The Lawless City of Liqueur was like a cancer of the world. Once anyone entered it, they could never be caught. Yet the world had left Liqueur alone because of the Godfather’s existence.

He was a being with influence equal to that of a king of a nation, almost like a god. No one could provoke such a being over a few criminals. But if that very Godfather appeared in person, then the story changed.

On top of that, the Godfather had now absorbed Rukan, who had absorbed Queen Lillian. If the Godfather fully digested Lillian, then an ordinary army would no longer be enough to deal with him.

Krona, the Lord of the West, and her disciple Daat delivered this situation to the kings of each nation, and upon hearing the news, the kings finally got up without complaint.

To be honest, they had wanted a situation like this. They were bound by causality and unable to properly exert their influence on the mortal world, which was deeply frustrating. To them, battle was neither more nor less than entertainment.

Boom! Boom! Thud!!

The Godfather, who had nullified every attack until now, was brutally crushed under the foot of a giant. The giant was none other than Adeus, king of the Adeus Kingdom. Living up to his nation’s reputation as the land of barbarians, he trampled, punched, and smashed the Godfather with bare fists and bare feet.

For a moment, it seemed as though the Godfather could do nothing against such primal attacks, but...

Snap.

With the sound of a finger snap, Ether burst from his body and took the form of a giant. It was nearly twice the size of Adeus.

“Hahaha! What an interesting trick!”

Adeus’ voice thundered across the world. Delighted, he began fighting the Ether giant.

So it seemed the Godfather had regained his freedom, but of course that was not the case. Capturing the Godfather was equivalent to absorbing the power of two gods.

Whoosh.

A slash flew in from somewhere, splitting space cleanly into left and right. It was no trick of the eye. Space itself had truly been split in two. Everything along that diagonal line began to divide apart, and the Godfather was no exception. However, the Godfather grabbed space with both hands and pulled it back into place.

“Thank you for not going down in a single strike.”

After King Adeus, a second god appeared. It was Belferio, king of the Belfario Kingdom, the nation of gastronomy. He appeared as a handsome young man wielding a rapier, and wherever his rapier moved, space split and tore open.

Unlike Rukan, who had only flaunted brute force, the Godfather was also experienced in real combat. He responded with a similar spatial slash, but...

Crack.

...his space slash had no effect whatsoever on Belferio’s strike. However, once more, he was cut apart vertically and horizontally.

Only after taking the hit twice did the Godfather realize it. Belferio’s slash was not simply a slash that split space; it was a slash that split the world—an attack that ignored space itself. As such, none of the Godfather’s attacks or defenses could block it.

The Godfather frowned. He could not immediately think of a way to deal with Belferio’s world-rending strike.

“Hehehe. Thanks to you, I get to come outside for the first time in a while. Thank you. I’ll make good use of your power.”

Belferio, as if intending to finish the Godfather with this blow, unleashed a cross-shaped slash, but...

“I don’t recall allowing that.”

...a young boy who had appeared from nowhere erased Belferio’s strike with a mere gesture.

Belferio sneered at the boy.

“Samael. You were the one who said the human world disgusted you. What brings you here?”

“This is not a human matter.”

Emperor Samael, ruler of the continent’s one and only empire, had also appeared here to execute the Godfather.

And that was not all. Though not visible here, even the king of the Baen Kingdom was lurking nearby, waiting for a chance. In other words, the kings of every nation had gathered in one place for a single purpose: to kill the Godfather.

If they had combined forces and attacked him all at once, it would not have been a battle but an execution. However, every king coveted the divine power the Godfather possessed. None of them wanted the others to have even the slightest share of it, so they fought the Godfather while also keeping each other in check.

Watching the war of gods, Keter let out a deep sigh.

“Sigh...”

At the same time as the relief of having survived, Keter felt a suffocating heaviness in his chest.

Massive reinforcements had arrived. Even the armies of each nation had come, taking over the battle against the chimeras in place of the exhausted Dawn Army. Because Keter and the Dawn Army had held out, the Godfather had not yet fully absorbed Rukan, and even the chimeras were pinned down. By all appearances, this was clearly Keter’s victory and the Godfather’s defeat, but Keter did not feel that way at all.

“There’s no way it ends like this.”

Countless people had died. The sacrifice was immense, enough to make one’s heart ache and eyes fill with tears. But to Keter, this price still felt far too cheap.

