Authority was the power of a god. When one Authority clashed with another, the outcome was determined by priority, and the one with stricter conditions took priority.

Keter’s Unchain held one of the highest priorities among all Authorities. Unless the other side imposed some kind of restriction, Keter’s Authority might as well not exist at all. And even when Unchain was activated, it did not give Keter an overwhelming advantage. It merely prevented him from being bound[1]. That was why Keter’s Unchain took precedence over almost any other Authority.

However, Unchain did not activate against Akrahh’s power to stop the universe. Part of that was due to the difference in their power, but it was also because Akrah’s Universal Stasis had conditions just as strict as Keter’s. The condition was that it could be used only once. Because of that restriction, Akrah’s Universal Stasis was powerful enough to work even on other gods, and it could ignore Keter’s Unchain.

As such, Keter imposed the same kind of time-limited restriction on himself, maximizing the power of Unchain, and allowing himself to move within the frozen universe. That alone showed how stopping the universe, and moving within a stopped universe, were not things even gods could do easily.

And yet, the Godfather moved, even while bound and unable to move by the gods. He took advantage of that brief instant when all of Akrah’s attention was focused on Keter, and completely seized her blind spot.

Keter saw the Godfather move with his eyes, but his body could not keep up. The same was true for Akrah.

Thud.

The Godfather placed his palm against Akrah’s back. Then he laughed darkly.

“Akrah. You arranged things so that the world’s forces would gather in one place because of me. Even though I knew, I pretended not to and let you believe that I dreamed not of being defeated by them, but of counterattacking.”

Keter knew exactly why the Godfather was explaining everything so kindly.

The Godfather only ever talks this much when he is two hundred percent sure of his victory.

Sure enough, something like mist began flowing out of Akrah’s body and was absorbed through the Godfather’s palm.

“What I was preparing for was not those gods, playing king over humans. It was you, Akrah Netzach. From the very beginning, I was aiming only for you.”

“...Alkione.”

“There is no need to worry. I, too, hate gods and prefer humans. I simply differ from you in method. I will take all divine power for myself and become the one and only god. That is the true path for humanity.”

“Oh, shut the hell up!”

Keter did not just stand there and watch the Godfather ramble. Even as cracks spread all over his body, he forced himself to move and threw a punch at him. Because the universe had been frozen, even energy itself had stopped. As such, this was not an ordinary punch. It was a strike filled to the limit with the power of Eslow’s prosthetic: Authority Nullification.

Crash!

With a single punch, the Godfather’s entire face was blown away, but no blood or flesh was scattered.

—Hehehe...

The Godfather’s voice rang out, but it was not coming from a face or a body. It was as though the world itself had a mouth, and his voice echoed from all directions.

Headless, the Godfather’s body slowly rose into the air. His flesh shed away like a shell. And what emerged from inside was a young man. He looked to be twenty, the age considered the peak of a human’s prime, and he looked remarkably like Keter.

—I am complete now.

As though overcome with emotion, Alkione looked down at his own arms. Keter stared at him, at this figure who looked so much like himself. The hair and eye color were different. They were black, like the Godfather’s original colors, but aside from that, the resemblance was almost exact.

“I didn’t know you liked me that much, Godfather.”

—Did I not already say so? I liked everything about you.

“Even so, copying me is a bit much. No matter how handsome you are, you’re still just an imitation.”

—Haha. That would only matter if anyone who knew you were still alive.

“So this is what you meant by doing things differently from Akrah?” Keter snapped, but the Godfather did not care.

—In a world where billions live, what difference does it make if only tens of thousands die? Do not worry. I will give you more than enough time to regret it.

The Godfather’s gaze turned toward the kings of the nations. It was clear he no longer cared about Keter at all. He intended to deal with the gods gathered here first. In fact, he did not even bother hiding it. And then, it happened. The frozen time of the universe, stopped by Akrah, began to flow again.

As expected, the first to react were the gods. They moved first, all staring at the Godfather. The relaxed expressions they had worn before were gone; their faces had hardened. That was how completely different the Godfather’s very level of existence had become.

—The main course is finished. Now it is time for dessert.

The Godfather stretched out his hand toward the kings, then slowly began to close it. At that motion, the world itself began to crumple inward from the outside. His will had become capable of interfering even with the laws of the universe. It was truly the power of a god.

And as proof of that, the kings of each nation appeared unable even to resist, as though they would simply be swallowed whole into the Godfather’s grasp. But then...

Snap.

With that crisp sound, the Godfather’s grasp slowed. No—not just the Godfather. The universe itself was beginning to freeze once more.

—This is....

Akrah had been absorbed by the Godfather, so how could the universe be stopping again? The Godfather’s gaze moved, without a second of doubt, toward Keter.

