Worlds Collide (2)
Dalen lifted his head. Where his adversary pointed, a man as large as a mountain stood.
It was Dallian. He was perched at the edge of a cliff, gazing out over a sea of lava.
“Awake, are you?”
His voice was low. Instead of replying, Dalen surveyed his surroundings.
The two of them were on a small rocky island, a pillar-like formation jutting out in the middle of the lava sea.
Due to its unique shape, the island wasn’t very large. From where Dalen stood in the center to where Dallian stood at the edge, it was barely fifty paces.
‘Tsk.’
A battlefield with a diameter of about a hundred paces. The toxic sulfur clouds covering the sky didn’t make for ideal conditions either.
His hand instinctively reached for his waist, but it was empty. His trusty hand axe had shattered in the last battle.
His relic armor was practically useless now, and his mithril spear had been lost in the fight with the dragon god.
All he had left to rely on was the holy sword lying a few steps away and the remnants of his artifact weapons, about a third of what they once were.
The odds weren’t in his favor if he fought like this. Just then, Dallian spoke again.
“You must have revisited your life.”
His voice was tinged with static. Dalen frowned slightly.
It was then he noticed the wound on Dallian’s neck, the weak spot where he had driven the white blade before losing consciousness.
[That energy… it flows like blood.]
The red spear was right. From the wound on Dallian’s neck, a grayish hue oozed like blood.
With each strange pulse of this bleeding, the gray ripples spread ever so slightly across his body, as if to say his time was running out.
“So, how did it feel to relive your short life?”
Dallian asked. Dalen remained silent.
It wasn’t that he was deliberately withholding an answer. He simply had no idea what to say.
What kind of reflection could one have on a life filled with slaughter, betrayal, plunder, and battle?
Watching from behind a monitor and experiencing it as if it were his own memory were entirely different experiences.
”······.”
The corpses weren’t just polygonal shapes.
The screams, once just a handful of audio files, were now a cacophony of thousands, each unique.
The blood of Sienna, splattered by his axe, was still vivid in his mind, as was the frozen look of shock on Lucia’s face, chilled by her last breath.
The countless innocent victims dying beneath his feet. The sickening crunch of leather and bone under his boots as he trampled their armor and limbs.
There was a time long ago when he thought he’d grown numb to killing, but that was never true.
Every death was etched clearly in his memory. The only thing that had changed was the capacity to hold them all.
“You’re not a monster like me yet.”
Seeing Dalen struggle to speak, Dallian laughed, a self-deprecating chuckle.
Dalen sensed a subtle shift in his demeanor.
Instead of the murderous intent of a warrior consumed by endless hatred, there was a mix of emotions he couldn’t fully comprehend.
Why was that? The answer came quickly.
“It makes sense.”
“What?”
“Seeing your life, I understand. Just as you revisited my life, I took a look at yours.”
Dallian slowly turned to face him. This time, Dalen was a bit surprised.
The warrior’s eyes were shedding tears. Or rather, a grayish hue flowed like tears.
“You lived two lives. One in this world, and another in a different one.”
Earth. South Korea. Those were the words.
He spoke.
“It was a pretty pathetic life, wasn’t it?”
After a brief silence, Dallian’s first words were.
Dalen couldn’t help but chuckle. Dallian’s lips curled slightly too.
“Yeah, I lived like a fool.”
“Not just a fool. Honestly, it was disappointing. The life of someone I feared more than the evil gods was just a guy trembling over a negative bank balance, clicking away at a keyboard and mouse at home.”
Dalen raised an eyebrow. That was a bit too detailed.
He had no way of knowing how much Dallian had seen. If his life had flashed by like a montage, wouldn’t it be the same for the other side?
“Getting chewed out by your team leader every weekday, and then ignoring your parents’ calls on weekends with the excuse of not wanting to worry them. When really, you were just too lazy.”
Despite Dalen’s discomfort, Dallian continued.
He added little gestures, like stroking his chin or shaking his head, as if he found it all amusing.
“Jealous of your successful colleagues. At reunions, constantly comparing yourself to your friends.”
“Hey, that’s enough…”
“With all that inferiority, you’d think you’d try harder, but instead, you crack open a can of beer and play games as soon as you get home. No wonder your girlfriend dumped you.”
This bastard. Did he invest in some kind of skill for his mouth?
If he were to drive the white blade again, it wouldn’t be into his neck but into that blabbering mouth.
