The grim reaper’s voice was flat and completely void of emotion. However, for some reason, I could feel irritation hidden behind layers of his facade. As the red beads stopped before my face, I couldn’t even turn my head to the side to look at his expression.
“You… Are you really the Grim Reaper?”
Although I was almost sure he was, questioning him was still the best way to gain information. As I was asking, I was also stealthily urging my energy to regenerate my missing arms. It was an attempt at best since I did not know how to restore them.
[… It’s futile. No matter how hard you try, you can’t recover your arms forever. A small price to pay for interfering with my job.]
With another snap, the stopped red beads suddenly moved down, aiming for both my legs. I tried to move to dodge them, but it was too late. A dozen or so beads hit them squarely, and everything from my knees down vanished like broken glass, scattering shards all over.
“Kuh!”
Unable to support my body, I fell back, crashing against Fang’s sleeping soul. With no arms or legs, it was almost impossible for me to even turn to my sides. I could only stare at the blurry face of the black-clothed grim reaper, with red beads surrounding him in orbit.
Seeing that I could no longer interfere, the Grim Reaper completely ignored me and continued peppering Fang’s soul with the red beads. Every time it hit her, she twitched in pain as a stifled groan escaped her pursed lips.
“Stop! Don’t you dare hurt Fang any further!”
I roared in anger, trying to reach out for one of the nearby beads and stop it. However, I could only wiggle a little, with only short stumps left from my waist down. Even if I waved my neck, it was nowhere near enough to reach the beads flying above my head.
‘There should be something I can do against this b*stard!’
I tried racking my brain, looking for a solution to this situation, but was unable to figure out a way that I could fight him fair and square.
‘If only we could fight in the real world… Wait!’
There was a way!
“Sorry, Fang. Wait for me!”
Without wasting any more time, I quickly returned my consciousness to my body. As soon as I returned, Fe fell forward, crashing against Fang’s chest.
“L-Leader…!”
Fang was surprised and panicked a little after I fell. I, on the other hand, felt confused. My arms and legs aren’t moving. Even if I tried to move them, they weren’t responding. It was as if it wasn’t my arms and legs anymore.
“… But the halo had been used a few hours ago. It’ll be quite a while before I can use it again.”
I muttered as I struggled to move. In the end, influenced by an anime I have watched before, where she sends projectiles flying like a railgun, I recirculated energy all over my body. It was different from activating Lifeblood, as I wasn’t circulating it “around” but rather moving it to pinpoint locations.
“Ugh! GaaaaaaH!”
With a forceful push, my fingers twitched before I finally managed to move my arm. The energy around me made my skin hot, but it was able to forcefully move my body according to my will.
“… Though it’s a bit slow…”
Moving your body manually is harder than moving it unconsciously, which is closer to an impossible feat. For every action, you need to move more than a few muscles in concert with pinpoint precision. After a bit of getting used to it, I finally managed to move from Fang’s chest and sit straight up.
“…”
Fang’s face was flushed red, probably both from enduring the pain and the earlier fiasco.
“But sorry, Fang…”
I apologized before I even moved, leaning closer and placing my lips over hers.
“Mmmmph~!”
Fang, surprised, had her body stiffen for a moment. After that, she slowly relaxed her body, letting me kiss her without resisting. Although I felt bad doing this, it was the easiest method to activate the skill I was going to use. It was one of Death’s few skills other than killing and concealment.
‘[Soul Recall]!’
I called the skill’s name inside my head, and a wave of energy flashed past my chest, through my mouth, and into Fang’s body. Fang felt the hot energy enter her body through her mouth and was about to move away, but I quickly held her back and pressed our lips tighter.
“…!”
Fang’s entire body was trembling from the pain and heat, and slowly, she was losing strength, literally. At that moment, I felt a tug from the skill and quickly separated from Fang.
