Chapter 20
The flower of the Reaper race. A death sentence.
The ultimate technique of black magic. The scribe's authority over the Great Stone Tablet.
Blah, blah, blah.
I realized it after using it just now.
In other words, the instant-death skill was a technique utterly unsuited to such extravagant labels.
It was utterly unremarkable.
Because.
Humans and death had been completely intertwined from the very beginning.
The boundary between them was made of something as flimsy as a wall of sand.
Because removing even a single grain of the sand that composed it
made it overflow like a burst dam.
Krrrck-!
The Siamese twin of birth manifested.
From the place where the male swordsman's umbilical cord had been attached, heaps of white things burst forth.
They were bundles of skeletal hands.
The hands of death's midwives, waiting to receive a corpse.
They covered the man's entire body.
Clack-! Clack-! Clack-!
It happened in an instant.
As though they had been lurking there since the moment this male swordsman was born.
As though they had been waiting for this one opportunity.
Once the momentum began, there was nothing I could do.
Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-!
A foot.
A leg.
Waist.
Chest.
Shoulder.
Arm.
Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-!Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-!Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-!Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-!Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-! Clack-!
The skeletal hands seized every part of him except one.
His head.
Using the only part he could still move—his face—he twisted it into an expression of despair.
“᷉̍͞네̡͕̱̓᷁́́ ̡̩̩̹́᷉͗͒놈̙͆̅̈이̰̩̊̿̐̇ ̢̳̦͖͔͋̿͐̚͞1̨̢̘͍̏̾᷉̒층̟̣͔̀̄̇̏͜͡의̜͓̜̣͋̍ ̛͓͔̰̪̓̋̎͛̋게̙͉̖̈̋̂̄͊이̛̪̩̅트̫̫́̾̈̌͆키͇̒̌͆퍼̜͇᷄̉᷁͢͞였̢̖᷃̐͜구͙᷃̕͞나..̢̻̬͟”
Immediately afterward, the hundreds of hands gripping his torso dragged him firmly down toward the ground.
Crack, craaack-!
̈́͂̈̆끄̛̻̥͈아̡̛͔̗̫̀᷄̚아̨̛̎̏̉아̹̪̾͐̄아̭̿̓̈͛̋̊아̙͕̅᷇̃᷀̄̒악̢̨̘̙͕̝̏!̬̝̺̘̀̿̐͒!̡͇͚̆̍̾͊!̛̪̋̋̔!̝̹̣͖͒᷄̃̍!̢̘̻̪̪͊́!͖̝͉̑̊̈̾͗᷅͢!̟̹̜̺̞᷉̑!͇͈̩͖̙̕!̗͚̮᷇̃᷀̄̒͝!̣̃!̨̠̫̩”
The skeletal hands disappeared beneath the floor, but the man's body could not follow.
Crrrunch-!
Unable to overcome the friction with the floor, every part of him broke.
I heard the sound of muscles tearing and vertebrae dislocating.
And at last.
The man's torso was completely ground away.
Only his head remained, lying alone in the center of a pool of blood.
His golden hair was matted with blood like rusted iron.
Finally, the bundles of skeletal hands began clutching his head. They squeezed until the shape of his head was completely covered and hidden, then…
Flash-!
They vanished in an instant.
Plop.
Rumble.
Only the skull fell to the floor and rolled away.
It had come full circle.
It was the first part of a human being to emerge into the world from its mother's womb.
And that skull slowly sank downward through the marble floor as though it were a swamp.
Plop.
I thought I heard something fall.
I learned the true identity of the Bone Plain in the Reaper realm.
“Ah.”
I stared blankly at the entire scene and realized.
The midwives of death.
Those hands were not lurking over that man alone.
They were beneath my feet, too.
Even within my shadow.
Those horrifying hands were always waiting for a chance to drag me away.
A single moment of carelessness.
A poorly offered bit of compassion.
A momentary misjudgment.
With any mistake at all, those hands would seize my ankles and hurl me into the Bone Plain.