And Keter, as if he had been waiting for this exact moment, raised his middle finger.

* * *

Keter had more than one Authority: Reversal. His second Authority let him copy an opponent’s Authority under certain conditions. Using that, Keter stopped the time of the universe, but the price was not small.

—I knew you were crazy, but I never thought you were stupid.

Keter had already only had an hour left to live, and now even that was cut in half. Just like with Unchain, it was the price for enlarging the scale of Reversal. In other words, Keter would now be annihilated in thirty minutes. No chance to revive. Nothing.

—Did you think stopping the universe would be enough to stop me?

Even with the universe frozen, the Godfather had no trouble moving at all. He had prepared for that in advance, and after absorbing Akrah, he had become outright immune to it. However, Keter had never intended to stop the Godfather just by freezing the universe.

He spread both arms wide. A bow formed in his right hand, and an arrow in his left. He set the arrow on the string and calmly drew it back, aiming at the Godfather. The Godfather watched the whole sequence, then sneered.

—You’re still thinking of using archery in a situation like this? Have you forgotten? Even before I became complete, your archery could not affect me at all.

“That was then. This is now.”

Keter let go of the string. And so, in a world where everything else had stopped, Keter alone began his fight with the Godfather.

—Then I’ll grant Rukan’s wish after all.

The Godfather already knew the speed and power of Keter’s arrows. They could do nothing to him. He ignored the arrow and immediately targeted Keter’s limbs, just as Rukan had once wished.

The Godfather was a being who could make anything happen through thought alone. The moment he decided to tear off Keter’s limbs, the phenomenon itself happened, regardless of motion or speed.

In other words, the Godfather’s attack was as fast as light. However, Keter’s arrow was faster than light. Before the Godfather could even perceive it, it struck him in the forehead.

—...!

The Godfather touched his forehead. There was no wound nor arrow. Keter’s arrow had been absorbed into his body.

—Your arrow is faster than me?

Keter blocked the Godfather’s attack with the Authority-nullifying power in his left arm, then nocked a second arrow.

“It's Tachyon, an arrow faster than light.”

—There is nothing in this world faster than light!

“That’s just what you think.”

Keter released the string again. Last time the Godfather had ignored it, but now he opened every one of his senses and watched the arrow closely.

—Archery is nothing but a crude act, a primitive technique of launching a tool called an arrow using the bounce of a bow and the strength of a human arm. With something so primitive, exceeding light is impossible!

If he blocked the arrow himself, that would prove it. It would prove Keter’s arrow was not actually that fast.

Thud!

Whoosh.

Two sounds rang out at the same time. The sound of the arrow burying itself in the Godfather’s head, and the sound of his hand grasping at empty air.

The first time, he could have excused it by saying he did not know. But now he knew, and he still could not stop Keter’s arrow. It truly was that fast—fast enough to feel beyond light.

—I admit your arrows are fast. But even so, they cannot affect me. My body is a microcosm. Shooting arrows at me is the same as shooting them at a universe.

“Shooting at a universe. I like the poetry of that,” Keter said and fired again.

The Godfather could have ignored the arrow and attacked Keter directly, but he wanted to break Keter’s pride. Killing Keter would be as easy as drinking cold soup, but once Keter was dead, his pride could never be broken again.

—I may not be able to catch the arrow, but I can block it.

As long as Keter used a bow as a tool, the direction he aimed made his target obvious. He was aiming at the same place as before: his forehead. As such, if he created a wall in that path ahead of time, Keter’s arrow would be blocked.

Rrrrip.

It sounded like thousands of sheets of paper being torn at once. The Godfather had layered tens of thousands of Ether Shields around himself, yet Keter’s arrow pierced through all of them and still struck his forehead again.

—...And what did you do this time?

“Tusk. I made it after noticing that giving an arrow rotation increases penetration. The stronger the rotation, the stronger the penetration, which means if you give it infinite rotation, there’s nothing it can’t pierce.”

—Another absurd claim... Just yesterday, that same technique of yours couldn’t even pierce a few hundred Ether Shields.

“I already told you. That was then. Why do you assume I can’t do now what I couldn’t do before?”

—Even humoring this nonsense has become boring. Die.

The Godfather had a vessel capable of wielding divine power, but his thinking still remained within human limits. That was why he could not believe in human possibility, in the idea that humans could do anything. How could a human accomplish what even gods could not?

In the end, the Godfather decided to kill Keter at once. He was a god, and gods were supposed to be omnipotent. Yet Keter had discovered that there were things even he, a god, did not know. He did not want Keter alive for even one more second.

That will took the form of an attack. He erased the hundred-meter radius around where Keter stood from the world. It was absolute death. An impossible force that allowed no defense, no evasion, a power that could kill anyone...Or it should have been.

