Episode 250
The clash of shadows and the giant of steel echoed through the air.
A hero, claiming the mantle of a god, sought to restore a world he couldn’t protect. Opposing him, the Shadow Lord moved his colossal, obsidian form.
He had cast aside his past life, choosing to remain as Dale of Saxon.
Truth is always cruel, sparing no one, not even those who claim to be its master.
He remembered the blood spilled in this world, nurtured as a hero from another realm. He hadn’t forgotten the world he failed to save. Yet, there was nothing he could change.
The mana saturating this world proliferated endlessly, consuming Dale’s world.
And each time, Dale, as the Shadow Lord, scattered darkness and cold in defiance.
As the hero said, the mana filling the earth could be a force for restoration or a weapon of destruction.
And the hero was willing to wield that power as a weapon of apocalypse.
To reclaim the world he couldn’t protect.
He couldn’t allow it. Even if nanomachines once again engulfed the planet, overlaying past landscapes, it would still be a lie.
There is no such thing as a beautiful lie. Truth and falsehood are not matters of beauty or ugliness.
The world of his past life had perished.
That was the inescapable truth, and that was all there was to it.
“There’s nothing that can be undone.”
“Is that so?”
The hero laughed. From within his steel war machine, a laugh of disbelief echoed.
“I only ever wanted one thing.”
The steel giant continued after the laughter subsided.
“What is it you desire?”
“Peace.”
”…I want the same.”
Dale replied to the hero’s answer.
After defeating the Golden Lord, he thought the final war had ended. It hadn’t. Here and now, both sought the same thing.
It was time to start a war for peace.
Dale and the hero clashed within their world, while the sacred sword Vadel, left in the Saxon citadel’s great hall, stirred.
A knight, who had arrived late following Dale and the black sphere, stood there.
She had many names: the Duchess of Lancaster, the wife of the Duke of Saxon. But to one man, she was known by only one name.
“Charlotte Orhart.”
”…”
A daughter whose face he didn’t know.
A father whose face she didn’t know.
Yet recognizing each other was never difficult.
“You’ve grown well.”
Sir Vadel spoke with feigned nonchalance, adjusting the grip on his sword.
Petals scattered. At a glance, it was clear. This was the sacred sword Charlotte had longed for.
“Why do you point your sword at me?”
Charlotte asked, unable to understand.
“Because the me standing here isn’t real.”
Sir Vadel replied.
“I wished for those with nobility to triumph. Even after this body was consumed by my obsession, I continued to fight. But seeing that so-called hero, I realized.”
“Realized what?”
“That on that white and dark winter night, the real me had already died.”
”…”
Charlotte bit her lip softly.
“The me here is nothing but a specter from the start.”
She knew what that meant.
“So, please, cut down this winter night’s specter with your sword.”
Her father, Sir Vadel Orhart, said.
The world beneath the feet of the father and daughter shifted.
It was a white and dark winter night.
Just as Dale and the hero couldn’t escape that winter night, neither could the man here.
Petals were scattering. Colorless petals.
In a world filled with black and white, Sir Vadel adjusted his grip on the sword.
“Oh my, I never expected to see you here, Lady Sepia.”
”…Lady Scarlet.”
The golden knights had withdrawn from the battlefield. But they hadn’t fled.
Just as the Saxon father and son sensed the threat in the grand labyrinth and headed there, so too did they follow the same path.
The Saxon citadel’s great hall.
There, Dale and the hero clashed.
There, Charlotte and Sir Vadel clashed.
Lady Scarlet and Sepia, too, clashed within their world.
A blood-red slaughterhouse and a crystalline land endlessly intersected beyond the horizon.
In one place, countless worlds intersected.
”…The Crimson Duke.”
“Ah, I thought you might be here.”
And it was no exception for the Lord of Blood and Fire, the Crimson Duke, and Saxon’s Allen.
A sea of blood and a madder-red twilight land intertwined.
“Can you feel it? The worlds colliding at this one place, ready to burst.”
For magicians of their caliber, it was impossible not to sense the worlds intersecting in one place.
“Every magician has their own world, and the pursuit of magic is the process of completing that world.”
The Crimson Duke spoke with delight.
“The ideal of a magician is to overlay that world onto reality.”
”…What are you trying to say?”
“Aren’t you curious? Who will be the last to overlay their world onto this one, surviving to the very end?”
“Was it all your doing?”
