Chapter 19
Sliiice-!
The sound of cartilage being crushed traveled from my hand directly along the bone and into my eardrum.
There was no pain.
No, there was, but perhaps I forgot it immediately.
My field of vision suddenly flipped.
The floor became the ceiling, and the ceiling became the floor.
Heaven and earth intersected and spun.
It wasn't all that dramatic a scene.
In this tower, it was impossible to tell the ceiling from the floor.
And my head hadn't shot upward.
Only my vision had escaped my body.
Thanks to that, I could see the appearance of the Reaper girl I'd possessed from a third-person perspective,
and immediately afterward, I saw the man charging in and bringing his sword down on my head.
Whoom-
It passed straight through.
The attack didn't connect.
I had become a ghost.
Invincibility through suicide.
I'd successfully activated Death's End.
Thunk-!
After that, my vision fell toward the floor.
I was thrown into darkness.
I sink.
Where to.
The threshold of death.
I had crossed the line of death.
*
I opened my eyes.
It was an ash-gray sky.
A massive cliff stood before me.
Below it stretched a silent world, a white expanse.
I was lying there.
Very comfortably.
“Mmm….”
I rubbed my eyes.
I felt so languid.
It made absolutely no sense.
I had been in such a desperate situation just moments ago.
But it couldn't be helped.
After all.
‘It must have been a dream.’
Because this was reality.
Everything over there was a fake world.
The tower, the modern world, all of it—none of that existed in the first place.
I had always been lying here.
This was home.
My sanctuary.
Where I belonged.
My wonderfully warm and comfortable bed.
That certainty took over my mind.
Yes.
What place could be this cozy?
‘This is comfortable….’
I wanted to keep sleeping.
All the memories from just before began fading like a fragment of a distant past life.
The impulse to sleep controlled every single cell in my body.
I love sleep more than anything.
Nothing is better than sleep.
A languid smile formed.
I tried to bury my face deeper into the white floor.
Because I had to sleep more.
Because at last, I could.
The floor against my cheek was a little hard, but it felt cool and pleasant.
I rolled over pleasantly and groped at the floor with my hand.
Clatter-
“…Huh?”
I felt something round caught in my fingertips.
It was smooth.
It had two empty sockets.
I looked bleary-eyed at the white lump in my hand.
“……”
It was a human skull.
“Eek…!”
In an instant, drowsiness receded like the tide, and goosebumps rose all over my body.
I jolted and sat upright.
The cradle was a plain of bleached bones.
It was made of countless layers of human bones, bizarre magical beast bones, and giant unidentified skulls.
I opened my eyes fully.
“…”
Why had I done that?
Rolling atop a mountain of corpses and talking about my childhood home…
I must have lost my mind for a moment.
Only then did I realize that something was clutched in my left hand.
A grotesque hourglass carved from white bone.
What was falling inside it…
Drip, drip.
It was blood.
Bright red blood was falling in drops.
“When all this blood runs out, do I return to normal?”
That was when.
Flash-!
“Aaaaaagh!!”
A figure suddenly appeared in the empty air around me.
The form of a hideous monster screaming and shedding tears of blood.
Judging by the scythe, it seemed to be another Reaper.
But less than 0.1 seconds after appearing, the Reaper disappeared.
Thus, it only looked like a brief flash.
Flash-!
Again.
This time, a figure appeared and vanished farther away.
“…Do Reapers have stays that short?”
These were senior Reapers whose stays had become extremely short after visiting the Reaper realm too many times.
“Did I overuse Death's End…?”
It seemed to be an example of what Captain Death Note had warned about.
If they could come here only for such a fleeting instant, they wouldn't be able to dodge follow-up attacks or ongoing attacks and would get hit.
I turned my head away.
Where could the Great Stone Tablet be?
As luck would have it, there was a Reaper some distance away who seemed to remain for quite a while.
They looked like a hideous monster too, but for some reason I wasn't frightened at all. Was it because they were one of my kind? I felt no wariness whatsoever.
“Excuse me!”
I closed the distance in a single bound with Black Shift and approached the Reaper.
“Eek?!”
