Episode 1139
Chapter 259: The Truth of the World, Your Truth, My Truth (8)
With his back turned to the bloated sun that seemed to crush the sky itself, Keliak grinned.
This fight was entertaining.
Those who should have broken easily were holding on astonishingly long. Just when it seemed like it would end, a new situation would arise—strengthening, enduring.
[You misunderstand, Jin Runkandel. I’m simply enjoying this. After all, what remains after my victory is nothing but dull emptiness. Will someone like you ever appear again? Will the entire dimension be manipulated to my liking, only for me to face errors like you or me, just as the creators once did? That day seems far off, so isn’t now the perfect moment to celebrate?]
Barisada blazed white-hot. The demon stone, transformed into a staff in Keliak’s hand, shimmered brilliantly with golden light.
‘I can remain human…’
Before understanding the true nature of the power of light, Jin had a premonition that if he took the legacy, he might become something other than human.
If the light power left behind by Solderet had been anything like the “tiny authority” Keliak described, that would have been true.
But the power Jin obtained was limited. It only allowed him to wield light for a finite time. So even if he could stand against the full might of the sun god and the demon stone, Jin no longer had the strength to restore the shattered world.
There were still people left.
They were not opponents to be fought without thought for the aftermath. Jin, as a warrior, never forgot his essence. With the single-minded determination to cut down his enemies, he pressed forward.
A gleaming blade flashed, leaving afterimages in Keliak’s vision.
At a speed no human—or even a god’s eye—could track, every flash of light sliced somewhere on Keliak’s body.
Without insight, foresight, manipulation, and distortion, he would have been defenseless.
[How amusing. Solderet realized he was light far too late. Had he known from the start, it would have been better to face me directly.]
“There are many things in this world that cannot be done without sacrifice. You, who have only trampled everything to satisfy your desires, could never understand that.”
Screech!
Barisada and the demon stone clashed, sparks flying. Behind them, the crimson sea roared, raising a tidal wave to swallow the people once more.
But even more light surged across the battlefield, slicing through the tidal wave like a blade.
Whenever Keliak tried to manipulate history, Jin stabbed his sword into his head. When he tried to distort space, Jin fixed a beam of light there.
Neither the demon stone’s power nor Kinzelo’s authority could pierce that light. Just as it’s impossible to grasp and reshape light with your hands, no force could break through.
Only Jin could do this now.
‘His power is gradually wearing down.’
It was subtle.
But every time Jin sliced Keliak with Barisada, he felt the enemy’s strength weaken, even if only slightly.
Of course, Keliak manipulated himself each time to erase the damage, but that was no eternal shield.
[You’re obsessed with fighting like a human, despite taking the form of a glowing orb.]
Though he appeared as light, Keliak kept feeling the sword cutting into his body.
He had gained too many powers to see Jin’s true nature. He failed to recognize that Jin was just a person—exhausted when moving, slowed by bleeding.
That was why Jin could push Keliak back.
Reading the battlefield and sending light accordingly was a skill of creation, not relying on divine authority like Keliak.
Jin hid his ragged breath, barely holding it in.
He had to. Until he cut Keliak down, he couldn’t show any sign of fatigue. It wasn’t difficult.
Because people were waking up.
Those manipulated by Keliak’s desires were regaining their senses. The mad who had turned their swords on each other now tended to each other’s wounds.
They mourned their fallen comrades and suffered over the irreparably broken world.
Compared to that, fighting with borrowed light was undeniably easier.
When spears fell from the sun, Jin blocked them. When spatial explosions erupted, he dodged. When Keliak swung his staff, Jin slipped past.
He struck with all his might.
From sky to earth, a single beam of light rode Barisada, leaving a long, massive trail. A crackling sound came from the demon stone.
The tip of the staff split open, spilling a blood-red liquid. Keliak’s body was severed, and his regeneration slowed.
Still fast enough to blink and recover, but definitely slower. At the same time, Keliak plunged his hand into the core of the glowing orb that was Jin.
His radiant heart shattered, pierced through the chest.
