Chapter 250

The shadow and the colossus of steel clashed.

To restore the world he failed to protect, a warrior who claimed to be a god stood his ground, and against him, the Shadow Lord moved his pitch-black colossal form.

Abandoning his former self, he resolved to remain Saxon’s Dailo willingly.

The truth is always cruel. Not even those who claim to be the sovereigns of truth could be exempt.

Raised as a hero of another realm, I remember the blood spilled in this world. Nor have I forgotten the world I failed to protect. Yet there was nothing I could undo.

The mana filling this world multiplied endlessly, swallowing Dale’s world whole.

And each time, Dale too, as the Shadow Lord, confronted it, scattering darkness and cold.

As the hero said, the mana filling the earth could be the power to restore the world, yet it could also become a weapon driving it toward destruction.

And the hero was willing to use that power as a weapon of apocalypse.

To reclaim the world he had failed to protect.

I couldn’t let that happen. Even if nanomachines swallowed this planet once more and overlaid the landscapes of the past, it would ultimately be nothing but a lie.

There is no such thing as a beautiful lie. Truth and falsehood are not beauty and ugliness.

The world of his past life was destroyed.

That was the inescapable truth, and that was all.

“There’s nothing that can be undone.”

“Ah, is that so?”

The warrior laughed. From within the steel-clad armored weapon, a laugh flowed out as if in utter disbelief.

“I desired only one thing.”

The colossus of steel continued after the laughter.

“What did you desire?”

“Peace.”

“…I too desire the same thing.”

In response to the hero’s words, Dale spoke.

After defeating the Golden Monarch, he thought the final war had finally ended. It hadn’t. Here, now, the two men desired the same thing.

It was time to start a war for peace.

Dale and the Warrior clashed within their world, and the divine sword Bader, left behind in the Grand Hall of Saxony, raised its head.

The knight who had arrived late, following Dale and the Black Duke, was there.

She bore many names: Duchess of Lancaster, wife of the Duke of Saxony. Yet to the man, her name was but one.

“Charlotte Orhart.”

“……”

A daughter whose face he did not even know.

A father whose face she did not know.

Yet recognizing each other was never difficult for the two of them.

“You’ve grown up splendidly.”

Sir Bader of the Divine Sword spoke with feigned indifference. He adjusted his grip on the sword in his hand.

Plum blossom petals scattered. The moment she saw it, she knew. That this was the very divine sword Charlotte had longed for so intensely.

“Why are you pointing that sword at me?”

Charlotte asked back, as if unable to comprehend.

“Because the one here isn’t the real me.”

The divine sword, Bader, answered.

I wished for those of noble character to prevail. That is why, even after this flesh was devoured by my deluded attachments, I never gave up and continued the fight. But seeing that self-proclaimed warrior, I finally understood.

“What do you mean?”

“That day, in the white and dark winter night, I realized the true me had already died.”

“……”

Charlotte bit her lip softly.

“That I, here, have been nothing but a phantom from the very beginning.”

Because she couldn’t possibly not understand its meaning.

“Therefore, I willingly ask you to cut down this winter night’s phantom with your sword.”

Charlotte’s father, the Divine Sword Bardel Orhart, spoke.

At that moment, the world beneath both father and daughter shook.

It was a white and dark winter night.

Just as Dale and the hero could not escape that winter night, neither could the man here.

Petals were drifting down. They were colorless petals.

Within a world filled with black and white, the Divine Sword Bader Orhart gripped his sword anew.

“My, my, I never imagined I’d see Miss Sepia here.”

“…Lady Scarlet.”

The Golden Knights had left the battlefield. But they had not fled.

Just as the two Saxon nobles had sensed the threat in the Great Labyrinth and headed there, they too were heading along the same path.

The Great Hall of Saxony’s Viscountcy.

Right there, Dale and the warrior clashed.

Right there, Charlotte and Sir Bader were clashing.

Lady Scarlet and Sepia, too, clashed within their own world.

The blood-red slaughterhouse and the crystal-clear land crossed endlessly beyond the horizon.

In one place, countless worlds intersected.

“…Blood-Red Lord.”

“Ah, I knew you’d be here.”

And neither the Lord of Fire and Blood, the Crimson Prince, nor Alan of Saxony were exceptions.

The land at dusk, shrouded in a sea of blood and the twilight glow of the poppy, interlocked.

“Can you feel it? Worlds pulsing and trembling as if about to burst, all centered on a single place.”

Worlds intersecting at a single point. Mages of their caliber could not fail to sense it.

“Every mage possesses their own world, and a mage’s training is the very process of perfecting that world.”

The Crimson Orb continued cheerfully.

“A wizard’s ideal is precisely the process of overlaying that world onto reality.”

“……What are you trying to say?”

