The Nameless Eagle
And so, if such a thing were possible, it would be fraud. Deception. An act that would crack the very mystique of the druids.
Every sacred race would turn its back. The Star Guardians. The elves. Perhaps even fellow druids themselves.
A creature that is the very symbol of ill omen could never be the Druid of the Golden Rule…
Any sane mind would reach that conclusion.
The problem was Ojuryeok — that crow — and the sheer abnormality of everything it did.
Ojuryeok was a being that rejected the ordinary, shattered common sense, a violation made flesh — as if root and leaf had been swapped end for end.
Ojuryeok. That thing had never been normal.
It had been that way from the moment it first appeared in the Tower of Mystery. It broke records that should never have been broken. It destroyed concepts.
And that was only the beginning. Everything it did afterward was equally beyond the bounds of reason. In the end it had restored his fang, yes — but the methods were so far outside common sense that suspicion was inevitable.
"If we clash our souls, the truth will become clear."
A Monster Soul. That soul was a medium designed to evolve in reflection of its summoner's spirit. Therefore, a contest of souls was nothing less than a collision of souls themselves. Just as sweat rises from exertion, the scent of a soul would grow sharper with every impact — and the true nature of the other would be laid bare.
Of course—
I shall prove that my soul is the strongest.
The thought of losing never once crossed his mind. He was the lord who ruled the North. An Absolute before whom even the gods themselves should tremble.
Hearing the White King's words, I couldn't help but feel a jolt of cold alarm.
He smelled Ojuryeok on me?
Impossible. Every malignant tendency had passed over to Randolph. All that remained in me now was the radiant affinity of light.
And yet the White King had named Ojuryeok with perfect precision. He said the scent was there.
But there was no way a real scent could exist.
Did he read my existence itself?
Had he somehow perceived one face of a dual being that no one else had ever managed to read? Or was it tied to some power of his own? His instincts had always been sharp enough to be called foresight.
…Instinct. He's sensing it. Pure gut feeling.
Yes. In the end, it was only a hunch. A probe. As long as I didn't flinch, he wouldn't catch me.
His instincts have gotten even sharper than before.
Unexpected. It seemed the White King had grown as well. Having reclaimed his fang and recovered his power, he had taken another step beyond that.
I looked at him again. It felt as though he had finally ascended the true throne of a king. His presence had changed — considerably.
Druid of the Golden Rule (Eleven Sacred Heavens)
VS
White King (Ruin King Mork)
But there was no more time for conversation. The fifth match had begun.
"Come. Let us play a little."
The White King brimmed with confidence — and Ruin King Mork's presence matched that arrogance, a force that could hold a thousand foes alone.
KWAANG!
The instant the match began, Ruin King Mork kicked off the ground and lunged at Eleven Sacred Heavens. The speed was monstrous.
GAAAAAH—!
In a blink it had Eleven Sacred Heavens by the throat. Its hands swelled to enormous size and twisted the far larger dragon's neck as if to snap it clean through.
Whoosh!
In that moment, the Wish Orb began to shine.
And then—
Gruk?
Ruin King Mork's movements began to reverse, rewinding like a film run backward. It released the throat and returned to the spot it had occupied before the charge.
The power to move a body's time.
Eleven Sacred Heavens commanded time — not the world's time, but the time of living flesh. It could wind a body forward or roll it back.
GROAAAAAH!
Ruin King Mork screamed. Scales sloughed from its body. Its frame hunched. It began to age at a terrifying rate.
Crack!
Everything shattered as if riven by fissures — and at the same instant, Ruin King Mork's body snapped back to its original state. The White King had spoken the activation word.
"No mystic power works on Ruin King Mork."
The abilities called mystic powers — every blessing, every curse, every force of that kind — simply did not take hold on Ruin King Mork. Mork possessed the power to cancel every ability directed at itself.
Ruin King Mork possesses the attribute Ability Intrusion Immunity (Lv. 40).
That, too, belonged to the realm of the Absolute. It even surpassed my mastery level — which meant that even the Martial God's Mind Sword could not yet cut through it.
It seemed this creature was specialized in a single thing: pure physical combat.
That did not make it invincible, however.
One of the eyes closed.
Countless eyes floated above Ruin King Mork's body. One of them had shut the moment "Inviolable" was spoken. Those eyes were the authority that suppressed mystic power. In other words, if every last eye could be forced shut, Ability Intrusion Immunity would lift as well.
Temporal deceleration and acceleration are still woven of mystic power, after all.
Now I understood why it was called the Ruin King — and why the White King was so certain of victory.
And of course he was.
KWANG! KWANG!
KWAAAAANG!
…It gave no opening to use mystic power at all. The barrier had to be broken by closing the eyes — but Mork moved faster. With both hands swelling to enormous size, it battered Eleven Sacred Heavens at speeds too swift to follow. In pure physical combat, there was no catching up.
Only one option remained.
"You still had room left to evolve?"
The White King smiled. Mork's movements stilled as well — as if waiting for the evolution to finish. He was indulging in a strong man's leisure.
Transforming into the form of the Twelve Heavenly Ones.
The final form stored in the tail. Sacred. Immense.
"…A crow?"
A white crow revealed itself. Seeing the Twelve Heavenly Ones, the White King frowned and tilted his head.
"Ojuryeok… it is not."