While Dalen rubbed his throbbing temples, Dallian, who had been harshly criticizing his life on Earth, let out a light sigh.
“I’m envious. It was the life I always wanted.”
“What?”
Was he mocking him again? The thought vanished as soon as he saw the bitter smile on Dallian’s face.
“I never had a life.”
Rumble…
The acrid sulfur clouds painted the sky a murky yellow.
A brief flash of lightning cast shadows through the clouds, followed by a rolling thunder.
“Human life is as fleeting as a flash of lightning.”
The warrior, whose neck and chin were now tinged with gray, tilted his head back to look at the sky.
The lightning reversed the shadows on his face. His blood-red face turned pale for that brief moment.
“Yet, in that fleeting moment, it’s hotter than the surface of the distant sun. Life is a journey with a beginning and an end. It’s a personal history from birth to death.”
”······.”
“How can something be whole without a starting point? Without a foundation, neither life nor one’s inner world can be complete. It’s just a flimsy structure built on a beach with struggle and slaughter. No matter how divine one becomes, defeating the evil gods’ inferno with such a baseless inner world was impossible from the start.”
The warrior placed his hand on the weight of the sword embedded in the ground and continued, almost as if reciting.
“Do you still want to overcome the apocalypse? Even now, after losing your true home and life there, and being thrown into this game world against your will?”
“Yes.”
Dalen nodded lightly.
In front of someone who had already revisited his past, there was no need for lengthy explanations.
He already knew that having lost once, he had realized the value of what he had lost.
Dallian nodded in return. He took a deep breath and spoke again.
“Surpass me.”
Dallian stepped back and gestured. The sword pulled itself from the ground and landed in his hand.
Dalen opened his hand. The holy sword flew to him, its hilt fitting snugly in his palm.
“Listen carefully. Enaxagus has absorbed the weakened Suum and Temomron. He’s recruited the beast sealed in the Blade Mountains and gathered some of the scattered dragon kin who lost their god. Soon, even Lapilem will be consumed by him.”
“Is that true?”
“Maybe it’s because we clashed so many times in life, but for whatever reason, my instincts tell me the state of the evil gods in this world. You can trust it.”
He had suspected as much. There had been plenty of indirect evidence before.
Even as the apocalypse approached its final stages, Enaxagus’s forces hadn’t shown themselves in the west.
The inactivity of Suum and his demons was too coincidental to be mere chance.
The fact that one evil god could consume another was something he had learned from Temomron in a previous cycle when he had raised a necromancer.
He had just postponed thinking deeply about it because there was no way to resolve it at the time.
Whether he fought five evil gods or one as strong as five, his choice remained the same.
“You already have the conditions. You’ve barely touched divinity. With my power added and the stone of wishes, you can save this continent.”
A world where your precious people remain unscathed.
The warrior finished speaking, raised the sword he held in both hands, and swung it down without hesitation.
──━━│││
A crack formed at the end of the simple strike.
It was as if the world itself was splitting apart.
The sensation was like breaking the framework of the world, with something else trying to wedge itself into the cracks.
It wasn’t an incorrect description.
If the opening of a domain was like painting over reality with a different color…
This is like tearing apart a canvas with a painting on it and forcibly stitching on a different kind of picture.
┃┃││││┃┃
Destruction and restoration happen simultaneously.
An endless clash of two laws, each trying to subdue the other.
It’s less of a miracle and more akin to a disaster.
The result is a phenomenon where two inherently incompatible worlds cast their shadows over a single physical space.
“Domain Descent”
“The Black Sun that Burns the Mortal Realm”
Mountains rise through a sea of bubbling lava.
Above the charred mountain ranges and valleys, tens of thousands of black lightning bolts strike relentlessly.
Sulfur clouds, torn apart by the black storm, scatter in all directions.
Beyond those remnants, a sinister, smoldering black sun emerges.
“I am not like the blacksmith or necromancer you remember. I had no time to hammer iron or carve gravestones. My life was nothing but endless battle, and the only way I can pass my life onto you is through that.”
Under the black sunlight that defies the very definition of light, Dalian, wielding a sword and axe in each hand, spoke.
“Take my divinity. Become a being that transcends the seven hierarchies. To fully surpass the divine rank, you too must make a choice, just as a warrior who preceded you once did.”
“A choice?”
“Of course, as you often think, that’s something to consider later.”
For now, focus on the fight with me.
The warrior said, pointing his sword.
And at that moment, the sun took a bold step toward the earth.