The Eternal Promise
The Heavenly Race is strong.
This truth has been handed down as self-evident from ages past to the present day, and the only beings who could stand as their equals were the demons.
Kwaaaaaaang!!
Hundreds of spears came surging in like a storm and slammed me straight into the wall. The instant they split apart, they detonated, one after another.
Light flared along my opponent's thick forearm, and my left arm blew apart.
I regenerated it.
So he's awakened a unique Authority.
"Ho! You regenerated that? You're no ordinary foe."
"You're strong."
My opponent was a Heavenly Knight — the Knight Captain who led the entire Order. His rank sat squarely in the middle tier, and he had awakened a unique Authority on top of it, honing his strength through it. A powerhouse in the truest sense: Authority and technique alike.
It was no exaggeration to say that a being of this caliber would flatten an entire continent merely by descending to the surface.
Even stronger than Duke Hwangyeolgong.
"Someone like you could easily command an entire legion, if not a house of your own. What's your name?"
"Where is Lady Lorelies?"
"Do not speak her name so carelessly. And I am the one who asks the questions here."
"No."
Kwaaang!
The spear moved. So did I. Before I knew it, I was behind him, and the White Savior had already punched through his heart.
"...!"
"I ask the questions."
From the impaled heart, the Spear's Roar erupted — a vortex of violence that shredded him not from the outside, but from within. The Knight Captain's body lurched, and a violent tidal wave of force tore him apart from the inside out.
He crumpled where he stood and rolled across the floor.
"Acting doesn't work on me."
"You saw through that, did you?"
In a blink, the Knight Captain had wrenched my spear free of his body, regenerating his 'heart' even as he swung his own spear in a wide arc.
It didn't surprise me. The Heavenly Race can restore themselves from the divinity stored in their souls even if their entire bodies are crushed to pulp. A heart bursting is nothing to them.
The only reason I'd bothered to grind his heart to paste was that, soul aside, part of his divinity flowed through it — circulating with his blood, the way blood cycles through the heart itself.
The Knight Captain's spear split apart.
The divided spears rose high into the air, then came raining down on me all at once. It was a technique I knew intimately.
"Rain of Spears."
"Your identity grows more suspicious by the moment. What business brings you here?"
"Who knows."
Against spears, use spears.
I split my own spear and raised a Rain of Spears in answer. Tens of thousands of lances collided and burst, triggering chain after chain of explosions. When divinity clashes against divinity, that much is only natural — but those strange detonations were not the aftermath of the Rain of Spears.
He's imbued his technique with his Authority.
I wasn't being pushed back by raw power yet, but the moment his Authority took hold, time would tilt the exchange against me. Ideally I'd have answered him spear for spear until the very end, but...
"I suppose I have no choice."
"Haha! So you've given u—?"
The spear transformed. The moment it shed its form, his Rain of Spears guttered out — and then, having recovered its target, came howling back toward me all over again.
My opponent was the Knight Captain. The true threat, Lorelies, still remained, and I could not afford to squander my strength here.
Clank!
A crushing weight settled into my hands. By the time I registered it, I had punched through every last spear and stood directly before him.
"A hammer?"
"A hammer."
KWAAA-JIJIJIK!!!
I brought it down on the Knight Captain with everything I had.
Technique matters. I learned the arts of the spear from a devotee of the spear, a devotee of technique itself, and those teachings have served me faithfully even now — the method of wringing maximum effect from minimum strength.
I respect technique. I think it profoundly useful. And yet there is a saying:
Overwhelming power needs no technique.
I poured divinity into the White Savior, now a hammer. Poured, and poured, and poured again, stacking it layer upon layer until the hammer brimmed with everything I had — and then swung it down. Nothing fancy. No flourish. A simple, honest overhead smash.
Granted, stacking divinity like that isn't exactly simple in itself, but swinging a hammer with force behind it hardly qualifies as technique.
And yet the blow landed devastatingly true.
Sometimes the answer isn't refined mastery. Sometimes it's a good old-fashioned single strike.
The Knight Captain was launched as though he'd detonated on impact, his body hammering into the wall. The Sanctuary shook and began to collapse — no. It didn't collapse.
...A barrier.
This was the Sanctuary governed by Lorelies, and naturally the whole of it was wrapped in a ward steeped in her power. Once this fight ended, it would restore itself to how it was. It resembled the barrier I had raised earlier, but the magnitude of the power behind it was on another level entirely. I could feel it, unmistakably.
I won't be breaking through this, not in my current state.
Despite an attack layered and layered upon itself, the barrier bore not so much as a scratch. If anything, it hummed in response to my divinity, radiating light as though drinking it in to grow only more solid. At this level, there was no doubt about it — she stood among the higher existences.
Thud. Thud.
I walked toward the epicenter of the blast, where the Knight Captain lay sprawled, not a single intact limb left on his body.
"Are you dead?"
"......"
"You're dead."
His soul might have clung on, but his body was gone. To his credit, he had braced his spear shaft against the ground even as the blow landed and channeled his Authority into it to absorb the shock. It hadn't been enough.