A crow was a crow. And yet this one was sacred beyond any comparison to Ojuryeok. The small sun blazing above its head and the tails glowing crimson were beautiful — so beautiful one could scarcely call the creature a crow at all.
Having taken in the completed form, the White King smiled once more.
"Well then. Let us play again."
—…
The Forgotten God watched the Druid of the Golden Rule in silence.
The Twelve Heavenly Ones. That sacred crow, too, was a being from beyond the Truth. A beast once worshipped as a god. Master of myth — giver and binder of life. Its power had been so overwhelming that it was cast out beyond the Truth and erased.
So that was the function of the Twelve Heavenly Ones from the very beginning!
The Forgotten God understood the instant it saw. Dianax. Angel Behemoth. The Ten-Tailed Fox. The Eleven Sacred Heavens. All of them had been forms the Twelve Heavenly Ones had linked and reshaped.
Not evolution — transformation.
Which meant this form was the absolute end.
It cannot win.
If this was the end, victory was impossible. The Twelve Heavenly Ones was a being specialized in amplifying the power of whatever form it had assumed. But Ruin King Mork was truly strong. It could neither command time nor bind life — and yet it was powerful enough to surpass all of that. More than expected. Beyond imagination.
That thing must be regarded as the final form of its species.
If the origin of the species was the human form the Forgotten God had created, then this could fairly be called the species' ultimate evolutionary form. The Forgotten God had not expected it to be this strong — but that was likely due to the summoner's own capacity.
The White King. That one…
He inherited the blood of the White Tiger Emperor.
The sovereign of the White Tiger Clan, who evolved everything under his rule. Even in the world of that once-most-brilliant civilization, he had stood as a figure none could approach. The White King seemed to have inherited that blood.
CAAAAW!
The Twelve Heavenly Ones screamed. It was somehow enduring Ruin King Mork's assault — but that, too, was only a matter of time.
The Forgotten God shook its head.
If only it had accepted me, the outcome would have been different.
It had offered everything. Had the Druid abandoned the goddess and received the Forgotten God instead, victory here would have meant nothing. Among the evil gods themselves, it would have risen to the highest rank.
—…?
Then it happened. The Forgotten God had believed the Twelve Heavenly Ones was the end.
—What is that…?
It could not trust its own eyes. The Twelve Heavenly Ones was changing form once more.
And that form—
The Forgotten God's pupils began to shake violently at the sight of it.
—That cannot be…!
The Gray King.
The World Tree.
The tree that upheld the world and preserved its balance. All life in every world had sprung from the World Tree, and so the first World Tree could rightly be called the mother of all creation.
But the Primordial World Tree carried a life-force so overwhelming that it could not endure for long. After scattering the seeds of other World Trees, it withered and died. The greatest problem, then, was the act of sowing the seeds the Primordial World Tree had conceived — for its power was so immense that no living thing could easily approach it. Even gods who had attained divinity dared not try.
There was said to be only one beast permitted to draw near the Primordial World Tree.
…Only one. A bird that had taken its place atop the World Tree. Though it was forgotten now, the Forgotten God knew of it — for she herself had been forgotten alongside it in the World Tree's dungeon.
Its name is the Nameless Eagle, sovereign of the open sky.
It had no name. No one knew what the bird was called. Yet that vast eagle had carried seeds from the Primordial World Tree and given birth to countless World Trees. Nothing that roamed the heavens could stand in the path of that colossal eagle. Though it was forgotten and gone now—
…That bird was surely the origin of the druids.
The race that creates nature — the druids. The role of the Nameless Eagle had been passed down to them intact. The druids themselves were likely one of the races the Nameless Eagle had made.
Yes. The reason the Nameless Eagle had been forgotten and erased was precisely this — the decisive reason it had been forced outside the Eye of Truth and annihilated:
The creation of species!
The making of new kinds. The Nameless Eagle had been an Originator. It had not merely carried the World Tree's seeds. In the process, it had forged countless species and become their progenitor. And yet the very races it created did not know the Nameless Eagle — for the Truth had wiped it clean from their minds.
—H… how…
The Forgotten God's eyes filled with disbelief. That was, without question, the most sacred of beasts. A being so superior that nothing could be set beside it for comparison.
And yet—
There were limits to the forms a Monster Soul could shape. Even if one could call back a being from beyond the Truth, the Nameless Eagle stood past even those outer bounds.
—How did you call forth an Old One…!
…Old One. In the tongue of the ultra-ancient civilization, the word meant "god of beasts." The beasts of the beginning had been incomparably vast and powerful, and so many species had thronged the world that every day was war. Among them, a vanishing few possessed transcendent power and held the rank of Deity — and the beasts had called those few Old Ones, and worshipped them.
And that was, without any doubt, the eagle that had been called an Old One. A supreme form that no soul should have been able to forge.
And yet it had forged it.
The Druid of the Golden Rule — the one who had refused the Forgotten God — had summoned the Nameless Eagle, and gone further still.
—…You mean to say it devoured it.
…And made of it another form.
Something had eaten it. Something unspeakably ominous, unspeakably ruinous — a presence that sent a shudder even through her, an evil goddess who scattered curses—!
What had clearly been the Nameless Eagle — an eagle that should have shone pure white and radiant — had evolved into something else entirely, feathered in gray.
The Forgotten God could not look away. It kept staring at that thing.
Of course it did.