How much time had passed?
By my reckoning, I felt like I'd been fighting for an absurdly long time.
But that was nothing more than my subjective perception, stretched by the way my body experienced time — in reality, it may have been a surprisingly short interval.
I launched yet another attack, so many I'd lost count.
My spearhand pierced the robot's chest, and the Heterodox Magic I activated destroyed the soul dwelling within its chassis.
The robot convulsed once, its entire frame shuddering, before coming to a complete stop.
When I withdrew my hand, the punctured hole showed no sign of regeneration, and the body toppled lifelessly to the ground with a startlingly light clatter — the sound of a husk that had lost the weight of a soul.
It was over.
No — not yet.
This robot may have been
This wouldn't be over until I delivered the final blow to the real one.
That said — I was wrecked.
My outside looked pristine, not a scratch on me, but inside I was in tatters.
The effect of Humility had been eroding my soul.
The energy I'd siphoned from the robot served as a buffer of sorts, but only barely — better than nothing.
If I let the effect of Humility wear off right now, who knew what would happen.
They say a candle flame burns brightest just before it goes out.
Please, just hold together long enough for me to finish Potimas.
— *If you're done, come outside* — A voice ringing directly inside my head.
A message from White?
The magical interference barrier was still active, and yet she just casually did something like this. Would it kill her not to?
It's a blow to my confidence.
Anyway, if White was going out of her way to call me, that meant I should head outside.
I forced open the door that had sealed behind me when I entered.
For something designed to keep a god locked in, it took a real struggle to get it open again.
Huffing and puffing, I pried the door open, then huffed and puffed my way up the long slope, emerging outside.
What I saw there was — how to put it — far beyond anything I'd imagined.
Forests burning everywhere.
Where the flames rose, enormous round objects of some indescribable nature were rolling around.
And amidst that hellscape, one enormous silhouette stood out above all the rest.
A massive, circular object was soaring through the sky, as if bloting it out entirely.
If I had to describe it in a single word from White's memories: UFO.
The kind that people whispered were piloted by aliens.
But honestly, that description wasn't far off.
A disc-shaped object floating in the sky — it really was a spaceship.
Potimas couldn't possibly have been unaware of this planet's current state.
The reason Potimas clung so desperately to this planet — a sand castle on the verge of collapse — was because of the System.
I'd been cursing the System not long ago, but that was precisely because I'd had expectations of it that were betrayed.
Potimas had placed his faith in the System too.
Hoping it might make him a god.
But Potimas had failed to become a god.
Even so, clinging to that last thread of hope, Potimas had stayed on this planet.
Wishing that someday, perhaps, he might ascend.
But Potimas himself must have known those were nothing but faint hopes.
That was precisely why he'd prepared a way out.
A means to escape from this planet.
Potimas could leave this planet whenever he chose.
And that was exactly why he could be so nonchalant about the planet's destruction.
That escape route — the thing floating in the sky right now.
Of course, that means of escape was thoroughly bound up in White's threads.
It looked like a moth caught in a spider's web, simply waiting to be devoured.
Hmm.
It was so on the nose I almost laughed.
White, you're incredible.
What have you been doing while I was playing around with that robot?
Too good — I'm speechless.
Potimas was definitely inside that thing.
Halfway through my fight with the robot, Potimas's voice had stopped coming through.
He'd abandoned the robot and fled without hesitation.
That robot, for all the time and effort he'd had poured into its creation, was nothing more than another tool in Potimas's eyes.
When it came to trading it for his own life, it wasn't even a question that required deliberation.
One of the threads binding the spaceship was anchored to the ground right beside me.
The thread was thick enough that a person could walk along it without issue.
I glanced around, but White was nowhere to be seen.
Still, with a thread placed so brazenly like an invitation, the message was clear enough.
I stepped onto the thread and used it as a foothold to climb upward.
Seems like all I've been doing lately is going up.
