Almost Died Again
What is death?
It cannot be known. No living thing that has experienced death has ever returned to tell another what it is.
Some say death is nothing more than a new beginning. Some fear it as an end where nothing remains. Some wave it off—a story still a long way from themselves.
Another One, drawn close to death by the Book of Death, knew how worthless all those questions and answers were.
Death is the unknown.
A thing that cannot be understood until the universe ends: a tag that follows only because life exists. That is why it is unknown. And that unknown, Another One was feeling to a damned degree.
'Can I kill it?'
He asked himself, and the question was foolish. That thing. No—could he kill those things?
The gray sea watched him from his back. The mask laughed without a sound. Between the two of them, the human mediated, and glared.
Beings twisted as far as that existed as one, and Another One resented the whim of the universe. The universe had permitted it. It had permitted those things to live sprawled at their ease, both legs stretched long.
'Fair. How fair.'
The world was not fair. The universe was. As if to say that whatever mess you raised, time would set it all in order.
A sneer settled on Another One's mouth. He offered a prayer for the repose of the self who would be left on Earth. If he failed to erase those things now, the future him would have to face them once they were complete. That, truly, would be the end of the universe.
"Huuuuu……."
He let the breath out, and it did not suit him.
Tension—an emotion crushed dead beneath the might of his true body. Terror—a weakness the long years had swallowed. Negative things raked through his mind. Another One could have killed them. He did not touch them.
What men call the brain's steroids, and its electric shocks, were not wholly bad.
The will to win. A flare of valor. The hunger for a contest.
He had thought he would never feel them again after the great war. After so long, the feeling struck like a drug, and strength flashed awake in him.
"Go."
He said it to himself. Today's battle would be one he could not forget.
Death was coming.
Death was coming, wearing the body of an Absolute.
Every last cell longed for the death of the one who was one, and yet three.
The mask told Do Gyeongsu: the instant he touched even one of the tens of trillions of cells that made up that man, he would die.
"Every death in the history of Earth is packed into that thing. Impressive, isn't it? I think I see why every living being in this universe lost to him. By rank alone, he's better than most of those old scraps. If a toy that isn't even finished can do this, what's the real one like? Should I go fetch the octopus?"
The mask was enjoying itself. Do Gyeongsu sighed inwardly. They were short of time even to beg for a method, and it was spouting nonsense. The fellow had always been like this. He still could not get used to it.
In place of the mask, which refused to be serious, the moon delivered its meaning. Do Gyeongsu gathered up the intent compressed into that single syllable.
"Kahaha."
The mask cackled at the moon.
"Too by the book. No fun. If it were me, I'd do it like this."
It hammered an absurd method into his head. In short: follow the fashion of the day, and make a special space that suits you.
A spirit-realm deployment? A high-grade barrier?
A vein stood out on Do Gyeongsu's forehead. He could not even control his own body. As if that were going to work.
He emptied his mind. Neither offer helped. He would simply have to do it himself.
He looked at the death bearing down. Dozens of lines appeared in the empty air, strung like a spider's web, and where they met his fingers they wound tight. As deftly as the Silver Thread he had worked in his days as a Phantom Thief, Do Gyeongsu flicked his fingers.
The shell laid over death—the line bound to that shell—snapped. Tens of trillions of deaths broke, and those deaths seeped between his fingers.
He had stolen them.
Do Gyeongsu tied the deaths, as if they were his own, to another line. That line ran to Another One's vital point.
Tut-tut-tut-tuk! Every line joined to Another One snapped. The one racing for the vital point never reached its mark.
"……!"
There was nothing in sight that he ought to steal. That had never happened before.
Death swallowed Another One once more. His gaze was endlessly sharp.
The moon explained the moment as it stood.
"Whew. In that little span, he caught the change that came over him. Then he used the next death and cut every danger touching him."
'Is that possible?'
"It's possible. That's why the view in front of you looks like that, isn't it? But it isn't free. He didn't only block the dangers we send. He shut out the dangers of an unspecified many, just to shave away whatever variables you might use. Thanks to that, time in the manifest world has grown extremely short. Of course, a risk that certain pays an enormous return. You'd better be careful. That man is in a limited kind of invincibility. Now, now. The reaper's aiming for your neck. You'll have to run your ass off, won't you?"
