The Grudge Returns (End)

The sunlight that should have been slowly rising vanished, and in its place, snow-white moonlight and a pitch-black night swept over the battlefield.

Darkness had swallowed everything, but the moonlight lit the field well enough that Florence and I could make each other out.

He struck first. He hurled his axe at me even as he charged.

I batted the axe aside to the left and sent it tumbling down beneath the wall, then raised the Sword of the Azure Sky in my right hand from below, cleaving upward along a diagonal line.

He caught my strike on the curved body of a second axe — one he had summoned back into his grip the instant he dropped the first. The moment he seized it in time with his stride, I thrust straight into his abdomen.

- Thunk!

"Kugh!"

The blade of wind had sunk deep into Florence's stomach and was opening a steady flow of blood — yet something about it felt like he had taken the hit on purpose. I discarded the wind sword and fell back, and the blade melted away without a trace, its form gone in moments.

Stranger still, his abdomen, where I had struck him, looked perfectly unharmed.

"Authority Manifestation — Void of the Kiss."

Black mist swirled around him, pressed itself against the wound, and healed it over as though it had never existed.

The old me would have fixated on that phenomenon, swinging at the miracle itself. Not anymore. My answer was simpler: cut down everything my eyes could see.

In the game, the Authority of Moonlight had been a skill that dealt physical damage even to formless beings, to things immune to mundane attacks.

I moved fast, sword swinging. He crossed his axes to block the descending Sword of the Azure Sky — was he really counting on the same defense working twice?

I let the sword fall from my hand, drew the wind blade, and this time drove an upward cut into the underbelly of his crossed axes.

"Guh!!!"

The recoil of the uppercut forced the axes out of his grip, and of course they sailed up into the air. I flung the wind sword at his face to blind him.

Throwing your weapon mid-battle is something you should never do — unless you have a way to get it back. Not that I expected this throw to hurt him anyway. All it had to do was drag his eyes away for a heartbeat. In that heartbeat, I completed the summons of the Sword of the Azure Sky.

Just as I closed my hand around it and stepped in, exactly as I had planned, something burst from the ground at my right.

"Authority Manifestation — Darkness Projecting."

A black arm, like solidified shadow, shot up and slammed into my side.

- WHAM!

I caught it on the flat of the blade, but the impact was too great — I couldn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠keep from flying down off the wall. Jeongryeong and the wolf spirits caught me mid-fall, bleeding away the momentum.

"You're mine, and mine alone!"

Black arms rose from the earth. Evil spirits raised their weapons against me. Demons licked their lips as they glared my way. And Florence, hungry to kill me and drown in the ecstasy of it.

I had to cut through all of them.

...There was nothing I couldn't do.

The violet glow of the Sword of the Azure Sky brightened into a pale lavender light. When I swung, the blade took the shape of a dragon as it carved through the air.

- Shff!

I didn't stop. Strike after strike, the assault never paused. Second strike. Third strike.

- Shff! ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Shff!

With every unbroken swing, the next cut came harder and faster. The violet radiance spilling from my blade proved devastatingly effective against the evil spirits — the moonlight seemed to repel them, and even watching me swing, they hesitated to attack.

Didn't matter. If the spirits wouldn't come to me, I'd go to them.

I cut, and cut again, until before I knew it the air around me was drenched in crimson-stained violet, and demon corpses lay strewn at my feet.

And of course, there was Florence too, swinging his axe at my head.

- CRANG! CLANG!

I twisted my stance and the angle of my blade together to deflect his heavy downward chop, then took his left arm off at the shoulder.

- Shff!

"GRAAAAAGH!!"

"Keep talking. What was that about Ellie?"

"You son of a bitch!"

Florence regenerated the arm with his Authority in an instant and came at me with everything he had. If he wanted a beating that badly, who was I to refuse? Time to give him a firsthand lesson in what happens when you trust nothing but your Authority.

I slipped back just enough to evade the upward sweep of his axe, then stepped back inside his range and drove a kick into his chest at point-blank, shoving him away.

With a crack of snapping bone, Florence tumbled across the ground and skidded away.

"I hate people like you more than anything. What even ARE you? Why do you get born with everything? Women, money, glory — why do people like you get to take it all?!"

He screamed at me, spewing bile. I answered with silence, sword raised, walking toward him step by slow step.

"Stop! You fucking bastard!"

Florence thrust both hands forward and began summoning black arms in a wild, indiscriminate frenzy.

"Hey. So you were born with everything, huh?"

"That's right. What would you know? I lived my whole life having everything torn away from me since I was a child — and when I finally became a Successor of the Four Divine Beasts, I thought I'd become the one who takes, instead of the one who's taken from!"

"What?"

The absurdity of it wrung a hollow laugh out of me.