I had not exchanged even a single blow with the male swordsman.
I had not arrogantly tried to gauge his strength.
I sensed it instinctively. That must have been what decided the outcome.
There was only one rule of survival.
If I didn't kill, I would die.
“……”
It was then.
A hologram appeared in the air.
[Death Sentence - Sight (視)'s cooldown is now in effect.]
[Remaining cooldown: 7 years and 6 months]
A cooldown of seven years and six months.
It was absurdly long.
‘He said it would decrease if I raised my Magic Power….’
As I caught my breath and thought about that,
a massive light erupted from the man's corpse and poured into my body.
[You have gained a massive amount of experience!]
[Level Up! 60Lv -> 61Lv]
[Level Up! 61Lv -> 62Lv]
…
..
.
[Level Up! 70Lv -> 71Lv]
It was an enormous amount of experience.
It seemed to include the experience from the female mage I had gutted and killed just before as well.
I rose eleven levels in one burst, reaching Level 71. I had accumulated thirty-three stat points.
At the same time, my earrings flashed blue. It was an unusually intense light.
[Magitech Azure Earrings (+2 / Charge: 41%)]
I had killed two people, but the charge had increased by six.
“Whew…”
I lowered my shoulders, which had been tensed to the limit, and looked around.
But the situation was not over yet.
“There’s still one person left.”
The woman who had been sliced through the arm and half her body by my scythe at the very beginning, then fainted.
She was lying in a pool of blood.
Incapacitated.
If I made absolutely certain that woman stopped breathing, this unpleasant first battle would be completely over.
I readjusted my grip on the scythe and approached the blood-soaked woman.
But.
The moment I took a couple of steps toward her.
Flash-!
The woman who had been unconscious suddenly opened her eyes wide.
“……!”
I spread black mist in alarm.
Whoom-
I used Black Shift to put some distance between us.
But the woman made no significant movement.
She merely mouthed something in a small voice.
““̅살̢͚̍̆려̢̛̘̥̐̍͢͞͝주͔̈́᷅̃̑͝세͉̟̬̌̋᷆요̯̰͉̝̺”
She crawled feebly across the floor with her remaining arm, trembling all the while.
She appeared to be begging for her life.
Of course, to my ears, it was nothing but a grotesque metallic noise.
“……”
I stared blankly at that wretched sight.
With a bitter expression, I gripped the scythe again.
I slowly moved forward.
“I’m sorry.”
I could not lower my head.
It was not because I lacked the decency to do so.
It was because I had to keep watching the woman's next move.
As I approached, the woman went completely berserk and desperately tried to do something with her remaining hand.
Flash-!
Green light poured from the wound.
It seemed she was using healing magic.
Afterward, a golden magical barrier unfolded around her entire body.
She crawled backward inside the barrier and began struggling to flee toward the stairs.
I stepped in front of the fleeing woman and raised my scythe high.
BANG-!!
I struck the barrier, but only sparks flew. The barrier did not even crack.
‘It’s incredibly sturdy…’
The woman continued using healing magic inside the barrier.
For all I knew, if she succeeded in stopping the excessive bleeding, she might be able to escape alive.
Naturally, I could not allow that.
BANG! BANG! CLANG!
I brought the scythe down repeatedly.
But my Strength stat alone did not seem sufficient to smash through the barrier.
‘What should I do?’
[Death Sentence - Sight (視)] was on cooldown.
The only thing I had left was [Death Sentence - Slash (斬)].
But that seemed to require the scythe to touch the target directly, rather than merely striking a barrier like this.
It might not have been the case, but now that I knew the scale of the cooldown, experimenting seemed out of the question.
‘I need to break this right now…’
If she escaped to the entrance, I would not be able to pursue her any farther.
Sending a survivor back was the worst thing I could do.
I could not afford to waste time.
I was not even certain I could defeat this mage in a fair one-on-one fight without an ambush.
Unless I could use an instant-death skill, I was just a low-level mob with a high Magic Power stat.
‘Should I invest in Strength?’
