The War God Descends
From the moment he first obtained Reversal [B], Yujin had already decided how he would use it.
Flashback [S].
A skill that could summon his first-run self into this moment.
He was strong now, true—but only overwhelmingly so relative to his level. Compared to the first-run him who had torn even the End itself to pieces, there was no comparison.
He simply had never imagined he would burn it on something as low as the twenty-first floor.
I was saving it for way higher up…
What a waste.
Such a goddamn waste.
It felt like finding a ten-kilogram gold bar on the street, only to get mugged before he could cash it in.
But not using it was not an option. As he was now, Yujin had zero chance of beating Omophnes. No matter what he tried, he could not escape the Tower’s Punisher.
So even if it hurt—he had to use it.
■ Reversal [B] has been used.
■ Target: Skill Window.
■ The state of all skills has been inverted.
■ The following skills have been deactivated:
— Heavenly Demon’s Footsteps [B]
— Heavenly Demon’s Swordplay [B]
— Seven Nights Demon Realm [B]
— Instant [D]
— Mind’s Eye [C]
— Slash [D]
— Heavenly Slash of Myriad Severings [D]
— Heavy Strike [E]
— Shadowform Sword [E]
— Iron Mountain Stance [E] and below, omitted.
■ The following skill has been activated:
— Flashback [S]
■ Due to its superior grade, Chronos’s Hourglass [EX] is unaffected by Reversal [B].
Unfortunately, his highest-grade skill remained locked. But that didn’t matter. He had never planned to use Chronos’s Hourglass [EX] in the first place.
Right now, Yujin needed only one thing.
Flashback [S].
Flashback [S]
Projects every memory of a forgotten life into reality for 15 minutes.
With the mechanical chime of the Akasha System, the man who had climbed alone to the hundredth floor and torn the End itself apart—the War God, Seong Yujin—descended once more upon the Tower of Light.
Everything stopped.
The splitting ice plains. The blade-sharp wind. The 3 No, fleeing for their lives. And the Punisher’s pure-white hand, mid-execution.
In the most literal sense, everything—time itself—came to a halt.
“Hoooo—”
Yujin exhaled a long breath. Space warped around it, buckled by a volume of mana beyond imagination.
A crack split across Omophnes’s expressionless face.
[You…]
“Shut your mouth.”
She had forced the words out under a crushing pressure that threatened to flatten her entire body—and a single line from Yujin cut them off cold.
“I’m a little short on time right now.”
Normally, Flashback [S] lasted fifteen minutes. Not this time. The duration of Reversal [B] was only five. The skill would force-cancel long before the full window ran out.
So—
“Let’s get started.”
KRAAAAAAAAAANG—!
When had he even moved?
Yujin’s foot drove into Omophnes’s jaw. With a blast like a bomb going off, her body rocketed skyward.
[Khhhuuugh—!]
The shock felt like her entire head had been ripped clean off. Omophnes clenched her teeth hard. It was nothing—no skill, no technique, just a kick. An attack so crude she would never have even considered dodging or blocking it under normal circumstances. It shouldn’t have been able to touch her at all.
And yet.
She hadn’t even registered when or how she had been hit.
But that was only the beginning.
“I’ve always hated you lot. Sitting up there as ‘Administrators,’ spouting your bullshit. Didascalia was the worst of you, obviously.”
Galaxy Sword [B] came crashing down—same stance, same trajectory as the very first strike he had thrown at Omophnes upon meeting her.
Kiiiiiiiiing—!
The power, however, was another matter entirely. Heavenly Demon’s Swordplay [B] had been impressive in its own right, but the blade in his hand now dwarfed it beyond measure. The beings behind them were not even in the same category. By level alone, the gap was more than fivefold. The first-run Yujin, standing at a full three hundred and fifty, had been a true catastrophe—one capable of killing even Administrators.
“And you were number two.”
Punisher, his ass. She was just a murderer. Measuring everything by her own private standards, delivering judgment alone, and calling it justice.
“What, you think you’re the judiciary?”
He snorted, watching blood trickle from the corner of Omophnes’s mouth.
[I am the embodiment of the sacred Tower’s system—]
“Yeah, yeah.”
Yujin laid the edge of Galaxy Sword [B] against her lips.
“Then die humbly, as the Tower’s mouthpiece.”
The gods of the nine heavens descended upon the blade, and a blinding light began to pour from the steel.
“I’ll be your End.”
Nine Heavens Divine Sword [A].
The technique that had torn the End’s body apart on the final day—and the single strongest skill among everything Yujin had ever mastered—activated.
[That—!]
At last, Omophnes’s face twisted. Her already pale skin went paper-white. She knew exactly what Nine Heavens Divine Sword [A] could do.
She made the best choice available to her.
Judgment of Sin [A].
A skill that converted a target’s sins into weight and crushed them to death under it. True to its A-grade fraud status, the user themselves decided what counted as sin. And by Omophnes’s measure, Yujin’s crimes were heavy enough to warrant instant death.
