Chapter 159

The surrounding landscape was submerged in darkness, leaving only ‘two Shadow Lords’ standing there.

Tentacles surged from beneath the Shadow Lords’ feet and began to rush forward in unison.

In response, the ‘Shadow Lord’ reconfigured the armor of the dark cavern like liquid metal, generating blades, and the black-blooded sword severed the Shadow Lord’s tentacles all at once.

He immediately re-gripped the hilt of the Peacemaker and drove it straight into the ground.

Simultaneously, tentacles surged forth again from beneath the Shadow Lord’s feet. Each time, the Shadow Lord restructured his dark armor to sever them. Yet one tentacle, impossible to evade, coiled tightly around his arm.

Thud!

A hollow sound, like breaking a tree branch, echoed.

Black blood gushed forth in spurts along the severed arm.

But the ‘Shadow Lord’ paid no heed. He swiftly manipulated the shadows to reconstruct his prosthetic arm and overlay it with black blood armor.

As the shattered armor of thought was restored, the distance closed. Or rather, it should have closed.

Another Shadow Lord… The body of the immortal craftsman, Frederick, lost its substance and crumbled to the ground.

“What a futile struggle, child.”

A voice came from behind him.

The Immortal who had been right before Dale just moments ago now stood far behind him, laughing.

Once more, tentacles surged from around him, plunging toward Dale.

The sheer number is too great to fend off individually. Even twisting the armor of the dark cave into the shape of blades, it is impossible to cut through them all.

Crack! Crack!

Several tentacles wrapped around Dale’s flesh, snapping like tree branches, and each time, the Dark Cavern’s blood spattered. Yet, even amidst pain that threatened to shatter his consciousness, Dale never knelt.

The moment his flesh shattered, he filled it with the shadow’s prosthetic body, then restored and overlaid the armor of thought upon it, rising to his feet.

The joints and gears of machinery broken beyond repair, patched endlessly like a coat mended with patches upon patches.

But nothing changed.

The battle between the two rulers.

Yet it had been a one-sided mockery from the start, and what Dale displayed was nothing but the most hideous, desperate struggle itself.

A futile struggle unfolding before an inescapable ruin.

“Truly ugly and foolish.”

Watching this, the Immortal Master muttered as if unable to comprehend.

“Why would Mother… treat something like a glass vessel, which shatters mercilessly with just a little force…”

It was right then. The immortal artisan stopped speaking as if he had realized something, and burst into laughter.

As if he finally understood.

“Your desperate struggle, volunteering to be a plaything for mother and daughter, is truly pathetic and pitiful.”

The Immortal Master smiled softly.

“But since you say you take pleasure in that sight, I suppose I ought to respond to that amusement.”

To him, Dale’s existence was nothing more than a glass vessel that could shatter at any moment. Yet why had the Dark Goddess and her beloved daughter willingly chosen to remain beside that fragile vessel? It was precisely for this reason.

“I shall gladly watch your ruin.”

Before inescapable despair, the ugliness and foolishness of struggling desperately, knowing no surrender.

This was what I came to see.

Swoosh!

Once more, Eldritch’s tentacles coiled around Dale’s limbs, tearing his limbs apart.

At last, a scream pierced the silence. Black blood poured down like a torrential rain.

Simultaneously, as limbs were torn off, shadow limbs replaced them, and once more, the armor of the dark cavern was overlaid upon Dale’s cybernetic body.

Yet the armor, which should have been impenetrable, pitch-black heavy armor, had grown so thin and shabby that even the term “light armor” seemed inadequate.

Through endless cycles of breaking and repair, the armor steadily wore away.

──And yet, it still refuses to kneel.

That was what made it even more laughable, unbearably so.

This is it. The joy only a human could fulfill for her.

Frederick the Immortal finally understood what the Mother and Daughter of the Ancient Darkness truly desired.

Before that overwhelming gap, too vast to even approach, clinging to the rotting lifeline of hope, that grotesque spectacle.

That very grotesque ruin is precisely the pleasure the Goddess of Darkness and her daughter so desperately crave.

That is why it cannot be killed easily. Controlling the force is crucial. Painfully enough to kill, yet never shattering the vessel.

Swoosh!

“Now, child. Rise again. The pleasure has only just begun.”

Toward Dale, who was squeezing every last drop from his thoughts, worn down to the point of exhaustion, endlessly worn down again and again.

Like a child who takes pleasure in cutting off each limb and segment of an insect one by one.

Yes. That creature was a bug. And what his mother and daughter desired was the sheer agony of that bug struggling to survive in pain.

That’s why Frederick laughed like a young boy tormenting a bug.

He was an opponent not even worth a wave of the hand.

Frederick, the immortal engineer and progenitor of Saxony.

Setting aside revealing the power of the Shadow Tower’s apex, or even that of the Eldritch itself, it wasn’t even something that could be called a fight from the start.

The execution of sadism began.

Squish!

Once more, the tentacles coiled around Dale’s body, shattering his limbs and torso along with his armor. As if crushing each bone joint into fine fragments. His ribs and organs twisted and shattered inside his armor, and dark blood gushed from Dale’s mouth.

But that was only the beginning.

Mages and knights do not die as easily as ordinary men. Especially a being like Dale, whose will to live burned fiercely—his obsession and determination were all the more relentless.

Kwoong!

Desperately repairing and restoring his shattered flesh… Dale tried to rise, but instead, he finally dropped to his knees.

His posture collapsed completely.

“How are you, Mother. And my beloved daughter.”

Immortal Frederick asked again.

Crunch, crunch!

His tentacles wrapped around Dale’s body, meticulously carving each bone joint within.

“Is that more to your liking now?”

Fractures, furthermore, the tentacles pressed against the flesh, obstructing blood flow and causing necrosis throughout the living tissue.

