Ch. 009: Welcome to the Closest Place to Hell (7): The Last
Dssal watched.
At last, he had reached the main battlefield.
And truthfully, it was everything one would expect — heavy, grim, and suffocating.
He slipped expertly into the cover of a heap of corpses. He wouldn't be joining this fight — not when it would only get him killed. Afterall, survival was the damn point.
At least the battlefield offered him mercy: the dead were still fresh enough to mask his scent without making him overly miserable about it.
A good seat. An ugly one, but a good one.
Unfortunately, his vantage point — roughly fifty metres out — left much to be desired.
'I'm basically blind.'
The figures who had stepped forward were barely distinguishable from one another. Three of them, by his count. Silhouettes shifting in the dark, swallowed by shadow and smoke.
He couldn't make out their faces at all. But in the same breath — it didn't matter.
From the original game, he remembered this scene far too well: Volus was disappointed. Kahrdan, the hero among them, was already practically incapacitated at this point. The mere fact others had stepped forward meant very little. They wouldn't survive.
No — to Dssal, they were worse, fools. Unredeemable morons who couldn't tell the difference between heaven and earth. In their position, he would have vanished the moment Volus arrived. Much less step up.
"EVERYONE!"
A shout cut across the chaos.
'Oh? Isn't that?'
He somewhat recognised it.
A familiar voice — coquettish, almost playful — but spoken now with a conviction that struck deeper than its surface politeness suggested. It was the same voice he'd heard earlier, back when he first arrived in Pantheon.
"HAVE YOU NO SHAME? IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY, YOU TREMBLE LIKE LAMBS ON A CHOPPING BLOCK — WHILE A FELLOW MAN FIGHTS VALIANTLY TO PROTECT YOU!"
The words cracked like a whip.
Dssal saw it for what it was. But the others couldn't — or wouldn't. The voice was feminine and light, polished in its cadence, yet it struck something buried in those three hundred wavering hearts. Something uncomfortably human.
They were cowards — that much was true. But they were still people. And without power, they'd never lost the capacity for shame.
"Damn."
"She is right."
"We are all pathetic."
Whispers bled into murmurs. Murmurs into cries. The crowd stirred.
How was it that easy. Dssal remarked but still, he didn't find it too strange.
Truth, no matter how cruelly wielded, always carried weight.
They were now Arcane Bearers — many born to noble houses, raised to understand the demands of power. Those who wielded it were supposed to maintain control. And yet here they stood: frozen, useless, humiliated by the blunt honesty of some random girl's voice.
Commoners and nobles alike. All of them moved.
It was almost hypnotic — not just shame stirring in them, but something else. A pull. A force. Like her words had left them no choice but to obey. As of the very act of questioning her had been quietly stripped away.
No one seemed to notice the compulsion threading through her words.
Well.
Except ofcourse him.
Dssal's brow furrowed.
'Again and again that goth girl, huh.'
Years spent navigating office politics had given him a finely-tuned instinct for pressuring people.
'She keeps causing trouble.'
Isolde was clearly rallying them — but for whose benefit? Her earlier actions had proved her intelligence to be enough to understand marshalling a few hundred panicked Bearers wouldn't save anyone from the Dire Wolf King. If anything, it would only hasten their deaths.
So why—
Dssal swept a slow glance across the field.
Silhouettes. Dozens upon dozens of them — shifting, blending, bleeding into one another in the dark.
And in that darkness, Kahrdan's flames flickered — and then died. The light that had held the night at arm's length simply went out, leaving something heavier in its place. The air thickened. It pressed against lungs like a physical weight, as though the darkness itself was aligned with Volus, breathing on his behalf.
Midnight.
Dssal stared at the space where the flame had been. Now, even to him, her effort seemed entirely unnecessary — unless—
'Yeah. It's probably that.'
"EVEN AS YOU FACE CERTAIN DEATH — REMEMBER YOU ARE WARRIORS! BRAVE ENOUGH TO FACE THIS! YOU TRUST YOUREELF YOUR HOUSEHOLD SOLDIERS TO DO THE SAME FOR YOU! A PRIDE OF YOUR RESPECTIVE FAMILIES! REMEMBER YOUR SIGNIFICANCE — DON'T LET FEAR BREAK YOU! FIGHT! FIGHT! STAND TOGETHER! RISE!!!!"
"YEAH!"
"YEAH!"
"YEAH!"
"RISE!"
It carried on.
The rally swelled. Eyes locked on her figure as she moved — toward Volus, or so it seemed at first. Then Dssal caught it: a subtlety that tried to slip past him.
Her feet were angled wrong.
Not toward Volus at all. But toward the dying ember that was Kahrdan.
Of course.
She wasn't rallying to win. That was impossible. She was rallying to escape — and she was using every weak-willed Bearer on this field as cannon fodder, trading their lives for the seconds she needed to drag Kahrdan out of the Dire Wolf's jaws.
All those soaring words. Empty. Every last one.
How terrific.
Dssal squinted through the distance. At last, her face sharpened into clarity — and he caught it: the faint, deliberate curve of a smirk at the corner of her lips. Then her gaze swept the battlefield, slow and practiced, as though cataloguing.
It paused at the mound of corpses hiding him.
She winked.
It could have been a coincidence. But nine times out of ten, she knew exactly where he was.
Damn. I underestimated this woman.
She wasn't just dangerous. She was a threat.
Dssal forced mana down his spell pathways.
The battlefield had changed shape. She almost certainly wasn't meant to be here — it was his earlier warning that had caused this. A stupid butterfly effect, and now the variables were off in ways he hadn't accounted for.
"Blink."
