The Evening Welcoming the Morning (1)
The first time was a fluke.
In a matter of mere seconds, the aura wrapped around my forearm blocked the falling debris.
Perhaps I had been thinking about it all wrong from the very beginning.
Attacks that cannot be deflected or dodged always strike in an instant.
A split second.
All that mattered was blocking that single, fleeting moment.
"Get down over here!"
The ceiling, displaced by the aftermath of the Tumor's passage, lost its structural integrity and began to collapse.
First went the widest space cleared in the center.
A pillar that had lost its balance and tilted could no longer bear the weight, toppling over in an instant.
I could see fragments of crushed flesh and the twitching limbs of corpses spasming through the gaps.
Dirt and debris poured down as if to declare it didn't matter what they looked like or who they belonged to.
Amidst Bran's despairing groans and my shaking vision, something flashed.
A straight spearhead clashed against the barrier of aura erected before my eyes, making a chilling screech.
"This is no time to—!"
Without a word, the knight twisted his hand, pressing down on me with the very aura he was thrusting forward.
An axe blade, honed to a spine-chilling sharpness, lunged for my neck.
I barely managed to raise my sword to block it, but the curved blade slid along the arc, hooked my weapon to sweep it aside, and thrust the spearhead at the tip straight toward me.
Thunk.
I barely twisted my body to dodge.
With his spearhead still embedded in the wall, the knight swung his halberd in a wide arc. Just as I was about to manifest another barrier to brace for the impact—
"Get out of there!"
Bran threw himself forward, dragging the knight back as they retreated.
Almost simultaneously, the ceiling, which had been barely holding on, gave way, and dirt and gravel began to rain down.
Reflexively, I covered my head and curled into as tight a ball as possible.
And then, finally, silence fell.
As my broken shoulder healed from the crushing weight of the fallen masonry, I surveyed the half-collapsed space.
I couldn't even tell where the light that had illuminated the darkness was buried, and the turbid air triggered a violent cough with every breath.
"...Bran?"
I squeezed my barely inflated lungs to call out, but no answer came.
Instead, the senses that slowly began to return painted reality with agonizing clarity.
It felt as if my leg had been plunged into molten lava.
I thrust my strangely contorted arm into the collapsed debris, and before long, I found the source of the pain.
Something hard and sharp brushed against my fingertips.
I fumbled with my fingers, trying to locate where it met my flesh.
...
I felt the sensation of a wet, sticky liquid.
Something had pierced clean through my calf.
Was it a fragment of the shattered ceiling?
I gripped the base of the foreign object that had invaded my body, timed it with my exhale, and yanked it out as fast as I could.
My vision flashed white from the sudden, overwhelming surge of pain.
The rush of blood to my head, as if fleeing from the agony, ground my thoughts to a halt.
I forced open my tightly shut eyes and looked up.
I saw the collapsed ceiling, completely sealed without a single breathing hole.
To think it finished its growth in that short span of time...
An ability that desecrated the deaths of others.
Because it was bound to draw attention by its very nature, it was extremely rare to see, but I had seen it once before.
I had seen a fully matured Tumor.
Its body, stretching upward as if coveting the heavens, upturned the earth and snapped forests in half.
It was all part of a shell woven from the melted bodies of the corpses the Tumor claimed as its limbs.
I had no idea how a half-baked Tumor, which had been hiding in secret, had managed to gather so many corpses.
In any case, to stop it from running rampant, I had to escape this place.
I had to secure enough space to move, even if it meant risking another cave-in.
First, I pushed away the stone fragments weighing down on my body as much as possible.
Of course, that in itself wasn't difficult, but every time I cleared a piece of stone, a rattling sound echoed from somewhere, preventing me from acting recklessly.
What happened to Bran? And the knight?
But I didn't bother searching for them or calling out.
Securing an escape route was the priority right now.
Besides, there was no way the knight would die so easily.
He was one of the Prophet's companions, so he was bound to have a trump card up his sleeve.
And since Bran had been right next to him at the final moment, I figured he would be relatively fine as well.
...Good.
My racing heart calmed.
I steadily healed my injuries as I climbed upward, bit by bit.
Gripping the crevices of the collapsed rocks, I found footholds as if scaling a cliff.
One step.
Then another.
When I used my drawn sword to dig through the dirt covering the underground space, a large hole opened up in an instant, showering me with gravel.
And then, an empty space appeared.
They must have laid down gravel to distribute the pressure from the surface.
The builder of this place probably never expected it to collapse from the bottom up.
I leaped upward as high as I could, squeezing myself into the void.
Good.
From here, I just had to slowly dig my way up.
It seemed there were no more signs of further collapse.
Since the underground chamber had been so massive, the ground above must have sunk considerably.
That meant the distance to the surface had shortened—good news, if indeed it could be called that.
Finding the most stable footing possible, I positioned myself and began to carve into the ceiling with my blade.
Just as I was trying to find solid ground that wouldn't trigger a landslide to carve out a passage wide enough for a single person—
Something with a faintly different texture caught my eye in the distance.
Black, damp flesh, clearly visible between the protruding egg sacs of the Tumor.
