Chapter 67. Eternal

I lifted my head from under the shadows of the gravestone. The golden sun slowly set over the horizon, painting the sky a deep red. Under it was the Haze Republic enshrouded in darkness.

Necro must be inside there.

All in order to accomplish his old dream. To do that, he was to massacre everyone inside his barrier.

“What would you have done?”

I unwrapped the saint’s bandages from my arms and put my dirt-ridden hand onto my chest. A warm, gentle pulse rang out, collecting mana from the surroundings.

The only thing that had been sealed was my power and the abilities derived from it. The bandage that had been gifted to the saint by a flower fae returned to its original form from magic. Like a full bloom of flowers. White particles of light appeared from the bandages, leaving a flowery scent behind it. When I put my hand on it, the particles faded away. What was left was a single magnolia flower.

I lay the flower on the saint’s grave and stood up.

“I’ll be back, then.”

There might be no profit. There was even a chance that I would fail. But I made up my mind that I wouldn’t run anymore.

*

When one leaves the shelter through the back door, a cemetery surrounded by maple trees appear. At this place, Necro was dancing whilst singing Michael Jackson’s Thriller. He would jump up on an occasional gravestone, or kick a lantern for dramatic effect.

“Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart.”

A hand dug itself out of the cold ground. The hand that had been decorated with nail art was, without a doubt, Kirisaki Hatsume’s. A muscular hand and a slender one rose out as well. Soon enough, Bruno Balter and Benny Guts dug their way out of their graves.

A total of five hundred.

Necro did a ceremonial jig as he looked on at the people who had come to greet him. The king’s personal army, composed of many former heroes and the powerful wizards he once used to work with. Necro gave the troop that had surrounded him a wink.

*

“What the hell is everyone doing?! Why can’t we contact anyone?”

A man whose neck and chin had practically fused together shouted furiously at a wizard kneeling before him. This squealing mess of a man was the Haze Republic’s king. The man who controlled the nation with the prime minister laid out at the front. The reason why this man was so agitated was because of Necro. The wizard who had been trying to contact the king’s army was constantly apologizing.

“It’s just that… They haven’t responded since a while back…”

“You’re like this because of a single wizard? Do you even know how much money I poured into you bastards? You people are lower than dogs…!”

The king let out a long sigh and leaned back on his throne. A sense of ominousness had overtaken him since a while back. The king thought about running away through the secret path, then raised his head as he noticed that the room was strangely silent.

He hadn’t heard anyone come in…

The door was open. Necro was standing at it with two girls at his side. These two girls were someone that even the king knew of- the hero Camille and the summoner Iris. The king quickly tried to call someone and ended up finding Chrono taking his spear out of his wizard’s head.

Could it be that he stopped time…?

He gripped onto his seat in order to hide the fact that he was trembling, but he realized that he couldn’t exert any strength.

“Did you wait long?”

Necro threw the king a head as he left a bloody trail behind him.

“Here, a gift.”

Thunk, roll…

The head stopped moving after rolling itself in front of the king. It was the prime minister. Seeing the painful face on the minister’s face made the king start thinking. What did Necro want? What was he thinking? The king barely managed to swallow once before managing to ask his question.

“W-what do you want? If it’s money, I can give you as much as you want! If it’s power, I can give you that too…! No, do you want to be king? I can do anything…”

Necro snorted when he saw the king try to pawn off everything just to hold onto his dear life.

“Money? Power? Sorry, but I’m not very interested in those things.”

“Then why…”

“Ah~ Why am I killing so many? Well, the reasons are countless aren’t they? Everyone has their own story, right?”

Necro began counting with his fingers as he walked to the king.

“For my happiness. For my future. For my entertainment. For letting out stress. To kill people I dislike, and to prove to others that my worldview is correct. It won’t be accepted in a moral standpoint, but in my case… Right. Maybe because I was born like this?”

A born psychopath. Even before he got his power, he was a person who thoroughly enjoyed destroying the lives of others.

“You’d understand how annoying this is if you just knew how bothersome murder was. To be honest, death is the truth in life. It’s really fun if you kill a man. More than anything. More than any kind of experience. It’s a one of a kind pleasure that nothing can imitate.”

Necro put his face centimeters away from the king and grinned.

“It’s just like hunting. No, it’s hundreds of times better. And you can become a god to boot! How profitable, no?”

The king put his trembling hand into his pocket. But before that, Necro grabbed onto his arm.

“No, no. Don’t do that. I came all the way here for you.”

The king’s body became frozen like a corpse due to Necro’s mana. The only thing he could do now was to watch as Necro extended an arm towards his chest.

Sha…

There was no resistance. The fingers just slid right into the king’s chest. The king widened his eyes in shock.

