I stabbed a dagger into the back of the Grim Reaper and recited the activation phrase for the Purifying Radiance that I had been preparing little by little.
– Let there be light.
Whoosh!
The light exploded from within the Grim Reaper, enveloping the world.
White. And more white.
This felt like the flashbang hit I experienced in those FPS games I played a few times back on Earth.
A world solely in white, as if a giant eraser had wiped everything away. The ear-piercing beep. The ensuing silence.
But this wouldn’t last long. After a bit…
?
No matter how long I waited, my whitened vision did not return.
In a panic, I looked around, sensing that something was wrong, but nothing changed.
A space filled with purest white that felt like it would drive me mad.
“I’m going crazy….”
What went wrong? Was it a mistake to treat the Grim Reaper as just another undead and plan accordingly?
No, did I even make a sound just now? Did the Purifying Radiance erase all the undead under my command?
But then why can I hear my voice but not see my body?
My mind swirled with questions and the anxiety that followed made it hard to even breathe, let alone move.
Breathing became heavy, like trying to drown in a space devoid of moisture.
It didn’t take long to realize something was off.
“Is this a mental attack?”
Was there ever a time in my previous life or this one when I felt this anxious?
No, there wasn’t.
Even when I had to pay rent in a week with only 17,284 won in my account, or when relatives asked me what I was doing on holidays, or when I first opened my eyes on the Pan Continent, or when I almost got raped by an ugly (important) vagrant, or when I smashed a vagrant’s head with a rock and killed someone for the first time, or when I faced a monster in the Labyrinth for the first time…
Never had I felt this anxious to the point of struggling to breathe.
But who? How?
My mental defenses must have reached a considerable level due to all my skills and powers.
Of course, such defenses wouldn’t help against overwhelming attacks… But didn’t I just sense that commanding the undead?
That my soul possessed an unusually high level according to the standards of the Pan Continent.
If this is a real mental attack, and the kind that could punch through my level and mental defenses…
“Why don’t you show yourself? You have business with me, right?”
As I spoke, a black smoke began to spread in one corner of my previously white vision.
It felt like ink being dropped into water.
The pure white world stained with pure black. From within that, a man stepped out.
A toga that seemed to rip the night sky to use as fabric, with starlight itself as patterns woven into it. Oddly, his face was not visible.
To be more precise, I saw it but couldn’t recognize it.
It was like there was some filter; every time I tried to look at his face, the black smoke spread like a veil, adding more stains to my view.
He gave off a vibe of a man who seemed to mix Greek and Cthulhu mythology. In his arms was a woman draped in a tattered robe.
She was not alive. If she were, she would have been breathing with some movement, but she was just limp.
However, her complexion was too good to be considered dead.
Now that I had some experience as an adventurer, I knew.
That woman was either someone who had just recently died, or an undead that had been meticulously revived. It had to be one of the two.
And that robe…
Naturally, I started to guess the identity of the person before me.
“I heard earlier that if the dead come back to life, it’s a violation of some rule or other.”
– That rule was set by me. I am also the one who judges. Who would dare accuse me of wrongdoing?
“Hmm, the pot calling the kettle black is a divine quality, isn’t it?”
Outwardly, I nodded calmly, but inwardly I was sweating bullets.
God of Death.
This guy, who should be lying dead somewhere in the Labyrinth, was still alive and kidnapped me to an unknown space at the moment the Grim Reaper was destroyed.
And judging by the negative emotions gnawing at my mind since earlier, he looked far from friendly.
As I nervously groped the feel of the Goddess Statue in my arms for comfort.
From the ink-like face, a rumbling voice emerged.
– First, let’s clear up a misunderstanding. I have no intention of being hostile toward you. The feelings you are currently experiencing are inherent repulsion caused by my nature, so please do not react too sensitively. …Lastly, I assure you, I am indeed dead at this moment.
“What do you… is this some kind of message? It doesn’t make sense that you’re dead yet here we are having a conversation.”
– What do you think is required of a being who revives the dead and gathers the souls that have lost their bodies to confront death?
“There’s nothing but obliteration left.”
– That’s harsh. But if I were to cease to exist, the cycle of this graveyard would be thrown into chaos. Therefore, what I require is sleep.
“Sleep…?”
