Chapter 76: Death on gate!

[HP: 0%]

The Grim’s expression changed instantly.

Its eyes moved down toward its own body first and then toward the ground, where two black pieces had fallen onto the broken stone.

The Reaper’s Order had been cut cleanly into two halves.

For a moment, the Grim simply stood there before its eyes widened in disbelief.

"No..."

It looked toward Karl and then back at the broken Order.

"No, no, no! How!?"

Its voice rose sharply as it stumbled backward.

"Even if you knew, you shouldn’t have been able to destroy it!"

Karl could barely keep himself standing, but a faint smile remained on his face.

The Death Slash had never been aimed at the Grim.

Everything before it had only been to make the bastard believe Karl was desperately searching for some imaginary core inside its body.

The moment the Grim stopped defending and put its hand through Karl’s chest, the Reaper’s Order hanging from its neck had been left completely exposed.

And Karl had only needed that one chance.

Cracks suddenly began appearing across the Grim’s black body, it looked down in horror as a piece of its arm broke away and dissolved into black energy.

"You can’t kill me!"

Another crack spread across its chest.

"No! I’m immortal!"

The Grim grabbed at its own body as more pieces began breaking away.

"I have no end!"

The arrogance it had carried for seven hundred years disappeared almost instantly.

Fear and desperation filled its face as it tried everything it could to keep its body together, but the black fragments continued falling away faster and faster.

Leon and Mira had seen those same emotions before.

They had read them page after page in the diary of the young man who had entered the Sanctuary desperate to save his sister.

Now the creature born from his death was showing them itself.

The Grim continued screaming until half its body had already collapsed.

"No! I can’t die! I can’t—"

Its voice broke apart with the rest of it and within seconds, the Grim disappeared completely and only a dark puddle of dense energy remained where it had been standing.

At almost the same moment, the entire Reaper’s Sanctuary changed, the soldiers fighting throughout the city suddenly stopped moving.

Mages froze where they stood while archers fell from the rooftops, and the massive armored guards still scattered across the city collapsed like empty suits of metal.

The fighting that had filled the Sanctuary disappeared within moments but Karl’s undead began collapsing too.

One skeleton near the plaza suddenly fell apart and then several more followed. Their bones cracked, lost all remaining Death Energy and quickly crumbled into dust.

Across the city, more of the Death Legion began suffering the same thing.

Karl finally dropped to his knees and blood poured from his mouth as another notification appeared in front of him.

[Reaper’s Mercy has ended.]

[Duration: 5 Seconds.]

Karl weakly narrowed his eyes at the notification.

Everything after the Grim tore his heart out had felt much longer, but only five seconds had actually passed.

And the moment Reaper’s Mercy disappeared, Karl understood exactly how much those five seconds had protected him.

The pain hit almost immediately his entire chest felt numb and burning at the same time while his body rapidly lost strength.

He tried breathing, but almost no air entered and another mouthful of blood came out instead.

Life Link was still active and it had taken as much of the fatal damage as it could and redirected it through the Death Legion, which was why undead throughout the Sanctuary were collapsing one after another.

But even Divine Life Link couldn’t simply make the damage disappear, Karl’s heart had been completely torn out.

Most of his left lung had collapsed while the right had also suffered severe damage from the Grim’s arm passing through his chest.

Karl forced himself to check his condition.

[HP: 1]

A weak smile appeared on his face.

one point.

Between Life Link, Reaper’s Mercy and his own body refusing to completely give up, he had somehow survived something that should have killed him instantly but that’s all.

Karl tried breathing again and nearly collapsed forward as another violent cough shook his body.

Leon and Mira reached him almost immediately, Leon dropped beside Karl and caught him before he could fall completely.

"Damn it!"

His eyes moved across the hole in Karl’s chest and his expression changed completely.

"You bastard... how the fuck are you still alive?"

His hands were already shaking as he pulled out every healing potion he had.

Leon emptied the first one directly over Karl’s chest and forced another into his mouth before immediately opening a third.

