Chapter 438: The Price of Life and Death
25 days had passed.
Inside the Silver Dragon Guild,
I stood frozen, unable to move,
as its master—and Danzo’s father—Adam Smasher embraced me tightly.
"Thank you, my boy... thank you for everything you’ve done for my only son..."
Hearing his words of gratitude, I didn’t know what to say.
It happened when I went to visit Danzo as usual .. only to run into his father.
"Your presence brought a smile back to his face.
You restored his energy and his health.
I could never repay you for what you’ve done...
But please, accept my deepest thanks."
As his massive arms pulled me into a crushing embrace, I saw tears welling in his eyes.
It must have been hell for him ...
watching his son return to him as a broken shell.
He had done everything he could.
But in the end, it wasn’t enough.
And then, one day, I came—alongside Uriel—and brought his son back to life.
To him, I must’ve looked like a ray of hope piercing through the darkness surrounding them.
"My son didn’t just gain a friend...
He gained a brother.
Thank you for everything you’ve done for him, Frey."
With tired, hollow eyes blackened from exhaustion, and a clenched fist, I listened to his words, unable to give him any reply.
Thank me for what, exactly?
I wanted to ask him.
I hadn’t done anything for his son.
Nothing at all.
Danzo was the one who had helped me time and time again.
He was the one who preserved what little humanity I still had left—the part of me I never wanted to lose.
And now, when the chance finally came for me to return the favor,
I stood powerless,
receiving praise and gratitude from his father, who didn’t even realize his son only had a few days left.
You shouldn’t be thanking me.
You should be cursing me.
I clenched my teeth, trying to hold myself together...
trying to say something.
But in the end,
nothing came out.
I was already nearing the breaking point.
And so,
I just stood there, frozen,
until Adam Smasher finally let me go.
He smiled as he bid me farewell.
"Take care of each other, both of you. You’re like sons to me now."
"..."
No, Adam.
No.
You’re so wrong...
"Your only son is the one lying in that bed.
No one else."
Time remaining: 5 days.
...
...
...
"Relentless effort does not guarantee success."
No matter how hard you try,
no matter how much of yourself you pour into it, Success is never promised.
It’s always out of reach.
Only 3 days left...
Only 3 days remained...
Just a few fleeting hours separated me from facing the turning point ..
a point that could break something deep inside me.
"I’m exhausted..."
Lying there in the Library of Existence, isolated and alone in its vastness,
I had finally reached my limit.
I hadn’t slept, hadn’t rested, hadn’t given in.
I did everything I could, surrounded by endless books.
And yet, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find the answer.
"Do you want me to kill him with these hands of mine?"
If death was his fate...
Then why was his life thrown onto my shoulders?
If he had died somewhere far away in the Ultras Continent, the pain wouldn’t have been this bitter.
I was afraid.
And I was angry.
Angry at how Danzo’s life had been toyed with ..
like some lab rat, his life prolonged on purpose just so it could end at the ’right’ time.
He had lost to Gvardiol.
He should’ve died then.
But that damned hybrid kept him alive on purpose.
And now I was the one suffering the consequences of his actions.
"What the hell am I even thinking?"
Forcing myself to stand,
I rose again and looked around the endless space.
I had reached my limit.
There was nothing more I could do.
After just a few seconds of standing,
my legs gave out beneath me, and I collapsed to my knees on the ground, broken.
"Please... show me the way."
I whispered, exhaling slowly.
"I beg you... just this once .. show me the way."
Who was I even speaking to now?
I didn’t know.
But I was drowning in exhaustion, buried beneath hopelessness.
I couldn’t think clearly anymore.
The wounds on my body ..
perhaps time could heal them.
But the fear carved into my soul...
who would erase that?
Fear of what was coming...
"Please... show me the way..."
If saving Danzo meant finding one book in this endless sea of knowledge,
then no matter how much I searched, I would never find it.
This entire place was just a space my mind had created ..
and so, I begged myself,
To show me the way.
To give me what I sought.
It was meaningless,
but if it showed anything, it was the depth of my despair.
And then, to my shock ..
The impossible happened.
Without warning, without my will,
A miracle.
"This...!"
It appeared from nowhere.
I didn’t know where it came from or how it had gotten here.
But a black, ominous book rested in my hands.
I didn’t know if this was truly what I sought,
but I found myself opening it desperately, frantically searching for the answer hidden inside.
And the moment I opened it ..
My consciousness was thrown far away, into another world of memories.
