The Ruler of the Abyss
They raised their weapons.
Gracia let out a long, heavy sigh.
A thunderous boom split the air.
In that instant a bolt of lightning struck. One of the thousand swords that had been roaming the sky plunged into the ground like a thunderbolt.
Anyone who saw the corpse split cleanly in half would surely panic and retreat.
“M-meat… the smell of meat!”
“That… that meat, we can eat it, right?”
Ah.
They had gone mad. Truly, completely mad. The Abyss had driven their minds out of their skulls—just as it had once done to Gracia himself.
Even if he slaughtered every last one of them this way, would it ever end?
Yet absolute leadership was indispensable here and now. The fact that they had turned on him meant the cracks in his authority had already begun to show.
I need to make an example of them.
—Die like vermin, or do what must be done.
That was the duty that fell to him. So that they would not die like vermin. So that, at the very least, they might die as human beings. He could not allow this place to become a hell of mutual cannibalism and frenzied slaughter.
Gracia raised one hand high, high enough for every eye to see, fully intending to butcher them all.
“Ah—the egg is cracking!”
At that very moment a man came sprinting toward him and shouted the report.
“Egg?”
“Yes! The black egg!”
Gracia’s brow furrowed. He moved at once.
The black egg that had emerged from Baal’s belly. If cracks were spreading across it, hatching was imminent.
When he reached the heart of the Abyss, Gracia’s breath caught in his throat.
Crack!
The black egg was indeed splitting open.
What in the world is hatching inside that thing?
A completed Baal? Or something else entirely? He could not know. He could not even begin to guess. One thing alone was certain: whatever emerged would be no ordinary existence.
Gracia and every soul around him tensed to the breaking point and fixed their eyes on the hatching egg.
“Ohh!”
“It’s waking!”
“The god is awakening!”
Gaunt faces. Emaciated bodies. Countless people babbled about the birth of the black egg.
Opinions on the black egg had been divided from the very beginning—Baal’s evolved form, or the god that had slain Baal. No one knew what would burst forth when it hatched. Yet every single one of them had dropped to their knees before it and prayed.
“Please! Please!”
“Save us!”
“We beseech you… we beseech you…!”
Whatever it was, they begged it only to take them out of this place. Trapped in the Abyss for more than a month, the people were desperate. They had been dragged here without warning and had spent every day not knowing whether they would live to see the next. Had Gracia not enforced iron control, the entire cavern would already have become a living slaughterhouse of mutual devouring.
Already the black egg had become an object of worship for hundreds of thousands. They believed with absolute certainty that only this black egg could save them. Hundreds of thousands of fanatics surrounded it with hands clasped in prayer. Hunger and exhaustion had reduced them to this.
Even Gracia could not stem the tide of fanaticism.
“Lord Gracia. Will a being from the deeper Abyss emerge?”
A player asked. Gracia shook his head.
“Whatever it turns out to be, we have only one duty: protect the people’s lives.”
It was no exaggeration to say that six hundred thousand lives rested in their hands.
Gracia drew a deep breath.
And then—
O Thousand Swords.
A thousand blades rose into the air and arranged themselves in a glittering ring around the black egg, ready to strike the instant the hatchling proved to be Baal.
Crackling blue Sword Qi flared from every blade. At the same moment, lightning-like radiance blazed in Gracia’s eyes.
His ultimate skill: Heavenly Punishment.
An overwhelming assault that drove a thousand thunderbolts into the target and erased it from existence. A finishing technique that consumed every drop of mana and stamina in a single strike. The long preparation time and the fact that using it left him unable to move for nearly a week made it a last resort he almost never employed.
“Is that… Heavenly Punishment Mode?”
“I’ve only ever heard the stories… never thought I’d see it with my own eyes…”
“They say no one has ever survived being hit by it.”
The so-called Heavenly Punishment Mode. The players stared in open awe; even during the first battle against Baal this form had never appeared.
Yet contrary to their wonder, Gracia was stretched to the limit of his nerves. Sweat evaporated the instant it beaded, yet he was sweating rivers from sheer tension.
“Everyone! Do not approach! Fall back as far as you can!”
Even in the midst of it all, one person still looked after the civilians—a beautiful woman, the Pure White Knight, Serengeti. She alone stood unshaken, her bearing straight as a blade. The goat-masked comrade who had been with her must already have died inside the cocoon, yet still she did not falter.
Beautiful.
Whenever Gracia felt himself on the verge of collapse he looked at her. Each glimpse of her unyielding will steadied his heart. He could not name the feeling. Was this love? Yet she was a being of Pangenia. Such a love could never be fulfilled. Simply gazing upon her was enough.
Crack—!
“Ah…!”
“The crack…!!”
The fissure that had begun on the egg’s surface widened into a great rupture. Every chattering voice fell silent at once. In complete hush they watched the black egg hatch.
And then—
A long, low hiss of smoke poured from the shell. The smoke gathered, took shape, and became something like a black phantom.
