Chapter 358: Everything Is Exactly As It Seems (1)

The dwarf had a height that barely seemed to reach one meter. His thick torso looked like a well-ripened potato. The overall tough-looking dwarf struggled in Keter’s grip.

“You grabbed my beard! You pervert, let go at once!”

“

Hm?

Oh

.”

Beards were quite a sensitive area for dwarves. Keter knew that well, so he released the dwarf’s beard and grabbed his hair instead.

Keter and Daat climbed out of the swamp trap the dwarves had made.

Keter set the dwarf down on the ground and said, “You’ve got accomplices, right? Where are they all gathered?”

“I’ve got nothing to say to a pervert.”

The dwarf was stern. The resolve of dwarves was prioritized above their lives, so threats didn’t work on them. However, Keter knew better than anyone how to coax them since there were dwarves in Liqueur.

“They’ll come out once we stir things up anyway. Let’s just eat this one.”

“What?” Daat asked back.

“

Huh?

”

Not only Daat but the dwarf was startled as well. Keter found their reactions even stranger.

“Why are you surprised?”

“Big Brother, even if that was supposed to be a metaphor, I don’t get it. You just said you would eat this furball.”

“So what? Dwarves taste good.”

A chill ran down Daat’s spine. He had spent decades with Keter, so he could tell the difference between a joke and sincerity. Right now, Keter was serious, and that was absolutely not something Keter would normally say.

Daat grabbed the dwarf by his collar and shook him. “What did you do to my big brother?!”

Keter had been perfectly fine just moments ago, but after climbing out of the swamp, he started saying strange things. In that case, obviously, the dwarf who made the trap had to be the problem.

However, the dwarf was just as taken aback. “I did nothing but drop you into the swamp! And do you humans really eat dwarves? You savages!”

“Of course we don’t!”

“Daat, you’re acting strange.”

Keter looked rather concerned, so it rather made Daat feel annoyed with the situation and raised his voice.

“Big Brother, get a hold of yourself! You’ve been saying weird things this whole time!”

“Get a hold of myself? I’ve been perfectly sane the whole time.”

“That’s exactly what’s weird.” Daat even stepped back to create distance and took a combat stance. “People are bound to go mad if they try to live in this world in their right minds. You just have to lose that sanity. If life feels hard, it’s because you’re sane. Go crazy. You’re the one who always says such things.”

Keter didn’t say anything.

“Staying silent isn’t like you either!”

Daat brought both his palms together and pushed them toward Keter. A compressed sphere of air shot toward him. It looked like an air bubble and seemed harmless at a glance, but it was actually a seven-circle spatial spell. Sphere of Space-Time Distortion, which erased everything it touched along with the space itself.

Even at Daat’s sudden attack, Keter’s expression didn’t change at all.

He simply held out his hand and said, “Dork, manipulating space is a specialty of our blue blood kin.”

Keter crushed the Sphere of Space-Time Distortion with his bare hand, despite it being a seven-circle spell.

Seeing with his own eyes that Keter could never be subdued by force, Daat took a deep breath.

“What you just said was strange too. What’s the blue blood

kin? I know there are various races in this world, but I’ve never heard of that in my life.”

“How do you not know the

blue blood kin? It’s one of the seven primordial races, just like the dragonkin.”

“I never thought I would say something like this, but come to your senses. You’ve lost way too much sanity.”

“Dork, you’re the one saying strange things. I think this cave is the problem. Let’s just wipe it out entirely.” Keter pressed his palm to the ground.

Daat grew desperate. Not because all the other races hiding in Sefira would die. Their lives didn’t matter much to Daat. The problem was that Keter wasn’t someone who would take lives so easily.

Big Brother is under the influence of something. If he kills now, things will get out of hand.

If a being with absolute power like Keter began to think lightly of killing, then he would certainly become a monster even more dangerous than the creatures of the Demon Capital. However, Daat couldn’t stop Keter by force. Persuasion wouldn’t work either, since Keter thought he was the strange one.

Not persuasion. I need a word that’ll snap him out of it.

There was no time to think long. The cave had already begun to shake. Fortunately, the cave was large, so it didn’t collapse immediately. Daat decided to try the words Keter liked first.

“Money! Meat! Freedom!”

Keter looked at Daat once, but that was all.

Come to think of it, anyone would like those. Who doesn’t like money, meat, and freedom?

Words he liked didn’t work. Daat immediately moved on.

“Abandoned by your parents! Monster! Murderer!”

This time, Keter didn’t even look at him.

Debris began falling from the ceiling. The sound of fractures echoed through the cave. Daat would be fine even if the cave collapsed, but Sefira certainly would not.

“People in Sefira will die and be injured.”

There was still no reaction from Keter. However, Daat could feel that the collapse of the cave had slightly slowed down.

“Do you know Lord Hissop sleeps less than three hours a day? Anis and Taragon too, they live each day like people facing death.”

“So what about it?”

“You said that if you truly treasure something, you should pretend like you don’t. That’s the only way to protect it.”

“Sefira to me is...”

𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

“It’s precious to you. It’s your home. It’s your family.”

Keter didn’t say anything.

“You’re going to destroy that?”

The ground that was trembling stopped. Keter lifted his hand from the ground and stood up.

Daat let out a deep sigh and approached him. “Have you come to your senses?”

“No, but I have realized that something’s wrong with me. Why does this dwarf look tasty? Why does everything I’m doing right now feel meaningless, and why do I want to put it off for later? The fact that these feelings seem natural is strange.”

“Could it be a side effect of getting stronger too fast?”

“Maybe. Either way, I’ll have to leave investigating this cave to you.”

“What about you, Big Brother?”

“I should go find Endymion. He’s the only one who can help me, at least here in Sefira.”

“Alright. You should get going.”

“I will.”

Even the time it would take to return the way he came felt wasteful, so Keter pierced straight upward through the ground.

***

Why did I do that?

Even when Keter asked himself, no clear answer came to mind. More precisely, the voice inside him instead asked why he found it strange when he had only done what was natural.

Dwarves were a delicacy. If conversation was possible, that was one thing, but if not, wasn’t it only natural to eat them? There was no way the dwarf had made this entire cave alone. There had to be at least ten dwarves. What was the big deal about eating one out of ten?

Having these thoughts themselves was strange. He was human, so why would he think of eating a dwarf?

—Why do you think you’re a lowly human? You are a great dragon.

That wasn’t someone else’s voice just now. It was his own.

Paratul, is that you?

Paratul, whom he had thought dead, was the one confusing him. That was the only explanation.

However, even that was not the answer.

—No. Paratul was completely destroyed. I would know, as I’m a part of the arhat kin within the mental realm.

He was of the dragonkin, yet also of the arhat kin. That was why he could tell. Paratul was gone, and the voice just now had been his. No one else’s. Keter clutched his head after reaching ground level.

“Lord Keter?”

“Divine Archer?”

The vassals and servants of the Sefira family approached, sensing something was wrong.

Keter reflexively extended out his left hand and shouted, “How dare you come closer, you lowly insects!”

A red current swirled on his palm. It was the precursor to blood magic. Bloody Marchen. A simple technique that exploded all life that contained blood. Issera had used a drop of blood as a medium, but it could normally be used on living beings. The power close to an Authority was said to be usable only by the true ancestors among vampires.

Just as it was about to surge from Keter’s hand, his right hand stopped his left.

To the family vassals and servants, it looked like he was joking around, so they laughed, as it was to be expected of Keter. However, he wasn’t in the mood to laugh.

I really would’ve killed them all if I had been even a little slower.

He wasn’t even curious why he could use blood magic, which he had never learned. The whisper in his head, his own voice, only kept multiplying. Then Keter realized that this was what people called instinct.

I want to quit everything. Let’s just sleep. I want to fly. I want to go to the sea. I want blood...

All kinds of instincts tormented his body and mind. If he had a little composure, he felt like he might understand why this was happening, but he couldn’t even manage that much.

“Endymion!”

He didn’t even have the strength to go find Endymion, so he shouted toward the sky.

The moment Endymion heard his name being called, he appeared before Keter. In fact, he had already been heading toward him before that.

Seeing Keter, Endymion’s brow furrowed. “This is....”

“What’s happening to me?”

“So the prophecy... wasn’t wrong.”

When Endymion first saw Keter, he had seen the future. A vision of Keter burning Sefira.

However, he had thought that the future had been prevented since he stopped Keter from becoming a dragon. Keter had overcome it.

But that wasn’t the matter.

Keter’s body had been meant for a dragon. Yet Keter, a human, had instead taken the dragon’s body. Endymion had predicted this would certainly become a problem, but he hadn’t known when or how it would happen. However, now he knew.

“Is he trying to become a being that is all and one, and one yet all?”

What he sensed from Keter was not the presence of a human. He was an elf and at the same time a dwarf, a dragon, a giant, a yaksha... The power of every race from ancient times to the present, Keter possessed them all.

Who could possibly have created something so dreadful? Endymion didn’t know the answer to that, but one thing was certain. If he did nothing about Keter right now, things wouldn’t end with just Sefira’s destruction. The destruction of the world. That absurd fate would begin here in Sefira.

“It’s not something a human mind can endure.”

It had already been a miracle that Keter had defeated the dragon within the mind world, but this time, even a miracle wouldn’t be enough. The instincts of every race were concentrated into a single human. That was the same as a fish living in the sea trying to defeat the whole ocean.

An arrow suddenly appeared in Endymion’s hand. An arrow of Ein Sof. Incomplete Ein Sof wasn’t enough to subdue Keter, but even knowing that, Endymion intended to fight.

At that moment, Keter said, “What’s the problem?”

“Your very existence is the problem.”

“

Oh

...”

Keter’s lips slightly curled into a smile. He looked as if he were an enlightened monk.

“I thought it was something serious.”

Then, Keter snatched the Ein Sof arrow from Endymion’s hand in the blink of an eye. Only after it was taken did Endymion realize what had happened, and the arrow pierced into Keter’s heart.