Just then, another summoning circle appeared in the sky. It had been created by the Godfather, and what it summoned were the malevolent and evil gods that had been in the capital.

The battlefield expanded exponentially. Keter and the Dawn Army, already exhausted and filled mostly with wounded, naturally fell back. The reinforcements stepped forward to the front.

Keter also moved back, intending to think for a moment, when his gaze suddenly turned to the right as if someone had nudged him. There stood the imperial army. They were more disciplined than any other nation’s reinforcements, and every one of them was equipped with state-of-the-art gear.

However, what caught Keter’s attention was their commander. Though clad in full armor, the commander was clearly a woman. It was not because she was a woman that Keter looked her way.

“So even the imperial crown princess has come to the battlefield. The empire is finally taking this seriously.”

Someone’s muttering reached Keter’s ears. The commander of the imperial army was none other than the crown princess, the next emperor.

More than her exceptional status, however, Keter felt something from her that seized his heart. There was something deeper—something more fundamental. Though the crown princess and Keter had a complicated history and stood far apart, their eyes met, whether by chance or fate,

“...”

The crown princess seemed to have felt the same thing Keter had, because she held his gaze for a long moment. But then she looked away first.

Normally, when gazes crossed, people simply moved on, but Keter was not like that. Even in his exhaustion, even in this chaotic battlefield, Keter tried to confirm the nature of the feeling stirring inside him.

Just as he was about to run toward her, a knight stretched out a hand and blocked his path, as though he had expected this. Keter raised his fist to punch the knight aside, but in the end, he could not bring himself to swing.

“It’s been a while.”

At the unfamiliar yet familiar voice, Keter looked at the knight’s face, and his eyes widened. Even after ten years, it was a face he could never forget.

“Luke?”

It was Luke, the knight who had once been assigned to help Keter adapt to Sefira, and who had later gone to the empire to search for his real parents. Now he had appeared before Keter as a knight of the empire.

* * *

In the temporary camp that was set up in the rear for the Dawn Army, Keter picked up a water jar and poured it over his head.

Splash!

“That makes me feel so much better.”

Wiping the water from his face, Keter sat down on a chair made of packed dirt. Across from him, Luke, now a middle-aged man, let out a faint chuckle.

“You really haven’t changed.”

“You have.”

Wearing imperial armor and even bearing a medal that marked him as an officer, Luke looked completely natural in it. If anything, he looked very comfortable.

Luke shrugged.

“So, about me. I was actually the illegitimate child of Selleizen, one of the empire’s seven duchies. I found out the secret of my birth, but... the family wouldn’t accept me, no matter how many years I tried. So I changed paths. As you can see, I joined the imperial family instead.”

“You’ve been through a lot. And you did well,” Keter answered Luke’s compressed explanation of his life with a single sentence.

“...You’ve changed, too. Giving compliments and all.”

“Why did you stop me earlier? You weren’t just stopping me to talk.”

Even if they were resting, the situation had not been fully resolved yet. Keter got straight to the point, as if pressed for time, and Luke sighed.

“There are four Primes guarding the crown princess. Her guards know who you are, but they would still attack you. That’s just how they operate.”

Hearing Luke explain that he had stopped him not to protect the crown princess but to protect him, Keter understood.

“What’s the crown princess’s name?”

“You don’t even know the name of the woman who will become the first empress of the Samael Empire? So it’s not just your looks that are the same as ten years ago.”

“I’m in a hurry, okay? So what’s her name?”

“Vina. The crown princess’ name is Vina.”

“Vina...” Keter murmured the name.

Luke asked why Keter had suddenly become interested in the crown princess, but the words barely reached him. Keter himself did not understand why he was so intensely drawn to her.

This isn't an ordinary attraction. It’s something strange. But I’ve felt something like this before. Where was it?

Keter began retracing his memories backward, and only after going all the way back to the memories of his life before regression did he realize.

It was when I first met Besil. I felt something like this then, too.

It was the feeling that this person was his family—a certainty at the level of instinct, without any need for blood tests or proof. Absurdly enough, the moment he saw Crown Princess Vina, Keter became certain she shared the same bloodline as him.

Of course, I’ve got fathers in every kingdom, but no. It didn’t feel like seeing a half-sibling.

And if she wasn’t a half-sibling, then there was only one possibility: it meant they had the same mother and father—a full sibling.

“Fuck me,” slipped out of Keter’s mouth.