A black smoke flew out of her mouth, condensing into a humanoid figure a short distance away. The figure was confused at first and started looking around in panic before setting his sights on me, who was supporting Fang’s listless body.
“You… You rude human! How dare you drag me into the mortal realm!!!”
The figure, still exuding black smoke from all over his body, was none other than the “Grim Reaper” that was playing around inside Fang’s soulscape.
“Yo! Welcome to reality, motherf*cker!”
After gently laying Fang’s body on the ground, I stood up with some difficulty. The Grim Reaper’s face, which was now completely visible as the face of a wrinkly and old Caucasian man, was washed with a mix of shock and disbelief. .𝙘𝒐𝒎
“How can you move? I should’ve cut your arms and legs for all eternity!”
“Why should I tell you?”
“…”
The grim reaper became silent for a moment, his anger cooling down slightly. A little later, he nodded his head deeply, convinced.
“Right. You would be dying soon anyway. There’s no need to learn about what you did.”
I smiled, holding the sniper rifle in my hands.
“You can try, but be careful not to fall first, old man!”
I was slowly getting used to controlling my body manually, but it was still far from being nimble enough. I cocked the rifle’s lever and aimed before pulling the trigger without mercy.
The bullet flew and hit the grim reaper squarely in the forehead. The bullet ricocheted and didn’t even manage to leave a single mark, though, making me feel like I bit a bitter bug.
“Sh*t, you sure drink your milk! How tough is your skull?!”
With a practiced motion, I loaded the next bullet and adjusted my aim, going for the chest. However, just as I pulled the trigger, a scythe materialized in his hand and, with the flat side of its blade, blocked the bullet’s path. Only a loud *ping* was heard as sparks flew from their contact.
“A gun is it… What an antique weapon you got there.”
The grim reaper muttered in a nostalgic voice. His words surprised me, of course, as he was basically the first “person” who knew what a gun was at a glance. But thinking normally, if he was really the Grim Reaper and had lived since the beginning of time, then it wouldn’t be weird that he knew.
‘Does that mean I’m currently picking a fight with a literal death god?!’
Death, one of the regressors, was called death incarnate during his short life. However, he was far from becoming a death god. At most, his strikes can make you feel like dying would be a salvation, but that’s basically his limit. He was a mortal through and through.
The old man before me right now was different, though. Just from his presence alone, he was definitely powerful. Probably more powerful than even the Dragon King, who was still squirming uncontrollably up in the air.
Just as I was lost in a labyrinth of thought, a flash appeared before my eyes. There was no warning whatsoever, as even my instincts and Death’s passive danger detection weren’t able to perceive it. Using all the energy I could muster, I made my body lean backward, dodging the scythe. As soon as it passed, I kicked hard against him, but he easily dodged the attack as he took distance once more.
“Stop struggling, mortal. Your end is set in stone, anyway.”
The old man said this with a snicker, waving the scythe in his hands as if it weighed nothing. I, on the other hand, felt a stinging pain under my chin. When I passed my arm against it, I saw traces of blood.
“The scythe didn’t even touch me…!”
Confused, I narrowed my eyes, trying to focus on the details of the weapon.
I belatedly noticed that the scythe didn’t have the blade in the inner curve but rather on the outside, like a curved sword with a weird and long handle. At the narrow end, close to the tip, a trace of blood could be seen. It was the tip that reached my chin and wounded me!
‘If my dodge was a millisecond later, then my neck would’ve definitely flown off!’
I felt a shiver down my spine upon having that realization. It was an instant later that I realized the shiver I felt wasn’t just from realization but also from the next attack that was coming for me silently.
‘I can’t dodge!’
It was too fast to even react, and my movements were delayed since I was controlling all my muscles manually. Just as I was about to despair, a transparent shield appeared before me, blocking the powerful scythe of the Grim Reaper.
“…!”
A surprised expression appeared on his face before he quickly jumped back and stared at me like I was a display animal at a zoo.
“You… You don’t have any karma?!”