They had bloated and multiplied, completely blocking off one corner of the empty space.
"...Oho."
A rather brilliant idea flashed through my mind.
Acting on that thought immediately...
With a long, resounding crack, the stalk of the Tumor collapsed, and the brilliant glow of the evening sunset began to pour through the ruins from where its roots had been anchored.
The pretentious Tumor's rage-filled screams were a welcome bonus.
Just as much had transpired underground, it seemed a great deal had happened on the surface as well.
Flames raged along the border of the pleasure district, high enough to swallow buildings whole.
Collapsed debris and the mangled, twitching corpses of the rebels littered the ground.
And there, her striking red hair fluttering in a way that perfectly matched the scenery, stood the Prophet, gazing in the direction where the Tumor had fallen.
"Your knight and my companion haven't made it out from down there yet."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. Gyal should be more than capable of rescuing them. The location is roughly..."
The Prophet's deep golden eyes crinkled into crescent moons.
Before I could even finish my sentence, distracted by her warm smile that felt entirely out of place given the circumstances, she raised a hand and pointed.
"A pity, but he looks far too busy for us to strike up a conversation."
"...Excuse me?"
I turned my head toward where her fingertip pointed.
...And saw the familiar back of a man running along the collapsed stalk of the Tumor, swinging a blazing greatsword.
"It would be faster if you helped him, wouldn't it?"
Without looking back, I bolted forward.
Atop the Tumor's stalk, which stretched out straight like a well-paved boulevard.
Its smooth surface began to bubble, and dozens of arms sprouted from it.
Blazing lines and dark red trajectories intersected.
Corpses, reforming as if growing side branches, persistently blocked Gyal and me.
"I thought you said we shouldn't run wild, but it seems you've changed your mind?"
"I said there was no need to interfere in internal affairs."
"And this isn't interfering?"
"There is no need to nitpick every word the Prophet speaks."
Of course, whatever you say.
There was nothing more reassuring than an ally who was both communicative and highly capable.
As I cut through the waves of corpses surging between us, Gyal's greatsword followed up, incinerating their struggling bodies.
"Where is your usual sword? You're using a cheap, standard-issue piece of junk."
"It was confiscated because I had to get arrested... but I'm sure it's safe somewhere."
"Pathetic."
Perhaps realizing they couldn't win like this, the corpses began to brandish swords they had picked up from somewhere or chunks of building debris.
It wasn't as easy as it looked.
Their true body was the Tumor itself.
Even when their limbs were severed and their hearts and heads pierced, they didn't hesitate, let alone stop their attacks.
"Fire!"
Just then, a familiar voice echoed from ahead.
Centurion Calian Barido.
At his command, the kingdom's archers released their bowstrings in unison, and a rain of arrows pierced the heads of the corpses.
I briefly admired the Centurion's precise spacing as the arrows fell right in front of us, then thrust my sword through the corpses stumbling from the sheer physical impact.
The blocked path opened.
Before they could recover, we dashed forward like arrows. The corpses, their formation broken by the repeated volleys, split into groups and lunged toward the archers.
"Heavy infantry, forward!"
"Hah!"
As if they had been waiting for this moment, heavy infantrymen holding broad shields formed a wall in front of the archers, blocking the corpses' onslaught.
"Distance, twenty paces! Third row, volley fire!"
"Hah!"
The archers at the very back raised their bows toward the sky and released their drawn strings.
As the arrows rained down in front of the heavy infantry, the next command followed immediately.
"Thrust!"
The shields, which had left no gaps, parted slightly, and through the openings, sharp spearheads pierced the monsters' bodies twice, then thrice in rapid succession.
Perhaps enraged by the unexpected resistance, the number of corpses before us had dwindled to nearly half.
As we sliced through their waists and incinerated their legs, the corpses that had been lunging through the gaps vanished.
There was no need to completely neutralize them.
Our target was not them, but the main body of the Tumor.
The stalk that had been spewing corpses had shriveled beyond recognition, and all that was left was to tear out the heart of the Tumor, which sat isolated in the middle of the plaza.
Just as we were about to approach the Tumor, which had erected a wall with the corpses it had gathered around itself—
"I-I did it! I actually did it!"
A voice echoing from the ruins behind us ruined the moment.
I turned to look at the person shouting in a cracked, highly excited voice.
A mercenary dressed in absolute rags was shouting from atop a building, holding his bow high.
"Twenty gold coins! No, wait, I'm a n-noble now! You all saw that, right?!"
Behind him, another familiar face emerged.
Though the beard on his sharp jawline was singed by the flames, his piercing gaze remained unchanged.
Taren Mors's deep, commanding voice echoed across the battlefield once more, overwhelming the crowd.
"Behold! The kingdom's centurion, who once served a tainted bloodline, has reclaimed his honor!"
The kingdom's forces began to waver.
Several corpses impaled themselves on the spears, snapping the shafts.
"O you who know shame! Look upon what you have wrought! Face the consequences of cowering, tucking your tails, and burning the homes of your own people just to save your own skins!"
The first corpse broke through the kingdom's line and bit into a soldier's forearm.
With a roar, the rebels who had been hiding in the alleys surged into the gap.