A ghost. No… that was—
“A Reaper…”
There was no mistaking it. A Reaper—the very kind that had hunted Gracia to the ends of the earth and stolen his youth.
Yet something was wrong. This one differed from every Reaper he had ever seen.
“Wh-what is that?”
“A ghost? A floating spirit?”
“Isn’t that a grim reaper?”
“It’s a Reaper. Don’t you see the scythe?”
People murmured among themselves. That was the first strangeness. Reapers were visible only to those who had been “marked.” Ordinary people had never been able to see the ones that pursued Gracia.
And then there was the appearance itself.
“Doesn’t the face look rather like Baal’s?”
“Those wings, too…”
Indeed. It wore the form of a Reaper, yet its face bore a strange resemblance to Baal. Of the three wings sprouting from its back, one matched Baal’s wing exactly.
Was this, then, a being from the deeper Abyss?
Gracia slowly raised his hand.
The entity opened its mouth.
—Kya.
…Kya?
What was it saying?
—Kyakyakyakyakya!
The Reaper laughed lightly and swung its scythe. Gracia prepared to counter, certain it was an attack—yet the scythe cut only empty air.
It swung at nothing? Why?
A moment later everyone understood.
A sharp whistle of force. The sound of something massive colliding. Then the crack of a hard outer shell shattering.
A deep, rolling rumble.
Far in the distance, the wall of the Abyss was crumbling.
Impossible.
It was the wall that had never so much as trembled no matter how desperately they had thrown themselves against it—the invisible veil that marked the end of the Abyss. Now it was collapsing, revealing the space beyond.
And beyond that space lay another Abyss.
“Wh-what are those…?”
“No… what…?”
“Ah… aah…”
Terror seized the crowd. Naturally. Gracia and the players alike stood stunned by the sight.
Floating above the darkness beyond the torn veil were countless eyes—the eyes of the monsters that dwelled in the Abyss, all of them staring this way.
Those eyes… every one of them belongs to a Ruler of the Abyss.
Only then did Gracia understand. The Rulers of the Abyss had been watching this place from the very beginning. He did not know why. Each Ruler was a monster of overwhelming power; even Baal himself had been merely one among them. Yet the number of eyes…
There were far too many.
If every one of those eyes belonged to a Ruler of the Abyss, what in the world filled the depths? Why had they been watching? And how had that Reaper split the veil of the Abyss?
A low hum.
A rising whine.
A piercing drone.
Before the questions could even form, countless warps bloomed beneath the people’s feet—one for each person. Easily more than six hundred thousand.
“Wh-what is this?”
“It’s the same as when we were summoned!”
“Warps! They’re warps!”
“Are we going back? Can we go back?”
“The Reaper of the black egg is sending us home!”
“Thank you, thank you!”
“Long live the Reaper of the black egg!!!”
The crowd erupted in frantic joy. The same warps had appeared when they were first dragged here; now the warps were forcibly repatriating them once more. People vanished in rapid succession, slipping and falling into the glowing circles.
Crack!
The egg was still hatching, unmistakably.
I must see it.
Whatever was inside. The Reaper that had shattered the barrier was merely an accessory; the true body had not yet emerged.
Gracia rose into the air, dodging the warps.
I must confirm it no matter what.
Instinct told him that only by learning what emerged from that egg could he know the future of humanity—whether it was enemy or ally, or at the very least what form it took.
The warps pursued him relentlessly. More and more of them spawned, determined to drag him away. Gracia bit his lip and poured every ounce of strength into evasion, desperate to witness the hatching to the end.
No one else remained. All six hundred thousand had already been transported. Only Gracia was left.
And then—
CRACK!
At last the egg shattered completely.
That form… it’s unmistakably—!
Gracia’s eyes flew wide as he beheld the being that rose from the shell.
That was as far as he got. In the same instant his foot found a warp, and he plummeted.
“….”
I uncurled from the crouched position. Straightening my spine, I drove strength into my legs and rose to my feet. Spreading my palms, I rolled my shoulders and neck, confirming that nothing was amiss.
“No problems with the body, it seems.”
—Kyakyakya!
Hell laughed. The towering Reaper form from moments earlier was gone; once more reduced to a tiny size, it began spinning circles around me.
The body was normal. I had clearly died… and yet I lived.
Eternal Randolph.
When Eternal Randolph activated, the thirteen Hidden Traits rose from the dead ashes. After that I devoured Baal, subjugated the Fragment of Ruin, and the flesh was reassembled. Outwardly I was still Randolph. There was no dramatic change in appearance.
I am myself. I have not become someone else.
Soul and mind were likewise intact. Yet without question I had changed. I had grown. Perhaps the word was evolution.
Status Window.
The window that displayed my transformation most clearly. I called it forth.
Name:Randolph
Class:Star’s Successor
Class:Supreme Sword Saint
Strength:117 (102+15)