[499] Despair. Despair. (2)
Despair. Despair (2)
A tier‑2 monster: Puraka.
A gigantic reptile with three heads, each horn spewing flame, virulent poison, and lightning — a supreme beast.
True to Puraka's reputation as Julu's most powerful summoning, it did not flinch even against Paiel's triangular Mara Kali.
A pall of poisonous mist spread, flame-colored hues filled the air, and streaks of white lightning flashed.
Each time the spectacle flared, the wallpaper‑like markings carved into Kali's shadow‑black body showed themselves.
Those whirlpool‑like patterns absorbed Puraka's magic and exhaled it as black smoke.
It was the aura of death.
"You are stupid, human."
Kali swung the Sword of Death, severing all three of Puraka's necks at once, then charged at Julu.
Kali's four great implements — sword, shield, whip, and skull — each symbolized death, and their effects — severing, disease, pain, decay — left no mercy for a human.
"I will take your life."
As Kali's whip snaked around Julu's wrist, excruciating pain lanced through her.
The disappearance of Puraka's corpse meant the summoning link had been broken.
But Julu's expression didn't change.
She revealed nothing.
Expressions are a form of communication possible only when there is someone to witness them.
Even bound by the whip of pain, Julu's composure made Kali frown.
"An insolent human."
It wasn't mere restraint or stoicism.
It was as if a chasm yawned inside her, sucking every emotion into it — a strange void.
"Death comes for everyone, in any case."
With the skull leading, Kali charged again, sword and shield swinging.
The disease essence worsened Julu's body, the rot essence ate at her cells, and the black blade traced a grotesque arc toward her throat.
Posmeteri.
A golden spacetime bird shot up toward the ceiling and the blade pierced straight through Julu's neck.
Having slipped into another spacetime, Julu freed her wrist from the whip and retreated to the very end of the trailer.
Focusing one's mind while bound by a whip of agony is impossible for an ordinary human.
Kali reconsidered the human called Julu.
'Severely deficient,' she thought.
Absolute negation.
She denied pain.
She denied death.
She even denied herself.
For someone standing at the center of the cycle, any fixed reality did not exist; thus even pain was not real.
It was the exact opposite of Gaold's asceticism — fundamentally different, and therefore inhuman.
Suck—suck—suck—suck—suck.
The only visible change in Julu as she looked at Kali was the increasingly rapid sound of her sucking on a pacifier.
"A pity, human. How did you come to be like this?"
'I can't win like this.'
Paiel's triangular Mara was a natural predator of all life.
'Do I have to abandon life?'
A ridiculous strategy, but the first thought that surfaced in Julu's mind was precisely that.
Suck.
With one sharp sound, Julu stopped sucking.
When the thought that had been cycling through everything halted, Julu's true face emerged for the first time.
'How immense.'
Kali realized that what she'd been fighting until now was only the shell of the human called Julu.
The entity hidden within that endless flow of the cycle shared Kali's nature — the sort that could be called a death god: bleak, and in some ways almost mystical. A Middle Eastern syllable, like the first line of a chant, slipped from Julu's mouth.
"What humans fear most is not death."
Kali understood Julu's words as if they were her native tongue.
"Is that so? Then what do you fear most?"
"Life that carries death on its back."
Julu summoned her sangsa.
"Erga."
A black bird materialized and alighted on Julu's shoulder.
She had first summoned a tier‑10 monster at the age of only three.
At the sight of that small, unimpressive familiar, Kali's face registered bafflement.
"You expect to face me with just that?"
Julu ignored the taunt and continued.
"Humans are strange. They know death and yet deny it. In truth, death is absent from their lives. Even knowing they could die at this very moment, they still believe it will never happen."
"You mean you're different?"
"Death is…"
Julu watched Erga's wings beating above her head, then turned her gaze away.
An indescribably gloomy aura gathered in her eyes.
"It has always ridden on my back."
"Nonsense."
Kali readied herself to charge with the skull once more.
Erga flew in front of Julu and opened its broad beak, repeating her words.
"Death has always ridden on my back."
Kali's advance halted.
Erga's voice matched Julu's perfectly.
"This monster was the first creature I succeeded in summoning. Its name is Erga."
"So? You intend to greet the end and die with it?"
"Summoning magic is performed through a sangsa. A sangsa has three stages: imprinting, empathy, and annihilation."
Julu regarded herself and the beak‑pecking Erga with cold eyes.
"Erga was the first being that came to me. We were always together. That was imprinting. We came to know each other. That was empathy. And finally…"
When Julu turned back toward Kali, her face was already unnatural.
Extreme loneliness.
Her expression was blank, like the landscape of a planet that had never been visited by another being since its birth.
Kali understood the source of the dissonance she'd felt the first time Julu showed her true face.
There was no love.
She was a human sculpted from absolute lack of affection.
"Shall I tell you something interesting?"
Black tears of blood began to stream from under Julu's crazed eyes.
