Jenny knew well that if Keter decided to do something, he would follow through. Even so, she couldn’t believe it.

“Keter. Just pretending to be dead won’t be enough to pass through here. I have to truly believe you’re a corpse.”

“I know that. That’s not the problem. With the Godfather’s personality, there’s no way he left only one gatekeeper.”

The Godfather was meticulous. He would never do something as careless as placing a guard only on the outside. There had to be someone on the inside as well.

And that person is going to be stronger than Jenny.

It could be Sword Demon Balt, or Ragnon the Bomber. No matter who it was, if Keter entered in a dead state, his body would likely be destroyed before he ever had the chance to come back.

Jenny nodded. She hadn’t been told directly, but she knew the Godfather wouldn’t rely on her alone. There was no other way. If the Godfather had arranged it, there would be no flaws.

A forced choice—that was what he always emphasized. Keter, too, would have to choose: kill Jenny and go underground, or give up. However, Keter didn’t fall into choices prepared by others. He simply refused to choose them.

“I’ll go in as a corpse. Jenny, throw me into the underground.”

“...You trust me?”

“I trust myself, who is trusting you.”

“That’s reckless.”

“I know.”

“You’re insane.”

“That’s nothing new.”

Keter cleared the ground with his foot, then spread his arms wide.

“Now, stab my heart.”

“What...?”

“You have to believe I’m a corpse to break the contract. So just kill me.”

“If I stab your heart... Can you come back?”

Jenny had been thinking of stopping his breathing and heart artificially. That wouldn’t count as death, as it would just be forced suspension. As such, pretending to be dead wouldn’t work. However, Keter was asking for real death.

“I could stab my own heart with an arrow, but then you’d doubt it. If you do it yourself, there won’t be any doubt.”

“That’s true, but... but...”

“Don’t want to? Then I’ll have no choice but to kill you.”

That had always been their fate—to kill each other. The Godfather had designed it that way.

Jenny felt like she might break down. She didn’t want to die, and she didn’t want Keter to die either.

That was when Keter erased her hesitation.

“Jenny, I don’t hate you. So, it’s not impossible that I might come to like you someday, but one thing I can’t stand... is someone who does nothing just because they’re afraid.”

Squelch.

The scythe pierced Keter’s heart. It was fast and precise. Dark blood flowed from his lips.

Jenny, trembling, murmured, “There’s no way... you can survive this.”

Keter placed a hand on her head and gently patted it.

“Well done.”

The light faded from his eyes. He went limp, collapsing forward. Jenny caught him and finally broke down in tears. She had killed the person she loved. No one was here, so there was no reason to hold back.

“Keter... you’re pretending, right? You have to be.”

She shook him, but his body rapidly grew cold and heavy.

“I’m going to mess with your face. You hate that kind of thing.”

She pulled at his cheeks, but there was no response. There was no need to check. His heart had completely stopped. He wasn’t breathing. What lay before her was a corpse, nothing more.

Even Keter, who had survived countless battles and overwhelming odds, had died from a single blow by her own hand, no less. Jenny felt like she might lose her mind, but barely held on.

“Keter may be insane, but he’s not a fool.”

Jenny lifted him in her arms and made her way to the underground entrance. Then, a phrase surfaced in her mind.

“No living being shall pass through this door.”

“This isn’t living. It’s a corpse.”

This wasn’t self-deception. Even her soul acknowledged it. She wanted to carry him down herself, but she couldn’t. She had to throw him, and that thought pained her.

“I’m sorry, Keter... but I love you.”

True to her title as one of Liqueur’s Five Lunatics, she leaned in and stole a kiss from his lips. Then, she hurled Keter’s body deep through the doorway.

* * *

The Boiling Desert, the first floor of the underground: this was a place where the sun never set, burning endlessly for all twenty-four hours. Beneath a cloudless sky, the heavens suddenly split open and spat out a man.

There was someone watching—a man dressed in loose, flowing robes. Seeing the man drop, he grinned.

“I knew you’d come, Keter.”

His name was Maran the Eye Collector, one of Liqueur’s Four Lunatics. He walked toward where Keter had fallen. Though the sand was so hot it burst like boiling droplets, frost formed strangely around Maran.

“Kekekeke...”

Maran examined Keter’s body. The wound in his chest was clearly inflicted by Jenny’s chain scythe.

“A precise strike through the heart, almost as if he let it happen. There’s no coming back from a wound like this.”

Even Maran acknowledged it. What lay before him was not Keter but just a corpse. And yet, he snapped open his iron fan and aimed it at Keter.

“Honestly, I can’t even begin to guess, but there’s no way you’d die this easily, Keter. Even in death, you’d have a way to come back. However, you will die before you can.”

Without a trace of mercy, he swung his fan. What followed was a storm of augmented aura. He watched closely, ready for Keter to spring up at any moment, but...

Boom boom boom!

The storm swallowed both the body and the ground without resistance. Maran frowned.

“Was I mistaken?”

Keter hadn’t moved at all. With the attack centered on the body, nothing but a face should have remained.