“What in the…!”

“What should be good for the first one I wonder?”

Necro stopped breathing for a second as he made his happy decision. His arm expanded for a brief second and a cracking sound came from the king’s body.

“Oh~ This is nice.”

Necro’s arm moved. The king managed to see something white get dragged out of his chest.

“Bone…?”

There was no pain. Despite having one of his ribs ripped out, there were no wounds nor marks left on the body.

[Dissection Eyes]

A demon eye capable of letting one look into and affect a person’s insides. It was developed for medical purposes at first, but Necro took interest in the fact that it could dissect someone alive.

“I would have cooked you after the dissection if I had the time. How unfortunate.”

Crack. Creak.

Necro skillfully removed the eleven pairs of ribs along with the sternum as he looked into the king’s eyes.

“Do you even know how long I have waited for this day?”

Necro opened his mouth in the terrified king’s face. His jaw dislocated itself to widen itself to an inhuman size. What was inside his mouth was a bottomless pit filled to the brim with teeth.

The king let out a mad laughter. Shortly after, the entire castle was struck by a violent earthquake.

*

I walked up the hill. Once I passed the cemetery that seemed to have been dug up by someone, a downhill slope appeared. I looked up at the castle on the cliff from this spot. The path to the castle was lit up with a red light.

“It’s been a while.”

Familiar faces had come out to greet me. The Man-eating Lion. Nail Hunter. Slenderman. The Ghost Forest. Unknown Reason. Fragile.

They discovered a living man and rushed in with the other corpse dolls to destroy it. To these things, that had been letting out screams of pain, I could only say one thing.

“Silence—-.”

At a hand’s length away, the corpse dolls all came to a rigid halt. Almost as if someone had pressed the stop button.

The process was rather simple.

Necromancy was but a branch of magic. A form of telepathy where the user controls the corpses using a remote. If I just sever the connection between the user and the corpse, the corpses would freeze till the connection would resume. It was a form of a safety device. To prevent the corpses from going berserk in case the user goes unconscious. And I could see exactly how it worked after becoming a wizard.

“Necro Kill. No, Bi Seokil(匕夕一).”

The wizard whose name was composed of the character of death(死). I’ll show you what I can do. I used my mana to connect to the real world. To a wizard, a name was something that functioned as a pointer to their location in the physical world. It is possible to seize control of their magic if one had this information.

Almost like a form of hacking called snipping.

Lastly, I needed to analyze the magic performed on me, neutralize it, and recreate it to fit me.

Telepathy. Name. The necromancy he used on my body. The floating eye.

Without these, this entire plan wouldn’t even have been possible. I closed one of my eyes. The floating eye that I had modified gave me access to up to 76,000 eyes. What came into my view was the entire republic. The earth that was filled with corpse dolls. Their bright red eyes seemed almost like a giant wave of evil. A total of 2.52 million corpses. I got the message that I had been connected to their network and uttered my spell.

“–Away with you, false candles.”

With a little puff, the red light all around the country began to disappear. Almost as if a black wave of darkness was engulfing the sea of red. The corpse dolls around me fell back as well.

I wonder what Necro’s thinking right now?

I calmly walked under the night sky. Once I reached the entrance of the castle, the doors opened by itself for me.

He must have been watching me from afar.

I passed the corridor filled with corpses and reached the room where Necro was. I could see a corpse that seemed to have been impaled on the head with a spear and a messy corpse that used to be the king.

He must have been eaten alive…

Necro made a face that showed that he was glad as soon as he saw me from his throne. With the blood on his chin.

“Oh~ You were alive? No, ‘you became alive’? Man~ I thought this might happen… I’m so bad with endings, right? Did the saint give it to you? Or did you buy it?”

He still seemed talkative and relaxed. Must be because he still had his Overdeath ability. There were corpses everywhere. He could revive wherever he wanted even if I killed him.

“Ah, I’m telling you this now, but I had no ill intentions, alright?”

I knew he wasn’t lying. This person really wasn’t thinking anything when he killed me.

He just wanted profit.

He could kill me, so he did. Because he needed something, he killed. Because everything else other than him was worthless to him. This man was just like the me from the past.

“It’s just that… I wanted to be god since a while back. You understand, right?”

Necro probably would have become god if I didn’t come here. He probably didn’t think he’d be interrupted like this.

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Eh? Really?”

“You and I… We’re both idiots that just can’t be saved.”

Necro snorted and erased all signs of emotion from his face.

“What the hell? You’re the only idiot here.”

Black mana began effervescing out of his body. Danse macabre, the dance of death. The strongest form of body enhancement in the branch of black magic was currently being cast by Necro.