“Aren’t you curious? Who will survive until the very end, whose world will be the last to overlay this one?”

“So it was all your doing.”

Alan retorted coldly, and the Blood-Red Orb responded with its usual exaggerated smile.

“History is nothing but a canvas upon which the strong endlessly overlay their own worlds.”

The magician, engraving a bloody history onto his own flesh, spoke.

The world of the defeated vanishes, replaced by the world of the victors. That is why, throughout my life, I have yearned for the final painting to be drawn upon history’s canvas. A masterpiece that would not fade, even amidst the storms bearing the name of the apocalypse.

History is the struggle between worlds.

And throughout his life, the Crimson Ball explored the final world that would be etched at the end of that endless struggle.

That was the very truth the Crimson Duke pursued.

“There is no such thing as a world of truth. Even that world we believed we touched that day was ultimately just one fleeting landscape etched into the history you speak of and then vanished.”

“Even if that is so, I care not. For at least the sheer power of that world itself was beyond doubt.”

The Crimson Orb replied.

“We can learn through history. By exploring the worlds endlessly inscribed and erased upon the canvas called the universe, we learn from the past and can finally confront the apocalypse that will come upon the eternal future.”

Hearing that, Allen gave a wry smile.

“There’s one thing I’ve learned about history.”

“Oh, I’d love to hear it.”

“The only fact you can learn from history is that you can learn nothing from history.”

Black Ball said. Before long, ‘Death’ revealed itself beside him.

“It seems our worlds will never truly align.”

Seeing this, the Crimson Orb laughed coldly.

The egg is the world of the bird.

He who seeks to be born must destroy a world.

For Charlotte Orhart, this place was an egg. And for her to be born, this world had to be destroyed.

The Winter Night’s Specter, her father, charged forward, sword in hand.

In a colorless world of black and white, the Winter Night’s Specter scattered petals of steel.

But the sword petals Charlotte Orhart unleashed in response were imbued with a violet light so dazzling it could steal one’s soul.

“Impressive.”

The divine sword Bader spoke, facing the swirling violet petals. Charlotte did not answer.

“Why must you die by my blade?”

She asked back after the silence.

“What does it matter if it’s real or fake?”

“……Please, do not forgive this father.”

“Why should I not forgive you, Father?”

Charlotte asked, almost pleading.

Yet her sword did not falter. Nor did the divine blade, Bader.

Like the divine sword Bader, the specters who could not forget that winter night clashed.

The colossal forms of shadow and steel enveloping the two specters crashed together and collapsed in a heap.

The two ghosts, stripped bare, collided directly.

In the primordial darkness, the Shadow Lord drew his ancient sword, the ‘Peacemaker,’ and the warrior from another realm also reached out into the void.

The same Peace Maker held in Dale’s hand shone brilliantly, scattering light.

The two swords began to interlock, yearning for peace.

Tick.

Simultaneously, both Peacemakers scattered the light of peace, and the world froze. That’s what he thought. But it wasn’t so. Only the Dale of now could understand.

It was merely nanomachines infiltrating the molecular structure of a vast area, halting all movement.

Therefore, Dale did not hesitate to scatter the apocalyptic cold embedded within his body. The entity halting time was, after all, the nanomachines in the atmosphere—Mana. Thus, the cold Dale scattered froze the nanomachines and halted their operation.

The ice that would devour the universe at the end of this world.

“Look at yourself.”

Watching Dale wield that power, the hero sneered.

“We really are alike.”

“What exactly are we alike?”

“You claim to protect this world, yet you casually scatter the cold that approaches its end. Isn’t that ironic?”

“……”

Dale did not answer. At this point, whether it was truth or falsehood no longer mattered. For the Dale of the present, there was a world he must protect.

And as heroes do, destroying one world to protect another was a sacrifice worth making.

At least the world wouldn’t freeze over tomorrow.

Lady Scarlet spread her bat wings and plunged from the sky toward the earth.

Sepia countered, shattering the crystal-frozen ground and scattering shards of cold.

The Book of Absolute Zero, dwelling within Sepia’s heart, emitted a bitter cold.

Lady Scarlet’s crimson slaughterhouse blazed fiercely against the swirling cold.

“Ah, I truly detest this cold.”

In the past, to protect her sister who should have died, Sepia reached out toward the universe’s winter. The forbidden art of absolute zero. Through that cold, she barely saved her sister’s life by trapping her heart within ice, only to be banished from the crystal land as the price for breaking the taboo.

Strictly speaking, what dwelled within Sepia’s heart wasn’t even a magic tome. It was a curse.

Something not vastly different from the apocalyptic cold that Dale now accepted within his own body.

“The day this world burns is drawing near. Burning you, the daughter of the Crystal Queen, will be the beginning.”

Lady Scarlet’s expression as she spoke was colder than ever before.