The moment the Reaper saw my black mist, they screamed and toppled backward.
“Could you tell me the way? The Great Stone Tablet… where is it…?”
They hurriedly got to their feet and began running away from me.
Why?
“Hiiiiiiik!!”
“Why are you running away?”
I chased after them.
“Why are you avoiding me?!”
“Don't come! Don't come any closer!”
Patter-patter-patter.
“You're the only person I can ask!!”
After a thirty-second chase, I used Black Shift one more time and caught up.
“Wait! Stop! Look!”
I clung to their leg.
“I asked where the Great Stone Tablet was!”
“Aaaagh! Go away! That, that! The black thing!”
The Reaper pointed at the cliff ahead with a trembling hand.
Was the Great Stone Tablet beyond that cliff?
“Thank you. But why on earth are you avoiding me like that?”
The Reaper shouted, looking like they were about to cry.
“Why am I avoiding you?! You're the gatekeeper of the Demon King's Tower!!”
“You think I don't know just because I'm an apprentice?!!!”
“Get the hell away!!!!!”
“……What?”
“Let go! My time is uuuup…!”
“Aagh-! I haven't even erased my name yet!”
With that final cry, the Reaper vanished.
I reached a hand into the empty air and muttered blankly.
“Was this Reaper I'd possessed… someone famous?”
I had no time to ponder that right now.
I turned and faced the massive black cliff the Reaper had indicated.
Was the Great Stone Tablet up there?
“How do I get up?”
I approached the cliff first.
Just as I was about to touch it to climb the surface.
“……Huh?”
I noticed marks on the cliff.
Countless gouged scars.
I stepped back and looked up.
It wasn't the surface of the cliff.
Characters densely filled the entire cliff without a gap.
“This entire cliff… was the Great Stone Tablet.”
It was so enormous I hadn't even been able to imagine it.
Because it was more like terrain.
And that was why it was a problem.
“How am I supposed to find my name here?”
How could I find a single name on this enormous slab?
After wandering around for quite some time.
“Am I supposed to do that…?”
I saw another Reaper.
That Reaper placed a hand on the tablet, then quickly moved and stopped at one point.
I tried copying them.
I touched the tablet.
Then.
Wooooooong-!
The circle in my lower abdomen began to rotate.
Using that power, my body traversed the tablet.
“So this is why I needed a circle before learning the instant-death skill…”
Hundreds of millions of names flashed past, and at last my gaze stopped.
It was near the bottom, toward the right.
There were two names blinking red there.
There were two.
These two seemed to be the names written most recently.
[■■■■ ■■]
[■■■■ ■■■]
I couldn't read them at all.
Therefore, I couldn't tell which one was my name.
“Not that I even know what the name of the Reaper I possessed is in the first place…”
But the one above.
This one looked more familiar to my eyes.
I was convinced that this was my name.
“If I erase this… I get the instant-death skill.”
I kill myself, causing my name to appear on the Great Stone Tablet, the register of Reapers.
And then erase that name.
I probably could erase only my own name, despite having no other authority.
Doing so grants the authority of the Great Stone Tablet's scribe, and that was supposedly the instant-death skill.
The bottom of the hourglass was filling.
I gripped the scythe anew without hesitation.
And drew the scythe's blade toward what I thought was my name.
Kraagh-!!
As the blade tore through the strokes, the name cracked and vanished completely from the tablet.
“…”
But.
Nothing happened.
“Where's my instant-death skill?”
No hologram appeared, and my stats hadn't changed at all.
“Or did I get it like this…?”
There was no way to know whether I had acquired the instant-death skill.
It was strange.
I stared at the tablet again for a moment.
The one remaining name still gleamed red.
“Was this one my name…?”
Apparently, it had been the lower name.
I was embarrassed that I'd thought its shape looked familiar.
It couldn't be helped.
I didn't know whether erasing both was allowed, but…
This wasn't the time to worry about anything. It was an emergency, since I might not get the instant-death skill.
I took up the scythe again and cut through the remaining name.
Kraagk!
It happened simultaneously.
A hologram appeared.
“That's it…!”
