Astrape
Astrape (Αστραπη).
The lightning of Zeus, a word that was sometimes used as the name of a goddess.
To Ha Jinwoo it was a weapon that launched projectiles with devastating force through principles he only half understood.
Closest thing to a coilgun, wasn’t it?
Its beginning had been pure propaganda.
A secret art worthy of the arrogant name Zeus Project. After much deliberation, the government had created it to announce the existence of a man called Ha Jinwoo upon the battlefield.
The Astrape was an excessively futuristic device that loaded specially manufactured bullets and mounted onto the arm. Without it the technique could not be used.
Principle, equipment, technique. He did not fully comprehend any of them, yet he knew everything he needed to know.
Radiation contamination. Heat. The weight of the disposable reactor and the imbalance caused by its asymmetrical structure. The discomfort of wearing and maintaining something so ergonomically flawed. There were many problems.
Yet it had been more than enough to make his name known to the world.
What he used now produced the same result through a different process.
There was no equipment. The output of the disposable reactor was replaced by lightning coursing through his entire body. The superconducting coils inside the barrel were likewise replaced by lightning.
The lightning that had covered him withdrew.
An arm drenched in blood, twisted and torn half to shreds, was revealed. All that remained functional was the one still levitating the spear in the air.
Feeling the blood dripping and pooling on the floor, Ha Jinwoo focused his mind.
He took aim with the remaining micro-currents. The target was the exact center of the torso.
He did not know where the vital point was. He did not even know if one existed. Therefore he would erase the widest possible area and render it immobile. He would shave away as many of the divine patterns engraved within—symbols formed from power similar to the blessing he had once received—as he could.
When he twisted his body violently, the lightning spear burning red and blue screamed.
Just one shot.
He poured every ounce of his strength into this single strike.
His brain felt as if it were on fire. Blood streamed from his nose. His vision turned crimson. Breathing became difficult. The spear felt crushing even to hold.
Nevertheless, he completed it.
The moment the entire spear turned a perfect, deep blue in his hand, he met the Holy Knight’s gaze.
He could not see eyes, nor could he tell whether any organ inside that helm served the same purpose. Yet looking at the melted armor, the invisible face within the helmet, and the hand still reaching for him, he felt something.
For an instant space itself rippled. A vision flashed across his eyes.
A woman having her child torn away. The monster discovered while searching for the child’s whereabouts. The necklace the mother had made for her child, found after the monster was slain. The Church of Darkness. Their mockery. The desperate prayers of a mother calling out to god.
It was the history of a Holy Knight who had hunted the Church of Darkness for hundreds of years thereafter.
The weight of that history stopped Ha Jinwoo’s breath for a single moment.
But he, too, was a father.
Whether he wished it or not, he could not lay down his life and abandon a child who called him father and longed to be loved by him.
Crackle—!
The spear spun. High heat and high voltage made the air boil.
The Holy Knight was struggling to rise.
Within the elongated moment, Ha Jinwoo boldly twisted his waist and drew his arm back as far as it would go. The Holy Knight did not stay still. She slammed both fists into the ground and launched herself forward.
The leaping mass closed in rapidly. His current body could not possibly block an attack carrying that much weight. If it hit, both of them would die.
Therefore he did not retreat.
He planted his broken leg firmly, twisted his torso, and swung the arm he had drawn back with all his might.
A shockwave erupted as the spear flew.
The blue lightning and red heat of the thrown spear split the oncoming night and drew a single straight line across it. The overwhelming light and impact scattered the water and blood on the floor; stone fragments and clouds of dust rose along its trajectory.
Burning the air blue, it flew straight toward the Holy Knight.
The Holy Knight saw it.
The metal hand she had thrust forward—different from a human one, yet a hand that had crushed countless enemies with overwhelming power—shattered.
The very attempt to seize the spear turned her hand into molten slag that scattered on the wind. Overwhelming heat, rotation, and lightning beyond both.
