It struck.
This area was no mere emptiness. The blade, infused with his entire soul, spirit, and power, had cleaved into his opponent's body. Asa could distinctly feel how his strength, his will, his very essence cut through the collarbone, shattered ribs, tore through muscle, sliced open organs—unstoppable, like a force of nature carving its way through, and finally, exiting from the waist.
It wasn't just the destruction of flesh. Everything crumbled beneath that strike—whether it was the gray armor surrounding the Necromancer King, the astonishingly resilient muscles and bones within his body, or the mysterious and unfathomable structures hidden deep inside. Against his searing, condensed battle spirit, his killing intent and power, all of it dissolved like frost under the morning sun.
What he wielded was not merely a blade—it was himself. He had compressed everything he was into a single, unprecedentedly concentrated point and driven it into the Necromancer King's body.
No matter the nature of power, if it could be honed to its utmost limit, it became the strongest, the sharpest. Before this ultimate, singularly focused moment of clarity, nothing could stand in its way.
So, it was over? Had I won? Asa knew very well that under that strike, everything had been destroyed—whatever that body once was, it had now been cleaved in two. Yet, he felt no excitement. Because the Necromancer King had not dodged, had not blocked, had not even attempted to defend himself. He had simply stood there, motionless, waiting for the blade to fall.
And then, at that moment, the Necromancer King suddenly reached out and grasped Asa's hand.
It was a strange sensation. Cold, yet not rigid—in fact, it was almost soft, like something that was gradually fading away. There was no hostility in the touch. It felt more like a handshake between old friends.
The sensation did not just linger on the skin—it reached deeper, flowing into his body, his spirit, the very core of his being. It was not just his hand that was being held. It felt as though his soul itself was in that grasp.
"I've been waiting for you for a long time. I knew you would come."
Even though the Necromancer King's body was indeed split apart, indeed destroyed—even though Asa could clearly feel that his body was truly 'dying'—a hollow voice echoed directly within Asa's mind.
"I also knew that you would do this, you could do this."
"It's… you?" Asa was utterly stunned.
What reached him was not just a voice, but countless images, thoughts, and emotions. Whether it was because of the hand that held his, or because of the strike into which he had poured his entire spirit and soul, his soul now seemed intertwined with that of the Necromancer King.
Desperate struggles in Dehya Valley... The difficult choices in the royal capital, and the golden dream that had once shone so brightly… The reckless gamble where all faith and life had been staked… The grim dissections in a dimly lit room… The wager in the Glory Fortress, the modifications, and that fateful moment—when he had been drawn, as if summoned, to grasp the black sword hilt, an object that had seemed to him like the ultimate meaning of his existence…
It felt like an illusion transmitted in an instant, yet at the same time, it was as if these long years of suffering had truly been experienced—memories built up through agony, overlapping and merging repeatedly, intertwining with his own thoughts, influencing and infecting one another.
In just a brief moment, Asa could no longer distinguish whether he was himself—the one who had come to destroy the Black Star at the cost of his own life—or whether he was that young man named Rodhart, who had struggled ceaselessly, only to sink deeper and deeper into darkness and despair.
But it wasn't just Rodhart's thoughts and memories. More surged forth—darker, bloodier, sharper, more intense. These were not the weighty, hollow traces of death emanating from the Black Star. It was as if other souls still lingered within this body.
One of them was fierce, brutal, ruthless—a monstrous beast of flesh and blood, formed from the concentrated essence of all the world's violence and savagery. This one was filled with nothing but primal, animalistic desires, yet its instincts were far more violent, far more twisted than any creature's. The beastly nature that had mutated within human hearts was something no mere animal could ever match.
And then, there was another soul—sharper than Rodhart, lonelier, more distorted. This soul, too, struggled and sank endlessly into the abyss of darkness.
Through the consciousness emanating from this soul, Asa could see countless familiar memories. The hatred, the loathing directed at him was intense beyond words. And yet, despite that undeniable animosity, their fates had been irrevocably intertwined.
For a moment, Asa had the illusion that this was… another version of himself.
Unlike Rodhart, these two souls were incomplete—they belonged to people who had already truly "died." Perhaps because they had been too close to the fluctuations of the Black Star, they had clung to this body, lingering. This so-called Death Lord was, in essence, the fusion of Rodhart and these two others—a collective consciousness of three people.
Asa couldn't resist, couldn't struggle. What surged into his mind wasn't just fragments—it was everything. Every thought, every experience of these three souls, down to the most minuscule detail. Not just vague impressions, but the deepest, rawest realities of their lives.