[You have severed the binding of the registry.]
[You acquire the authority of the Great Stone Tablet's scribe.]
.
.
.
.
.
.
[Error. This Reaper is not in the Reaper realm.]
It seemed some problem had occurred.
“Huh… but I'm right here…”
I was confused.
“Is it because I erased someone else's…?”
It seemed like the only explanation.
Just as I stood there bewildered, not knowing what to do.
A hologram appeared again.
[The aforementioned scribe acquires the authority in your stead.]
[Unique Skill: Death Sentence - Carve (刻) acquired.]
“Oh… Did it work…?”
Being told it was on my behalf made it feel like I'd stolen it, which bothered me, but I was happy for now. I'd thought I wouldn't get it.
But that wasn't the end.
[As Death Sentence is reawakened, the scribe's authority is restored.]
[Error. You already possess this authority.]
.
.
[Death Sentence - Slash (斬) has been reawakened.]
[Error. You already possess this skill.]
“Huh…”
It seemed some problem had occurred.
I had no idea what was going on.
I had to wait a long time after that final error message appeared.
More than half the blood remained in the hourglass, but there was no telling when it would end, which made me anxious.
Then this message appeared.
[The Great Stone Tablet examines you.]
.
.
[To remove the duplicate skill, the Great Stone Tablet raises the rank of one of the two ‘Death Sentence - Slash (斬)’ skills.]
.
.
[‘Death Sentence - Slash (斬)’ evolves.]
.
.
[Unique Skill: Death Sentence - Sight (視) acquired.]
Things were confusing, but I could clearly understand the conclusion.
I had obtained the instant-death skill.
Two of them, in fact.
___
[Death Sentence - Slash (斬)]
Immediately executes one target that comes into contact with the Reaper's scythe.
Cooldown depends on the user's Strength stat.
[Death Sentence - Sight (視)]
Immediately executes one target caught in the Reaper's gaze.
Cooldown depends on the user's Magic Power stat.
___
“Fucking insane…”
Even just hearing the descriptions, they sounded incredible.
Apparently, I could kill with just a touch, or even just by looking.
I figured I could alternate between the two skills.
It looked like I'd stolen one from another Reaper, but… I had no choice.
Drip.
There was still quite a lot of blood left in the hourglass in my left hand.
I waited for all the blood in the hourglass to fall downward.
The moment the final drop fell.
Ssssss-
My vision began to recover.
The Reaper realm's afterimage and the view inside the tower were overlapping.
Before my eyes, I could see both the white bone plain of the Reaper realm and the male swordsman at once.
̉᷇᷈͊̉᷇᷈͊̉᷇᷈͊̕̕̕죽̼̱어̪᷅͑-̰̮̱͍̑̍͑̊!̮̱̋᷈͐᷁̊!̘̅̓̕͜!̤͇”
The swordsman's face was distorted as he screamed.
His greatsword was crashing down toward my motionless body.
BANG-!!
It passed through my neck and slammed into the floor.
I remained in a state where attacks did not connect.
It seemed to be because my body was still in the Reaper realm.
The man attacked me like a madman.
Horizontally, then vertically.
But once again.
He cleaved empty air.
Around the time my vision could no longer tell which of the Reaper realm and tower scenery was the afterimage,
the drops of blood in the hourglass began flowing backward.
At last, I could fully understand what my master had said.
That one's stay time was growing shorter meant.
It meant the time during which one could choose when to leave the Reaper realm was growing shorter.
I had plenty of time right now.
Enough to leisurely wait through several of the man's follow-up strikes.
Whoosh- Bang!
After missing with his greatsword several times, the man panted roughly and stopped moving for the briefest instant.
An opening.
‘Now.’
Crack!
I smashed the hourglass, whose blood was flowing backward, with the scythe.
All the blood fell to the floor.
Fwoosh-!
Red magic power returned to my vision, and the black-and-white world awakened.
Substance solidified in my body, which had been in a ghost state, and the weight of reality descended upon me.
I returned to the tower.
Immediately.
Keeping the man in my sight, I opened my mouth:
“Death Sentence. Sight (視).”