Thanatos had never once opened her eyes while in the form of a nun. But the moment Keter declared he had found a way out, she opened them. Keter and Balt tensed, yet surprisingly, her eyes were no different from a human’s.

Within her gaze fixed on Keter, though, there was an unmistakable obsession and an unyielding resolve to never let him go. A god who ruled over the absolute phenomenon of death was showing not negligence, but fixation toward Keter. Her claim that his very existence was dangerous was no exaggeration.

Balt felt a strange mix of relief and tension as he tightened his grip on his sword. Even if they had found the exit, there was no way they would escape unscathed.

I’ll hold her off.

The moment he steeled himself to ensure that at least Keter survived...

“Kuk!”

Balt was suddenly yanked into the air. Keter had grabbed him by the back of the neck and leaped toward the collapsing sky.

Thanatos didn’t move immediately, which meant Keter’s actions posed no real threat to her.

“...So that’s what it was?”

Instead, Thanatos let out a faint scoff.

“That attack earlier was meant to accelerate the collapse of this world.”

The Milky Way arrows Keter had fired but passed through her and exploded in the sky had hastened the world’s destruction, tearing open cracks between dimensions. And now, Keter was heading straight for one of those cracks, as if it were the exit. But if that truly were the exit, Thanatos wouldn’t have simply stood there watching.

“How foolish. The place you’re leaping into lies between worlds. It is an infinite space that can never be bridged. Crossing between worlds is impossible unless you are a higher-dimensional being. To jump in there is no different from choosing death.”

Balt looked at Keter, but there was not a trace of hesitation on his face. The rift ahead was pure darkness, one so absolute it wasn’t even certain one could enter it at all.

Balt wondered what lay within. According to Thanatos, it was a void, an empty nothingness where nothing could survive. Even if one did, there would be no future. And yet, Keter accelerated even faster toward it.

Thanatos watched closely, wondering if he might do something else, but... 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Boom!

Keter and Balt vanished into the crack between worlds.

“...”

They had not chosen to be killed; they had chosen death themselves. The moment they entered the void, whether alive or not, it was no different from death. Even for her, it would be the same. Keter, the one who defied the cycle of life and death, had surely been erased.

And yet, Thanatos remained there for a long time, unable to shake the faint, unexplainable unease lingering within her.

* * *

Tick, tick, tick...

At the sound of clock hands moving, Keter and Balt opened their eyes at the same time. They were seated facing each other, surrounded by countless clocks of every kind.

A situation where only the result existed, with no process in between. For Keter, this dreamlike state wasn’t unfamiliar. He had experienced something identical when he met Nippur in the infinite library of the fifth floor. Balt, too, having gone through something similar via the Godfather, immediately understood.

A god has intervened.

Balt didn’t know who, but Keter did. It was the Heavenly Venerable, Mandala’s master and the one who could slow time. He had saved them from the void. This was exactly what Keter had intended.

Back when Mandala first reached out to him in Liqueur, no time or place for a meeting had been set. However, Keter instinctively knew that this being was one of the underground’s Rulers.

If that were the case, Keter thought that he could naturally meet the Heavenly Venerable as he descended into the underground. He didn’t know which floor he ruled, but Keter was certain: if that being wanted to see him, he would be saved. And just as he believed, he lived. Yet in this space filled with ticking clocks, the Heavenly Venerable was nowhere to be seen.

“At least we survived.”

Balt cautiously rose from his chair and looked around.

The room wasn’t large. Clocks lined every wall, but otherwise it looked ordinary. There was a door and a window. Beyond the window stretched a bright sky and lush greenery. It looked like stepping outside would bring in fresh, cool air, but Balt hesitated.

Instead, he asked Keter, “Was this your doing?”

Keter shook his head.

“I’m just popular like that. Even gods can’t help but be drawn to me.”

“If it were goodwill, we wouldn’t be left in a place like this.”

“Interest doesn’t always come with goodwill. Anyway, this is as far as you go.”

Keter opened the door Balt had been wary of. Beyond it was a completely different scene from what the window had shown—a bleak gray sky and ruins. It was a desolate place, but both of them recognized it immediately: the surface of Liqueur.

The Heavenly Venerable only wanted Keter. Letting Balt go was, in its own way, a form of courtesy. Balt, who had been destined to die, had been given another chance at life, but he didn’t step through.

“Keter, I heard your story. You, too, were a victim of this world’s injustice. Even so, do you still want to save this rotten world?”

Balt had heard everything when Thanatos revealed Keter’s truth. That was why he wanted to save him even more.