"At the time I was three years old. I don't remember exactly, but it was around then. And I…"
Erga's black body cracked and was crushed with a sickening crunch.
The black mass, mashed like ground meat, writhed and then unfurled like a scroll into a gigantic form.
Kyeeeeeee!
A grotesque scream that shook Sion tore out as a ten‑meter reaper revealed itself.
The robe's waist was unnaturally long, the head hanging low.
Bony skeletal fingers dangled from the long sleeve tips, lending a chill to the air.
Because the robe absorbed nearly a hundred percent of light, it felt as if a hole had been torn in space itself.
Called a tier‑1 monster, a death‑mage lich, Julu had never encountered a lich in her life.
Thus the lich was a projection of her own avatar.
It was the manifestation of the warped desire that had brutally killed the first life she ever met.
"Erga!"
Clutching her chest and shedding bloody tears, Julu's face emptied of soul as if representing the lich's hidden face.
Hrooooooo!
Kali felt an unfamiliar emotion emanating from the lich.
The vast terror she had encountered only in her master Paiel swelled inside her.
Death is the end of life, but not necessarily the end of everything.
The true end lies beyond death: eternal loneliness.
The aura of loneliness pouring from the lich made Kali tremble.
"Ergaaaaaa!"
Julu's voice was distant and faint, as if rolling in from the netherworld, yet it struck with painful clarity.
She had killed it.
Believing that taking a life would keep it by her forever, she had strangled the throat of the first friend she met.
'Impossible.'
Kali contorted her face in fury and swung all four implements at once.
'No human can overcome the fear of death.'
Death is the ruler of living beings.
"Vanish!"
Kali's sword sliced through the lich's robe, but the blade itself was cut.
There is nothing to slice in a hollow void.
Hrooooooo!
The lich thrust out its gaunt hands and enveloped Kali.
* * *
"This is quite… interesting."
Mumyeong, a Nephilim born of the Angel of Achievement and Garas, muttered to himself outside the Stop barrier Armin had cast.
The realm he'd presumably reached — the light‑speed domain — was a territory that, in Armin's world, only he was thought to have attained.
Even for Mumyeong, born with endless lust for achievement, it lay beyond dozens of barriers.
But his insight, far superior to ordinary humans', made those barriers merely a matter of time.
"Ohho. Aha. I see."
Armin felt goosebumps watching him nod over and over, his sword dangling at his side.
Though Mumyeong had made no overt move, every time his eyes flashed that inner radiance Armin grew more certain.
Growth? Awakening? Evolution?
He was approaching and swallowing stages at a speed no human concept could explain.
'Damn it! At this rate…!'
Just as Armin decided she had to gamble, a dark wind slid past Mumyeong's side.
Clang!
Mumyeong easily lifted his sword to parry Kuan's attack and launched a counter.
Like a scholar stepping out for air from old research, the face pressing Kuan back remained utterly calm.
'You bastard.'
Kuan disliked that expression.
Here he was, risking his life in a duel, and his opponent looked half‑asleep.
Did Mumyeong regard the clash of blades as child's play?
'You belittle the sword?'
Kuan drew gravitic force from all around and made his body tremble.
His body, vibrating side to side, flashed past Mumyeong at one instant.
"Gah!"
Dozens of wounds blossomed across Kuan as blood spurted out.
He rolled to the ground to regain his footing and glared at Mumyeong in disbelief.
"This is… too shallow."
Mumyeong wiped the blood from his blade and turned his head.
"Next time, it will be a little deeper."
Kuan ground his teeth behind clenched lips.
The dozens of small wounds he'd taken in exchange for avoiding a fatal strike had cut at his pride in his swordsmanship.
As Kuan pushed off the ground and sprang forward, Mumyeong charged as well.
The two swordsmen collided head‑on; what looked like a brief contest soon yielded new scars on Kuan's body within seconds.
Shiina, watching from inside the Stop veil, hurried to her feet.
"We have to get out!"
Kuan could not subdue Mumyeong.
Even if they risked losing techniques, ending the fight early was the best judgment.
At that moment Armin grabbed Shiina's waist and pulled her down to the floor.
"Oppa?"
"...."
When Armin gave no answer, Shiina finally understood what she was thinking.
"Onii‑chan! Let go!"
But no matter how she struggled, Armin didn't release her.
Having already mastered Flicker magic, Mumyeong would not let any of the three inside escape.
If Kuan could somehow create an opening, taking Shiina and running would be the best option.
"Onii‑chan! Onii‑chan!"
Shiina shook her body violently to wrench Armin free.
Then, abruptly as if frozen, she stopped and widened her eyes, staring ahead.
A smile had formed at the corner of Mumyeong's mouth after he'd sliced Kuan.
"Aha — so this is the taste."
Kuan stood, briefly showed his back, then turned with a bitter expression.
At last, a killing blow — his side split open and crimson blood gushed out like a fountain.
"Haa."
A sigh of rage escaped him.
"This is driving me insane."