Artist
Artist
The Artist, Heliax van Luminox.
The Artist was once a baron, a man who lost his lands and became a robber baron.
A man who survived by running a bandit gang so formidable on foreign soil that even the Imperial Household took notice.
A man who at the end of that road became a Master, then was hunted by Warrior Monks, and finally became a high priest.
A man whose original name was forgotten, leaving only the title "Artist."
The Artist stared at what was happening now, bewildered.
Crackle!
This man spoke the Artist's true name without hesitation — a name no one in this era should know. He wielded Verdict without pause, despite not fully understanding its function himself.
His voice echoed as if defying reason, making space itself wail; golden lightning crawled across the earth, condemning the Artist.
Watching it all, the Artist recalled something a woman had said. The one who had vanished the moment he'd glanced away, just before they entered the mine.
'Still, best to be careful. That breed called Players — they always overturn the table at the very last moment.'
Player. He didn't grasp what it meant exactly, but he understood it referred to Aslan. He'd taken it as a warning about Aslan's latent strength.
But that wasn't it. The Artist now saw that Aslan possessed something well beyond mere strength.
'Dangerous.'
He didn't know Verdict's function. All he had was the knowledge that Verdict could shatter his plans, and a vague sense of menace.
In that moment of hesitation bred by menace, Aslan spoke. He pronounced, in a voice that transcended reason:
"You have plundered lives for vanity."
"To gratify your vanity, you stole noble lives and swelled your belly."
"This is not just."
It was as though multiple mouths spoke at once; every time Aslan's lips moved, voices rang out from all directions.
As if answering that resonance, golden lightning swarmed and seared the pools of venom, and even the burnt toxic fumes were driven back, drifting through the air.
Lightning filled the space. The pronounced words. The Artist recognized it for what it was: an incantation.
Magic created by the Ancient Gods — a means to alter the world's reason, and a tool they had used to control it.
The incantation was part of that. Drawing on what he knew, the Artist understood, in part, what Aslan was doing.
Instinct told him that this incantation was tied directly to the function that could crush his plan.
He had to stop it. If only he could stop it, that fleshly body could not endure. The Artist judged swiftly and moved at once.
He raised his mace, tucked it close to his shoulder, and charged.
He meant to crush Aslan's skull entirely.
Aslan, seemingly defenseless in his incantation, did not move. The mace descended directly—
Claaaaang!
"Guh, agh!"
—but someone interposed herself before him.
It was Ereta, the woman gripping an axe slick with venom that gleamed with a murky light.
Her axe head met the mace and was pushed back hard, but she had shielded Aslan's head.
Ereta had sensed it on instinct too: the only path to victory was to protect Aslan now.
The judgment of two Masters clashed, and what followed was a slaughter-fight to destroy each other's purpose.
"Get out of the way, Ereta!"
The Artist's voice had lost its composure for the first time. The mace howled and rushed in — a chain of strikes tracing four trajectories in the span of a single heartbeat.
Ereta felt death approaching with a single hesitation and a single failure. She moved her blood-drenched wrist and gripped her axe.
She fought purely to defend. No greed, no reaching for a counterattack. She set her stance high and thrust her axe forward as if it were a spear.
Clang-clang-clang!
She thrust first, deflecting the mace's piercing strike. The deflected mace flipped and came chopping down from above; she stepped one pace to the side, crossed her hands on the haft, and struck upward.
The upward blow caught the mace and tilted it aside. The follow-up diagonal chop she met with the flat of her axe head and diverted. Her wrist broke, but divinity mended it.
Then three more brutal blows from both sides. Each time, Ereta thrust her axe to block, then spat flame to force distance. Both wrists shattered. She didn't care.
Pain was something she liked, after all.
She soothed herself with that thought and kept swinging, determined to fend off the mace that sought both her life and Aslan's.
She staked her life on it.
As if answering her, Aslan closed his eyes and pronounced:
"You laid claim to lands that were never yours, and robbed those barely scraping by of their lives and property."
"You ignored their grief, and only took their lives."
"This is not just."
Crackle-crack!
The lightning surged violently, and in the moment the Artist squinted against the overwhelming brilliance—
Ereta's axe moved.
