**Chapter 418. My Victory**
—
Yet Annihilation denied it.
That number was not registered even within **Truth**.
For a moment, he mistook it for **Heaven**, but that could not be.
Thirteen signifies the end, but at the same time it represents **ill omen**.
Misfortune, disgrace, death—
the darkness bound to that number was beyond comparison.
Even the Demons of the Seven Deadly Sins were not worthy of comparison.
By contrast, **twelve** is a sacred number.
Time, the cosmos, and everything else are divided into twelve.
Therefore—
If that Destruction were **the End**, then that human could be called **the Demon of the End**.
—…You are an enemy of Heaven.
Annihilation realized it.
Why the human standing before him was not registered within Truth.
Why he could not be grasped.
‘He bears the form of a human, but he is not human.’
Because he was never human to begin with.
A demon.
Among the demons of the Seven Sins, the closest resemblance would be **Greed**, but—
‘Even the Demon of Greed never reached thirteen.’
At least, that was what the information recorded in Truth said.
Which meant the being standing before Annihilation was that ominous.
A root-level evil.
An **Absolute Sin** that infects all things and drives them toward the End.
An enemy that Heaven must destroy.
Annihilation regained his composure.
…That was merely an ominous symbol—a weapon unrelated to Heaven.
It was not a Destruction created by Heaven.
If so—
—Warriors of the Twelve Zodiac.
Rumble!
The twelve towers shook.
Then the towers crumbled into dust, and the dust compressed, gathering into distinct forms.
Twelve beasts.
A ram, a bull, a dragon, a monkey, a lion, a fox, a pig, a rat, a snake, a horse, a rabbit, and a goat!
The forms of the beast masks worn by the executives of the Reaper Cult had taken shape.
Like the Four Calamities of Destruction, they were the Zodiac Warriors led by Annihilation.
‘The Golden Mask must have known it instinctively when he founded Reaper Cult.’
From the moment he was born, he had been under Annihilation’s influence.
However—
Originally, there was no **goat**.
There were only eleven orthodox lineages and their patrons.
The twelfth was **Annihilation**, because he himself was the goat.
Phantom had pretended to be the goat, but in the end it was only imitation—a fake.
The giant eye set in Annihilation’s face slowly rotated.
Snap!
Once more, Annihilation clasped his twelve hands together.
—Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings.
Grrraaak!
Again, Phantom’s body was constricted.
But this time it was far stronger.
The **Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings** was the strongest seal Annihilation could produce.
A power granted to Annihilation alone—
a seal capable of binding twelve gods at once.
One that made resistance itself impossible.
—This time, you will not break free so easily.
Phantom could not move an inch under the Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings.
The Seal of the Twelve Zodiac could be forced open, but the Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings could only be broken by **cutting** it.
And **the End** could never break the Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings.
—Are you flustered because you cannot cut it? Of course—you wouldn’t know.
Annihilation spoke mockingly.
For a moment he had been overwhelmed by the number thirteen, but in the end, even that thing could not escape the limits of Destruction.
—All Destructions are designed so they cannot directly attack one another.
That was why Annihilation persisted in sealing Phantom.
Destructions cannot directly attack each other.
That was how they were designed.
Which was why he had induced a seal from the start.
As expected, the End could not break the Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings.
Because the End, too, was a kind of Destruction.
Of course, Annihilation himself could not directly attack either.
Instead—
—A battle of Destructions is a battle of vassals.
…There was still a way.
They could be killed **by vassals**.
The vassals of a Destruction were powerful enough to reach even beings like them.
—Devour everything, my vassals.
Crunch!
Crack!
Through the gaps in the seal, the twelve vassals rushed in and began tearing the End apart.
—Having lost all your vassals, you were never my opponent to begin with.
The Blade Dragon God had gone mad and self-destructed.
Baal and Lilith had been devoured by the Black King.
The nameless Eagle had exhausted itself and been forcefully unsummoned.
In other words, the End had no vassals left.
There was no way for a Destruction without vassals to oppose another Destruction.
For a moment, he had been overwhelmed by the number thirteen—but once the vassals were gone, the outcome was already decided.
There was nothing left to aid the End.
Humans?
What help could such weak beings offer?
The somewhat threatening Druid Albino was dead, and the two gods had vanished after being struck by Annihilation’s waves.
They might already have been erased.
Riiip!
The End was being torn apart, dying.
It was screaming.
‘My victory, O End.’
Annihilation was certain of his triumph.
*
*
I awakened.
Realizing that I was **Phantom**, I built my home.
I conceived and created an unmistakably my-own world, but—
‘It doesn’t obey me completely yet.’
It felt as though my hands and feet were moving separately.
Unlike Wilhelm, the power of the End was not easy to wield at will.
Because I still did not truly understand the End.
I had never tried to understand it until now, so in a way it was only natural.
‘And this seal is more troublesome than I expected.’
I had removed the first Seal of the Twelve Zodiac by using the power of the End.
But the **Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings** binding me now could not be removed.