He was outmatched from the start.
His divinity and rank both fell short of mine. If he'd wielded a superior technique — Annihilation, or perhaps even Sacred Fire — who could say? But no ordinary skill in his arsenal could kill me.
"Ugh...!"
Not that I'd come through unscathed either.
I wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth. I had drawn on my divinity too greedily, and I hadn't yet recovered from the lingering backlash of the Authority the Knight Captain had left behind. Still, given time for my divinity to replenish, it would mend itself.
Leaning on the hammer like a staff, I surveyed my surroundings.
"...It's quiet."
I still had to deal with Ervino — the wretch who'd dared to betray me. Had he fled in the meantime?
What a nuisance.
I reached out my hand. The Red Guide could have done it, but in my current state, tracking the location of a mere lower Heavenly Knight was well within reach.
There — his trace. He hadn't gotten far.
After letting my divinity recover a moment, I teleported directly in front of him. Ervino's eyes split wide open, and he clutched his head in both hands and bolted. Really, was all that fleeing necessary? Judging by the sight of me hammering the Knight Captain into paste, apparently yes.
Afraid your head might come off?
"Gyaaaaah! F-forgive me! I was wrong!"
"Then why did you do it?"
"P-please, mercy!"
"No."
There are no second chances for the Heavenly Race. I am hardly a merciful soul, and they are beings who have forfeited any right to a yellow card. What awaits them is one thing, and one thing only.
Clank.
A red card.
I gripped the hammer and launched myself at him. Even a lower-rank Heavenborn would be worshipped as a god upon descending to the surface — and yet here he was, running away with his tail between his legs.
"You're lucky. I won't erase you outright."
"E-erase?"
"That's right."
The divinity-laden hammer came down to pulp him then and there —
— and something shot between us like a bolt of lightning.
"...Now what is this?"
It was an enormous white shield, octagonal in shape, that had caught my hammer. Its inner face spun round and round like a whirlpool, and the moment divinity came pouring off of it, my hammer was flung backward as if by natural law. The arm still gripping it rang out in protest on its own.
The shield spoke.
"Away, discourteous one. Withdraw."
"And who might you be?"
"......"
Shaaang!!
This time a white, angular blade came flying at my throat — wielding, unsurprisingly, the same power as the shield. I kicked off the ground in a burst of speed and beat the sword aside with my hammer. The weapons rang against each other in a long resonance, and the weight bound into the blade began to press my hammer back.
But the sword was being pressed just the same.
"...!"
It slid backward, and backward, and only managed a grinding halt by the time it was embedded in a pillar far, far across the chamber.
The shield seethed with menace.
"Discourteous one. Today you have committed a second wrong."
"A wrong? Is that so. I'd say I've issued quite enough warnings."
The only reason the Heavenly Race — beings who deserve death for the mere fact of their existence — were still breathing was that I was no longer the person I had been during the war. The me of now had returned from that place only to be put through trials inside a game. One reprieve, I could grant. Anything beyond that, I would not.
"How laughable. You would pass judgment upon Lady Lorelies' 'Discipline' with that meager scrap of power?"
"Discipline? You mean that nonsense?"
"Discipline is no nonsense."
Behind the shield, yet another weapon rose into the air. A spear this time, was it?
"The first wrong: you invaded Lady Lorelies' Sanctuary. The second wron—"
Chaak!
"...!"
My hammer tore clear of the spear's attack range — a heartbeat too slow. By then the lance had already bored through my side, and it flared with light.
"You dared to violate her Discipline."
The spear began to spin.
Knock. Knock.
"Enter."
At the very crown of Lorelies' Sanctuary, the door to the chamber where its mistress dwelt swung open, and a strangely shaped shield floated in, hovering on its own. The shield tilted its body in what could only be a bow.
"As commanded, she has been subdued."
"Subdued, was she."
"Yes. The Knight Captain was holding back, so it was no great struggle. Her resistance was fierce, however, so she is presently confined within the Eternal Cage."
"I see. Well done, Manus."
Seated upon an ancient, dignified chair, the mistress of the Sanctuary — Lorelies — offered her praise. When her gaze shifted, Manus's attention followed it. Behind her, a great pane of glass had been set into the wall: no view of the heavens, but of the surface world below.
The world was at peace.
"The world has changed a great deal. The bloodshed and death that once seemed endless have run dry. A wondrous thing, is it not?"
"It is."
"And yet some things remain unchanged. For instance..."
An eternal promise, perhaps.
"The... promise, you mean?"
"Yes. The eternal promise. It is why 'this place' endures even as the ages pass. Come to think of it, perhaps this, too, was part of Her design."
"......"
"Our survival, this place in the far-off future, even what would become of Her herself — all of it."
Every last bit of it had been Her design, and the fruit of Her promise.
For the great road stretches on, even now.
Eeeee...
"You know it as well as anyone. The only ones who know what this place truly is are myself and you, Manus."
"......"
"On an unrelated note... 'you.'"
Tak.
"How much longer do you intend to keep up this charade of being Manus?"