The Might of a Bookkeeper

A shrill scream sounded.

Gilgamesh had cut a woman in half, at the hip, and moved on to someone else.

He extended his hand and grabbed their sword, not caring about how it stabbed into his palm. Samael was drove into their head, right between their eyes, and came out the other end.

At the same time, he twisted and pulled the sword out, deflecting several weapons as he rolled along the floor and vaulted upward, his knee connecting with someone's face as his sword chopped at their back.

His wounds were slowly showing signs of healing, but that process was painfully slow.

Even so, he did not care.

He slaughtered and slaughtered and slaughtered, uncaring of anything else.

No matter how many of them came.

Law and his Destroyers, which were now reduced to a measly ten thousand, were finally able to see some traces of victory.

"Follow Gilgamesh! Do what you all do best!" Law raised his fist and the nunchucks clutched within it, goading his men on.

He was also riddled in wounds, and had a severe gash running across his chest, but his fighting spirit was wholly rekindled.

He raced behind Gilgamesh with his Destroyers, and fought tooth and nail alongside them.

Arthur, Merlin and Morgana were yet to move.

"If this keeps up, he'll kill them all." Morgana said, itching to take her staff and join the fight.

"And until he does, we will do nothing," Arthur shot her an intense glare, and she instantly piped down.

"I am not so dishonourable as to strike my opponent while he is engaged in a desperate struggle for his life."

Merlin shook his head with a sigh. "You talk of honour, Arthur, but our opponent knows not of it. Perhaps, for a Demon, you can overlook your honour-"

"Nonsense." Arthur grimaced, and would hear no more of their words.

They watched as Gilgamesh fought.

Despite his situation, he did not cease to absorb souls. He directly devoured some souls, or ripped them to shreds and forcefully refined them.

He did not care to refine those souls down to their essence, and so the soul power he was taking in was even more chaotic and violent.

Even so, he did not care. He stopped suppressing it, and allowed it to influence his energy. His meridians were under intense stress, and his body was also being riddled with wounds from the inside.

Luckily, these wounds were easier to deal with.

With a casual attack, his energy would destroy a kidney or some other organ. His heart had already exploded several times, but he had restored it.

This kind of energy exhaustion was only possible because he was able to continuously absorb raw energy from the Negative Space of the Books, while also utilzing the violent soul power to take some of the strain off his sea of energy.

Even so, the true energy crystals were slowly losing their lustre.

Despite it all, Gilgamesh fought without leaving anything in reserve.

Though it took a very long time, he was able to kill them all.

As he stood in a blank world of white, surrounded by entire continents of corpses, he struggled to get his breathing under control.

His eyes were locked onto the three Bookkeepers, and he would not look away.

Law and the last of his Destroyers, eight thousand of them, came up beside him.

"Do not join me in this battle," Gilgamesh ordered.

Law and the Destroyers seemed hesitant to back off now, as they already knew it was a suicide mission. They were resolved to die, as long as it meant they could fulfill the drive in their souls.

Their inherent natures desired nothing more than violence and destruction, and they would follow Law anywhere as long as he promised them this.

However, Gilgamesh was adamant. Law told them to stand down, and they obeyed.

Gilgamesh climbed to the top of a giant mountain of bodies, and raised his sword toward Arthur.

"You three!" His chest heaved, and he took a deep breath.

"Come!"

Arthur's hand reached for the sword sheathed at his side. The pommel was gold and round, attached to a handle that was wrapped tightly in black leather.

The hilt was also golden, and below it the steel blade was covered in runic symbols of every color imaginable, showing the influence of the Bright Speck.

With the sword in hand, Arthur descended as Merlin and Morgana followed.

"A battle well fought, 11th. You are, if nothing else, an accomplished warrior. That alone is worthy of respect."

Gilgamesh's red eyes dimmed and he brushed aside his messy golden hair that was once black.

It had become chaotic and bloodsoaked after the battle, and had even been cut off at some points.

"I don't care for your respect. Where is my sister?" Gilgamesh asked the question in a tone that sounded more demanding than anything else.

Arthur frowned.

"The 12th is with our Master. She will have already submitted to Master if she is smart, but considering the fact that she weakened herself by idolizing you, I do not think she will. unless forced." Morgana replied with a poisonous smile.

Gilgamesh did not look at her or Merlin.

He knew that they weren't as powerful as Arthur.

He could feel it in his soul. The soul that he no longer recognized.

The soul that belonged to the identity he had unknowingly created by severing himself from who he was.

He was only just beginning to feel it, and it started off by alerting him to Arthur's strength.

