The Berserker’s Second Playthrough Novel - Chapter 74

Chapter 74
## Chapter 74: Every Moment, Every Time (3)

On a superficial level, the distinction between an upper demon and a high demon was merely a second horn. However, the true disparity between the two was as vast as the gulf between the heavens and the earth.

While an upper demon represented a being that had reached its peak potential, a high demon was a creature that had stepped onto the path of transcendence.

Upper demons lacked individual names, but high demons possessed them. Upper demons led mindless monsters, whereas high demons commanded other demons. The abilities of an upper demon were, at most, a collection of lethal tricks; in contrast, a high demon toyed with the fundamental laws and principles of reality. While an army might suffice to topple an upper demon, bringing a legion against a high demon was a recipe for total annihilation.

This was the reason Kadim had arrived so thoroughly prepared. He had steeled his spirit for a grueling war of attrition and arranged every defense he could conceive. He had exhausted every resource at his disposal, refusing to relax his vigilance for even a heartbeat.

Yet, all that preparation and resolve had been rendered futile by a foe that defied every shred of logic.

“Hrraaagh!”

――――――― Kwa—jik!!

Following a savage exchange that left his bones splintered, he managed to cleave the creature’s skull once more. Yet, the rotating hands of a clock nullified his progress yet again. The demon, its mask clinging to its face, drew in his life force and offered a mocking, rhythmic clap.

* My praise… This time… you have slain ‘the me from 7 seconds ago’… Now… the time… has come.

[……Hold on, Kadim! ……I suspected it would…… ……Something within your knowledge…… Finally encountering a great demon as one……]

“……”

Kadim tightened his grip until his knuckles turned white. The crimson film coating his sight grew more opaque. The chaotic murmurs in his mind were slowly coalescing into distinct speech. His state of berserk fury was on the verge of a total explosion.

Tschik—!

Kadim tore his own thumbnail out by the root. He used the sharp spike of agony to force his consciousness back to reality. Luckily, the mental images faded for a moment, and the bloody shadows obscuring his vision cleared slightly.

He drew a ragged breath, fixed in a hateful stare at the entity.

“Hoo… You have a disgusting persistence. I feel as though I’ve ended your life five times already…”

* To be precise, it isn’t that my vitality is stubborn. ‘The version of me at that specific second’ truly perished, after all.

“……Save the nonsense. Tell me, how many more versions of you do I have to butcher before you stay dead?”

The question wasn’t meant to elicit a real reply. However, the demon, tracing the outline of a clock upon its mask, gave a jubilant answer.

* Every moment, every time.

“……”

* If you wish to wipe me from existence, you must execute ‘the me from every moment, every time,’ you miserable insect.

A sense of arrogant comfort radiated from the demon’s high-pitched voice. It was the calm of the invincible. The serenity of a creature existing on a superior plane, certain that no bug crawling at its feet could ever inflict harm, regardless of how much it struggled.

Kadim let out a dry, mirthless laugh.

It was preposterous. A power that granted a being infinite lives, with a new one being generated every passing second. Of all the high demon traits he had encountered, this was uniquely and unnervingly dominant. Killing it five times with every ounce of his strength was like trying to drain the ocean with a single spoon.

Still, there had to be more to the mystery. Even ‘great demons’ that appeared godlike and untouchable had methods by which they could be destroyed. There had to be a flaw, a hidden vulnerability.

Perhaps shattering that pocket watch was the key.

“……”

Regrettably, that intuition proved incorrect.

Kadim had already pulverized the device three times. Each time, just like the demon’s own skin and bone, it reconstructed itself in a flash. It likely wasn’t an enchanted object or a magical tool—it seemed more like a physical extension of the demon’s innate power.

For the moment, no brilliant strategy formed in his mind, no matter how hard he pushed his intellect. His bloodlust was beginning to cool, like a piece of forged iron losing its heat. The demon tapped the second hand of the clock face etched onto its mask, beckoning him forward.

* Are you spent? Delaying is pointless. In the time you’ve stood there in shock, ’21 seconds’ worth of myself’ have already been brought into being.

“……”

Kadim forced himself back into focus. For now, he needed to replenish his bloodlust, continue the assault, and hunt for a crack in the armor. He reached for a container of demon blood with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.

In that heartbeat, the demon’s mask flared with a sickly blue radiance.

* I have been patient with you once or twice. How much longer did you believe I would permit such a transparent tactic?

At the demon’s command, the gathered demonic energy on the ceiling cascaded downward in a violent torrent.

――――― Kwaaaaa—!!

A massive weight of demonic power slammed into Kadim. The vial he held shattered, as did the ones strapped to his belt and hidden in his coat. The overwhelming force burst his leather flask, soaking his attire in a deep crimson. Blood began to pool around him in a wasteful display.

Kwaaaaa, whooong—

The demonic power consumed the blood entirely and evaporated into the atmosphere. The engravings on the ceiling took on a fresh, vivid red tint.