Abandonment. Rage. Murder. Betrayal. Being used, exploited. The will to be strong, the refusal to submit, the endless struggle to transcend it all, to achieve victory, to never again feel pain. The need to silence that suffering with the cries of others, to seek solace in their submission, their reverence—only to pass that cycle down again, forcing others to repeat the same torment.
The overwhelming darkness, the bloodshed, the savage cruelty—it was all an accumulation, layer upon layer of torment heaped together. But beneath that fractured, corrupted soul, Asa could feel it clearly: these horrors were not born in a vacuum. They were twisted into existence—by the world, by others, by the merciless grind of life itself. Every scream, every struggle, every moment of isolation and terror, every ounce of pain that had shaped these souls into what they had become.
From the moment a person is born, from the first wailing cry of an infant, their fate is sealed—to be melted, burned, and reforged in the furnace of this brutal world. To suffer. To be broken.
Sorrow. Despair. These were the only emotions Asa had left in his fading sense of self.
All four memories intertwined, fused together, their fragments scattering chaotically, yet one sensation grew ever clearer.
Powerlessness. Emptiness.
"Perhaps you didn't feel it before, but now you should understand. Our meeting here was truly fate."
The voice remained hollow. But now, Asa understood why—it was because the world itself was hollow.
Desires no longer mattered. Gains and losses were meaningless. Everything was futile, devoid of purpose. It was time to end.
"Yes, I can feel it," Asa murmured in reply.
Now, he could indeed feel it. He could faintly sense the underlying framework of the entire world, the sequence of its development. It was something vast and boundless, beyond all meaning, beyond all concepts.
No good. No evil. No light. No darkness. Like an unimaginably immense and intricate machine, it operated without emotion, without bias, binding all things together in its order. Nothing could escape this structure, this sequence. Or perhaps, this was the very essence of the world itself.
He couldn't comprehend it—he could only feel it.
This was a realm beyond human understanding, just as an ant could never transcend itself to grasp the movements of the stars or its place within the animal kingdom. This was merely a memory flowing from the Deathlord, and even that memory was but a residue left behind by the Black Star.
The Black Star was the condensation of the world's essence, and naturally, it attracted the course of all things. From the moment of his birth—or even before he was born, before Rodhart was born, before Claudius was born—their paths had already been set. No matter the journey, the outcome had always been inevitable.
Asa had heard such claims before. Each time, he had resisted, disbelieved, fought back. But this time, he couldn't—because now he knew. He understood. He had felt it, truly, with his soul.
Everything that had happened—his own struggles, Rodhart's, those of the other two fragmented, dark souls, and even the entirety of this mortal world—all its horrors, loneliness, sins, and desperate struggles, were, in the grand mechanism of the universe, insignificant.
Like dust. Utterly meaningless.
"This is the very end, our final destination. After coming so far, we've finally arrived."
Rodhart's hollow voice began to distort, for his body had already started to crumble.
Asa's blade had long since split his body in two, and now, both halves were breaking apart, scattering into small fragments. By now, the collapse had reached his chest.
"Everything I have was given by you. You gave me too much. Now, it's time for me to return it to you."
These were the Deathlord's—Rodhart's—final words. Then, with his failing hand, on the verge of complete disintegration, he pressed the hilt of the Black Star into Asa's left hand.
With a final crash, the Deathlord's form shattered completely into countless fragments.
With the body gone, the soul too vanished into nothingness. But all of it—his memories, and those of the other two souls—had already become a part of Asa's consciousness, never to be separated again.
"Yes… this is the final destination." Asa murmured.
The familiar aura of the Black Star surged forth once more, an endless darkness that seemed capable of devouring everything.
Perhaps it was the time Rodhart and the other two souls had spent adapting to this presence, or perhaps it was Asa himself, now accepting it after inheriting their memories.
This time, as he faced the boundless darkness, he felt neither fear nor rejection—only a light, detached calm. A sense of finally reaching the end.
And then, the darkness ceased to be darkness. It was merely emptiness.
"Let everything end here." He tightened his grip on the sword hilt and pointed it toward the sky. The surrounding darkness shattered.
Outside the darkness, everyone who saw him froze—even Grutt.
The Ghost King's Robe had transformed into an ancient suit of armor, enveloping his entire body. His right hand still held the blade that had slain the Deathlord, but in his left was the black hilt of the Black Star.
Yet the aura radiating from him was no longer that of darkness—it was sheer, indifferent emptiness.