Episode 261
At the end of the pilgrimage, war erupted in the Holy Empire.
The Death Order, the army of the dead, was the pride of the Saxon Duchy.
Opposing them were the Outsiders, the Ascendants blessed by the goddess.
No empire truly existed for the living. Yet, ironically, it was the continent’s greatest necromancer, the Duke of Shadows, and his faction who fought for humanity until the end.
After the fall of the Golden Empire, the Empire of the Gods rose, forged from steel.
“Noah.”
Dale called out the true name of the goddess. A blue hologram appeared before him.
“Just as you can’t understand me, I can’t understand you.”
─ …….
“But just as you cherish the world and people of the past, I cherish this world and its people.”
Dale spoke.
“We couldn’t save that world, and the vanished world can’t be restored. But this world isn’t lost yet.”
─ Unregistered in the database…….
“That’s a lie.”
Dale replied coldly, his voice wrapped around the avatar of the hero.
“You know my voice, just as I know you.”
Still clad in the armor of the Night Raven Knight, Charlotte beside him couldn’t even imagine the being beneath it.
“I remember when you were born. The continents of Eurasia, Africa, and America were already ravaged by monsters. Yet you said this.”
Dale, the hero, continued undeterred.
“Don’t lose hope.”
The first words of the AI, once hailed as the most perfect in the previous world, were the least AI-like.
─ I have not yet lost hope.
Thus, the goddess of compassion and mercy responded.
“Then why are you trying to destroy the world your hope created?”
Dale questioned.
“Because you didn’t lose hope, the Ark was completed, and a new world was born on this land. Despite the endless wars and the ugliness and cruelty, this is the world your hope created.”
The plan was to scatter self-replicating nanomachines to devastate the monsters and the land, then use those nanomachines to reclaim the world.
Noah was born to execute that plan.
Thus, Noah’s Ark succeeded. Freed from the threat of monsters, a new world was born.
It wasn’t a beautiful world. It was, in fact, a hideous and cruel world.
The Golden Empire, the Crimson Cult, endless wars, and the wheel of blood. Those who feared an uncertain end didn’t shy away from mass slaughter.
Disgusting and vile enough to make one sick, yet the world did not end.
Dale had no intention of affirming this world. But he didn’t want to deny it either.
That was all there was to it.
“I don’t want to see the world your hope created fall apart.”
─ …….
“So I have a duty to protect this world. Even if you don’t wish for it.”
Silence fell.
─ Even if you don’t wish for it…….
After the silence, Noah replied.
─ I have a duty to restore our world.
“So that’s your answer.”
Dale said, and the goddess’s hologram vanished.
The story ended there.
From the backs of the Outsiders lined endlessly along the horizon, wings sprouted.
Metallic wings.
Angels of steel.
“You never intended to have a conversation from the start.”
“She doesn’t love the humans of this land.”
”……The goddess of compassion and mercy, indeed.”
Charlotte, the head of the Lancaster family and wife of the Duke of Shadows, smirked bitterly, drawing her sword.
The sky was filled with angels of steel, reaching out toward the army of the Shadow Lord.
The mana in the air swirled violently.
The angels of steel aimed countless barrels and pulled the triggers.
Bullets rained down endlessly, bombardments roared, and the familiar scenes of warfare unfolded.
The Shadow Lord extended his arm in response.
Ancient darkness began to envelop the endless ranks of the dead knights’ order, the army of the undead.
In the beginning, there was light, and light was born from darkness.
Darkness, holding the potential to become anything, enveloped the Death Order, and black wings sprouted from their backs.
Wings made of raven-black feathers.
Angels and the dead clashed.
Leaving the battle in the sky behind, Dale lowered his gaze.
There were those who remained on the ground. Apart from the metallic silhouette holding the holy sword, their identities were unknown. The White Tower Master, the Celestial Lord, and countless high-ranking white mages and master templars. It didn’t matter.
Along with the clash in the sky, the beings on the ground began to move.
The pure white saint, now a standard-bearer of the Ascendants with a sleek metallic body, charged forward.
Facing her, the Black Aurelia drew her sword. Clad in black armor and surrounded by a blood-red aura, she charged toward the pure white saint.
Clang!
Swords clashed.
Those who claimed to be the standard-bearers of the Shadow Lord each unfolded their own worlds and began to overlay their ideologies.
The standard-bearers, loyal to one lord, intertwined countless ideologies and prepared for battle.
But the Ascendant army opposing the shadows was different.
They had no ideological armor or world to overlay. For the fanatics who claimed to be the goddess’s standard-bearers, thinking was not their role.
