A summoning circle that had devoured all of Rukan’s chaos power, Ether, floated in the sky. It seeped a sticky and gloomy aura. No one knew what would emerge from it, but they knew this much: whatever was being summoned would be something no one here could handle. It had to be stopped.

Keter fired an arrow. It was the strongest arrow he could unleash at that moment. He created and fired a new ninth form for Limitless Archery, which until now had only had eight forms. He spontaneously fused Tusk, known for its extreme penetrating power, and Tachyon, which produced an instantaneous supersonic explosion.

Limitless Archery, Ninth Form: Flash.

The arrow fired from his palm traced a single streak of light with a brief flash. The other Transcendentals also unleashed the fastest and strongest techniques they could use at that moment, but Keter’s arrow reached the summoning circle first, without question.

No one paid any attention to Deyal, the traitor. He himself only stood there watching, and even if he had attacked, stopping the summoning was more important now. So all of their desperate strikes, ignoring even their own lives, pounded against the summoning circle, but...

Pshhhh...

With a sound like air escaping from a balloon, every attack was swallowed up, as if stones had been thrown into the sea. The faint ripples that followed showed that while the attacks had not done absolutely nothing, they had amounted to practically nothing.

Watching this, Deyal murmured as though reciting a prayer. “Almighty Alkione, all things have come to pass according to your will.”

Hearing that, Keter understood two things: Deyal had not betrayed them just now. He had been one of Alkione’s pawns from the beginning. That much was clear, because Deyal’s voice was filled with absolute devotion. And second, what was coming out of that summoning circle was not some great demon or the true form of an evil god.

Szzzz...

What descended from the summoning circle was the fragile foot of a human. Then, a bent old man with a back curved like a shrimp fully emerged. He looked like a decrepit old man on the verge of dying from age, but Keter instinctively knew.

“Godfather...!”

What had been summoned using Rukan as a sacrifice was none other than the Godfather, Alkione.

The sound of someone dropping to their knees echoed behind him. It was Deyal kneeling, but no one present cared. All eyes were fixed on the Godfather. No one even blinked. No one breathed. They simply stared at him.

The Godfather’s mere presence shook their souls. He looked like an old man, but the existence pouring from that old body was more overwhelming than heaven and earth.

“H-heh, heheheh.”

The Godfather laughed first as he looked around, like an old man stepping outside for the first time in months. Soon, his eyes met Keter’s.

“Keter,” the Godfather called his name.

Keter answered him in return. “Alkione.”

“I told you that the next time we met, I would make you an offer you could not refuse. Do you remember?”

“I remember.”

“Submit to me. If you do, you and Sefira will be spared.”

“That sounds pretty easy to refuse.”

“Refusal is easy. It’s just that you won’t be able to bear the price of that refusal.”

Whoosh.

The Godfather gestured toward the sky. It was a weak, lifeless motion, yet heaven and earth shook from that single gesture.

Rumble!

The sky sank, and the ground split apart. Even though it was not a direct attack, the aftereffects were tremendous.

Thinking it was simply a performance meant to display his power, Keter gave a short laugh.

“Looks like you wanted to show off your strength.”

“I just erased Sefira.”

“...?”

“I’ll give you credit. You anticipated this situation well and prepared for it. You made Alakir, the elemental god, your guardian deity, and had Endymion, who specializes in defense, guard the main estate. But they all died just now, every last one. Not even an ant was left alive. Not a single speck of bone dust remained. I killed them all with that one gesture.”

“....”

Keter looked into the Godfather’s eyes. He was not lying. Every word the Godfather said was true, which meant that Sefira had actually vanished from this world. The family, the servants, the buildings left there—all of it was gone without leaving even a speck behind.

With a single gesture, the Godfather had annihilated Sefira from thousands of meters away. The family Keter had struggled so hard to protect had fallen in an instant, and the Godfather’s power surpassed imagination. In every sense, the Godfather was a god.

Keter trembled. He did not want to hide it. The rage rising in his chest, and the fear—he spoke those feelings aloud without concealment.

“I’ll kill you.”

There was no need for any more conversation.

* * *

It looked as though the battle began because anger lit the fuse, but that was not it. The anger only gave him momentum.

Keter charged in because the Godfather was not yet in a complete state. With a single gesture, he had crushed the vast Sefira estate from thousands of meters away, but even that did not mean his power had fully returned.

The proof was that the summoning circle was still active in the sky. He had not yet fully digested Rukan, who had absorbed Lillian. If the Godfather, who could already be called a god even now, became complete, then there would truly be no answer.

