Chapter 95

From the epicenter of the explosion, something sharp flew out. It was Malthiel’s fingernail. Just before being struck by the attack that condensed the lightning within the massive cloud into a single point, Malthiel, in a desperate gamble, tore off his fingernail and threw it, aiming for the boy’s forehead.

Normally, a small hole would have opened in the boy’s head.

But the boy, once again, twisted his head to avoid it. A light scratch appeared on his forehead, but it was a wound too small to bother with.

Not long after, the boy’s body slowly stopped in mid-air, and then began to fall towards the ground.

Malthiel, having been struck head-on by a massive amount of energy, was also collapsing towards the ground like a soaked kite, without any strength.

Even as he fell towards the ground, the boy raised his finger and aimed at Malthiel’s body.

More than four minutes remained of the bloom’s duration.

Even after unleashing a massive amount of lightning, the boy’s body had plenty of magic left. This was thanks to him manipulating external electricity, rather than the electricity within his body.

Within Malthiel’s chest, as he fluttered towards the ground, something faint glimmered.

It was Malthiel’s core.

Without the slightest hesitation, the boy swung his arm.

Suddenly, a stark white light burst forth from the blue sky. Conjuring a bolt from the blue was nothing to the boy.

The lightning, cleaved into a score of tendrils, rode the ionized air on all sides. It mattered not. The root, the essential core, drove unerringly toward Malthael’s nucleus.

The word “victory” flickered through his mind.

And with it, a faint stench of mortuary carts wafted to the boy’s nose.

That night, the faces of soldiers who perished in the burning forest played across his vision like scenes from a silent film, one after another.

He hadn’t anticipated such memories surfacing in the final moment.

Unbeknownst to himself, deep within the boy’s heart, a guilt towards those who had lost their lives because of him lay dormant.

“…This will suffice.”

Thus.

At the very moment everything was about to end.

“Samael.”

Malthael’s lips, blackened and charred, uttered the name once more.

* * *

Dirt stung his eyes. A small stone struck Lex’s thick brow, ricocheting away. The wind scraped dryly at his back.

Lex felt a chill bloom in his abdomen. He twisted his body, buried in the earth, and lowered his gaze to a stomach awash in crimson blood.

It was putrefying. As though injected with some noxious fluid, his very flesh was undergoing rapid necrosis.

The first emotion he felt upon seeing the wound was terror.

He was dying.

The truth of it pressed against his skin, raw and real.

‘What am I even doing?’

But swiftly, a powerful question, eclipsing even the terror, consumed his thoughts. Lex turned his head, scanning the surroundings.

Earth pressed in from all sides. The corners of his vision blackened, and strength deserted his limbs.

Where am I? The thought surfaced in his mind with startling ease.

“Samael.”

The voice, low and chilling, vibrated against his eardrums, sending shivers through his body.

“…General.”

Belatedly, Rex’s mind began to piece together the events.

‘I was in battle.’

Maltiel and General Bean were locked in single combat. Rex had feigned using the war horn, irritating Maltiel.

As a result, Maltiel had unleashed Samael, a card he’d been saving for the very last moment, a limb of his own body, on Rex.

Samael had subdued Rex in an instant.

And as a result, here he was, a hole punched through his abdomen, awaiting death.

It did not take Rex long to understand the sequence of events.

‘Damn it. Did I lose consciousness for a moment? My limbs move. I can still breathe, however faintly. I can still fight. Assess the situation, what happened with the General’s battle with the Archlord?’

Rex forced his sprawled body upright, turning his head towards the source of the voice.

There, Maltiel, blackened and reduced to ash, was collapsing weakly to the ground like a rain-soaked plume.

‘The General prevailed? Alone?’

If it had been Rex in his usual state, he would have focused on marking Samael in that moment, ensuring that Bean could finish off Maltiel with the advantage secured.

The battle situation was overwhelmingly favorable to Bean, by all appearances. Barring an unforeseen variable, it was a foregone conclusion that Maltiel would lose his life in the next instant.

“…It’s over?”

But Rex was not in his usual state.

He’d momentarily lost consciousness, only just now clawing his way back. Oxygen struggled to reach his brain, and a delayed, immense pain began to crash over his abdomen.

And it was that Maltiel, the one dying.

The warmaster Maltiel, with whom Rex had spent three years, crossing the razor’s edge together, the one who’d caused the annihilation of the Sixth Platoon.

Bin wasn’t the only one traumatized by the catastrophe that day in the forest.

“…Finally!”

The vow he’d made before his comrades’ corpses flashed through his mind.

The very smell of that day, when he’d sworn to become a stronger warrior and kill Maltiel, was still vivid.

The creaking of the corpse carts, carrying his comrades, still filled his ears.

Rex felt the ache in the one arm that had become machine. Simultaneously, he couldn’t contain the surge of something overwhelming in his chest.

And that complex, countless array of emotions, momentarily slowed the warrior’s thoughts.

“Warmasterrrrrrrrr!”

It ushered in a colossal disaster, beyond repair.

“…!”

Rex shuddered at the desperate roar behind him and whipped his head around. There, stood Samael, wings spread wide, knees bent.

‘Damn it.’

Rex belatedly focused on the foreign sensation in his chest. He had to pull out the horn and blow it, prevent Samael from interfering in Maltiel and Bin’s battle, as quickly as possible.