But the light that had spread across the battlefield moments before gathered inside, filling the hole in Jin’s chest. Using the remaining light, Jin unfolded a new sword.
Runkandel’s Master Sword Technique:
Sun Splitter
A sword Temar once forged to cut down Solderet.
Back then, neither Temar nor Solderet truly knew themselves. So this sword, designed vaguely to prepare for Solderet’s return as the sun god by Ziphl, now aimed at Keliak’s sun.
The massive trail left by Barisada began to spin.
A single rotation formed a pure white circle that swallowed the sun in an instant, bathing the sky in dazzling light.
[Ha!]
It was Kinzelo’s authority, finally grasped after traversing the entire dimension. But even as Keliak summoned his power again, he saw that the sun’s light could not be pierced.
Was this power truly unable to overcome even this much light?
He was dumbfounded.
Kinzelo’s power was perfect. Even without the demon stone, it could create and destroy worlds.
In contrast, the light Jin held was but a handful.
A handful—that was the only fitting way to describe it. Such a tiny force completely obscured the sun.
And that made it all the more tempting.
But how could he steal that light? Keliak had wondered throughout the fight. Light that couldn’t be manipulated by the demon stone, that couldn’t be grasped with two hands—how could he take it?
No answer came.
‘Becoming the sole god only brings more incomprehensible things than when I was human…’
It was infuriating.
The sun wasn’t just buried in light—it was constantly being split apart by something within.
Keliak thought that something was light.
But it was a sword. The will of a warrior named Jin Runkandel. Keliak still couldn’t grasp that truth.
He only thought Jin had gained a superior power unlike anything the world had ever seen.
His held-back ragged breath escaped involuntarily. His hand gripping the sword trembled. His legs felt ready to collapse.
Keliak couldn’t see the human beneath it all. If he could, he’d know how easy it would be to kill that fragile being—easier than crushing a bug.
[How do you feel, Jin Runkandel? Honestly, at this point, I’m more baffled than pleased. Had I known such power existed, I wouldn’t have obsessed over Kinzelo.]
“You sure talk a lot about how you think you’ll lose.”
[Ha ha, is that how it sounds? Well, half of it’s true.]
He didn’t think he could win.
Keliak doubted himself. At first, he was just amazed they could fight evenly. Now, the power of light clearly felt superior.
With every passing second, the changes inside him became laughable.
Even during brief exchanges, his body was cut dozens of times. The sun, hidden by light, no longer even radiated heat toward Jin. His enemies were escaping death.
No one was dying anymore.
No one flailed in the sea, no one suffered from manipulation or distortion. In Laprarosa, priests had descended to tend the wounded, and the Golden Fleet patrolled the battlefield, gathering the fallen.
It was as if he was fighting humans, not the sole god. Whenever he swung the demon stone in frustration, light unfailingly blocked him.
It was maddening.
Still, Keliak found solace in one area where he dominated.
Destroying the world.
[I’m handling that quite easily, but I can’t pay attention to what’s outside the battlefield.]
Jin’s eyes narrowed.
True to his words, Jin couldn’t stop the entire crimson sea flooding the world. Light existed everywhere, but Jin couldn’t control it all.
“So, if you just destroy this world, is that your victory in the end?”
[That’s already a given. You don’t have the power to rebuild this land. You may have bound my sun, but you haven’t fundamentally nullified Kinzelo’s authority. And you… don’t have much time left. The time you can wield the light.]
Keliak had identified the greatest weakness of Jin’s light. Jin said nothing, simply watching him.
In truth, Jin felt the light draining from him with every strike against Keliak.
[It’s not eternal, but brief—and above all, intense. It suits you perfectly. It’s like witnessing a truly extraordinary human life. The question of which holds more value, the finite or the infinite, has already been answered. I can’t beat you like this… So then, I’ll become finite too.]
The solar aura began to fade from Keliak’s body.
He was letting it go. The power of Kinzello, the sun god he had finally obtained, was slipping away from him.
Moments later, he returned to a form no different from an ordinary human and looked at Jin.
No longer a radiant orb of light, but a wounded man barely standing his ground against him.
“Ah… now I can finally see just how weak you really were.”