* From this point on, you shall face me using nothing but the raw strength of your own meat. I wonder if you are even capable of resisting ‘this version of me’ without your demon blood… Oh, my anticipation is nearly unbearable.

Kadim pushed himself up from the floor with unsteady limbs. The outlook had turned even more grim. His supply of blood was gone, his fury was draining away, his sight was turning red, and the voices of madness were digging into his consciousness…

[……Impossible…… Hiss, I am telling the truth………… You will understand eventually……]

Yet, rather than surrendering to the void of despair, he wrapped his fingers around the handle of his blade.

The demon blood was right there. It was right in front of him, contained within that mocking mask—he would split it wide and seize the blood gathering on that flayed face.

“Hrraaagh!!”

Kadim let out a roar and sprinted toward the demon.

He wove through the lingering trails of the scythe, dodged traps of pure malice and shadowy bolts, stepped aside from returning phantoms, and chased the demon as it flickered through space in the blink of an eye. Even as his vital organs felt ready to rupture, even as his sinews screamed from the strain of being torn, he refused to halt. Everything was for a single drop, just a solitary smear of blood on his steel.

It was a lost cause.

His thoughts became sluggish. His perceptions grew dull. His vitality drained away. His speed bottomed out. Deprived of his bloodlust, Kadim was no longer a match for the high demon. He couldn’t even draw a single bead of blood, let alone get close enough to strike.

The demon visibly relaxed, moving with a lazy grace. Like a bored child playing with a beetle, it casually created a multitude of illusions, savoring the sight of the berserker’s frantic, doomed efforts within its reach.

“Huff, huff, huff…”

Tschik, tschk!

Even the act of tearing out his remaining nails failed to wake him. His eyes were failing, his ears were losing sound. He felt himself drowning in a thickening red swamp.

The visages of his former brothers-in-arms drifted through Kadim’s mind.

If Melissa were present, she would have turned the demon to ash with her flames and bound its limbs in place.

If Gordon were present, he would have restored me with divine light and sapped the demon’s strength.

If Cyril were present, she would have used her hexes to choke off the demon’s power at its root.

If Gale were present… he would have already identified the demon’s secret and pierced its heart with his holy sword.

But those were merely weak, pathetic fantasies. Kadim knew the hard reality. The true cause of his descent into failure wasn’t the lack of allies.

He simply wasn’t strong enough.

He lacked the power to claim the blood from that masked visage and destroy ‘every moment, every time.’

[……One day in the lands where the sun never sets…… ……I hope we find each other again……]

The last strand of his composure snapped. His world was submerged in scarlet, the shrieks of insanity stabbing through his mind. As he plummeted into the depths of the red mire, Kadim whispered one final, desperate prayer.

Even if his mind was lost, let his body strike at that vile demon until the end.

Atala, let him one day stand before that cursed deity and crush its head.

And please…

Let the place he reached a moment from now not be a locked room marked with ‘Game Over.’

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Pebilatus squinted at the shifting patterns on its mask.

“Kraaaagh!”

* ……

There was a discrepancy. This was different from the fragments of that old, exhausted dream.

The massive fighter it faced once more did not radiate the suffocating intent to kill or the overwhelming aura from 300 years ago. At his peak, when he was saturated with blood, he had seemed like a threat—but compared to the mountain-sized pressure of their initial meeting, he was less than a small mound of dirt.

Pebilatus quickly deduced the reason.

‘I have ascended too far. I am strong enough now to see this beast as nothing more than a pitiable maggot…’

After passing away in the demon realm and descending into the pits of hell, it had experienced an impossible evolution. It had risen from a common lesser demon to a high demon wielding power beyond the mortal veil.

A man views the objects of his youth as tiny. Having evolved to the point of being reborn as a different species, its outlook had naturally transformed.

“Kraaaagh!!”

Without the essence of blood, the beast was merely a noisy pest. It was comical that it had once shivered in terror at such a creature. Ending its life now would be simpler than crushing a bug under a heel.

However, Pebilatus had no desire to end the beast’s life just yet.

There had been a strange sensation only a few moments prior. A sharp ache and a foreign presence pushing from the center of its forehead.

This was the sign of a second horn beginning to grow.

The dark pits behind the mask flared with intensity.

To rise from the rank of high demon to the next echelon usually required the slaughter of millions of sentient beings or the collapse of a whole nation. Yet now, simply through the torment of a single mortal, a new horn was about to break the skin? The ‘agony and hopelessness’ of superior beings carried far more weight, but… could this maggot truly possess such internal value?

It was beyond logic, but it was a chance that could not be wasted.

The rank following ‘high demon’ was ‘great demon.’ The absolute peak that all of demonkind worshipped and feared.

Beyond the status, there were endless practical reasons to seek that title. Its current gift, the ‘Pocket Watch of Life’s Moments,’ seemed all-powerful but was riddled with constraints.

As noted, it didn’t truly grant the lives of ‘every moment.’ It could only affect living organisms and demonic energy, having no power over inanimate matter or different types of mana. Even then, it required a significant investment against high resistance, and it was useless against beings of a higher tier.