Fine particles began to seep through his skin, bursting from his chest.

But it was already too late.

*Bang!*

A pitch-black shadow narrowly grazed above his head. A sharp wind followed, slapping his cheek.

‘Sleep…’

Rex possessed neither the strength nor the space to halt Samael.

‘Am I not your foe?’

‘I still live. Does this horn not grate on your ears?’

‘Do you intend to sully a sacred warrior’s duel?’

A torrent of meaningless words flooded his mind. He couldn’t conjure any phrase that might restrain the monster for even a tenth of a second.

No, perhaps no words existed that could obstruct that monster.

“Kill me and *gooo!*”

Yet, Rex had no choice but to shout. The particles escaping his chest had yet to fully coalesce into the form of the horn.

‘This is the worst.’

The instant he recognized the error, a chill gripped his spine, and cold sweat beaded beneath his chin.

No matter what Rex shouted, Samael did not cease his flight.

Like a bullet, Samael propelled himself towards his Overlord, some thousand meters distant.

The result: both Malthiel’s charred body and Samael’s form shattered simultaneously.

The flesh and bone fragments, scattered as if torn asunder, began to coalesce around Malthiel’s core in the next instant, swiftly regenerating his ebon skin and wings at a speed that dwarfed his previous recovery.

“A paltry trick.”

The boy wreathed in lightning remained unshaken by the sudden variable. He merely gestured with his customary indifference, summoning heavenly retribution, and a second bolt of lightning ripped through the clear sky.

Malthiel’s body, rapidly reconstructing itself, was enveloped in black smoke. A delayed thunderclap resonated around them. Rex felt a cold despair crawl from his gut, tightening like a noose around his throat.

“…Commendable, Samael.”

From within the pitch-black smoke, a low voice emanated.

“Let us witness the world’s end together.”

A furious flapping echoed from within the smoke. The black haze soon dissipated, revealing Maltiel, his body completely restored to its former state.

“…”

The boy, wreathed in lightning, grimaced as if he had witnessed a grotesque, sickening spectacle that should have remained unseen.

Rex, through a vision blurring crimson with pain and regret, understood exactly what had transpired.

Samael hurtled towards Maltiel, faster than any crossbow bolt, and collided with him.

The act was meant to swiftly detach the burned-out cells from Maltiel’s core.

Simultaneously, Samael dismantled himself. He severed his own core from his physical form.

Detached from his body, Samael’s core instantly shattered into countless fragments, which were then sucked into the Overlord’s nucleus. Immediately, veins engorged with corrupted blood began to envelop the blackened core, and in the next instant, Maltiel regenerated his chest and arms with unprecedented speed.

Maltiel used his restored arms and chest to deflect the lightning strikes. They instantly turned into black ash, but even that was regenerated in an instant.

‘…What am I even doing?’

Barely seventeen, the young boy had overcome his own limits and subdued the Overlord in single combat.

Yet he, born a warrior and having spent his entire life on the battlefield, had committed such an absurd blunder.

Rex was overwhelmed with self-disgust.

He couldn’t begin to imagine the consequences that this mistake, born from a moment’s sentimentality, would have for the people of the continent.

‘In the end, I accomplished nothing properly.’

He knew, at least, that he was an unsuitable shield for the general.

The boy would undoubtedly become a swordmaster-level mage within three years, and no matter how hard he tried, he would never be able to keep pace with his growth.

That was why, when he was first offered the position of guarding the boy, he hesitated.

He questioned whether he was worthy of accepting such a role, or if a more trustworthy and powerful warrior should be the one to aid him.

Despite it all, he had ultimately accepted the boy’s charge.

He wanted to repay the boy who had believed in him.

‘And this is the result.’

A moment that deserved nothing but despair.

The Grand Duke, who had nearly brought him to his death, had recovered his strength by absorbing the high-ranking commander he was supposed to be guarding.

He hadn’t craved glorious achievements or impressive legacies. He merely thought he could die as long as he fulfilled his duty.

Valerand was that kind of battlefield.

A place where more than a hundred people with similar skills to his lost their lives every day on the battlefields of Grand Dukes and Generals.

And yet, look at him now.

Far from protecting the General, he couldn’t even slow down the demon before him, letting the victory slip through his fingers.

Even the desire to ‘do his part’ was too much to ask for Lex.

‘General Bean will face the Grand Duke, and even the Demon King and demons in the future. In comparison, I can’t even stop a high-ranking commander… I’m just another mediocre talent, the kind you find in any unit.’

A moment where he clearly felt the limits of his own abilities.

Crack!

Lex’s prosthetic arm ground against the ground, spitting red sparks. His faltering legs kicked off the dirt, trying to rise again and again, only to collapse.

His tibia, fractured, vibrated roughly. The pain crawling out from his abdomen spread throughout his body, numbing the movement of his muscles.

‘But that fact…’

Screws began to fall out of Lex’s prosthetic arm, one by one. A creaking sound came from the metal plate, painted a thick red with the number ‘6’.

‘…Is no excuse to lie here in a stupor, lamenting my fate.’

Lex stubbornly, with legs bruised black and blue, pushed his heavy body up.

The boy’s hand clutched the horn the boy had given him.

“Biiiiiiiiin!”

The warrior shouted.