Allen asked coldly, and the Crimson Duke responded with his usual exaggerated smile.
“History is a canvas where the strong endlessly overlay their worlds.”
The magician, who inscribed the history of blood onto his body, said.
“The world of the defeated vanishes, and the world of the victor overlays it. That’s why I’ve yearned my whole life for the final painting to be drawn on the canvas of history. A masterpiece that won’t fade, even in the storm of apocalypse.”
History is a struggle between worlds.
And the Crimson Duke had spent his life exploring the final world to be inscribed at the end of that endless struggle.
That was the truth the Crimson Duke pursued.
“There is no such thing as a world of truth. The world we believed to have touched truth that day was just another fleeting scene inscribed and vanished in the history you speak of.”
“Even so, it doesn’t matter. At least the strength of that world was undeniable.”
The Crimson Duke replied.
“We can learn from history. By exploring the worlds endlessly inscribed and vanished on the canvas of the universe, we can learn from the past and finally face the apocalypse that will come in the eternal future.”
Hearing this, Allen gave a bitter smile.
“I know one thing I’ve learned from history.”
“Oh, I’d love to hear it.”
“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from it.”
The Black Duke said. At some point, ‘Death’ appeared beside him.
“It seems our worlds will never see eye to eye.”
The Crimson Duke laughed coldly at the sight.
An egg is the world of a bird.
To be born, one must destroy a world.
For Charlotte Orhart, this place was an egg. And to be born, she had to destroy this world.
The specter of the winter night, her father, charged with his sword.
In the colorless black-and-white world, the specter of the winter night scattered petals of blades.
But against it, the petals of Charlotte Orhart’s sword shone with a dazzling violet brilliance.
“You’re strong.”
Sir Vadel said, facing the swirling violet petals. Charlotte did not reply.
“Why must you die by my sword?”
She asked after a long silence.
“Does it matter if it’s real or fake?”
”…Please, do not forgive this father.”
“Why shouldn’t I forgive you?”
Charlotte pleaded.
Yet her sword did not stop. Nor did Sir Vadel’s.
Like Sir Vadel, specters unable to forget that winter night clashed.
The shadows and the giant of steel enveloping the two specters crumbled in their clash.
The two specters, stripped bare, collided.
In the primordial darkness, the Shadow Lord drew his old beloved sword, ‘Peacemaker,’ and the hero from another realm reached into the void.
In his hand, the same Peacemaker as Dale’s shone brilliantly.
The two swords, yearning for peace, began to intertwine.
Tick.
Simultaneously, the two Peacemakers scattered the light of peace, and the world seemed to stop. Or so it seemed. But it wasn’t. Dale, now, could understand.
It was merely the nanomachines infiltrating the molecular structure of the area, halting movement.
Thus, Dale unhesitatingly scattered the end-of-the-world cold within him. The entity stopping time was the nanomachines, the mana in the air. So the cold Dale scattered froze the nanomachines, halting their function.
The ice that would engulf the universe at the end of this world.
“Look at yourself.”
The hero mocked, watching Dale use that power.
“We’re the same.”
“What do you mean, the same?”
“You claim to protect this world, yet you scatter the cold that will come at its end without a second thought. Isn’t it ironic?”
”…”
Dale did not answer. At this point, truth or falsehood didn’t matter. For Dale, there was simply a world he had to protect.
And as heroes often do, destroying one world to save another was a sacrifice worth making.
At least, the world wouldn’t freeze over tomorrow.
Lady Scarlet unfurled her bat-like wings and dove from the sky toward the ground.
In response, Sepia shattered the crystalline frost, scattering shards of ice into the air.
The “Tome of Absolute Zero” nestled within Sepia’s heart exhaled its chilling breath.
Against the swirling cold, Lady Scarlet’s blood-red slaughterhouse blazed fiercely.
“Oh, I really can’t stand the cold.”
In the past, to save a sister who should have died, Sepia reached out to the winter of the universe. The forbidden magic of absolute zero. By encasing her sister’s heart in ice, she barely managed to save her life, but the price was exile from the crystalline lands for breaking the taboo.
Strictly speaking, what resided in Sepia’s heart wasn’t even a magical tome. It was a curse.
Not so different from the apocalyptic chill that Dale had embraced within himself.
“The day this world burns is drawing near. Setting you ablaze, daughter of the Crystal Queen, is just the beginning.”
Lady Scarlet’s expression was colder than ever as she spoke.