But if it could evolve into a ‘great demon’…

‘……I would achieve nearly perfect immortality and command the flow of time for all of existence without any boundary.’

Thus, the decision was made. It would torture the beast to the breaking point, then snuff it out like a bug in the midst of its greatest sorrow.

…Exactly as it had been made to suffer 300 years ago.

“Kraaaagh!”

Having gathered enough demonic essence, it could now influence the beast’s timeline as well. If the fighter suddenly withered into old age and collapsed while struggling so hard, he would undoubtedly experience the ultimate despair.

Pebilatus smiled cruelly and gave the pocket watch a sharp shake.

Ting—

However, the hands of the clock stalled, and the beast showed almost no signs of aging.

“Krahk, kraaaagh!!!”

Instead, his hair and facial growth became more chaotic, and he began to fight with an even more primal, animalistic savagery. Furthermore, the ink of the tattoos covering his torso began to pulse with a terrifying red light.

Woooom—

Pebilatus felt a surge of alarm and quickly wound the watch backward. Fortunately, it managed to return the beast to its previous state before he could tap into the power of those marks.

Pebilatus contemplated why the attempt had failed.

* ……

It soon understood the limitation. This power could only advance a target’s age up to the point of their natural death. This meant the beast’s remaining time on earth was already incredibly short.

It wasn’t a major setback. If advancing time failed, it would simply reverse it. Even the most savage berserker had once been a small, weak, and frightened child.

‘He shows little fear even when I break his limbs and rend his skin now, but if I turn him back into a child and do those things…’

It could barely contain its glee at the thought. Showing its blood-red teeth in a moment of pure joy, Pebilatus shook the watch counter-clockwise with all its might.

It would realize its error soon enough.

A lethal, irreversible, and ruinous error.

It was only after a few more seconds had ticked by.

Initially, the plan seemed to work perfectly. Spin, spin. The hands moved without resistance this time. The beast’s wild mane grew short, and his momentum began to fail. The markings and battle scars faded from his skin. The insanity in his gaze vanished, and his frame began to shrink.

The beast was peeling away his monstrous nature layer by layer, returning to a more human shape. Pebilatus stood back and traced the clock pattern on its mask, waiting to greet a terrified, helpless barbarian boy.

But when the reversal of time pushed past a specific threshold, something entirely nightmare-inducing occurred.

A divine manifestation of pure ruin appeared without a word of warning, taking the place of a child’s face.

* ……?

In a heartbeat, the very oxygen in the room seemed to vanish.

The hands of the watch froze as if they were a lie. Pebilatus knit its brow. But it wasn’t merely the watch—the flow of time across the entire world felt as if it had hit a wall. In the heavy, terrifying silence, the demon slowly lifted its eyes to look at the beast.

* ……Hm?

For some reason, the beast was even larger and more imposing than he had been moments ago. The very air around him was different. But with a single look, it was clear that it wasn’t just his size or his aura—something at the very core of his being had shifted entirely.

Just as it wondered what had changed, the realization hit like a hammer.

A tension so heavy it felt as if someone were squeezing its heart until it burst. A suffocating pressure like a tightenening noose. A crushing burden like a titan in iron boots standing on its neck. A killing intent so sharp it felt like ten thousand swords were skinning its hide and hacking its bones.

The horror born from those combined visions took root. Teeth began to chatter, nausea swelled, tears and wails threatened to break out, and an instinctual urge to pray to a savior emerged. It was an all-consuming dread.

* Uh, uhh, uhk, uhk…

This was a feeling it hadn’t known since its transformation into a high demon. Pebilatus was in disbelief. It made the sound of a strangled animal, trying to convince itself it was an illusion, a sudden dive back into that old memory.

But a voice it had never heard, and the events manifesting before it, proved this was the cold truth.

“……It has been a long time.”

The beast, his eyes void of life, turned and took a single step forward.

――――― Thud—!

That simple movement caused the demon’s heart to sink into its guts.

A freezing omen of certain death wrapped around its middle like a cold snake. Shaking violently, it stumbled backward, caught its foot on a stone, and fell. Pain flared behind its mask. The demon’s consciousness fell into a void of ancient history, losing its high status and reverting to the lowest, most pathetic creature in the abyss.

* Kee, keee…

Just as it had happened back then, the beast stood over the demon, his shadow covering it like a dark mountain.

“You mentioned that I only need to butcher ‘every moment, every time’?”

Just as it had happened back then, the demon groveled on the ground, its hands bleeding as it clawed at the stone, weeping for its life.

* Keeik, keee… Spare me… I will do anything, anything…

The location, the era, the rank, the appearance, the power—everything was different, yet the demon’s end remained identical. Before this impossible judge, the demon was still nothing more than a speck of dust. No matter how it fought, the hand of death was closing in with no escape.

Exactly as it had occurred in the demon realm 300 years ago.

“……That shouldn’t be too difficult, then.”

――――――― Splut—crack!

The berserker returned from the first playthrough grabbed the high demon’s skull in one hand and crushed it like an eggshell.