The wrist and forearm she had extended to block disintegrated, melting and breaking apart. She watched death approach slowly.
Holy Knights were not supposed to die.
They were bodies prepared in paradise, the afterlife reached by those who had faithfully served the light. Even if they died, it was not the end. They simply returned to paradise. No matter how powerful the enemy, they could learn and prepare for the next encounter.
The Church of Light, which possessed legions of such Holy Knights, was undoubtedly the strongest force in the world.
Yet they had never conquered the labyrinth.
Holy Knights who died here could not return to paradise. They simply perished.
Even so, she had volunteered. She had wanted to kill the avatar of darkness inside the labyrinth.
Andreina, who had lost her husband, son, and daughter, had dreamed of an endless revenge and desperately stoked that hatred so it would never die.
Therefore she had thought it was fine to die.
She would resist until the very end. Even if her limbs were torn away, she would headbutt the enemy if she had to. She would deliver punishment to the avatar of darkness, defeat to the Church of Darkness, and victory to the Church of Light.
Yet in that final moment she realized it with almost refreshing ease.
Is this the end?
This was the end of Holy Knight Andreina.
Staring at the approaching period, she felt it clearly. She could not block it. Suspended in the air, she could not dodge.
Even if her body had been in any condition to dodge, she suspected she still could not have.
It was simply too fast.
Her entire family slaughtered like meat, a boy left alone. The boy who ground his teeth in vengeance yet still looked up at the stars. The boy growing up, meeting people, becoming a warrior and standing on the battlefield. Living on, meeting countless people, parting from them, yet continuing to live until he reached this place.
It had been a cruel life.
Even in the avatar’s memories that flashed past like a lantern slide, even in the drastically slowed perception of time, the spear felt unbearably fast.
It pierced her before her body could even move. Andreina let out a hollow laugh.
KWAAAAAAAANG!
With the sound of her armor shattering into pieces, she fell to the ground.
A blue afterimage lingered in the darkness. The body that clumsily imitated life struggled to draw breath, heaving.
Her hands and feet barely moved at all.
Creak. Creeeak. Still on her knees, she looked down at her wounds.
Her right arm completely gone. A massive hole punched through her chest. The force would have blown a human apart from pelvis to collarbone.
She saw the avatar of darkness standing right in front of her.
“It was… an excellent technique.”
Regret remained.
If only one more Holy Knight had been present. If Florencia had not been occupied. If she had followed the instant the avatar was sent flying and eliminated him first.
But those were merely hypotheticals. She knew the outcome before her could not be changed.
Between sorrow and regret, a sense of relief remained. Strangely, her heart grew calm.
“Avatar of Darkness… I would like to hear your name.”
“Jinwoo. Ha Jinwoo.”
“I am Andreina. A Holy Knight.”
The man with the somber face closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. Even though his steps staggered as if his mind were hazy, he approached until he stood right beside her and silently watched the dying Holy Knight.
“I will remember. Holy Knight Andreina.”
They understood each other.
They had glimpsed each other’s memories and seen how both had arrived at this place. Neither offered meaningless consolation, because both knew the other did not need it.
Andreina realized her revenge, her tantrum, was over.
Her husband and children had been unbelievers. They were not in the paradise of light. An unknown future lay before her—an optimistic unknown in which she might meet her separated family again.
“Will the children… forgive their mother?”
“I don’t know. But if it were me, I would forgive her.”
“I see… I have no face to show them…”
The ritual anchoring her soul to the armor and artificial body blurred. Consciousness slowly drained from her form.
“Thank you… Ha Jinwoo…”
When the Holy Knight’s head finally drooped in silence, Ha Jinwoo gazed up at the blue flash that had reached all the way to the distant sky, then collapsed.
And so every person in the labyrinth city saw it.
The blue flash soaring diagonally from the ground into the heavens.