The crown princess of the Samael Empire being either his younger or older sister meant Vina had also been born from Akrah. He wasn’t even curious who the father was. The real problem was that Vina’s appearance did not feel like an accident at all.

A rough picture formed in Keter’s head.

When the Godfather, who absorbed Queen Lillian, started rampaging, all the gods of each nation gathered in one place. And Akrah’s goal was to wipe out all the gods...

All the gods were going to die in this place. Whether that was possible or impossible did not matter. A divine being would never proceed with something like this based on uncertainty.

“This is so fucked. Completely fucked.”

Luke quietly watched Keter muttering to himself in frustration, then rose to his feet.

“Keter. I can barely manage protecting my own life, and the ones I consider my father and my home—Jacques and Sefira. I can’t help you.”

“Is that so?”

Keter waved his hand dismissively. At this point, the scale of things was far too large for Luke alone to make any difference anyway.

Slowly, Luke pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and placed it on the table. Then, after leaving one final remark, he turned and walked away.

“This is the best I could do.”

He had left behind a meaningful note, and there was no way Keter could ignore it. He immediately unfolded it, and his eyes widened.

—Be wary of the imperial army. They did not come here simply to kill the Demon King.

The power that reflected misfortune and the status of an imperial knight—none of those could directly help Keter right now. However, the information Luke had given him was an incredibly important clue. For Keter, who had been lost on what to do next, it was like a light showing him the path forward.

Looking in the direction Luke had gone, Keter muttered, “Guess it was worth keeping him around and teaching him after all.”

If there was ever a next time for him and Luke, Keter decided, then they would definitely have a drink together.

* * *

Keter predicted that the battle between the gods would not end quickly. A major reason was that the gods of each nation were not united, but more than that, it was because he knew the Godfather well.

The Godfather almost never acted personally. If he has stepped in himself, it means he has that much confidence.

There was still time. Not much, but at least the outcome would not be decided immediately.

Swoosh!

Just then, the tent flap was yanked open roughly. Just from the sound alone, Keter knew who had arrived.

“Brother-in-law! You’re alive?”

The man who barged in, calling Keter his brother-in-law, was none other than Hyperion, the Fist Emperor. He was not alone. Daat was with him.

Why the hell is this guy calling me his brother-in-law?

As far as Keter knew, Hyperion had no reason to call him that. He had to be using the word without even knowing what it meant. But then, Daat gave Keter a silent signal with a wink.

Keter understood immediately and spread his arms wide to welcome Hyperion.

“So you’re alive too, Brother-in-law!”

At Keter’s warm welcome, Hyperion grinned. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

“Who do you think I am? I’m the Fist Emperor. Oh, right. Alisa is doing well. She didn’t join this battle, but I’m fighting hard enough for her share too, so don’t let her feel neglected.”

Alisa was the lust-crazed female dragon Keter had met in the Syndicate. Keter had been the one who introduced her to Hyperion. Apparently, Hyperion believed Alisa and Keter were family.

As if members of different species could be family.

Whether Hyperion was just stupid or overly innocent was hard to tell.

Keter barely held back the urge to laugh at him. Still, if it hadn’t been for Hyperion’s help, things really would have become dangerous.

He may be a bit lacking, but he’s a good guy.

If Hyperion had only come to pass along greetings, he could have just left. Seeing his face, it was obvious that there was something else he wanted to say.

“I was about to have a drink anyway. Why don’t we have one together?”

“No, forget the drink...”

Trailing off, Hyperion glanced at Daat, who caught on immediately.

“I’ll put up a barrier so no sound leaks out.”

After Daat stepped outside and cast a barrier, Hyperion finally opened his mouth.

“Keter, I have something serious to say to you.”

Hyperion became serious. Even Keter felt tense along with him. Hyperion usually seemed like some dumb, overly strong older guy from the neighborhood, but he was still an eight-star Irregular. Maybe he had realized something. Maybe he had picked up on the Godfather’s and Akrah’s hidden intentions.

“Go ahead.”

“Before that, promise me something. Whatever we say here stays with us to the grave.”

“In this kingdom, I’m the person with the heaviest mouth.”

“Right. You’re a madman, but you’re trustworthy. I’ll trust you and say it.”

Hyperion, the Fist Emperor, had fought without fear even against the Godfather, who had displayed invincible divine power.

And now that same man looked at Keter with an utterly desperate expression and asked, “Please take Alisa back. I can’t live with her anymore.”

The Fist Emperor did not fear the Godfather, but he did fear his wife.