"So the point you're making is survival of the fittest, right? That's your whole argument?"

"..."

"Then you dying here, to me, is part of your logic too. Can't you see it? I've swept away every last one of your pathetic Authorities with a single sword."

"I see it. How could I not? Don't you DARE treat me like an idiot, you fucking bastard!"

"Authority Manifestation — Darkness Projecting!"

His Authority collided head-on with mine. The sight of darkness crashing against moonlight blazed like one of those hackneyed depictions from the game — light and shadow locked in war.

The balance didn't hold for long. The countless arms and hands surging from the ground melted away in the moonlight, and the fresh ones couldn't be spawned fast enough to replace the ones dissolving.

"Authority Manifestation — Demonic Summon!"

Realizing his hands alone could never stop my blade, Florence desperately invoked his Authority, calling on the evil spirits for strength.

But the spirits flinched from the moonlight too, refusing to move. No — they simply wouldn't move at all. He barked desperate commands at them, and they stood rooted where they'd been summoned, deaf to his orders.

And I wasn't dense enough to kick away a gift like that. The wall of hands finally crumbled under my relentless advance, and until the moment my sword took his head, Florence kept his face turned toward me, watching.

- Shff!

With a crisp, clean sound of something being severed, Florence's head went airborne.

- Thud!

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

It struck something and bounced twice before rolling to a stop. The headless body crumpled to the ground in a heap.

When I went looking for the head to claim it, the body — as if it hadn't yet accepted death — swung its axe at me all over again.

He should have fallen. I had watched his neck leave his shoulders with my own two eyes. And yet he scrambled up and came at me.

But strangely... every one of Florence's blows had become far heavier than before.

He reversed his grip on the throwing axe and swung for my jaw; I answered with a side kick.

- TANG!

"Huh?"

Impossibly, the kick was caught on the axe head, and I lost all room to retreat. Panicking, I gripped the sword with both hands and barely deflected the axe as it roared upward.

"Ggh...!"

Since when was his strength this absurd...?

Florence had never favored this style — never these pondering, crushing blows, never these power-loaded strikes aimed at the smallest opening. At first I'd assumed he'd been revived by Taowu's power and kept attacking anyway. But the more our blades met, the more the corpse before me insisted on a single truth: this was not Florence.

The way it fought — agile feints, deception, simultaneous strikes at the flank and the rear — was the same battle style as mine and Ellie's. Which meant it had been built on the way Florence fought back when he still used daggers, before he'd switched to the axe as his main weapon.

In other words: the person inside had simply been replaced.

Wait. The person changed...?

"Who are you?"

Even as I said it, I flooded the Sword of the Azure Sky with a massive surge of the Authority of Moonlight.

A cascade of crescent-shaped cuts, one flowing into the next.

- CAANG!

- CAANG!

- CAANG!

Three slashes, and I loosed a fourth in the same breath — but the body shifted backward and slipped away from every strike with insulting ease. Then it set Florence's head down at its own feet, and spoke.

"So... it was you."

"Who... are you?"

"You have no need to know. You will learn soon enough regardless."

"..."

"A Successor of the White Tiger. I bestowed an Authority upon him, even gifted him a new weapon — and he is crushed in miserable defeat. Is this how he can call himself My Successor?"

Did he just say... We...? And "My Successor"...? Don't tell me—!

The instant the realization struck me, the thing wearing Florence's body — no, the thing that had stolen it — curled its lips into a vicious, knowing grin.

"Ah... you've figured it out."

I have to kill it. Why — why would one of the Four Perils be HERE, of all places?

Thinking could wait. This was no time for judgment.

Moonlight blazed through the blade, wreathing it completely, while the same luminous energy sheathed my whole body and sharpened the force of every strike.

"Moonlight, is it. So you... have already come that far."

"Shut up, Taowu."

I charged straight in.

"Moonlight is the supreme bane of us creatures of darkness. And yet—"

Taowu, wearing Florence's body, extended a single open palm — and caught my sword flat.

"That's impossible...!"

This attack carried far more force than the one that had taken Florence's head — and he had stopped it effortlessly, palm upright, unhurried.

"And yet, it is a matter of how one wields it, no?"

It was too soon to feel that crushing sense of helplessness. One way or another, I had to break Taowu's possession of this body. Think — find the answer, please! You've done this a hundred times before!

The method I landed on was certain to work — and at the same time, it was dangerous, and utterly reckless.

When I gathered every drop of mana in my body into the blade and raised it overhead, Taowu spoke as though amused.

"How laughable. What do you imagine you will accomplish with such a crude technique? Fret not, child of the blue lizard. This vessel will soon crumble regardless — and when it does, I shall simply return to the place of my sealing."

"And why would I believe a word of that?"