He aimed an arrow toward Kahrdan's head.
He had to interfere — by force, if necessary. If Kahrdan survived without him doing anything, the credit would go elsewhere. Worse, Isolde would walk away the victor. He needed an alibi. Not a coward lurking in a pile of corpses, waiting to reap benefits, but someone who had actively tried to save Kahrdan.
That was the story, anyway.
Flash!
In the middle of the field, the Wolf King's eyes sharpened. They snapped first toward Dssal's former hiding spot — tracking the residue of the spell — then swept back across the battlefield.
He couldn't say why, but something had snagged in the air. A distinctive current of power. Unusual. Out of place.
In the next second—
Kahrdan was gone.
"Kekeke…"
Volus chuckled. But the smile didn't reach his eyes.
No wonder they'd dared challenge him like this — it had been a distraction the whole time. Keep him occupied while their champion slipped free. Secure the king. Simple enough strategy.
The piercing gaze roved and then settled on the woman who had somehow managed to blunt the edge of his murderous will — only to find that she and her two attendants were already drifting, step by careful step, toward the treeline.
Volus' laughter grew louder.
The atmosphere thickened further — pressing, crushing, almost audible. He, the great him, had been outwitted by his food.
The mood broke open.
The crowd of Bearers felt it before they understood it. Isolde's hold on them lifted like a spell dispelled — and the absence of it left them cold. The fog of righteousness cleared, and what replaced it was the bare, ugly reality of where they were standing.
They couldn't touch Asren. Much less the thing above Asren. They should have run when they had the chance. They'd wasted it. The window was gone.
Kiku…
They shivered.
Volus, thoroughly displeased, laughed harder. An agonising sound — not cruel in the way a human cruelty sounds, but vast, impersonal, like something geological deciding to move.
Their legs buckled. They backed away instinctively.
Then he spoke.
"Destructive Shadow Arts: Dark Moon!"
Too late.
A dark mana expanse surged outward, spreading across a full kilometre of ground in seconds. And Volus — massive, elemental Volus — compressed himself. His form shifted, condensed, and settled into something humanoid.
He was serious.
As had been established many times before: beasts only took humanoid form when they intended to fight in earnest. For Volus to do it now meant only one thing. He was planning a massacre.
Dssal exhaled.
His body felt completely hollowed out. Drained in a way that went past muscle and reached something deeper — the kind of exhaustion that follows spending what you don't have.
He'd used Blink to pull Kahrdan clear of Dark Moon's radius. They were beyond its reach. He knew what was about to happen to the ones left inside, and he wasn't relaxed — but he wasn't going back in, either.
The least those Bearers could do was stall. Buy a few more seconds with whatever they had left.
That was all he needed from them.
As Danya had explained it: Blink wasn't teleportation. It was your own body doing the running, only pushed past its natural ceiling for the duration of the spell. When it ended, everything caught up to you at once. And with his mana reserves already scraped dry and his physical attributes barely above average, Dssal calculated he might manage one more activation before losing consciousness entirely.
Hopefully Volus won't bother chasing.
Panting, Dssal gathered himself. He called up the quest window.
[ONGOING QUEST]
Survive the Tutorial Trial: Endure the Dire Wolf Tide for 2 Extra Minutes
Time Remaining: 59 — 58 — 57 seconds
Reward: ???
He might actually make it. Unlike Kahrdan, Dssal understood Volus' disposition. Post-massacre, it was unlikely the Wolf King would immediately come hunting for stragglers — not when Dssal had deliberately blinked them into a direction holding forty people at most. Low priority. Low interest.
He let his guard ease, just slightly.
Closed his eyes.
Then, a moment later, he glanced down at Kahrdan — who had crumpled against his side, close enough that the warmth of him was still present despite everything.
A man of strong ideals. A tough front. Iron in him, Dssal had always thought — even from watching through a screen.
Now, like a puppy that had run itself into the ground. Passed out. Bleeding seriously. Still clenching his sword with both hands.
Scary… If I'd accidentally tried to pull that sword away, I'm not confident I'd still have my head.
A bead of sweat rolled down his cheek.
But — on the bright side. He was the one who had saved Kahrdan. When Kahrdan woke, that debt would sit squarely on his shoulders. And debts, Dssal knew, were a currency he understood far better than swords or spells.
He smirked.
Then, with one last lazy sweep of the surrounding area, he closed his eyes again.
Tick. Tock.
Time passed.
The quest window ticked down to three seconds. His legs were leaden, fatigue sunk all the way through to the marrow. But he'd made it. He had actually made it through.
2 — 1 — 0.
BURRTTTTTT!
A deafening sound reverberated across all of Lily. The Star Guide materialized in the sky as the darkness peeled away, devoured by the bright arrival of the sun. Light crashed back into the world like a physical force, washing the battlefield in something that almost resembled mercy.
[Kik Kik Kik… Seems not everyone in this batch is hopeless, after all.]
The voice rang across the world — mocking, almost playful, and carrying enough weight to be heard in every corner of Lily whether you wanted to hear it or not.
Dssal cracked one eye open.
The timer had vanished.
In its place, a new window.
[NEW PERSONAL QUEST ISSUED]
Survive the Aftermath of the Dire Wolf King's Rage
Volus, enraged, has forced his generals to take human form. They have already infiltrated the ranks of the Bearers.
Survive — without letting them discover that you know.
Time Remaining: ???
Reward: ???
What the hell.
Dssal's smirk froze on his face as the Star Guide's voice continued rolling across the sky in the background, carrying all the warmth and comfort of a funeral bell.
HOW TO USE A WORLD'S APOCALYPSE
(END OF CHAPTER NINE)