Squelch.

Keter’s arrow struck the Godfather’s forehead again.

The Godfather had erased space. The attack had definitely worked. And yet, for some reason, the space Keter stood on remained intact.

“I wrapped myself in Ivan’s Three Thousand Worlds. This universe may belong to no one and so can be erased, but my world belongs to me. No one can erase that.”

Keter’s Reversal copied the Authorities of those he had fought. That meant it did not matter when he had fought them. If he had once survived an Authority, he could reproduce it at any time.

—Even so, all you’ve done is delay your death by one second.

If he could not kill Keter by erasing space, he could simply attack another way.

Of course, Keter kept firing arrows the whole time, but the Godfather no longer cared. Keter’s attacks could not affect him anyway.

The Godfather reached out into empty space. In response, the void itself tore away into the shape of a sword and landed in his hand. The Godfather was no master swordsman, but he was a genius who could understand and replicate any technique after seeing it once. From his sword, secret techniques from the greatest sword schools in the world were reproduced.

Sky-Slashing Sword Art: Slashing the Sky

Demon-Slaying Wall Sword: Lightning Severance.

Blackwood Style: Torrential Wave.

One Hundred and Eight Mortal Affliction Sword: Flesh Carver.

...

He was not merely copying the techniques. Like Belferio before him, each and every one of them was imbued with the power to split the world. This meant they could cut through Keter’s Three Thousand Worlds as well.

—Then block this too. Heh... heh?

The only way to stop world-splitting slashes like that was to possess a microcosm of one’s own, like the Godfather, and Keter had not obtained a microcosm. As such, he should have died without fail, but once again, Keter trampled the Godfather’s certainty.

Whish, whirl!

He was dodging—dodging in the middle of a storm of sword techniques that looked completely airtight. Twisting his body, dropping flat, leaping through them. It didn’t matter if the slashes could split worlds; if they did not hit, they meant nothing.

—Y-you can dodge this?

Of course, the Godfather had not bothered to consider how the sword techniques linked together. But even so, each individual technique was a secret or ultimate technique, and he had already unleashed seventeen of them.

The idea that someone could identify the openings in all seventeen of those techniques on the spot and avoid them all was almost unimaginable.

—Do you have no pride at all?

Keter rolled on the ground to evade the slashes, even taking on ridiculous poses. And this, while wielding the power of a god.

“Does pride put food on the table?”

Keter even fired an arrow upside down in a handstand, like some kind of acrobatic trick. Unsurprisingly, the arrow struck the Godfather in the forehead again. At that point, the Godfather stopped his assault entirely. The enemy itself had vanished from his awareness.

—Keter. I absorbed Akrah, the mother of gods. You, on the other hand, merely strengthened your Authority. So how are you still enduring in front of me?

There was no need to answer every question an enemy asked, but Keter kindly answered anyway.

“Godfather. You once said that the strongest person in the world is the one with nothing to lose.”

—So you made yourself into a terminal being beyond saving, just to push your talent to the limit?

“Up until now, I agreed with you, but not anymore. The strongest bastard in the world is the one with a shitload of things he wants to protect.”

—...

“And one more thing. You made a huge mistake.”

—Heh heh. So arrogant now, your mouth has really loosened. Fine. Go ahead, talk all you want. You’re as good as dead anyway.

Even if Keter could survive the Godfather’s attacks, he could not avoid natural death.

“In Liqueur, the first rule of survival was this. It’s not over until it’s over. A Godfather like you shouldn’t forget that.”

—Bluffing... Hm?

The Godfather suddenly felt something wrong in the arm he had stretched out. His body was a microcosm, an endless darkness. Yet in his palm, there was a tiny but unmistakable glimmer. That glimmer was increasing in real time.

—Th-this is?

The Godfather hurriedly looked inward at his own microcosm, and his face twisted in shock.

They were explosions happening inside the microcosm. Rays of light spreading out through the darkness. Then Keter’s voice echoed through that tiny universe.

“Milky Way. A lamp to light the darkness.”

The arrows Keter had fired and which had been absorbed into the Godfather’s body began exploding one after another without end. The explosions devoured each other, expanding endlessly, and they did so faster than the Godfather’s microcosm could grow. His microcosm reached a point where it could no longer contain the light, and it burst free from his body. And in the blink of an eye, it swallowed the entire world.

1. It appears that the strict conditions here don’t just mean that there are many conditions to fulfill. When someone uses their Authority to say that Keter can’t escape, Keter’s Unchain doesn’t mean a thing. Although the condition of how it should be done by someone with a higher priority Authority has to be met, the possibility that Keter’s Authority will not mean a thing still exists. It gives Keter the highest disadvantage in terms of Authorities, hence granting him the highest priorities. ☜