Bang!
A burst of fire erupted from the gun’s muzzle, and a round lead bullet shot out, cutting through the rain as it aimed for the heart. Dalen barely shifted his gaze to track its trajectory.
In the next instant, his axe flashed.
Clang—Thud!
The sound of metal clashing and a dull impact echoed almost simultaneously. The bullet shattered against the swinging axe, which then continued its arc, embedding itself in the shooter’s head.
As Dalen retrieved his outstretched hand, he effortlessly caught a spear thrusting toward his side. The soldier wielding it gasped, his breath caught in his throat.
“Ugh!”
The soldier staggered, dragged along by Dalen’s grip, yet he refused to release the spear. It didn’t matter. Dalen simply swung the soldier along with the spear.
Crack!
Armor fragments scattered in all directions, followed by chunks of flesh and droplets of blood. The spear, along with the soldier clinging to it, knocked down another twenty men. Dalen dropped the broken spear, the metallic taste in his mouth unpleasantly salty.
Boom—!
Lightning flashed across the sky, momentarily casting the buildings and people in stark relief. Faces twisted in terror were illuminated in the brief light. The torrential rain soaked the collapsed structures, and a thin stream of red flowed like a river between the broken stones.
“Monster.”
“Murderer! Demon!”
“Kill the imperial lackey!”
The crowd, armed with torches and weapons, shouted, their words and actions belying their fearful expressions.
Dalen spun his axe silently. There was no point in responding to such cries.
‘Is this the fifth time?’
He stood in a city on the empire’s frontier, the fifth backdrop to change after passing through the eastern knight kingdom and the western guild alliance.
‘The small city of Yurgland.’
A place where fragments of ancient, forgotten grand sorcery lay. Depending on the circumstances, it was a city that would later rebel against the empire.
In the last cycle, his character had suppressed the city’s rebellion, earning a reward from the empire while using the entire city as a sacrifice to revive the old grand sorcery.
The memories came easily, even through the relentless downpour.
“Fire!”
Ratatatat!
A volley of gunfire erupted from the rooftops. Dalen lightly stomped his foot, and the ground flipped, raising a wall of earth several meters high.
“Mus… urgh!”
Beyond the earthen wall, dozens of flashes glinted. In the dim moonlight, spears, swords, shields, helmets, and other weapons gleamed.
The weapons, abandoned by their owners and scattered along the roadside, pierced through the earth, raining down on the building where the gunmen were stationed, completely demolishing the upper floors.
Rumble…
As the building collapsed behind him, Dalen looked up at the sky.
Five times the backdrop had changed, each time accompanied by unavoidable battles and massacres. The bodies piled up numbered in the tens of thousands. In the square of this small city of Yurgland alone, the area covered by corpses exceeded that of the exposed paving stones.
At some point, his hands swung the axe mechanically. Amidst the silent slaughter, he realized why the newly born god of the abyss had prepared such a gift for him.
Boom—!
Another flash of lightning. Dalen’s eyebrows twitched as he looked up at the sky.
The air high above was rippling again. It seemed the battlefield was about to change, having accumulated enough death.
‘Not this time.’
In a brief moment, Dalen reached into his coat.
The precise moment when the battlefield shifted. The opportunity was fleeting.
He hadn’t endured five battlefields, playing along with the hallucinations, for nothing.
If the new god was who he suspected, it would be as meticulous in anticipating his moves as he was.
Vroom—
The mechanical axe swings, repeated over countless corpses, were a ploy to create even the slightest crack in its vigilance.
Now, as he drew the Phantom Slayer from his coat, it was time to see the fruits of that ploy.
“Tatsum.”
He murmured the incantation softly.
The Phantom Slayer, which had been humming with a low resonance, began to tremble.
It was similar to when he had unleashed the power of the Spell Slayer to break the barrier on the way to the High Orc’s sanctuary long ago.
Back then, it was merely about pushing the artifact’s abilities to their limits, but now, with the ancient Tanling of the Sandstorm Dynasty in his possession, it was different.
An entity with will can break its own limits.
By awakening the will of the weapon and raising it to a living spirit, its potential could be exponentially increased, which was the true power of the Tanling.
“Lux.”
Screeeech—!!
The blade of the Phantom Slayer began to ripple like a wave. It wasn’t just an illusion.
The metal composing the blade, the ancient runes, and even the will engraved within it began to shatter their limits.
Crack—
The dagger, crumbling from the tip, shot up as a beam of light. It aimed for the shifting backdrop in the sky above.
The beam of light, extending from the ground, collided with the rippling air near the storm clouds.
The world lurched and shook violently, as if experiencing seasickness.
Dalen closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
The surroundings had changed once more. This time, it wasn’t an illusion.
A low hut, an open clearing around it, and beyond that, the dense fog of the Silent Moonlight Forest.
As he rotated his shoulders, stiff from the long battle, a familiar voice called out from behind.
”…Dalen?”