As soon as Keter attacked, the other Transcendentals attacked as well. Pride no longer mattered. Running away was not an option either. The moment they turned their backs, they would die instantly. Fighting would not necessarily let them win, but it was still better than dying while trying to flee.

“Hehehe...”

The Godfather did nothing. He straightened his bent back and simply watched, as though he were enjoying his grandson’s little performance.

Rukan’s Ether Shield had already been sturdy enough to be called almost invincible, but the Godfather’s Ether Shield was simply invincible. No attack worked. It was like punching at mist with no substance. Divine power, Ein Sof—every attack vanished uselessly.

Faced with such an overwhelming gap and no hope of victory, the expressions of the Transcendentals darkened. Then, it happened.

Slash!

Keter’s back split open in a long gash. Deyal, who had been watching from the sidelines, launched a surprise attack. The Godfather alone had already left them with no chance of victory, and now Dayal, an eight-star Irregular, had joined him.

“This is so fucked.”

Veiga of the Mejai family looked like he wanted to run, and he was on the verge of tears. Just as Deyal, having ambushed Keter, moved to bring his sword down on Gyro next...

“How presumptuous of you.”

The Godfather extended his hand. His target was Deyal.

Whoosh.

Before Deyal could even react, he turned into gray dust and was absorbed into the Godfather’s hand. The others, seeing this, did not feel relieved that one troublesome enemy was gone. Instead, chills ran down their spines.

He erased Deyal with a single gesture?

This meant that the Godfather could kill any of them whenever he wanted and was only toying with them.

As morale visibly started to collapse, Keter shouted at them, “You idiots, Deyal was using the Godfather’s power in the first place. He just took the power back. He didn’t kill an eight-star in one blow!”

Even though what Keter said made sense, no one looked reassured. That only meant the Godfather had absorbed Deyal’s power too.

Clap, clap, clap.

The Godfather applauded. It was only that, but everyone flinched and braced themselves. But it really was just applause.

“Even at a moment like this, you calmly observe the situation. That was always your greatest strength, Keter.”

“Praise right before you kill someone. That’s a nasty thing to do.”

“I am acknowledging it. And now that you have returned alive from Liqueur, surely you know by now that you and I are not so unrelated.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Hmm. That expression. So you truly do not know. In that case, all the better. Die without knowing.”

The Godfather, who had been standing still until then, finally stretched out his hand. In truth, he had no need to. Action itself was meaningless for him. Rukan had attacked with mere will, and what would stop the Godfather from doing the same? And yet he deliberately chose to move, as though placing a restriction on himself. Because of that, Keter could predict the motion and dodge.

Fwhooosh!!!

A beam shot out from the Godfather’s shriveled palm. His tiny hand would not span ten centimeters even fully stretched, yet from it burst a death beam with a radius of five meters.

Keter moved before the attack even came. From the outside, it looked as if the beam had not even grazed him. But when Keter landed on the ground, his upper body had turned to charcoal. It looked as though one touch would make it crumble apart.

Crack.

The charcoal flaked away in the wind, but it was not his body breaking apart. New flesh was already growing from within.

Just before the beam hit, Keter had anticipated that even a physical dodge would not fully evade it, and had over-regenerated his body in advance. It was an enormous gamble. If Keter’s prediction had been wrong, the over-regeneration would have caused his own collapse. But he had been right. Even though he had physically dodged and the beam had missed widely, its influence alone had burned away his upper body.

Those who saw it swallowed hard. Keter survived thanks to his abnormal recovery, but they had no such ability. In other words, being struck by the Godfather’s beam—even being brushed by it—meant instant death.

“That versatility of yours was one of your charms too.”

The Godfather praised Keter again, like a father admiring a well-grown son. Keter brushed the fragments off his body and crooked a finger.

“So gods aren’t all that special. That was survivable.”

“I wonder whether the others would feel the same.”

This time, the Godfather fired the beam in the opposite direction. He was not targeting anyone in particular. There was no need. Simply including them in the beam’s area was enough.

“Fuck!”

“Aaaaah!”

The Transcendentals cursed and shouted. Otherwise, there was no way they could endure the Godfather’s death beam.

Unlike Keter, who could revive, they chose not to dodge but to block. A beam whose effective range was different from what it looked like was not something they could evade anyway. To the Godfather, it was only an attack he let loose with a single gesture, but the Transcendentals had to gather every authority they possessed to resist it.

Boom!

Gyro, wielder of the greatsword, stepped forward first and slammed his sword into the ground. His sword was not simply a ridiculously large one; it was the Demon Sword Obelisk, and he had even released its true name to draw out its real power. But...

