Kon

My clone just ahead slapped the air before me, as I crossed the skies at incredible speeds, slowing me down in exchange for its fake life; when I hit the ground, it wasn’t elegant, but it didn’t matter, I had flown over the entire army of undead, and reached the death [God]’s palace.

“’Try not to die’, you said?”, Taffy quoted me, as she landed by my side completely silent. “Oh, my, have you actually started to like someone other than your sister?”, she covered her chuckles with one hand, just as lady-like as when we first met.

“…They put up with my bullshit”, I replied as I started to walk up the grandiose stone stair that led to a pair of giant old doors, the entrance to the palace.

“Oh, my, so you know how embarrassing you actually sound?”

“Shut up. I just like this kind of stuff, okay?”, good thing my black clothing hid most of my facial expression, so no one could see when I blushed.

When I finally reached the doors to the palace, however, I turned around, and observed the absolute chaos that was going on on the hill where I left those twins; explosions, bones flying everywhere, dust, the enemies piling on Ank and Hunah so much, they created piles of undead over the two of them.

“You think they won’t be able to win? Or that you won’t be able to win?”, Taffy asked, following my gaze with her bizarre closed-eyes sigh (and people thought I was the strange one...).

She didn’t need to remember me that. Opening the portal had taken a heavy toll on me:

[Name: Kon Dragonthrone

Level: 1619 (-809)]

I had only half of my power still available to me, and the rest wouldn’t come back until I exited that dimension; the consumables I used only made me feel less exhausted, but didn’t really replenish anything.

“I was just appreciating the scenery. As expected, death [Gods] have a nice sense of aesthetics. I especially like the mountains of skulls”, I shrugged and opened the doors behind me.

The palace was empty of servants, all of the deity’s underlings must have been sent to fight the twins. There was nothing to come across, while crossing the badly illuminated corridors other than dust and cobweb-covered furniture, and cracked walls. Soon enough, however, I reached another pair of great doors, and I knew our objective waited on the other side of it.

“[Clone: Kon]”, I created a copy of myself, and made it open the door, and cross its threshold.

Through the eyes of my close, I saw that, behind the doors, there was a dead garden full of leafless trees, and bizarre flowers; some skull-shaped, some blood-red, some with the same blue tone of the lightning that illuminated the cloud covered the sky above. And, at the center of the garden, the Death [God] from before, and the 3rd Guild Master carrying a giant metallic box, full of seals, and chains, and locks on his back waited inside some kind of platform full of magical inscriptions. Probably a portal of some kind, and it was gathering energy.

“Kaka! See? I told you that I should save my energy for when the 1st Guild Master reached us”, the death [God] told his concerned companion.

[Species: God, Level: 12.512 (-11.125)

HP: 25.123/200.723]

“…If you had used your power to open the portal, we wouldn’t need to face him, though”, the 3rd Guild Master muttered, looking down, and tightening his grip on the chains that kept the giant box on his back.

“Don’t get cocky just because you have the name of the boss backing you up in this mission, mortal”, the death [God] repressed the adventurer I was pursuing. “Now, shall we start, mister ‘strongest adventurer’? Kaka” the deity concluded. And jumped towards my clone, closing the distance between us in the blink of an eye.

My clone tried to punch with all the strength we had left, but not only I was in a severely weakened state, the enemy was even stronger than I expected, and the laughing skeletal figure kicked my clone straight in the chest with such a might that the body I was controlling broke through the wall behind it, and connected the corridor my real self was hidden, to the dead garden.

“Kakaka”, the death [God] laughed as he looked at me from the corner of his hollow eyes, his pupils two little blue flaming dots.

I dashed away from the deity, as my clone’s body fell to the ground, lifeless, all of its bones crushed to dust. But, as I turned on the next corner, I found myself facing the 3rd Guild Master, who then wasn’t slowed down by the metal box anymore, but waited with his clawed hands covered in mortal light.

[Species: Wooden-Man, Level: 899

HP: 32.081/55.223]

Cornered between the two enemies, I came to a halt, and cloned myself once again, sending the copy of me against the death [God], while I grabbed a handful of stones from a pocket and threw them against the 3rd Guild Master: I couldn’t use 100% of my [Strength] unless I wanted to destroy my own body and kill myself, but even then my built was so unbalanced I had more than enough power to force the Wooden-Man to dodge my attack unless he wanted a couple of new holes in his body.

Because the 3rd Guild Master sidestepped away from the volley of rocks like I foresaw, which pierced through the wall behind him with ease, I managed to reach him, even if I normally would lack in [Perception] to follow his movements in a fight. I, then, closed my fists and threw a punch at his eagle-like face, which should be able to at least knock him out for the rest of the fight.

But the punch never reached its target, as I was thrown away by a sudden kick on my side:

“BOOM!”, I crashed against the palace wall, still alive just because of the incredibly high-quality items I had equipped.

The death [God] had caught up me, my clone having its fighting skills limited because of the lack of proper space between us.

The damn thing. It was incredibly weakened, as if it had been beaten way beyond anyone’s healing capabilities; one could tell just by looking at its broken body, kept together by its own magic, blue energy filling up holes, cuts, and substituting entire lost limbs. If I had gotten even just one good punch at him, I’d be able to win, but there would be no difference between sending a clone to attack while so close to me, and using all of my strength by myself: in both cases I would die.

Holding me by my collar, and lifting me up from the rubles of the wall to meet his eyes, the deity laughed:

“Kakaka! Is this the best the mortals can do? Is this the hero of the lowly trash? Kakakakaka! I have to say, I had low expectations for you shitters, but holly fuck, you suck!”, pulling his head backward, preparing a headbutt, the deity concluded: “Anyway, I have a quest to complete for the boss, so, bye-bye! Now-!”

“DIE!”, breaking through the wall behind me, the twins interrupted, and concluded the death [God]’s phrase for him, sending the deity flying away with the attacks they used to come in.

The twins?!

The brother looked a little weird, monstrous even; with six leathery wings, a lipless mouth with hundreds of needle-like teeth, and a tail; but those were definitely the purple-skinned twins that I knew. But that was impossible, they should be fighting an ar-

The army had been completely annihilated.

Looking through the hole in the wall of the palace that the twins made, I could see that the army had been utterly defeated, flattened, just like all of the surroundings; hills of cracked gray soil disappeared in burned craters, the river of mud had completely solidified, and the mountain of skulls was then a mountain of powdered bones.

“You okay?”, the transformed Ank asked me, concerned.

Fuck. What was I even doing? Hundreds of years of constant fighting and training, centuries spent in getting stronger so to revenge mother and Ur, so to do what my father failed to, just to perish at that end of the world of a pocket dimension made by an already half-dead [God]? No way!

“Ha! This is but a scratch for the Lord of Pain himself!”, gritting my teeth and bearing the agony of broken ribs and punctured organs, I got up from where the enemy had dropped me after being sent away, and stepped closer to the palace garden once again, where the deity was hurled into.

Honestly, how could I be so defeatist just because my power was halved? Half of me was still more than enough to beat that skelly guy up.

“…Thank you”, I told the twins without giving the angered deity emerging from the wreckage my back.

“Go. We’re gonna take care of the third-place here”, Ank replied, chuckling.

And so we did, as I jumped back again into the dead garden at the same time that I cloned myself, and the twins pounced on the 3rd Guild Master.