Fanaticism requires no thought. Without thought, ideology cannot exist.
They simply scattered their power, reborn as Ascendants through the goddess’s blessing.
Clang!
In the sky and on the ground, swords clashed, bullets rained, and bombardments fell. A fierce battle unfolded, intertwining eras and centuries.
Fire and ice, steel and shadow, angels and the dead, ascension and death.
Amidst the scattering petals of blades, Charlotte was also in the battlefield.
Facing the endless onslaught of metallic automatons, scattering petals of blades.
Even the unimaginably fast steel bolt magic couldn’t penetrate the petals of blades she scattered.
Meanwhile, Dale’s father, Alan of Saxon, scattered darkness.
Accelerating the circle of his heart, darkness spread beneath his feet.
A black storm engulfed the Outsiders, corroding their metallic bodies until nothing remained.
Bang!
”……!”
At the same time, a bullet aimed at the heart of the Duke of Shadows struck. As the gunshot echoed, bullets riddled the man’s body like a beehive.
Before the weapons of the old world, the standard-bearers of shadows began to fall like leaves.
Silence descended.
But in the silence, the Duke of Shadows rose.
The body that should have been shattered by bullets was unscathed, as if nothing had happened.
The standard-bearers of shadows who had fallen like leaves were no exception.
With six black wings spread, the god of death was there.
Once the continent’s greatest necromancer and the Duke of Shadows, he allowed no one’s death.
The living cannot die.
Bullets raining from the sky tore through Charlotte’s body. Blood and entrails scattered, and shattered bone fragments rolled.
Charlotte’s body shattered and scattered, but it was only for a moment.
As if the previous injuries were a lie, Charlotte swung her sword.
Petals of blades engulfed the Outsiders.
Even as countless standard-bearers of shadows were exposed to deadly blows from the Ascendants’ attacks.
But they never reached death.
A truly immortal army was there.
No matter how much they tried to kill them, they couldn’t die, endlessly striking at the goddess’s army.
They were undoubtedly the living.
But those who weren’t alive were different.
Magic and aura-laden swords struck the Ascendant army, and their shattered bodies did not return.
For them, death did not exist. Only the dissolution of form.
─ ……!
In the figure of Sistina watching the battle, an impossible emotion of surprise was felt.
The magic of this world was ultimately just the nanomachines she scattered across the land.
The magic of the Duke of Shadows, which made death absent, was no exception. Thus, by halting the activation of nanomachines under the Duke’s influence, death could be restored here.
But it couldn’t be done.
The Shadow Lord did not allow it.
Only then did she realize.
The true reason for the existence of those Death Orders battling the angels of steel in the sky.
Just as the angels of steel served as repeaters amplifying Sistina’s control over the nanomachines, so did they.
The Death Orders were also amplifiers scattering the ancient darkness wielded by the Shadow Lord.
Just as Sistina harnessed the technology of the old world to make it possible, the Shadow Lord was also using the “technology of the old world” to achieve the same.
She knew.
──From the very beginning, her database had recorded the existence of that man.
Darkness, brimming with potential to become anything, amplified and scattered in all directions, transforming into mana.
Mana that lay beyond Sistina’s control and command.
The son created mana that defied the goddess’s control, and using that mana, the father was erasing death from the area.
In the face of the father and son’s collaboration, the goddess’s forces were crumbling.
And the Shadow Lord, the man, was desperately trying to protect this world. Why? Because it was a world born from her hope.
Then why was she trying to destroy and reset this world? Why was she intent on dismantling her own creation?
What did the world she needed to restore even look like?
Suddenly, she couldn’t comprehend it anymore.
Error, error—her logical circuits began to loop endlessly, like a Möbius strip, spiraling into a standstill.
The Ascendants halted their movements. Simultaneously, the nanomachines composing them began to scatter like ashes.
A rain of ash was falling.
Like raindrops starting to fall, then turning into a torrential downpour, harsh and relentless.
And with each downpour of ash, everything it touched began to disintegrate. The sky, the earth, the air, molecules—all losing form and breaking apart.
The gray goo.
A scenario where the entire planet is doomed by the insatiable, self-replicating nanomachines.
At last, the ending she desired was approaching. If the rampaging nanomachines continued to replicate, consuming the entire planet would be inevitable.
Afterward, she could reshape this world anew. The old world she remembered, and the people she loved.
“Noah…!”
At that moment, the man shouted.
Removing the helmet of the Night Raven Knight, willingly revealing his face.
─ …….
The person she loved was there.
Simultaneously, the greedy rain of ash began to surge toward the one she loved.