I stayed alert for any defensive fire from the spaceship, but none came, and I reached it without incident.
Already neutralized by White, presumably.
I climbed onto the surface of the ship and looked for something like a hatch.
Before long I found one and, naturally, ripped it open by brute force, then climbed inside.
The interior was startlingly dark.
No lights.
Not that it mattered to someone with the Dark Vision Skill.
I walked.
For a vessel of this size, the corridors were absurdly long.
I walked.
Through glass partitions I could see factory-like facilities, and agricultural installations, and more.
The ship had apparently been designed so that an entire civilization could be sustained within it alone.
When you considered that voyages through space could last centuries, that made sense.
Potimas's reluctance to leave this planet wasn't just about hoping in the System — there was also the fear of the unknown ahead.
This planet had only one god, Gülie, but other worlds might have many more.
When you thought about it that way, you couldn't afford to be careless.
I walked.
Defense robots swarmed out, but they were laughably weak compared to the one I'd been fighting underground.
I cut through them.
Fighting these other robots really drove home just how special the one I'd faced underground — the Gloria Type Ω, was it? — had been.
I walked.
Clones of Potimas came shrieking at me.
Their once-harmonious features were twisted beyond recognition by desperation and terror.
Until now, Potimas had never let his composure slip like this, no matter how many clones were destroyed.
He could afford to lose as many clones as he pleased — but if his real body was killed, that was a different matter entirely.
Obvious, really.
I disposed of the clones as they lunged at me.
Even enhanced by machinery, they were long past the stage where they posed any threat to me.
"You're cornered, is what it all comes down to."
I walked, and walked, and at the end of the corridor — there it was.
The body of the elderly elf, sealed inside a transparent cylinder.
Countless tubes were connected to it.
The cylinder's interior appeared to be filled with some kind of solidified material, for the old man didn't so much as twitch.
"Stop! Stop, stop, stop! I don't want it to end! It can't end — it shouldn't be allowed to end! I must live forever! Please! Just stop!"
Well, he couldn't move, but the speakers were broadcasting his screams at full volume.
A constant stream of desperate pleas mixed with meaningless shrieks poured from the speakers.
Since he wasn't breathing, he could scream endlessly.
For Potimas, the body was nothing more than a container for living — as long as it kept functioning, that was all that mattered.
When he needed to move, he used clones.
This body, lying motionless inside this cylinder, simply existing — this was Potimas's true self.
I'd imagined it might be something like this, but seeing it with my own eyes was pitiful.
A man who had clung desperately to existence, who had pursued nothing else — and this was his end.
"I don't want to die! I don't want to die! No! I don't waaaaaaant to die!"
"I'm sorry, Potimas, but you're going to suffer something far worse than death."
I felt no sympathy for the screaming Potimas.
And yet it wasn't satisfying either — not the vindictive pleasure I'd expected.
I thought something welling up inside me might surprise even myself, but I felt nothing at all.
"Abyss Magic."
Potimas heard my whisper, and his screaming rose to a new pitch of frenzy.
Abyss Magic was a special kind of magic.
While Heterodox Magic destroyed souls, Abyss Magic decomposed them and returned them to the System.
Simply killing him wouldn't be enough.
This man would answer to this world — with the very soul he'd used to wreak his havoc.
I began preparing the Abyss Magic.
Unlike Heterodox Magic, Abyss Magic required elaborate magical construction.
I was fairly certain D had done that on purpose.
Heterodox Magic had been established to counter gods.
Abyss Magic had been created for mortals to pass judgment on one another.
It stripped away the option of reincarnation and imposed a sentence of return to the System.
That meant it had been judged more beneficial to this world than reincarnation.
I secretly suspected the lengthy casting time and impracticality in real combat was evidence of that.
"Well then, Dad ."
I unleashed the Abyss Magic at Potimas's true body as he continued to scream, no longer capable of producing any words with meaning.
And then, only silence remained.