Yet, despite all this, Dale’s body never ceased its movements.

It endlessly twisted and contorted its shattered form, desperately writhing like a tattered rag.

“Daughter, is it done yet?”

Frederick asked again, inflicting pain upon the writhing insect once more.

But in his counterquestion, there was no sound of an answer coming.

Frederick simply turned his head. Now, unable even to think of getting up, he watched Dale lying face down, desperately struggling.

“Mother? …Lise?”

The Immortal opened his mouth again. As if to say the game was over.

“Still want to play more? Lise.”

But that was never the name of Dale’s sister.

It was the name of the daughter the Immortal King Frederick had sacrificed long ago to write the Book of the Black Goat.

Hearing that name, Dale burst out laughing. A sound that could scarcely be called laughter escaped his lips.

Even in a situation where he couldn’t move a finger, he wouldn’t stop his ugly, foolish struggles.

“What’s so funny?”

Frederick asked coldly.

“Still… haven’t you… escaped your delusion?”

Dale muttered hoarsely, his head buried in the floor.

“Delusion?”

Squish!

Once more, the tentacles of the Immortal Beast crushed Dale’s body.

“Let’s stop playing with this for now.”

After the game ended, he believed without a doubt that ‘they’ would return to him.

“This world still overflows with playthings for you to toy with, doesn’t it?”

Tentacles sprouted from beneath his feet, overlapping in clusters, their tips emitting a sharp, blue-black glint like needles.

The final blow to end this game.

Facing that blow, Dale burst into laughter once more.

After laughing, Dale said.

“──Had enough fun, Shub?”

─ It was incredibly fun!

“……!”

At the same time, a voice reached his ears. To Dale, it sounded like the innocent nod of a young girl.

But what Frederick heard was not that.

“■■■■──!”

The most horrifying scream in the world echoed. It was neither his mother’s voice nor his daughter’s.

“Why…?”

At last, Frederick tilted his head as if unable to comprehend.

“Mother? Lise?”

Like a frightened little boy, Frederick muttered.

He turned his head. Toward Dale, who was letting out a weak laugh, as if the wind had been let out of him.

“The game is over.”

The immortal’s tentacle plunged toward Dale’s heart.

Thud!

The tentacle, sharp as an awl at its tip, pierced through Dale’s heart and burst out the other side.

An undeniably lethal blow. Dale’s body, twitching its fingers in resistance, finally ceased its movement.

And that signified only one thing.

Death that could not be avoided.

It should have been, and it was at that very moment.

Thud!

Simultaneously, another sound echoed.

─ Caw! Caw!

Several crows flapped their wings and took flight. Their feathers scattered in all directions.

Amidst the dizzying fall of black feathers, Father was there.

Beside his son, whose tentacles pierced his heart and protruded from his back.

──Dale, who should have met his end, smiled quietly.

As if he had known it would be so from the very beginning.

Lord Black stood there.

Before the Saxon progenitor once known as the ‘Immortal Lord’, the heir who would inherit that clan’s legacy.

“Why…?”

Seeing that figure, Frederick swallowed his breath softly. Like a child unable to accept what unfolded before him.

“Why?”

At that very moment, Lord Black also spoke.

“Why did you do such a cruel thing to my son?”

At least in Dale’s memory, it was a voice filled with a cold hatred unlike any he had ever known.

“O great progenitor of Saxony.”

“……”

After the silence, the immortal Frederick raised his head. His empty black pupils, devoid of focus, turned toward father and son.

“I cannot see…”

Frederick murmured softly.

“Neither our ancient Mother of Darkness, nor my beloved daughter. I see nothing at all.”

He paid no heed to the descendants before him.

“Why can’t I see? Why is the world so dark?”

Leaving the black bandage at his feet behind, he repeated the question as if he couldn’t comprehend it.

“You still don’t understand?”

Dale answered that question.

Dale, whose body should have been torn to shreds and shattered, his very heart pierced by tentacles, dead.

“What do you mean?”

“Why she can’t be seen and won’t answer.”

Dale, who should have met his deserved death, stood there unscathed, not even a scratch on him.

At first glance, it appeared no different from the healing magic of a White Mage.

However, though the philosophies pursued by the ‘greatest dark mage and white mage on the continent’ differ, their form is identical. Just as the two mage towers of black and white were once one.

The control of life and death.

Just as the absence of life is death, the absence of death is life.

Thus, the Black Mage appeared there ‘at the opportune moment’ and erased the death that should have come to his son.

‘Still don’t understand? That I did not permit your deaths.’

As the continent’s foremost dark mage, capable of manipulating the very concept of death itself, and as the pinnacle of the Black Tower.

How could he have appeared at such an incredibly coincidental moment? Dale couldn’t know. Yet he was certain.

Because he had promised Shuv that.

“Don’t try to read too much into Shub’s silence.”

That’s why Dale said.

“She isn’t hiding her presence and keeping silent for the complex and demanding reasons the Immortal Lord imagines…”

The truth Lord Immortal Frederick was trying so hard to turn away from.

“──It’s simply better for her to stay by my side.”

The Book of the Black Goat had chosen, of its own volition, not to be with the author, but to remain by Dale’s side.

Upon hearing that answer, the immortal craftsman Frederick burst into laughter.

At first, it was a very small laugh, but soon he threw his head back and burst into a mad, frenzied laughter. It was a laugh filled with madness.

“How dare he, how dare he, a mere usurper of Saxony…!”

Simultaneously, the air around them began to violently convulse.

But facing the world’s oldest monster, the Immortal, was no longer Dale’s burden.

“Step aside, Dale.”

Another Saxon Duke stood in his son’s path, opposing Saxony.

Six black wings spread wide behind him.

Facing the immortal monster, the Angel of Death stood there.