Snap.

Closing his fan, Maran stepped closer.

“It’s a shame I couldn’t fight you, but those eyes of yours will be mine...”

Clang!

His iron fan shattered. He knocked aside something flying toward him, but his iron fan couldn’t withstand it.

An arrow?

He had heard Keter used archery.

“You came back to life that quickly?”

Maran raised both hands, which unleashed a wave of lightning. It was not magic, as there had been no casting. It was immediate, meaning this was a special ability, the origin of magic.

Rumble!!

Lightning struck wildly toward the direction the arrows had come from—toward Keter. Sand burst upward again and again, obscuring the field of vision. Maran moved through empty air as if stepping across invisible footholds, unleashing lightning without pause. But the lightning could not break through the arrows. The arrows were faster and stronger.

“...Tsk.”

Clicking his tongue, Maran clasped his hands and brought them down. Thunder crashed.

Booom!!!

Bolts powerful enough to shatter fortress walls. Yet their true strength wasn’t just force, but the ability to incinerate with even the slightest contact.

“...!”

Hundreds of spinning arrows intercepted the lightning, dispersing the dust. Maran frowned. Keter was still lying there like a corpse.

He’s dead. He didn’t revive.

But something had changed. Arrows were emerging from Keter’s body, moving as if they had a will of their own, circling him, reacting to incoming attacks. Maran felt a chill, but he smiled.

“Hahahaha! Keter, you’re a formidable opponent even in death!”

He tore off his upper garment. His bare skin was horrifying, covered entirely in eyes. As if to prove they weren’t mere decorations, each one blinked and rolled around.

“Haa!”

With a shout, he thrust his palm forward. Then, a massive boulder that was thousands of tons appeared in the sky and plummeted downward. This was Meteor Fall, an eight-circle rock magic.

At the same time, one of the eyes on his chest closed.

“Keter, just as you said, I won’t hold back from the start!”

One by one, the eyes across his body shut. At once, countless special abilities and spells activated simultaneously: Mist of Decay, a high-level dark magic; a special ability that inverted healing into damage; Great Primeval Forest, an elven wood art; Spear of the Sun, eight-circle fire magic; and Lightning Severance, the ultimate technique of Demon-Slaying Wall Sword.

Powerful attacks capable of reshaping the land all poured onto a single person—no, onto a corpse. Maran thought it was enough, but this was Keter.

“That won’t be enough to kill you.”

He closed and reopened his eyes. They had changed into a burning crimson color, like the glow of sunset. They were the eyes of a Transcendental. Blood tears streamed down his face. The brilliance faded, but in exchange, that being’s Authority manifested.

Authority: Boundless Sea.

It forced everyone except the caster to perceive themselves as being in an endless ocean. It was an illusion, yet people experienced it as reality. Assuming he was merely pretending to be dead, Maran used it to disrupt Keter’s mind.

Crash!! Voong!!

Arrows burst outward from Keter, colliding with the onslaught. At the moment of impact, sound itself vanished. It became a silent world. There was no dust and only blinding light. Even Maran was thrown back by the shockwave, barely regaining his footing.

“Hah... hah...” Maran panted.

He wasn’t even attacked, yet blood trickled from his mouth. His senses were distorted. He came down to solid ground, unable to maintain balance in the air, but still staggered.

“Urgh...”

He ended up vomiting. However, he was smiling.

“Hehehe... Ehehe...”

Though his vision was blurred, he laughed. As it gradually returned, what he saw was no longer a desert—it was a crimson wasteland. The ground cracked like paper. The terrain had been completely reshaped, and Keter was nowhere in sight. That was when Maran suddenly realized something.

I should’ve preserved his eyes.

He had focused too much on winning and lost what he truly wanted.

“Damn, this was a loss, then.”

Killing his rival felt satisfying, but he hadn’t obtained the prize. He walked toward the battlefield, hoping part of Keter remained.

“Not even a scrap of clothing.”

There was nothing, not even a trace of Keter’s existence.

“Of course. No one could survive that.”

Keter had been erased entirely. Looking around would be a waste of time.

Though he had won, the thought that he had come out at a loss left Maran dissatisfied. As he turned to leave...

Crack.

The ground, which had become glass now due to the heat, shattered. Maran saw Keter wake up, lifting his upper body.

“...”

Maran’s jaw dropped. Keter was fine. Even the wound in his chest had completely disappeared. It was visible since the explosion had burnt away all his clothes. The injury on his chest was gone, and for some reason, he seemed more alive than before.

Maran blinked in disbelief. Someone who should have died had returned even stronger.

Keter looked around, then spotted him. Maran, still unable to comprehend, prepared to fight again.

“Oh, I was worried for no reason.”

Keter’s response was unexpected. He started laughing when he saw Maran/

“I was worried it might be Balt or Ragnon... but it’s you, Maran? What a relief.”

“...Relief? Why?”

Maran genuinely didn’t understand why he was so relieved.

As if it were obvious, Keter answered, “Because you’re weak.”