Partly because I could not properly wield the power of the End—
But also—
‘This feels fundamentally different from the seals I know.’
Its very operating principle was different.
Perhaps that was why—
‘…Even Wilhelm’s authority doesn’t work. There must be something I’m overlooking.’
Tch.
I clicked my tongue softly.
The same held true for the authority I gained from registering Wilhelm’s Star.
That authority was the power to rewind time by one second.
Used well, it was a broken ability, but it did not seem to be the answer to breaking this seal.
Because Annihilation was devoting all his effort solely to binding my movements.
Rewinding one second would only result in being sealed endlessly.
I calmly reviewed the nature of this battle.
‘He’s not trying to attack me—he’s focusing on sealing me. Especially after I summoned Randolph’s End, he’s devoted entirely to sealing. Just as I can’t break the seal, he also can’t attack me or the End.’
The Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings.
This was a seal that could only be broken through **attack**.
It had to be cut.
But as one who wielded the power of the End, I could neither attack nor break it.
Perhaps—
‘Destructions can’t attack each other.’
That structure must apply here.
The problem was that I had already accepted the End.
I myself had become an incarnation of Destruction, making it nearly impossible to separate myself from the End.
‘It’s not that my rank is insufficient to reach him. It’s that he’s not the kind of enemy I’ve ever faced.’
Wilhelm’s rank.
And my own rank, now finally complete.
If this were a simple contest of force, Annihilation would not be our match in depth.
But this was something different.
A different kind of existence altogether.
I simply did not yet understand it.
I did not yet know how to wield the End properly.
Just then, Annihilation babbled on, inadvertently dropping hints.
‘Only through vassals…’
Meaning that attacks through vassals were possible.
Was that why the Destruction that invaded Pangaenia long ago created the **Four Calamities**?
Perhaps vassals were needed not for strength, but for function.
However, all my vassals had fallen.
I could neither resurrect them immediately nor find new ones.
I closed my eyes and thought.
What should I do?
How should I wield the End to break this deadlock?
This required an entirely different line of thought from anything before.
But clearly, the answer lay within me.
It had to.
Because within the house I built, **all possibilities existed**.
‘I created my own Truth.’
Home.
It was another Truth.
Not Heaven’s Truth—**my** Truth.
And within my Truth, there was no such thing as impossibility.
When I opened my eyes again—
…I smiled faintly.
‘Then I’ll make a vassal.’
The answer had been there all along.
There was no need to search elsewhere.
I would simply create a vassal.
And in fact, I could create one right now.
One that—
No Destruction had ever experienced before.
The **strongest vassal** imaginable.
*
*
He closes his eyes.
A sign of surrender.
But as if nothing had happened—
He grinned.
“Thanks for giving me the answer.”
What was he thanking me for?
Ah.
For telling him why he was sealed?
But knowing it didn’t change the outcome.
If he had even a single remaining vassal, he might struggle—but—
He had none left.
And it wasn’t as though one could suddenly create vassals out of nothing.
He must have realized there was no answer.
So why smile?
Self-mockery? Resignation? Enlightenment?
At that moment—
Crunch!
One of the Zodiac vassals suddenly burst apart.
Crunch!
Crack!
Again and again.
The vassals were erased without any chance to resist.
Annihilation’s eye trembled violently.
For a moment, he could not comprehend what was happening.
No—his perception wavered because something impossible was occurring.
There was nothing around.
No vassals of the End existed at all.
So there should have been nothing capable of attacking him or his vassals.
Yet there was only one reason they were being attacked.
—…You made the End… into a vassal…?
The End itself had become Phantom’s vassal.
This was fundamentally different from the End merely lending Phantom its power.
It meant that the End—a Destruction—had become **subordinate** to Phantom.
And thus, it had escaped the karmic limits of Destruction.
A Destruction, by nature, is a destroyer subordinate to no one but Heaven.
There was no precedent.
Never before had a Destruction become someone’s vassal.
Even if such a thing were possible, to wield a Destruction as a vassal, one would need to be an existence of higher rank than the End itself.
A smaller being cannot contain a greater one.
That was why it was baffling.
Only Heaven was greater than Destruction.
—This is… impossible…
It should not exist.
It must not exist.
Crunch!
The final vassal burst apart and vanished.
All twelve vassals were erased in futility before a single, overwhelmingly powerful vassal.
Reduced to dust by one that could rightfully be called the **strongest vassal**.
Sss—
The face of the End turned toward Annihilation.
The Seal of the Twelve Divine Kings had already been cut away.
Yet Annihilation’s eye was not looking at the End.
It was staring at the man who had subjugated the End as a vassal.
Regardless, the End opened its mouth.
And just before it devoured Annihilation—
—You…
…Annihilation realized it.
That the meaning of thirteen was not limited to end, ill omen, or misfortune.
That the number thirteen held **another meaning**.
An existence vast enough to make the End a vassal—
No matter how he thought about it, there was only one.
Thirteen.
It is—
—Be…tray…al…!
…The number of **traitor**.