"You have touched the forbidden."
There were laws upon which this world was built...
Laws the Engineer had once spoken of.
If I wanted to save Danzo,
I realized I had no choice but to break one of those laws if I hoped to survive.
The completed Devil Seed was something unique.
A cursed tool invented by one of the most terrifying demons.
A soul resided inside that seed.
And unlike Sansa’s incomplete seed—
where the seed fused with the body—
Danzo’s seed had fused completely, and the soul had merged with him as well.
They had become one.
And one...
cannot become two.
What I was trying to achieve ..
was freeing Danzo, from Danzo himself.
That was neither realistic nor logical.
In this world, escaping a completed Devil Seed was impossible.
That’s what I realized the moment I opened that book.
What I was about to attempt to break ..
was the Law of Life and Death.
The very same thing Nameless had once tried to defy.
Opening that book,
the past was illuminated before me.
And my mind was torn apart by a cold voice that shook my soul.
"There is no life without death."
I heard it clearly.
Was that... Nameless’ voice?
Slowly,
I began to sink into the truth.
No life without death .. that’s what he said.
So then, what had he done to reach that higher law that stood at the top of the world?
And in that moment,
I understood.
And my expression darkened.
As I stared at a horrifying sight unlike anything I had ever seen, my whole being trembled.
"What did you do?"
Blood.
Death.
Slaughter.
With his own hands...
He killed them one after another ..
ended their lives, snuffed out the flame of their existence.
And then, he defiled their corpses.
Kill, kill, kill...
And then more killing!
All to achieve what he desired.
To satisfy that twisted, diseased passion of his.
He did whatever it took to get what he wanted.
"What... is this?!"
I had never seen this before.
The truth... about Nameless.
"He wasn’t some great king, like they called him."
It was blood, and for blood.
He wasn’t noble.
He wasn’t righteous.
He wasn’t anything like that.
"He was insane!"
Wherever Nameless went,
disaster followed.
Giant black birds would soar ominously in the sky wherever he appeared.
And soon after, calamities would strike.
He killed them.
He killed every type of creature, one after another.
Death, death, and more death ...
and even more death beyond that.
He caught them all, and dissected their corpses one by one.
Cut them down to the smallest pieces,
until their blood became seas and oceans.
Nameless spared no one.
Neither the weak nor the strong.
Neither the young nor the old.
Neither the poor nor the rich.
He killed them all, and did whatever it took without hesitation to achieve what he sought.
Blood.
Blood.
And more blood.
He never faltered,
and he never stopped.
Alone,
he did what not even the demons themselves dared to do.
Frozen in place before that terrifying sight—
the horrifying experiments that entity carried out,
I found myself stumbling backward,
retreating in horror.
"I was naive..."
A king? A mighty warrior?
Bullshit.
How could I have forgotten?
"He was a monster. A monster as terrifying as Agaroth."
To reach that level...
there was no way he did it through normal means.
He was insane ...
without limits or chains to bind him.
As long as it meant achieving his goal,
he would do anything,
without a second thought.
And so it led to a massacre.
And oceans of blood.
Staring at those catastrophes, I finally understood what had happened.
"He did it... and the demons bore the blame for what he had done."
Realizing the truth, all I felt was disgust at what I had seen.
His past was dark ..
but no one had ever truly known him.
Because he left no one alive to tell the tale.
And so, the world thought the demons had committed these atrocities,
because such horrors matched their ways.
But the truth was far from that.
The real monster
was the man behind that dark mask.
This was how Nameless challenged the Law of Life and Death ..
and reached the level he had attained.
Realizing this,
Despair washed over me.
How was I supposed to comprehend what I had just seen?
Those horrific experiments,
that sea of slaughter...
All for the sake of surpassing the limits of flesh and blood.
This was the power I needed to save Danzo.
But reality was far crueler than I imagined.
Because to reach that insane level,
I would have to sacrifice everything,
become a monster like him...
and do what he did.
Break the highest Law of Life and Death.
And that...
that simply wasn’t possible.
Unlike teleportation,
you couldn’t learn this just by witnessing it.
"From the very beginning... there was never a way to succeed."
When this book appeared before me,
it wasn’t offering me hope.
It was offering me despair ..
crushing the last shred of my will.
"I can’t save him.
I can’t..."
Swallowed by the bitter truth,
I finally sank into darkness ...
defeated once again.
They were really going to make me do it...
Make me kill Danzo.