'Tch.'
Do Gyeongsu clicked his tongue.
Even without his true body, Another One was Another One. It was not that he felt no fear of his own annihilation, and still he threw himself in like a moth to flame. That decisiveness, that judgment—call it the pinnacle, and it would not be too much. A chill crawled up the nape of Do Gyeongsu's neck.
He realized there was no road behind him. Looking around, he found himself and Another One sealed inside a hemisphere, while death in terrible concentration beckoned him closer.
'Was he wary of the moon?'
The moon hung brazen at his back. From where Another One stood, it would have been a danger without precedent, one he could not even read. He had stopped it from intervening and, for good measure, sealed the way out. The distance between them was a stumble and a bumped nose. Another One had played his decisive stake.
He was, in any case, a phantom that time would erase—nothing but a record of the past. Before the limit ran out, he would draw on everything. Under a calculation aimed at Do Gyeongsu alone, he killed every starting point called possibility and cut one straight road called victory.
'This is bad.'
For an instant Do Gyeongsu weighed whether to speak the last character of his name. That would have let him slip free. But he would have had to abandon this state, and he could not throw away a chance he had finally made.
"See? It would've been a little easier if you'd done as I said."
The mask sneered.
'Quiet. I'm thinking.'
"Want a hand? I'll finish it the way we finished the tree. All you have to do is give me your body."
The mask lolled its tongue, and the mouth moved as smoothly as a devil's own.
"I'm curious, you see. What his despair would look like. A whole life's golden tower collapsing in front of a grown-up's prank, and him screaming. To see that one second, I could even stake my life."
Do Gyeongsu knew the words were a lie. The mask had no such thing as sincerity. Only chaos and madness, near enough to infinite. That was the champion who would toy with the universe and smile. If Do Gyeongsu, too, had lacked someone's protection, he would have been Chaos's plaything with no way out.
'I don't need it.'
As always, he refused, flat and final, and crushed the mask's presence down. His head cleared a little.
"Hoo."
His breath caught hard. Another One had closed to within arm's reach.
Death aimed at my neck and bound my limbs. It thinned my mind, stole the freedom of my flesh, and left me a condemned man waiting on his execution.
Funny, that a miracle like this belongs to a fake. I have to drag out every power latent in me just to see the fake's full strength. What was the original author thinking, creating a cheat this foul? Too strong for a final boss. The genre is all wrong for a hero story.
Do Gyeongsu closed his eyes.
This one, he could not dodge. Phantom Thief be damned. He saw no way out.
Perhaps Another One knew the choice. He closed his eyes for the same brief moment, then paid his greatest rival the highest courtesy.
"Haa. Haa."
Another One stared at Do Gyeongsu's corpse drifting in the air and gasped for breath.
"Did I win……."
Strength left him, and he dropped to one knee.
"A good thing I judged quickly."
Had he fought a probing battle—had he given the man even one second—the one who fell would have been himself.
"This……. All I've done is a favor for my true body."
Another One raised a hand. The death that had drawn on every scrap of its potential was slowly coming apart.
Flutter.
When the strength ran out, the Book of Death slipped free on its own.
"……What."
Another One was at a loss for words.
The book's last page. In the record of death, still updating even today, there was no name he knew. A name that began with Do Gyeongsu—nowhere at all.
"Don't tell me……."
He looked at the corpse with trembling eyes.
The corpse had a hand laid on the Book of Death.
"…How are you alive? You were dead. I am certain of it."
The feel in his hand had been sure. Even death had affirmed it. So why?
"There was one thing you alone failed to block."
Do Gyeongsu pointed at himself.
"My death."
"Ha……."
Another One could not believe it.
"You mean to say you stole even death?"
"Sometimes you've got to know how to steal even yourself."
Do Gyeongsu opened the Book of Death.
"Return to where you belong."
Another One lowered his head as a loser should. His consciousness was drawn into the book.
Thump.
The Book of Death shut.
Do Gyeongsu tucked it inside his coat. Before him, Death One—the one used as a host—lay collapsed. Do Gyeongsu hauled him up onto his back.
"Let's go back."
To Earth.
Do Gyeongsu kicked off toward the blue planet.
The last moon left saw him off as he went.