The lightning of the avatar spoken of in the prophecy of the avatar of darkness.
And they realized.
The evil god who presided over chaos, fear, and adversity—Darkness.
The man most favored by that darkness had appeared in the labyrinth.
While the Holy Knight fell to her knees and died and Ha Jinwoo collapsed unconscious, Maribella’s eyes widened. She started to run to her father, then saw the blood clan scattered across the ground.
Swallowing her impatience, she threw aside her broken breastplate and asked,
“…Any fatalities?”
“N-none, my lady.”
A blood clansman sliced cleanly in two was gathering his spilled intestines back into his abdomen. That was simply how they were. As long as blood remained, they did not die.
She had fought with that knowledge in mind, yet the aftermath was still severe. She had nearly died herself. Had she been human, she would have died long ago.
Maribella chewed on that thought, clenched her teeth, then finally approached her father.
“Father…”
At the quiet call, a hand slowly rose. Maribella looked at the blood-dripping hand with complicated eyes.
“Father, can you hear me?”
No answer came. The weakly outstretched hand gently covered her cheek for a moment, then dropped heavily to the floor.
She felt her chest tighten for a reason even she could not name, yet she kept her lips pressed shut.
Fortunately his heart was still beating. Maribella hurriedly took ointment and healing medicine from the pouch on her belt.
She skillfully applied them to Ha Jinwoo’s wounds, then used the belt itself to bind the severed arm and stop the bleeding.
“My lady, the doctor has arrived.”
“What about the main gate defense?”
“It was successfully held.”
“Then first prepare a bed. Set up a temporary ward in an intact building—”
Considering they had just repelled an unprecedented assault by a Holy Knight, the damage was relatively light. She felt relief that the casualties were not worse, yet a headache still throbbed.
“Prioritize Father’s treatment above all else. No matter what, keep him alive.”
“Understood.”
Even though her chest ached for some reason as her father was carried away from her arms, it was not without gain.
Maribella watched the dark elf dragging an unconscious woman with vivid scarlet hair.
“Maribella.”
“Bishara.”
“I put her to sleep with poison for now. Shall I hand her over?”
“Yes, please do. There will be many things to say once she wakes. Haran, lock this woman in an appropriate place and keep watch.”
“Yes, my lady.”
As the unconscious Florencia was dragged away, Maribella unconsciously stared in the direction of the ward where her father had been taken.
“Judging by how much that proud young lady cherished her, he really must be the avatar, huh?”
Maribella flinched, shoulders trembling at the words.
The avatar of darkness. The harbinger of doom who would descend upon a broken world bringing lightning and fire.
Maribella let out a long sigh.
“It seems so.”
“You don’t sound very certain.”
It hit the mark. When Maribella closed her mouth, Bishara narrowed her lusterless eyes and smiled.
“Well then, I’ll be going. It’s been a long time since I had this much fun. The future looks like it will be noisy, and I’m looking forward to it. When he wakes, tell him the dark elves have as many requests as he could want.”
“…Father doesn’t do that sort of work.”
“That’s something you’ll have to hear from him yourself.”
Chuckling softly, the dark elf left the blood clan’s territory in the same spotless dress she had arrived in.
Maribella watched her back, then sighed once more.
Repairing the collapsed buildings, treating the injured knights and her father, restoring the unconscious mystic, explaining the situation to the adventurer guild and the other autonomous districts—there were many headaches awaiting her.
Still, they had won. That was what mattered.
Maribella began to move, feeling her throbbing head and aching wounds, when—
“…Ah.”
She suddenly noticed the blood on her hand. More precisely, on her gauntlet.
The blood that had smeared onto her when she held her father. Her father’s blood.
The blood of the avatar. As far as she knew, the blood of a superhuman who had transcended humanity.
Maribella stared at the still-wet blood flowing down her fingers and drew in a deep breath.
If it’s only a little sip—
Indeed, the gains had not been small.
