Episode 721
Chapter 180: Each One’s Battle (11)
Mary kept blinking rapidly, her eyes fluttering open and shut. As her blurred vision cleared, the figure of Dipus gradually came into focus.
“Ugh…!”
Seeing Dipus’s condition, Mary instinctively covered her mouth in shock.
Her older brother’s body was riddled with a dozen fist-sized holes, and his lower half was twisted completely the wrong way.
It was a harsh reality.
A living hell.
“Finally… I’m coming back to my senses…”
A thin trickle of blood slid down from Dipus’s sunken eyes.
He remembered how he had fallen into corruption, the terrible things he had done after that.
And now, he knew what he had to do—and what he needed to say to Mary.
“You’re coming back to your senses? So you’re telling me not to kill you? How am I supposed to believe that…?”
Mary’s gaze flicked between the dagger lodged in Dipus’s hand and his eyes.
‘This has to be a trap set by my corrupted brother. But if he really has come back… what should I do?’
Should she pull out the dagger and stab him again? Or should she listen to what he has to say?
It was clearly going to be a final message, but she couldn’t find her footing.
“Mary… listen to me… if the curse activates now, it’s all over. And…”
“Don’t lose like me. Keep fighting bravely. Together with the youngest.”
Diphus’s eyes closed as he barely managed to finish his words.
“Brother!”
Mary hurriedly pressed her ear to Dipus’s face and chest.
She felt the faintest breath and heartbeat, and quickly made up her mind.
‘I have to keep him alive for now. Even if I have to kill him again later, I need to hear why this happened.’
If she couldn’t hear the reason for this nightmare directly from Dipus, she wouldn’t be able to live on. She wouldn’t be able to avoid despair.
The temporary alliance’s fleet was preparing to retreat.
‘Signal flare! Send a rescue signal…!’
But most of her belongings had been destroyed along with the venomous snakes. When she reached into her pocket for the dagger, only powdery blood clots and sand remained.
She shouted toward the sky several times, but her allies didn’t hear her at all.
Normally, her voice would carry across the battlefield with strength, but now she was so exhausted she could barely hold herself up.
Still, Mary tried to lift Dipus and move him, reaching out to him several times before finally lowering her head.
Without a mage like Valeria to seal the curse, or a healer of the caliber of the Holy King to assist directly, moving Dipus alive was impossible.
In the end, all Mary could do was wait for such allies to arrive.
Praying desperately that Dipus’s breath wouldn’t fade before then.
“You’re quite resilient, Prophet.”
Jin spoke.
On the battlefield where resistance had been strongest, the fight between Jin and the Prophet was nearing its end.
[Ugh, argh…]
The Prophet’s massive form, once filling the entire Ricalton Castle, had vanished without a trace, replaced only by a sea of blue flames.
Jin was burning the remaining fragments of the Prophet’s spirit with Eternal Flame.
Only five spirit fragments remained.
Each time Jin sliced one with his blue blade, the Prophet screamed in agony.
“But now, the end is truly in sight.”
Four… one more spirit fragment disappeared.
[Stop! St-stay back!]
“Ever since I first learned of your existence, I’ve been waiting for a day like this.”
Jin’s fury was mirrored by the Eternal Flame raging like a storm all around.
All that flame was the spirit that had once been the Prophet’s true form.
Three, two, the last one.
Jin crushed the final spirit fragment beneath his blade, eyes blazing.
“I’ll finish this.”
Swoosh!
The blue blade struck down the last fragment.
The spirit shattered like glass, sending sharp shards flying—but these shards were made of a different power.
‘Spiritual energy?’
Spiritual energy.
In the past, Dox had mistaken the Prophet’s spiritual energy for a connection to Jin.
Jin was momentarily taken aback, but only briefly.
He had long suspected some link between spiritual energy and chaos.
[Don’t you wonder how I can wield spiritual energy? Twelve Riders. Let’s make a deal! Release me now, and I’ll serve you from now on.]
“Prophet.”
Jin interrupted the Prophet’s words, twisting the blade lodged in the spirit.
“There are humans who never fall to corruption. They never make deals with you, and I’m one of them. Why can you wield spiritual energy? It’s obvious. Solderet must have blessed Helluram in the past. Or Helluram stole his power.”
[Argh! You’ll regret refusing! You may torment me, but you cannot annihilate me! It’s impossible!]
Indeed, the Prophet’s last spirit fragment burned into pieces but did not vanish.
Still, Jin silently intensified the Eternal Flame.
Whatever the Prophet meant by ‘annihilation,’ Jin could clearly feel the sensation from his blade—the Eternal Flame was eating away at the Prophet’s life force.
Jin’s only concern was one thing.