At a distance where their feet could tangle together, she rotated along the line of her body.
Shrrrk!
"Guh...!"
And the first strike landed. A diagonal slash from the turn. The axe grazed past the Artist's eye socket, and his divine blood sprayed a murky green.
Ereta's expression settled coldly. In her eyes, killing intent gave way to something else: certainty.
The face of a Master who had seen the arc of victory.
The Artist gritted his teeth and swung his mace — to wipe away that expression, to wipe away his own scowl, to recover his dignity.
Just as he had always done through the long years of his life.
Metal met metal. The divinity of a dead god clashed fiercely against divinity unjustly amassed by the living. Fire and venom blended and danced; dark green and crimson mingled and flowed thickly.
Detached from that scene, Aslan gripped the spear.
Even within his hazing consciousness, the golden spear burned with a clarity that did not fade, blazing with potent divinity.
And he pronounced the Artist's crimes.
For a single judgment.
"You have served an Evil God and slaughtered countless lives."
"Regardless of their station or age, you have filled the world with lamentation to satisfy your own pride."
"This is not just."
The venom-laced mace quivered faintly as it crushed Ereta's shoulder.
Her arm dropped, but regenerated at once. She fought back, swinging her axe one-handed, and the Artist screamed:
"What could you possibly understand?! It was all art! Art I created by sculpting their lives! You don't know their nobility!"
A high priest without a shred of composure. A foulness swelled desperately, terrified of the punishment descending upon it.
As if condemning that foulness, the massive lightning stormed thicker around them. The damp venomous air tore apart and went up in flames with a shriek.
At the center of that lightning, Aslan pronounced, lofty as a judge:
"You have dressed your deeds, your sins, and your atrocities all as art."
"You did not repent your sins; you took pride in them."
"Your arrogance is not just."
Boooom-crack!
Amid the raging lightning, the Artist took a direct hit. He swallowed a scream and was hurled backward. Ereta, both hands crushed, knelt and waited for her limbs to regenerate.
The Artist and Ereta both panted. Aslan's breathing rasped. In that mingled wretchedness, Aslan spoke:
"Lastly, you have extorted divinity that does not belong to you."
"With that divinity, you threatened the world."
"I therefore pronounce sentence."
BOOM! The lightning coursing through Verdict became a shockwave that swept the surroundings, and the divinity dwelling in the spear flowed in the name of Order.
Within that storm of Order, Aslan opened his eyes.
Eyes of blazing teal. For an instant, gold dwelled in them.
"You are a sinner."
The undulating gold erupted from his eyes and swept outward, and something like light streamed from the spear.
"You are a sinner."
That light pushed back the venom surging toward them like a tidal wave, and time seemed to stop.
"You are a sinner."
Alone within that frozen-seeming world, Aslan moved, and declared:
"Thus, your divinity is hereby confiscated."
A pronouncement of Order that could not be evaded even from the opposite side of the world. At its center, the Artist saw the lightning crashing down upon him.
He raised his mace high to resist, but the lightning passed through the mace as if it did not exist, and plunged straight into the Artist.
Boom-craaackle-bzzzzt!
Within that lightning, the hazy outline of a human form crumbled, rose again, crumbled again, in endless repetition.
Before the divine force that operated as a kind of law, the divinity that the Artist and the Apocalypse's Grounds had absorbed from the Ancient Gods was being scattered.
The lightning withdrew. The Artist stood panting, skin charring. Then he saw it: the spear.
The spear hurtling toward him with full force. Verdict.
Verdict's moment had come, and the Master of Combat chose what he did best.
He drew back the spear in a reverse grip, moved an arm that ought not to move, aimed at the Artist, and hurled it.
Amid the onrushing waves of venom, Aslan's eyes blazed.
"So just die already, you miserable bastard."
Thunk-crack!
The javelin flew. Verdict, a crystallization of divinity that never broke and never rusted even before venom that killed gods — it punched through the Artist's entire left arm and tore it off.
"Guaaargh...?!"
In that instant of penetration, the Artist realized.
His power had reverted to when he was merely one of the Three Evils.
And not only himself — his master, the very grounds of apocalypse, had reverted to nothing more than a Poison-spitting Dragon.