Keter scratched the back of his head.

“It’s not exactly pleasant. I’ve imagined what it’d be like to grow up in a happy family, with parents and all that. But I like who I am now.”

“Why must some be happy while others suffer? Don’t you wish for a world where everyone is equal? Where people like you and me don’t have to exist as victims anymore?”

“Even if the world becomes equal, people will still create hierarchies. Everyone’s equal, but some will always claim to be more equal than others.”

“...”

“Don’t get so serious. No wonder you’re still a virgin at your age.”

“Heh.”

Clink.

With a resigned look, Balt removed the blood cross necklace containing Dracula. He forced it into Keter’s hand.

“Use that to replace your lost arm. And from this moment on, there are no more debts between us.”

“I’ll gladly take it.”

Keter immediately pressed the blood cross against his missing left arm. Dracula, having exhausted himself fighting Thanatos, couldn’t resist and transformed into Keter’s new arm.

Balt turned his back, ready to leave without lingering, but...

“I wasn’t gonna say anything since it’s your personal business, but seriously, stop pining after Stella and just confess already,” Keter casually added.

Stella was the Godfather’s only daughter. Balt had loved her for years.

“But Stella loves you.”

“So what? Even if I loved her too, what kind of man gives up without even trying?”

“...!”

“Failure’s temporary. Regret lasts forever.”

Keter kicked Balt in the back, sending him through the door. The door shut on its own. Then...

Clap, clap, clap.

Keter turned around and saw a man standing there. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with a red bow tie, dabbing at his eyes as if moved to tears.

“‘Failure is temporary, but regret lasts forever.’ What a truly impressive line.”

This sentimental man was none other than the Heavenly Venerable, the master of Mandala and the Ruler of the seventh floor.

* * *

Keter had seen the Heavenly Venerable before. In his previous life, he had made a contract with him to obtain Mandala. The Heavenly Venerable saw right through him immediately.

“That expression... you’re looking at me like this is the second time. Yet for me, it’s the first.”

“That would be true in this timeline.”

“Oh? You’re not even trying to hide it anymore?”

As Keter spoke with him, he suddenly realized that time was accelerating. He was sure he had been standing still, but before he knew it, he was already seated, drinking tea and eating snacks. The process of sitting down, drinking tea, and eating had vanished, leaving only the result.

Smiling, the Heavenly Venerable said, “I have no intention of harming you, but this space itself is the seventh floor. Whether I like it or not, it affects you.”

“So time is accelerating?”

“Not quite, but you can think of it that way. The longer you stay here, the greater the time difference with the outside world. For example, by the time you feel like you’ve spent about an hour here, a full year will have passed outside.”

“Not exactly a pleasant place.”

“Look on the bright side. Stay here for a year, and a thousand years will pass outside. You could call it time travel. Aren’t you curious about the future of this world? Whether Sefira will still exist a thousand years from now?”

“I’m not interested in a future where I’m not there.”

“I have the power to create such a future.”

“I already know you’re impressive. So what do you want?”

“I don’t like that tone. It makes it sound like I sought you out because I needed you. Hmm... has the majesty of divine beings fallen so low? I can’t let that stand.”

Snap.

The Heavenly Venerable flicked his fingers, and time slowed. The hands of the clocks began to move at an agonizing crawl, so slow that even after a full minute, not a single second seemed to pass. Still, Keter’s perception of time remained unchanged. One second still felt like one second.

It was a familiar sensation—Mandala. Even without Keter activating it, the Heavenly Venerable had forcibly invoked it.

Moving freely in a world that was practically frozen, he said, “The crime of reversing time, which should be equal even to the gods. The crime of recklessly using my Authority without a contract. You’ve already realized you are no ordinary being, but your arrogance has grown too great. Thus, I shall give you a light punishment.”

An hourglass appeared on the table. It was so small it didn’t even seem capable of measuring a full minute.

“Until all the sand in this hourglass falls, reflect upon your wrongdoing.”

At first glance, it seemed like a trivial punishment, but the sand didn’t fall.

Ten seconds, one minute, ten minutes, an hour... Not a single grain moved. However, time hadn’t stopped entirely. After five hours, the sand shifted ever so slightly.

At his peak, Keter’s Mandala could reach seventy-five hours per second, but now, the Heavenly Venerable’s Mandala operated at one hundred sixty-eight hours per second. In other words, for a mere ten-minute hourglass to empty, it would take one hundred thousand eight hundred hours.

This meant that Keter was forced to sit still for eleven years, doing nothing but watching the sand fall.