It was the voice of the witch whose head he had severed earlier.
“Dalen, is it really you?”
Sienna’s voice was as cold as ice, reminiscent of their first meeting at the Crow’s Nest.
“If it’s really you, prove it somehow.”
She pointed her hand at Dalen, her face full of suspicion.
Feathers fluttered down around her, and black and white magic flickered between her fingers.
”…”
Instead of answering immediately, Dalen glanced around. Sienna wasn’t the only one on guard with a weapon drawn.
Lucia, Farn, Felber, Tommy, Bjorn, and Akasha—all were ready to unleash their power at a moment’s notice, likely due to the doppelganger corpses strewn across the ground.
The dozens of bodies, slashed by spells and white flames, all resembled the seven others, excluding Dalen.
It wasn’t hard to guess that a fierce battle had just taken place.
”…It’s him. It’s Dalen.”
It was Felber who broke the tense silence. The mage lowered his staff and suppressed his magic, prompting Sienna to question with a twitch of her long eyelashes.
“How can you be sure? The other doppelgangers looked and felt the same on the surface.”
“My soul is bound to Dalen’s. Unless they copied his soul too, they can’t mimic the bond between a dragon and its kin.”
“But…”
“Second Mother, the mage is right. I’ve never seen another with such a strong and vast soul vessel as Father. I can also sense the presence of the Third Mother clearly.”
“There’s a faint divine aura. It’s Dalen.”
With Akasha and Lucia’s support, Sienna had no choice but to withdraw her magic, though her expression still held a hint of dissatisfaction. She asked one last question.
“Then tell me, how good are you at cooking?”
”…Damn it. Does it have to be that question?”
“It really is you. I was worried.”
The witch’s face softened, while Dalen’s turned sour, as if he’d bitten into something unpleasant.
Amused by his grumpy expression, Sienna and Lucia both let their lips twitch into smiles.
Dalen sighed deeply and shook his head. Damn it. After collecting hundreds of corpses, not once did he gain any cooking skills.
“Anyway, we’re finally all together. It’s been a short but long time. The hallucinations were so vivid, I almost got fooled.”
“What kind of hallucination did you have, old man?”
“My past mistakes from my youth. I’d already overcome them in my small domain, but the hallucinations of the Silent Moonlight Forest were beyond imagination. What about you?”
”…Well.”
Dalen shrugged and looked around at the question, stroking his beard.
There was no need to mention the massacre of tens of thousands. It seemed the new god’s target was him alone.
“At least we’ve reached the exit.”
The group stood in a wide clearing.
Centered around a solitary hut, the barren clearing stretched out, devoid of a single tree or blade of grass.
The barren clearing seemed untouched by the thick fog that blanketed the entire fourth level of the labyrinth. It was as if an invisible boundary had been drawn around the fifty-meter radius of the cabin.
This cabin marked the end of the Silent Moon’s Domain and simultaneously served as the entrance to the fifth level of the labyrinth.
Naturally, the group made their way toward the cabin. It was then that Sienna spoke up.
“Now that I think about it, isn’t it strange? Weren’t the doppelgangers of the Silent Moon’s Domain supposed to be incorporeal?”
[Impressive knowledge for a place like this. As expected of the master of the Raven’s Nest.]
The response came from behind them.
Across the clearing, facing the cabin door, stood a dense foggy forest of the Silent Moon’s Domain.
“Not many explorers of this era have reached the fourth level… Did you study Paul Ackerman’s writings? I should have asked the Sienna from my world line.”
The sea of fog parted with a loud crack.
Emerging from the mist was a towering, half-naked man.
Thud—
Each step he took made the ground tremble.
Behind him, a trail of bright red lava flowed from his footprints.
Dark lightning crackled between his fingers, and his eyes burned with a blue flame, like a ghostly fire.
Compared to the dragon god they had recently faced, the aura emanating from this man was at least twice as overwhelming.
“Dalen, could that man be…?”
Sienna stammered, forcing herself to stand firm despite her instinct to step back.
Having closely guessed Dalen’s identity, it wasn’t hard for her to deduce who the man before them was.
“Yes, you’re thinking correctly.”
The man’s build was similar to Dalen’s.
His upper body, exposed through torn armor, was covered in scars of various sizes. Axes, swords, and a shield were strapped to his waist and back with leather straps.
He was a head and a half taller than most, with a massive frame, muscles like boulders accentuating his scars, and a face with strong features. His deep, dark eyes and low, resonant voice made him look like Dalen’s twin.
“Dallain.”
“Oh, you remember my name. I’m honored.”
The man chuckled lowly. Dalen detected a faint hint of unease in his laughter.
Was it related to the flickering ash-gray glimpses visible through the gaps in his armor, suggesting some kind of incompleteness?
It was impossible to know for sure. Dalen let the thought drift away as he focused on the words that appeared above the man’s head.
[You have discovered the corpse of a fallen war god in the Abyss.]
The conclusion of the final chapter was right before his eyes.