Chapter 144
Chapter 144
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 144
Chapter Title: Weeping Fallen
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Titeo, seated upon a throne made of skulls, stared piercingly into the pool of black tears that stained his own visage.
Within the black helm,
crimson eyes fixed upon him.
The challenger, the pilgrim.
Titeo glimpsed his ideals.
‘Different.’
The number of knights who had challenged him thus far was beyond counting.
Some for their honor.
Others for power.
For wealth, each harboring their own ideals and desires, they had come to face him.
Across a millennium.
To Titeo, who still held his post after all this time, this new challenger was intriguing.
‘A sword with nothing dwelling within.’
And yet, because it held nothing, it proclaimed it could contain anything—an ambition laid bare.
Arrogance bordering on hubris, a self-assurance blazing in his gaze.
All the better.
[Proof is no longer necessary, is it.]
He had already proven himself.
Mere words would not have moved Titeo. But these were no empty delusions.
Titeo could fully sense the myriad auras harbored by the challenger.
Fairy and dragon. And god.
He already bore what could not be borne.
With that, he had proven it.
That his sword could contain anything.
He was more than qualified.
Titeo closed his eyes.
A thousand years ago.
Bearing the deaths of his comrades on his back, he slew the dragon, slew the demon.
Yet the war remained deadlocked, and the might of one man alone proved insufficient to end the colossal battlefield of the Dragon-Demon War.
Even so, his convictions never broke, never bent.
Even if this body shattered a hundred times over and perished, he was resolved to charge forth and sever the enemy's throat.
But.
Not everyone shared Titeo’s resolve.
The saintess, of all people, did not.
The heroes representing each sacred armament banded together to end the war.
In a manner utterly opposed to what Titeo desired.
Dragon, demon, and man forged a pact.
With the giants as witnesses, they erected the tower.
Titeo’s fierce opposition was crushed beneath the giant’s spear and sealed away.
Agatodo.
It had been the giant’s spear, after all.
‘I harbor no grudge against the giants.’
Wisest of all.
For he was the giant himself.
His choice had been the right one.
The saintess and the heroes? They were no different.
Their choices, too, could only be respected now.
Thanks to them, peace had come, after all.
Across a millennium.
Mankind grew prosperous, dragons rested, and demons consolidated their strength.
However.
Titeo could not accept that peace.
But sealed within this tower, he could not escape.
Thus, he waited.
For the one who would bear the rage and deaths of himself and his comrades.
The knight who would carry it at his sword’s edge.
[Can your sword contain even us.]
He yearned to find out.
* * *
The skull knight’s spear thrust toward Kallias. His shield rose to meet it.
This was a place of proof.
It demanded he prove himself by breaking it with raw power.
He existed.
Their desires were simple.
What the Weeping Fallen desired.
What the knights who echoed him desired: merely the value of death.
A death of worth and honor.
Nothing more.
‘I will.’
Topple them.
And embrace them all.
For that was precisely why he had come.
[Prove it!]
The spear shot forth.
At the same instant, the Devouring Sword swung.
Clang!
In the dim stone chamber of the fourth layer.
Sparks flashed across the proving ground guarded by the dead.
‘The power I possess.’
Everything he had.
He would show it here.
Just as he drew Lament to deliver a single finishing strike—
Rustle!
Kallias’s sword lost its target.
“…What?”
Suddenly, the forms of the skull knights dissolved into faint sand and collapsed.
They vanished completely soon after.
The demons as well.
The fourth layer stood empty.
As if it had all been a dream.
But it was no dream.
[Can your sword contain even us.]
The lowest, most ominous voice he had ever heard.
Kallias, chills racing across his skin at the sound, did not relax his guard.
He was quite flustered, too.
The fourth layer was meant for proof.
A place to prove one’s convictions.
Thus, Kallias had needed to defeat them all.
‘But they vanished.’
As if no proof were required.
For the first time since arriving at the tower, events unfolded contrary to his expectations.
Whether this was fortune or calamity, he could not say.
‘Us.’
Could it even contain us.
Was this a question?
Only one could pose such a query.
Weeping Fallen.
“Titeo.”
Calling his name,
the door opened as if it had been waiting.
A door leading downward.
Kallias’s fluster ceased.
He quickly regained his composure.
Yet he did not lower his guard.
Contrary to plan, Titeo—
“You must wish to meet me.”
All the better.
Kallias headed straight for the door.
He descended the stairs and promptly entered the fifth layer.
“Nothing here.”
This should have been where Titeo’s memories emerged.
The reason for his fall.
The war’s end.
The origin of the corruption it birthed, and the seal binding him here.
All of it should have appeared.
Yet what lay before him was an empty cavern lit only by a few candles.
With a look of rough understanding, Kallias descended to the next layer.
His footsteps echoed softly as he went down the stairs.
Step by step.
The deeper he went, the thicker the darkness and the aura of corruption whispered to him.
It dredged up his wastrel days, his past pains, urging him toward depravity.
The agony of countless trials, the regrets of misguided choices swirled about his ears.
Yet his expression unchanged, his posture proud and unyielding, he reached the layer’s end.