Arthur was, like the others, a Bookkeeper. His body was built like a human's, but he was much taller, stronger and had pupils that reflected the pure white of the Bright Speck.

He looked down at Gilgamesh and saw the irrefutable disdain, knowing that Gilgamesh wanted nothing more than to kill all three of them.

Arthur shook his head.

"Very well. I do not wish to destroy the Second Book, so we must battle elsewhere."

"But first," Morgana's figure blinked away, and Gilgamesh's eyes widened into an expression of enraged shock.

"Don't you dare!" He yelled, turning around to see where she was headed.

"Morgana!" Arthur called, but he was too late.

The woman arrived before Law and his Destroyers, staff already aimed.

Gilgamesh roared and aimed his sword, throwing it in a crazed fit of rage. Samael spun through the air toward Morgana.

"For your crimes against the Books, begone."

A dreadful heat surged, and a ball of green fire emerged from the staff, making to consume Law and the others.

They tried to resist, but how could they?

Samael whirred before arriving at Morgana's back, but her staff moved and deflected it.

Gilgamesh called the sword back to him; he was already in the air above Morgana, having jumped from atop the mountain of bodies.

"Twist and Sever!" Morgana aimed her staff at Gilgamesh's arm, and the purest powers of space warped near his shoulder.

Her smug look never left her face, and Gilgamesh was so angry that he ignored the pain, even as his bones were crushed by the force.

"Foolish woman," Merlin growled, and pointes a finger at Gilgamesh.

Arthur's raised hand stopped him in his tracks.

"She chose this."

Gilgamesh's sword reach Morgana, but she defended with her staff. At the same time, there was a snapping sound as his right arm twisted in on itself, breaking almost all of its bones in the process.

Gilgamesh aimed a kick at her torso, and Morgama retreated as two balls of green fire were launched at him, singing his skin and burning his tattered clothes.

He summoned his energy and fueled his recovery, but it was even slower than him trying to heal his current wounds. His arm could not be restored any time soon.

Taking Samael in his left hand, he did not let up. He would not let her increase the distance between them.

However, Morgana effortlessly defended against his attacks and launched some of her own.

Gilgamesh cut apart a ball of fire, sensing flames forking around either side of his blade.

He pressed forward, looking around to see that nothing was left of Law but a few ashes.

"You... bitch!"

Despite the fact that his arm was completely destroyed, Gilgamesh used it to slap Morgana's staff and throw her off.

"Insolent savage!" She raged as she tried to correct her stance, but Samael was already upon her.

Her staff moved, but she was not fast enough to fully defend. The sword missed her neck and cut into her shoulder, so Gilgamesh immediately sent chaotic energy into her body.

The wound widened and bleed profusely, but he could not destroy her shoulder completely.

Even so, he was not deterred. His foot found her stomach at last, and she had the wind knocked from her.

Gilgamesh continued to hammer at her with his sword, taking random swipes at her legs or torso when he saw the opportunity.

Morgana sucked her teeth, "If you two are just going to stand there, then don't blame me if I damage this Book!"

Her staff hit the ground and an explosion of force pushed Gilgamesh back a couple dozen feet.

"Capture and Seal!"

As he was trying to arrest his momentum, stone hands rose from the white ground and grabbed him by the heels, forcing him to fall over on his back. At the same time, more stone hands grabbed him by the wrist and the neck.

Entire arms of stone held him in place, hugging him and pulling him as far to the ground as he could go.

Once he was firmly captured, those stone hands resonated with one another, and created an powerful seal.

Gilgamesh could not easily escape.

The beginning of Morgana's chant alerted him to what was about to happen.

"As conduit of my power, fill the enchanted Staff of Nimue with your power, O Lord of Light!"

Gilgamesh struggled to free himself, but he was unable to in a short time. As Morgana's magical energy swelled, he could feel her strength that was already more than capable of destroying an entire Page.

And it was steadily growing.

"Brightness!!!"

With a powerful cry, Morgana's hand tightened around the staff and she thrust it out in front of her.

It glowed with matchless vibrance and power, and put such a strain on the Negative Space that it cracked open before being eradicated.

"Merlin!" Arthur called, and Merlin immediately knew what to do.

His palm opened and closed, and bright blue energy spread out from it.

When the blankness of the Negative Space cleared, a bright blue barrier replaced it.

Gilgamesh was freed from the seal by the Negative Space's destruction, but it did not even matter that he was.

The miniature bright speck that Morgana had created already reached him.

All he could do was try to defend.

Within the blue barrier, there was an explosion of light so intense that it seemed to match even the Bright Speck.