"That's... the Requiem for the Entombed Soul!"
Although the name of the ability Hathaway was using sounded like the title of a song, it was, in fact, an exclusive incantation of the Church of Death and End. The power was exceedingly dangerous, targeting any creature with a soul other than the chanter. If the user possessed sufficient spirit, it could deliver a one-hit kill to nearly any spiritual entity of an equal or lower level.
As the red-haired girl in the sky spread her arms, her dazzling hair danced in the night wind. The light of the red and blue twin moons converged upon her, and as her tranquil, eerie song spread outwards, it sent sound waves vibrating through the air and tides of energy rippling through space.
Jenkins felt his body temperature plummeting, though he wasn't physically harmed. He watched as the black mass of flesh in the distance ceased its writhing. The pitch-black gun barrels retracted, and the creature seemed to have lost all signs of life.
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After the song ended, Hathaway had to sit sideways behind Jenkins to keep from falling off. She looked utterly exhausted, leaning against his back, barely able to speak.
"I think I overdid it... Can I leave the rest to you, Jenkins?"
Jenkins guided the unicorn in a slow descent, placing Hathaway beside the hidden Briny. She had used a charm to ensure no one would discover the blonde girl, so with his Eye of Reality, it was easy to find Briny's hiding spot.
he promised, then sat down himself, leaning against the wall of the cold, gloomy alley.
His soul flew from his body, and the silver metal block linked to his fingertips erupted in a dazzling golden light. The waiting unicorn neighed softly as opulent platinum armor materialized over its body.
The God of Lies, radiating a brilliant aura, emerged from the alley and looked up at the fleshy mass in the night sky with a soft sigh.
"This is the last drop of godhood."
He mounted his steed and ascended once more, and the mass, which had been feigning death, immediately counterattacked. This time, Jenkins saw the entire process of the bizarre bullet being fired. Unlike the other black projectiles, this one was pure white, and the strange human face on its tip was alive.
In his deified state, many things became clear to him, and he instantly realized his opponent was The Unrecordable Gun. The god's gaze fixed upon the fleshy mass, and the answer came to him naturally.
This was no Cursed Item; the gun was a descendant of the Beast of Calamity known as the Nameless Venom. It had no name because it had never been discovered; it had no physical form because, like that terrifying Calamity, it was merely a concept. The gun's current form was only the outer shell of its seal. If it were to break free, Jenkins, with only a single drop of godhood remaining, would likely be unable to defeat it.
At this thought, the god suddenly leaped from his mount, flying through the night sky toward the hideous mass. He reached out with a right hand wreathed in pure white flame to touch his enemy, but with a tremendous bang, the mass exploded, scattering pieces of flesh in every direction, all across the town.
Jenkins's foe was intelligent; it knew full well that in its current state, it was no match for a god.
The moons suddenly dimmed as his divine power resonated with the ability in his soul's core. Countless black shadows rose from the ground, forming innumerable copies of Jenkins. The scattered pieces of flesh were all intercepted and burned to ash, leaving only the key keeper's ugly, pitch-black soul and the gun, both fleeing in different directions.
Harnessing the power of the shadows, the countless Jenkinses simultaneously stretched out their hands. A barrier of divine power intercepted the two fleeing enemies. The phantoms vanished, and the god, now strolling through the air, held the pistol in one hand and the ugly soul in the other. He burned the remaining quarter of his godhood and asked himself:
"What is really going on here?"
It was as if brilliant fireworks had exploded before his eyes; his divinity was abruptly and completely consumed. Jenkins instinctively released the pistol, letting it fall to the ground. He had been too careless. His remaining divinity was insufficient to perceive the truth of that terrible thing. If not for a premonition that made him let go, he would have been severely injured for the first time while in his divine state.
The matter of the gun could be dealt with later. The ugly soul in his right hand was already revealing its history to Jenkins.
It began with the exceedingly dull history of a country boy's upbringing. After growing into a man, the boy left his small village for the city. Many things happened during that time, but from the moment he first killed someone, there was no turning back.
In the process, Jenkins witnessed all the innocent people the key keeper had murdered over the past half-century, as well as his entire psychological journey. Until he was at least forty, his life had nothing to do with supernatural powers; he didn't even know how dangerous the hidden side of the world was.
The change occurred during a dangerous assassination—his one-hundredth target. After the murder, the boy, now a middle-aged man, returned to his ordinary life to rest. It was then that he saw a behemoth from the void in a dream.
Perhaps it was his 'luck,' or perhaps the continuous killing had attracted the gaze of a higher dimension. Jenkins couldn't be sure if it was some fiend from subspace or an evil god; his residual divine power was insufficient to interpret the dream. The only certainty was that the middle-aged man, like most people in the world, had no talent whatsoever for becoming an Enchanter.
In the time before he went into seclusion at the snowstorm manor, he tried methods revealed in his dreams and even performed human blood sacrifices to pray for 'great power.' But he never succeeded. No matter what he tried, he always failed.
Those great beings could forcibly bestow power upon mortals, but the entity the key keeper had encountered in his dream had merely glanced at him by chance and had no intention of changing the mortal's life.
Keao O'Drie was a tragic figure. He had glimpsed the truth of this world and prepared himself to step into it. He even had an invitation, yet he lacked the aptitude to enter the supernatural realm.
Gradually resigning himself to his fate, the murderer found himself wanted across the continent around this time. Disheartened, he could only hide deep in the mountains. But fate loves to play tricks on mortals. In his third year as the key keeper, he once again encountered a strange creature in a dream.