"Foolish. What cause would I have to jest with you? One brush of My true power would reduce you all to dust where you stand."

"..."

"So fret not. The moment I am freed from my sealing, you may rest assured — I will wage war upon this world and ravish it to your heart's content."

"Sure. I'll look forward to it. Because by then, I don't think I'll be the one losing."

"What more is there to say to a follower of that fool who covers his eyes with his palm and declares himself ruler of the heavens?"

He turned his head and made to walk away — and I had to stop him. If I let him leave now, there was no telling what would happen.

"Wait. Where did Florence go?"

At my question, the thing in Florence's body quirked one corner of its mouth upward.

"Your thoughts are laid bare before Me — but very well, I shall overlook it. And yet... you, of all people, should know precisely where My follower has gone, no?"

"..."

Unlike the Successors of the Four Divine Beasts, a Successor of the Four Perils receives the full breadth of their god's Authorities the moment they are chosen. That is why Peril Successors tend to crush everything beneath an overwhelming, absolute power.

But in exchange for that strength, a soul too frail to endure the god's Authority and favor is slowly devoured by them, crumbling from within. The pain such a soul endures, the game had said, was beyond any capacity to depict. And because the soul persists, there is no fleeing, no escaping from beneath the Peril — only eternal agony.

Florence, too, would suffer that torment forever under Taowu's heel.

"The hour grows late. It has been some time since I last stepped outside — an agreeable excursion."

"Go to hell. It wasn't a pleasure for me at all."

At my words, the thing that had stolen his body — Taowu — burst out laughing.

"Heh — it matters not. This land will belong to the Four Perils soon enough, Myself included. I find Myself anticipating your struggling. The more you thrash, the more entertaining it will be to paint this world in our colors."

"You're climbing right back into your coffin, and still so talkative."

"Struggle with all your strength until we wake. It will avail you nothing — in the end, you shall suffer beneath our hands for all eternity."

With those final words, Florence's body crumbled away into ash.

And so the long, bitter grudge between Florence and me ended in the very place he had started it all — in the ugliest form imaginable.

The moment Taowu vanished, I sprinted back up the wall to check on Ellie. The fight had dragged on long enough that the wound across her back had widened badly, festering.

Glancing sideways, I saw Kahn, drenched in sweat, holding down the Authority of Darkness. I approached without a word and laid my hand on her back.

I touched her as if it were nothing at all, but Kahn — who had known I was coming — jolted in alarm.

"What are you doing?! Do you have any idea what happens if you touch the Authority of Darkness?!"

In answer, I simply poured white light from my palm and kept my hand where it was, telling him without words not to worry. Only then did Kahn wipe the sweat streaming down his face and ease himself into a better position.

"It's brutal..."

He had poured everything into holding back Ellie's contamination, crouched on his knees this whole time to keep the darkness from spreading through her.

I focused. Remembering Ellie the night Dantalion had pierced her mind with his interference magic, I poured the Authority of Purification into her body.

It flowed in slowly and began to hold back the contamination as it tried to devour her skin and muscle.

"Ngh... nghhh...!!"

Two opposing energies warring inside a single body — even for Ellie, it was clearly an ordeal. The darkness and the purifying light I had forced in were locked in open conflict.

But the darkness had already been beaten down, suppressed all this while by Genbu's power, and its momentum had faded. Even so, weakened as it was, it fought the Purification hard enough to make the struggle anything but easy.

"Nnngh...! Ngh!!"

At last the darkness peeled away from her back, and the black mark like a tattoo tore loose into the air, scattering into powder and vanishing. Ellie's pained groans fell silent with it — thank goodness.

This war had been a close call. Letters had already reached the capital two weeks ago, suggesting Florence had been sending demons in to probe and scout. Battles had raged from that point on, so by rights, the war had begun then.

And if Florence had truly mastered his Authority along with weapon arts and battlefield tactics, as I'd feared, we would have lost. A single use of that overwhelming domain had blown apart the double walls surrounding the frontline territory.

The domain of moonlight shattered, and the sun rose once more to light the sky.

Haah... here come the side effects...

"Nghhh...!!"

"Hyun!"

Kahn realized at once how bad my state was and hurriedly took my pain onto himself.

"Wh—?! Ngh...!"

Even carrying it for me, he was clearly struggling to bear it.

"Every time you use a big technique like earlier, you go through this?"

I didn't have the breath to answer, so I just nodded — and Kahn sighed and kept absorbing the pain anyway.

Whether it was his kindness, or whether it was because he had taken the pain from me, I couldn't say. What I knew for certain was that the agony truly did ease.

Grateful to him, we leaned against the wall together and simply watched the blue sky until Gerald arrived. The heavens, as if nothing had happened at all, greeted us with perfectly clear weather.