The sixth layer.
The engraving on that door: a giant and a spear.
And the Weeping Fallen alone.
Boom.
Kallias flung the door open with both hands.
Rumble!
As the door parted, what first seized his eyes was black water.
Black water flowing toward his feet.
Green torches blazed around, illuminating an endless underground abyss.
And at its far end.
The Weeping Fallen.
Titeo sat upon his throne of skulls, shedding black tears.
Kallias said nothing, merely stepping through the tears with wet splashes as he advanced toward him.
[I fell.]
Kallias’s feet did not stop.
[My sword and body, offered to halt the war, rejected peace at its very end.]
Kallias drew his blade.
[At the dawn of peace, I corrupted myself and revived my piteous, slain comrades.]
The Weeping Fallen rose slowly from his throne, as if to greet him.
[I became the sword myself. A sword to embrace them.]
Ominous waves rippled outward from Titeo. The pitch-black cavern trembled and began to shift.
From the empty darkness.
Thousands of skulls slowly began to rise.
From that distant past.
Heroes who had risen solely for peace. And those who had sacrificed their lives to save Titeo.
They stood as one, blocking Kallias’s path.
An impregnable wall, an iron fortress.
[Thus, I ask.]
In the heart of abject despair.
An endless wait without end.
But Titeo was not alone.
With thousands of revived comrades at his side, he lifted his head toward the solitary Kallias.
[You who received the fairies’ love and bear the dragons’ wrath. At the tip of that sword which serves the gods, can it contain even us.]
Before him stretched fathomless darkness.
Ranged against him were reversal heroes beyond number, a sight to inspire dread.
Yet Kallias advanced.
Sword aura whipped from his blade.
The smoky aura soon took the form of scattering petals.
He offered no verbal reply.
Words held no meaning for them; he would show it through action.
The knight wielding his sword moved without hesitation, his gaze unwavering, so the Fallen merely watched.
Soon, the knight hurled forth his bracelet.
Immense silver divine power erupted, devouring the surroundings.
Yet purity was nowhere to be seen.
But his comrades hesitated.
[Hmm.]
He seemed to grasp the reason.
Violet energy mingled at the knight’s side.
And then. The aura of tyranny.
Crimson light dragon intertwined.
Myriad energies swirled about his form before merging as one.
The tears he trod were black.
Yet his fluttering cloak was white.
Stark black and white.
Amid the charred dead, he was the pilgrim.
Pure white, alone.
But right now.
The aura he exuded was gray.
His entire body shrouded in gray energies, he was neither black nor white—gray.
Regret filled Titeo’s eyes.
No, it held ashen hues.
The Fallen’s lips curved into a smile.
His assembled comrades were stunned.
In the past millennium.
He had never smiled.
[Hahaha! The pinnacle of imbalance!]
A novice who hadn’t even pierced his limits.
If swords were divided into medicine and poison, he would surely rank among the weak, the poison.
Yet the Fallen could not condemn him.
[…]
Drawing upon every aura, he shattered his limits.
No, he was shattering them.
Assimilating with it, even his body was breaking through limits. His once-low heart soared steeply. Unlike before, his imagery expanded ceaselessly.
A will dominating the realm.
The Weeping Fallen could sense it.
It was a thirst for power.
The resolve to inherit the righteous ones’ legacy, a pride declaring he differed from her.
In the heart of the enemy lines.
He declared thus.
[With ash, I shall contain all.]
Crimson eyes recalled old memories.
Petals rampant everywhere.
In that brutal battlefield, she who for a fleeting moment etched flowers into his heart.
Stella.
‘Her successor.’
But memories faded.
The petals changed. No longer petals, but ash.
Gray ash blanketed everything.
The Fallen’s gaze wavered.
‘This, too. Is beautiful.’
Ash scattering everywhere.
At its center, the knight of ash stood tall.
He sought to surpass limits.
Human limits. His own limits.
With everything he bore.
Containing it all in a single strike.
His imagery swelled endlessly.
The indwelling will dominated the realm.
Suppressed it.
Could a single speck of ash hold such lethal menace.
Absurdity drew a hollow laugh.
Ash bore impossible heat.
Yet it did not burn.
Unlike ordinary heat.
As one of the assembled knights reached out to a drifting speck of ash, it seeped in.
And soon, bare bones crumbled to ash and fell away.
‘If flames burn from without, does ash burn from within.’
Each speck carried heat, of course, infused with sword aura.
No, it was being reinforced in real time.
The sword aura took the form of sword beams.
Meaning it embodied will.
How had he woven such profundity.
‘Because of the fairy and dragon.’
Likely so.
Otherwise, it made no sense.
He had infused his sword with their powers, rooted in nature’s forces.
And what enabled it was his very imagery.
That turned impossibility into reality.
[An absurd bastard.]
Imbalance had forged balance in turn.
All of it piercing limits.
No, it had pierced them.
The Fallen was satisfied.
After a millennium’s wait, he had met him.
[What is your name.]
At last, the ashen knight, who had forged his own world, answered.
“Kallias.”
And with that, his sword cleaved the Fallen’s world.