Krrrrrk—!
A crushing pressure slammed down on both of Yujin’s shoulders—like an entire mountain had settled onto him. No mortal, no ordinary human, could possibly endure it. Proof of that showed at once: the descending sword’s speed plummeted.
Even so, she could not smile.
[How…?]
How was he still moving? With weight like that on him, he shouldn’t have been able to stand—he should have been flattened into paste on the spot!
“One of my traits, see—”
Charrk—, charr-rr-rrk—!
The scales of Dragon Scale Armor [B] screamed. Moonlit Night Black Divine Robe [C] fluttered in agony. And still Yujin trembled, the corner of his mouth curling upward. It was a grotesque expression, but there was no mistaking it—he was smiling.
“I’ve got something called God-Inhabited Body [S].”
An S-grade trait. Reversal [B] had only inverted the skill window. Which meant every trait he currently possessed was still fully active. Judgment of Sin [A] was a monstrous skill, but not monstrous enough to break God-Inhabited Body [S].
[That’s impossi—]
Never once had Omophnes imagined he could withstand even Judgment of Sin [A]. Her face a mask of pure shock, she kicked off the ground—
Or tried to.
Galaxy Sword [B] was faster. So much faster that her movement wasn’t even in the same conversation.
Goooooooooh—!
Space-time itself was being cut. It was as if the result—Omophnes’s legs already severed—had been decided first, and the process reverse-engineered from the outcome. Dodging had never been possible to begin with.
——————!!
A pain so vast it bored straight through her skull. Omophnes’s mouth fell open in a silent scream. This was nothing like simple flesh being damaged. It felt as if her soul itself had been ripped free.
Both legs gone, she slammed into the frozen plain and convulsed wildly against the ice.
About three minutes left?
He hadn’t even done that much, and two minutes were already gone. Yujin walked over to Omophnes, who was vomiting frozen blood across the ice. He would have loved to mock her properly, to condemn her, to explain exactly why she was about to die—but he had to finish this. Time was short.
Extinction [A].
Annihilating energy that erased everything it touched began to pour from his entire body.
[W-wait—!]
The lofty, arrogant, high-and-mighty bearing of an Administrator was long gone. The desperate hand Omophnes thrust toward him looked no different from any monster thrashing for its life. That was what these things truly were—garbage that had simply gotten lucky enough to sit in the Tower’s management seats.
“If you’re going to slaughter innocent people like that, you should’ve figured you’d die the same way.”
He raised Galaxy Sword [B].
[I’ll tell you secrets! About the Tower and the System! About those Relics you’ve been collecting! Everything I know—I’ll teach you all of it!]
An ancient catastrophe breathing the air of merciless slaughter.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
From now on, your nickname is Absolute Fucking Loser.
“I’m a little curious, sure, but no. It’s not like I have no other way to find out. Drop the idea that scrap like that is enough to buy your life.”
[Then—!]
“Enough.”
The power of Extinction [A] soaked into Nine Heavens Divine Sword [A]—a single strike capable of killing even a level-300 Administrator.
Omophnes crawled across the frozen plain in a grotesque frenzy, thrashing to put distance between herself and Yujin. Onto her back, Galaxy Sword [B] fell.
Kagagagagagak—!
The sound of ice that had been solid for centuries shattering. The sound of a Punisher’s body, centuries old, collapsing together with the frozen plain that had accumulated over the same span of years.
[AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—!]
A scream. Despair. Lament. Wailing. Madness. Frenzy. Regret. Outrage. Attachment. Grief. Rage. Resentment. And terror. Every one of those emotions was knotted into Omophnes’s shriek until it sounded like hell itself.
Yujin looked down at her in silence, then lifted his foot.
“You’re loud, you fucking loser. Just die quietly.”
Pusshk—!
With a sound like a perfectly ripe watermelon splitting open, Omophnes’s head became one with the ice.
The eardrum-splitting scream stopped.
The world that had frozen began to flow again.
“Ah, fuck.”
Yujin tore his gaze from the dead Omophnes and spat the curse with pure irritation.
“This is bad.”
He had killed an Administrator. This was not remotely comparable to killing Black Darkness on the Tutorial Floor. After hundreds—maybe thousands—of years of holding their posts as pillars of the Tower, one of the thirteen Administrators had just been removed from the board. They would not let this slide.
“This is exactly why I held back and didn’t kill Didascalia…”
He had wasted a precious item and painted a perfect target on his back for every Administrator alive. This time, a real sanction might come down through the Grand Council. From start to finish, the whole thing had been a catastrophic loss.
Yujin sighed and looked up at the sky.
“Still.”
Something began to appear as faint dots against the gray heavens.
“It’s not like I got nothing out of it.”
■ You have achieved victory in battle against Administrator Omophnes.
■ Due to the large number of achievements completed, the time required to calculate rewards has increased.
Time Remaining: 72 hours 48 minutes 22 seconds