh behind them.

“Human. There is something I wish to ask.”

The Arch Lich was approaching beyond the Skeleton Warlord’s slowly crumbling shoulder, but I silently nodded.

“Anything.”

After hesitating for a moment, the Skeleton Warlord asked in a small voice,

“What you said last time. Did you mean it?”

“Last time? What did I…? Ah.”

I suddenly remembered.

It had been right after Lei Fei’s death, when the Skeleton Warlord was thinking about the past he could no longer remember.

And the words I had casually tossed his way.

“Well, I think he was probably a pretty decent guy.”

“…Huh? Were you saying that to this commander?”

“No. Just talking to myself.”

“Ahem. Right?”

So that was why.

That was what it had been about.

For the Skeleton Warlord, who had awakened after drawing strength from a spirit that had lost all its memories, I might have been his only friend—the one who had always been by his side.

One small remark I had tossed out like a pebble had sent ripples through the pond of his heart.

What an idiot.

Why did that matter? Why was one little thing worth going this far?

For a moment, I could not speak. Something hot rose inside me, but I forced it down and barely managed to answer.

“Of course I meant it.”

“Yes. I see.”

The Skeleton Warlord’s flickering blue eye-lights curved into a smile.

At that very moment, a chilling voice rang out and brought everything to an end.

“Have you finished saying your farewells?”

“……!”

“Bone Explosion.”

Boom!

I instinctively crossed both arms over my face. The impact swept through my entire body and sent me flying.

When I barely managed to push myself upright, I saw a skull soaring high into the air and bones shattering into countless pieces.

And…

That was all.

The Skeleton Warlord was nowhere to be seen.

Thud!

Hero’s Soul fell from the air and plunged deep into the ground.

Along with the hand of someone who had never released its hilt, even at the very end.