It felt as though becoming just a little stronger would let me smash through it.
I still had thirty-three stat points remaining.
I had also been told that Slash's cooldown depended on the Strength stat.
Strength would not become completely useless.
Spending a few points would not turn me into a jack-of-all-trades, either.
Above all, the Strength stat had never betrayed me.
‘All right.’
I opened the holographic status screen and invested one of the thirty-three remaining stat points I had gained from leveling up into Strength.
[Strength stat increased by 1.]
Immediately afterward, I swung the scythe.
BANG-!
The barrier rippled faintly.
The woman's eyes wavered when she felt the vibration.
I raised my Strength by one more point.
[Strength stat increased by 1.]
THUD!
It was still perfectly intact.
I repeated the process.
[Strength stat increased by 1.]
BANG!
[Strength stat increased by 1.]
CRASH-!
The expression of the woman desperately maintaining the barrier was dyed with despair more deeply with every blow.
The scythe blows grew stronger and stronger.
The only lifeline she had cracked again and again as it began to break apart.
[Strength stat increased by 1.]
[Strength stat increased by 1.]
…
[Strength stat increased by 1.]
The moment I had invested exactly eleven points into Strength, bringing the stat to 48.
Crack- Craaack!
The barrier reached its critical point and began showing signs of collapse.
‘I need to be careful.’
I tightened my focus.
This moment, when the barrier broke, would be when the mage staked her life on launching an attack.
Crash-!
At the exact moment the barrier shattered.
As expected, the woman was moving her hand as though she were preparing some kind of trick.
I gave her no opportunity whatsoever.
“Black Shift.”
I moved behind her together with the black mist,
and cut her throat at the same time.
Plop. Rumble.
The woman's torso collapsed with a thud.
[You have gained experience.]
[Level Up! 71Lv -> 72Lv]
[Magitech Azure Earrings (+2 / Charge: 43%)]
“Whew….”
At the same time, a holographic message I had never seen before appeared.
[You have successfully repelled the intruders.]
[The Demon King's reward will be paid!]
A reward…
It was absurd.
[Calculating difficulty…]
[Calculation complete]
[404,500G awarded!]
“Fo… four hundred thousand…”
Four hundred thousand gold in one go.
A fortune that 800F+ named users would have to save for more than fifty months.
Had the male swordsman really been that strong? Or was the reward itself simply that generous?
I had no way of knowing, but in any case, my worries about paying for the next Golden Carriage had vanished completely.
It was just as I was marveling at that.
[The Demon King's reward vacation has been granted!]
[Your guardian duty will be temporarily suspended for 23:59:58!]
It was better than four hundred thousand gold.
The reward I had wanted more than anything had arrived.
“Reward vacation….”
Only then did the tension finally leave my body.
I wanted to lie down and stretch out right that instant.
But not yet.
“Let’s leave a record of the scene.”
I brought up a holographic panel.
Then I turned on the camera and began photographing every corner of the scene.
After I finished taking the pictures, I pressed the writing button.
___
Title: Killed 3 First Intruders.
Author: ㅇㅇ(60F)
{19 photos of the blood-soaked battle scene on Floor 60}
I began writing the post.
First, I uploaded the photos.
Then, as I began writing the content…
I stopped.
“……”
While describing the scythe blows, I was overcome by an indescribable emotion.
No.
More than anything, it was easy to describe.
I was feeling the most ordinary and clichéd emotion one could feel in this situation.
Guilt.
“…”
I looked down at my hands.
Snow-white, delicate hands.
With these hands, I had made a woman's insides spill out and cut the throat of another woman who had begged me to spare her.
I bit my lip tightly.
My purpose became clearer.
“I have to go up.”
Originally, I had been doing it to survive, but now I had one more reason.
I did not want to experience killing someone again.
Being forced into a situation where I had no choice but to do everything I could to kill was a terrible thing.
“For now, I just need to reach Floor 100…”
Having steeled my resolve, I posted the entry.
A little while later, I pressed refresh.
Then.
“…”