Divinity of the Ancient Gods scattered, dispersing. In that moment, as the Artist's eyes flew wide, two figures rushed at him.
A woman who had just regenerated her hands, gripping her axe with bloodstained fingers — Ereta.
And Aslan, holding the pure white greatsword in his right arm in place of a left arm that had completely melted away.
"Keh, keheh, ha, hahahah!"
The Artist laughed. He laughed, raised his mace, and charged back at them.
Thoroughly satisfied with this artwork of himself — completed at the very limit of restraint.
The mace swung as he closed in, but it no longer carried the same force. Only technique remained. Technique against technique: the clashing of metal rang out in rapid bursts.
But the balance had clearly tipped.
Exhausted though they were, these two were the Master of Combat and the Master of Blunt Weapons. One of them had even attained divinity rivaling a priest.
Against those two, the Artist — even more ravaged than they were — had no way to endure.
He caught Aslan's swinging Purity on his mace. His fingers were sheared off. Gripping the mace with only his index finger, he kicked at Ereta, and she cut off his ankle with her axe.
The axe, wreathed in flame, prevented even what feeble regeneration remained. And the white light Aslan swung carved away at the Artist — little by little, relentlessly.
Carved, kicked, battered, slashed.
Feeling himself being whittled away piece by piece, the Artist kept moving.
The more he struggled, the more brilliantly this work called "himself" would shine.
He deflected a descending Purity with his mace, losing even his index finger. Then came the closing axe.
He thrust his arm in its path to buy time. Barely wrenched his body free.
Braced himself on the floor with his severed ankle, bent deeply at the waist.
He tilted his body far back and drew the maximum amount of venom into his mouth.
And spat.
The venom spraying from his mouth was an extreme poison — an acid so potent it dissolved flesh down to bone the moment it touched skin.
His target was Aslan's arm. If he could only take away that absurdly sharp sword of his, there would be a chance.
If he could counter that one move, he would be complete. If he couldn't counter it, he could struggle further.
Dodge, or take the hit?
To the Artist, watching with anticipation, Aslan's answer was unexpected.
Instead, he thrust out the arm holding Purity and blocked the venom.
Hiiisssss!
Aslan grimaced. Venom seeped through the gaps in his armor's scales, dissolving flesh and sending it sloughing away.
Melted human flesh and bone dripped through the armor. The Artist looked at Aslan with something like regret.
The sword with that crazed cutting power fell to the ground. Aslan was staggering.
Looking at that grimacing face, the Artist lamented that the Master of Combat would meet his death from such a simple mistake.
But he didn't waste the opportunity. He lunged forward, meaning to tear out that throat with his venom-laden jaws.
But Aslan moved first.
He thrust his dissolving arm at the Artist and shoved him back. The Artist caught a faceful of melting flesh and bone and reeled.
Whump!
"...What?"
The force was weak. Barely enough to shove him.
But that shove was enough. Leaving his right arm completely dissolved behind him, Aslan's left arm moved.
Uncovered by any leather, convulsing from venom, the left arm reached behind his back and grasped a hilt.
Gr-r-r-rowl!
A beast-like howl rang out as he pulled that hilt free.
The Sword God he drew in one swift motion blazed pure white.
The moment the Sword God was fully bared, the scabbard unfolded and swallowed it whole. The dark-blue scabbard became the blade.
A bizarre, serrated saw-blade sword. A weapon impossible to wield one-handed. Drawing it now was a choice the Artist could not comprehend. He froze.
"Sa, pl."
Aslan's lips moved, and mana flared blue.
The blazing mana lifted the Sword God, and the hilt moved.
It rose into the air as though gripped by some vast entity and tilted horizontal.
Then came the force.
A strange flow of power surged from his lower body to his upper body, lashing through his own flesh like a whip.
It erupted from thin air, and the sword moved.
At its apex, the blade's tip vanished without leaving an afterimage.
It hurtled forward at a speed too swift to see.
Witnessing that beautiful technique, the Artist curled his lips into a grin.
A dark-blue afterglow lit the dim cavern and sketched across the landscape.
"Magnific—"
Shrrr-r-r-rick!
Where the dark-blue afterglow passed, the Artist's waist split in two.