Crack.

A crack spread across the artifact that was said to be indestructible. The Godfather’s beam was being blocked and scattered by the greatsword, but still...

Screeeech!

In the end, the Demon Sword Obelisk and the Transcendentals’ secret techniques succeeded in dispersing the beam completely. But the price was anything but small.

Crack.

Obelisk shattered into pieces.

The Transcendentals who had been supporting from behind were in no better shape. They looked as though they had aged ten years in an instant. Their hair had turned white, and so much sweat poured from their bodies that puddles formed beneath them.

“Huff... huff...”

The Transcendentals were gasping for breath. That single attack had consumed almost all the vital energy in their bodies. They had only barely blocked one attack from the Godfather, and yet they were already on the verge of collapse. No matter how one looked at it, there was no chance of victory at all.

There were even people missing. Two were gone—Krona, Lord of the West, and her disciple Daat. No one could tell whether they had fled or died.

There’s no chance of winning this.

The only small mercy was that the Godfather remained still, whether because he was going easy on them or because he could not attack continuously. Gyro, who had just lost Obelisk in an instant, approached Keter.

“So this is how we meet again, Boss.”

“Looks that way.”

“To be honest, I have no idea what we’re supposed to do. Do we even have a chance of winning?”

Not knowing when the Godfather would attack again, Gyro skipped straight to the point.

“We can’t win,” Keter replied.

“So in the end we all die.”

Death was not frightening, but that did not mean they wanted to die. No one would.

Thump.

Keter struck Gyro lightly in the chest.

“We don’t have to be the ones who win.”

“...?”

Gyro’s mind, stiffened by despair and helplessness, could not understand at first. Normally, Keter would have mocked him for that, but this time was different. This might become their last conversation.

For those who lived to fight, dying in battle was said to be honorable and inevitable, but death was still a sad thing. However, Keter smiled with a certainty that could plant hope in anyone watching.

“If we endure, then we win.”

The one who answered those words was not Gyro, but the Godfather.

“I have not the slightest intention of sparing any of you.”

He placed a hand on the ground. A shadow spread from his hand, covering a radius of hundreds of meters. What rose from within that darkness were the chimeras that should have been in the royal capital. They were monsters created by fusing countless other monsters together. And even those bodies were imbued with chaos. The Godfather did not want only the Transcendentals' lives here. He wanted the lives of every living thing present.

As the Godfather’s chimera army gathered, the Dawn Army, which had been watching the situation from far away, joined the battle as well.

No one needed to explain that it was not a fight they could win. They were outnumbered and not as powerful as the chimeras, and yet they joined willingly. Sweat poured down their faces from fear and anxiety, and they trembled, but none of them ran. They gripped their weapons so tightly their hands seemed ready to shatter, but they fought on.

At its root, it was a battle to survive. At the same time, it was a noble and impossible courage that could not exist without the conviction that they were defending this kingdom and this world.

* * *

Two days passed after that. They had fought continuously for forty-eight hours without even a single second to rest. The Dawn Army was still alive. Corpses had piled up into mountains, and blood had formed rivers, but they endured to the end. It would have been impossible without courage and sacrifice.

Of course, the courage and sacrifice shown by Keter played the biggest role. Keter repeated the act of coming back from the brink of death a hundred times. Even if he could restore his body in an instant, it was not free, and Keter was still human. He felt every bit of the pain, and each time he revived, his strength dropped sharply. It was visible to the naked eye that Keter was growing more exhausted and slower.

But even if Keter’s stamina was fading, his will never broke. He kept charging at the Godfather, over and over again, even though none of his attacks worked on him at all.

The determination of Hyperion, who stood shoulder to shoulder with Keter, was just as incredible. If Hyperion had not been there, even Keter would not have been able to endure.

And so, Keter’s words came true—they would win if they held out.

Bwooooooo!

A majestic horn sounded from beyond the horizon. The reinforcements they had been waiting and waiting for had finally arrived. However, the expressions of the Dawn Army did not brighten.

By fighting the chimeras and the Godfather directly, they had realized the truth. Humans, and even Transcendentals beyond them, were no match for the Godfather, no matter how many of them there were. However, it was not only humans who had come as reinforcements.

Rumble!!!

Without warning, the foot of a giant appeared in the sky and stomped down on the Godfather as if crushing an ant. If it had only been an ordinary giant’s blow, there was no way the Godfather would have been affected, but Keter saw it clearly with his own eyes: the Godfather’s Ether Shield, which no attack had managed to touch until now, was cracking apart.