But nothing useful happened some of the smaller wounds began closing and the bleeding slowed slightly, but the enormous damage inside Karl’s chest remained almost unchanged.

Leon opened another bottle anyway.

"Come on... fucking work."

Mira crouched beside Karl but didn’t say anything as she looked at the wound.

The potions could restore HP and repair ordinary injuries, but there was a limit to what they could recreate.

Galzan returned soon after in his human form and stopped the moment he saw what had happened.

For once, he had absolutely nothing to say.

Seraphine arrived only a moment later and her expression changed into one of horror.

Leon immediately threw aside the useless potion bottle and grabbed her by the arm.

"You’re a Divine Priestess, aren’t you?"

His eyes had already turned red.

"You have to do something."

Seraphine looked toward Karl and Leon’s grip tightened further.

"Please, do something!"

His voice began trembling.

"If he dies... you won’t live too."

"If he died... if he died..."

but Leon could speak no more Seraphine remained silent for a few seconds before looking at him with pity.

"I... can’t."

Leon froze totally, Seraphine crouched beside Karl and checked the wound herself before shaking her head.

"After abandoning the Pantheon I am mostly a elemental battlemage most of my stronger healing abilities are gone."

"And even if I still had them, damage like this is beyond ordinary healing."

Her voice became quieter.

"No healer below Level 300 could recreate this much of the body."

"His heart is gone, Leon.both of his lungs are damaged and one of them is almost completely destroyed."

Leon slowly loosened his grip on her arm and he dropped down beside Karl.

Karl could barely hear them anymore, their voices had become distant while his vision darkened further with every passing second.

Even the pain was beginning to disappear as his body slowly lost the strength needed to feel it.

Only his thoughts remained remained with him.

No...

Karl tried moving his fingers but even that had become difficult.

I can’t die.

He had already died once, he had already watched everything he had built disappear and felt the life leave his body before somehow opening his eyes ten years in the past.

I can’t lose it again.

His thoughts became slower but he forced himself to hold onto them.

He didn’t care whether it was fate, the World Will or something else that had allowed him to return.

You already took my life once, you can’t take it twice from me.

Yet no matter how much Karl refused, his body continued dying.

Death was standing directly in front of him again.

But this time Karl understood something he had never thought about properly before.

He had always treated life and death as two opposite states but hadn’t he already crossed that boundary once before.

The thought slowly became clearer as everything else around him disappeared.

If life could become death and death could once again give way to life, then the two were not simply an ending and a beginning standing separately from each other.

There was a process connecting them, something that allowed one existence to end and another chance at life to begin.

Karl had already passed through it once without understanding anything about it.

Now, standing on the edge between life and death for the second time, he finally understood what that process represented.

Reincarnation.

The thought settled inside his mind and for the first time since his heart had been torn out, Karl’s fading consciousness stopped slipping away.

The plaza suddenly trembled, Leon looked up as cracks spread beneath Karl’s knees.

Behind them, the dark puddle left from the Grim’s death began vibrating violently and so did the whole sanctuary.

The dense energy that had accumulated through the region for generations flowed from the streets, ruined buildings, town hall and every corner of the city before gathering around the plaza.

The energy started circling around him and his body slowly lifted from the ground.

Leon grabbed Mira and pulled her backward just before another burst of energy shattered the place where they had been standing.

Leon looked at the growing phenomenon in confusion and glanced toward the others, but none of them had any idea what was happening either.

Seraphine kept her eyes on the rapidly expanding storm before speaking.

"We should leave, and we need to go far. Whatever is happening here isn’t going to be docile."

Galzan immediately transformed back into his Titan form while Lucifer, Seraphine, Leon and Mira hurriedly climbed onto him.

With several massive leaps, Galzan left the city and landed far outside the Sanctuary.

But even from there, they could still clearly see what was happening.

The storm of Death Energy had already expanded over nearly a tenth of the city, while Karl remained floating silently at its centre.