“Didn’t I tell you before? Throw away any preconceptions you might have had about wizards.”

A speed that couldn’t be detected by a human’s eyes. Before I could even respond, Necro had come up to my face and had stuck his hand into my chest.

Flatline–.

Normally, this technique would have simply stopped my heart. But a giant destructive force was added onto it, shattering the right side of my ribcage into pieces.

Bang!

My body flew back and became stuck in the wall. My cells immediately got to work and began to regenerate my ribs that were harder than titanium.

The pain was still there though.

“Kuh…!”

Thirty seconds before the magic was cast. I couldn’t afford to strengthen my body at this time. I could only take the beatings with my body. I somehow got myself up on my feet. Necro immediately attacked and I was given several fractures on my limbs.

He wasn’t using magic. He must be thinking that he won’t be interrupted in this time.

“What is it? Does it hurt? That’s good~ pain is a part of life. Don’t you get the feeling that you’re really living it right now?”

I didn’t take out the Murderer despite his taunts. It was impossible to calculate the coordinates unless I got out anyway.

And…

This was enough.

I lay down on the floor as I looked up at the smiling Necro.

“Do you remember? About Whitehead?”

“What? Why? Thinking of home now that you’re about to die?”

“It’s good that you remember.”

I activated the equation that I had prepared as I finished. Necro, who had been a little unguarded due to his domination till now, let out a shout of surprise.

“What…?”

Camille restrained his arms. Chrono took hold of his waist and left leg. Iris took care of his right leg.

“What the… Let go!”

Necro did all he could to shake off the three heroes. He realized that doing so was impossible shortly after and shouted at me.

“How did you…!”

“Necromancy isn’t something that belongs to just you.”

Magic was something that was borrowed. But right now, I was able to imitate his necromancy without borrowing a god’s power.

“Hah…”

Necro let out a small laugh. He closed his mouth for a second, then raised his head.

“So? What now? Are you planning on turning me into a corpse doll?”

“Of course not.”

It would be troublesome if the finale was that boring.

“Back to the question I asked. Do you happen to know what one needs in order to achieve nuclear fusion?”

Necro frowned slightly.

“Again with your lectures… Plutonium? Uranium?”

“That’s nuclear fission. What one needs for nuclear fusion, however, is deuterium and tritium. Both ingredients that could be found from the sea.”

Necro’s face stiffened.

“A sphere of death with a radius of 300km. The artificial sun created from seawater would burn even inside this barrier of yours.”

Until absolutely nothing was left. Not even a bit of bone or flesh. Necro realized what was about to happen to him and widened his eyes.

“You crazy…!”

Now he gets it. I clenched my fist as I watched him struggle. The fusion reactor began to spin whilst letting out a rainbow light. It sped up faster and faster without ever showing signs of slowing.

“—-If you like death so much, you might as well stay dead forever.”

A heart is too much for an idiot like you.

“Cold fusion.”

[Shining—-]

I could hear a kind, cheerful voice in my ear along with my memories that would never return.

[Hey! Hi! Nice to meet you! My name’s Morto Hai! In short, you can call me haihai?] [I may be a beautiful girl, but please don’t think perverted thoughts about me! I’ll sue you!] [You need to be more mature. I almost invoked the power of a cop within me, you know?] [Nyaha☆] [It must be nice being so simple, Mr. Murderer. You’re like an amoeba.] [For you, each hit will be filled with love. Please scream like a pig in happiness every time you get hit.] [Mr. Murderer~ Mr. Murderer~] [It’s a flower fairy!] [Mr. Murderer, were you thinking of something very inappropriate about now?] […No, it’s nothing. It’s just… I was surprised at how human you are.]

I probably won’t be able to ever forget it. The most valuable autumn that I had ever experienced in my life. The most precious person I had ever encountered in my life.

I haven’t managed to tell her at the time, but I think I can answer her now.

[These wasted days add up to your entire life!] [Why here…? Aha, it’s a date, isn’t it? How nice of you, Mr. Murderer!] [Look, look, Mr. Murderer. I’m going to stop your heart with these cat ears!] [Dear, dear. To think you haven’t even noticed yet… Isn’t being able to date me a great fortune in itself?] [Tada~ How is it? Do you feel your heart throbbing yet?] [In order to create a better world for everyone!]

The girl who liked to hit.

The girl who liked to eat.

The girl who liked cats.

The girl who liked quizzes.

[I love you.]

I love you.

“Morto Hai.”

[Buster——!!!!!!!!]

A white light began to appear from the center of the castle. This giant ball of heat quickly swallowed the castle whole and became even bigger as it devoured on the corpses of the dead.

I watched this on with my floating eye as I peacefully closed my eyes.