If Dipus died before the Eternal Flame finished the Prophet, everything would be lost.
Otherwise, there was no chance the situation would turn against them.
[Roar!]
“Jin!”
A white dimensional gate opened, and Siris and Valeria appeared once more. They had been searching for the remaining allies on the battlefield and hurried to Jin.
Because of the orb.
Valeria had brought the orb called the ‘Helluram’s Record Device’—which Jin had obtained from Joshua’s villa—onto the battlefield.
Before heading to the Caldren Snowfield, Valeria had discovered that the Prophet had emerged from that orb.
So, in this operation, they intended to analyze the orb more thoroughly, and had just finished.
When Valeria pulled the orb from her pocket and held it out to Jin, the Prophet’s energy resisting the Eternal Flame suddenly became unstable.
The orb Valeria offered was now tinged with a deep purple, unlike when it was first obtained at the villa.
[W-what? Mother. How could you… you fools…]
The Prophet couldn’t even imagine the orb being pulled out now.
She had no idea Joshua had possessed the spiritual orb, nor that Jin had taken it from him in the past.
That was why, even after Joshua’s fall and corruption, the Prophet never mentioned the orb.
If she admitted such a thing, she knew exactly how she’d be treated.
“Jin, destroy it with your spiritual sword.”
Valeria revealed the orb was the sealed link between Helluram and Inse.
As long as this link remained, even if the Prophet’s body disappeared, his soul would return to the orb.
That was why the Prophet said, “You cannot annihilate me.”
Jin took the orb.
[Give it to me! You have no right to destroy this!]
“We have to find Dipus immediately. He’s barely holding on to stop the curse.”
Jin’s eyes widened.
“He’s holding on? Brother, to stop the curse?”
“It seems his mind has returned. It can’t just be a whim.”
“…Understood.”
The white dimensional gate opened again, and Jin clenched the purple spiritual orb tightly, ready to crush it.
[No, please! Mother, mother! Can you hear my voice…?]
Jin threw the orb into the air and unleashed the first form of his spiritual sword technique—Soul Severing.
[Ah, ahh! Mother!]
Shatter…!
The orb exploded into countless shards with a splash of purple like drops of blood.
At last, Jin’s eyes caught the image of the Prophet’s disappearance.
Roar!
The spirit consumed by the Eternal Flame scattered and vanished.
The Prophet’s voice was gone.
At that moment, Jin was overwhelmed by an intense, inexplicable premonition.
Somewhere on the battlefield, Dipus’s final breath, resisting death, had just been extinguished.
The power of the Wretched God that Dipus had held never returned to Rosa.
Instead, the moment Dipus died, the remaining power of the Wretched God inside him went berserk.
A massive black sphere of spirit energy rose above Dipus’s body.
But unlike before, this sphere didn’t strengthen Dipus or infect those nearby with chaos.
It was simply a colossal explosion waiting to happen.
Like hundreds of volcanoes erupting at once, the sphere continuously spewed spirit energy.
Jin immediately ran toward the outer fortress, following the sphere.
If left unchecked, the retreating allies would be slaughtered en masse.
The first thing Jin saw upon reaching the outer fortress was Mary.
She was kneeling, gasping for breath in front of Dipus’s body.
“I have to… save my brother and take him with me… ah…”
Like dandelion seeds blown by the wind—
Dipus’s corpse was scattering into particles.
Mary reached out absentmindedly toward the drifting fragments, then fainted and collapsed forward.
At that moment, the white dimensional gate and steel doors opened, and Valeria’s group and Orgal appeared.
Orgal looked exhausted. As Jin had expected, he had been interfering with the Wretched God all this time.
[Jin, now it’s just you and me left. If we stop the explosion and escape, the mission will be a success.]
Jin swatted a chunk of spirit energy leaking from the sphere toward the opposite sky.
Each fragment had the power to deal fatal damage to the fleet.
Meanwhile, Valeria examined the records left behind where Dipus had vanished.
She hoped there might be something worth telling Jin and Mary later.
Mott swallowed Mary.
Siris and Valeria stood silently before the white dimensional gate near the fleet. Jin nodded at them, urging them to hurry.
“Valeria, tell Veradin this: once the rescue is complete, instead of a flare, have Kojek fire his main cannon just above the sphere. The explosion will likely obscure any signal flare.”
“Understood. Come back safely.”
As Mot disappeared, Jin and Orgal threw themselves toward the power of the sphere-formed Wraith.
It was more than ten minutes later that Kojek’s main cannon fired just over the sphere.
Before passing through the steel gate, Jin took a moment to look back at the land where Dipus had vanished.
If he hadn’t returned until the very end, if the prophet had ultimately failed to resist death…
This mission would never have succeeded.