– Yes. I am currently in a deep sleep from which I cannot awaken, whether by my own will or that of others. Even this conversation is but a fleeting illusion, the nonsense of a dream. You must rid yourself of doubt.
“…Alright. Let’s pretend everything you said is true. What’s the reason why a sleeping god would kidnap me now? Didn’t the Grim Reaper fall to dozens of other adventurers already?”
– Indeed. But there will be no next time. Mente has faced true death… as you would define it, permanent obliteration.
“What does that even mean? The Labyrinth is a place where time and space intertwine. Death should repeat itself time and again.”
– I cannot disclose that.
The tension I had maintained suddenly relaxed.
A being I thought was dead, or rather was actually dead but could still function to some extent, was mum.
Whenever the conversation turned substantial, he would seal his lips.
Wasn’t that a familiar trope?
Indeed. This is a classic scenario where an important character appears midway, sprinkling breadcrumbs for the plot.
A narrative style used by many authors…. and one I intended to employ myself someday.
The more breadcrumbs the better, as I had planted various seeds of future events.
Of course, the current situation could also have elements assigned to it.
It was a mere concept but… isn’t this a world where even such concepts manifest?
Excluding the setting I had thoroughly discarded, it wasn’t strange for anything to happen on the Pan Continent.
And if I were to add a god with remnants of will after death…
“You. You’re a portion of the god that was turned into a monster? One that was hiding in the Grim Reaper.”
They surely hadn’t included a sane god. They would have borrowed a plotline where part of them was cut off to resist madness, and that bit took on its own will.
Upon my question, the God of Death—no, the faceless deity—shrugged.
– Good deduction.
A clean acknowledgment. The fact that my very presence incited negative emotions was odd.
While it’s true that living beings fear death, there’s also the undeniable aspect of longing for and idolizing it.
Thus, the God of Death should be both terrifying and awe-inspiring. Not merely an entity to fear.
Still, even if he had fallen, he was a part of a god.
It was true that he wasn’t a standard existence. He’d turned awry to the point of being dangerous… but I believed in my setup.
The Labyrinth was the perfect divine realm birthed by the Goddess of Love over a long time.
It was impossible for anyone to bring me harm while hiding from her gaze.
If I were to get hurt or die in the Labyrinth, it would be solely due to the rightful rules of the Labyrinth… and thus the natural result of battling monsters.
There should be no room for interference from god-like beings mysteriously revived or transcendent entities approaching with vague intentions.
With the reassurance of having the Goddess of Love as my backing, I tilted my head a little defiantly.
“So? You brought me here for a reason, right? Hurry up and tell me; I have things to do even if I don’t look like it.”
– For you, it is urgent. You have always been this way.
…Always?
No, I shouldn’t assign meaning to every word that came from that being’s mouth.
It was highly likely this was something I added lightly as a piece for effect, and wasn’t it merely a piece discarded due to madness?
A god they might call a ghost. It would be better to consider it an inferior spirit.
Raising my guard higher and consciously locking all doors to my heart, the anxiety I had felt began to ease.
The moment I isolated myself in this empty white world.
The dark stain on my neck began to tremble ever so slightly. As if it was struggling to hold back laughter.
– As you suspected, I am but an existence that merely exists. I possess neither power nor authority, nor can I deliver a message, thus my existence value was non-existent. …It had been non-existent.
With that, he pointed a finger at me.
The woman I had assumed was the Grim Reaper had vanished from my embrace.
– I can reveal to you the truth, so that no one will dare question my worth anymore.
“…Truth?”
I narrowed my eyes and braced myself. To disregard any nonsense he might say.
However, the next thing out of his mouth was more than enough to unsettle the preparation I had made.
– The long funeral is nearing its end. There will be no next time. Trials of the World Tree, warriors blessed by the land, the most human-like of the non-humans, and the grim reaper who has forgotten its role, along with the tiny fragments clinging to existence…
– There will be no next cycle. Every given coin has been spent. …Love will run out, and the Labyrinth will collapse.
“What?”
As I flinched, the fragment before me began to be slowly devoured by the darkness lurking around its neck.
Just as it emerged from that darkness, it again began to disappear into the abyss.
Before I was expelled from the white space, I heard his final words.
– You will be our end.
