Chapter 182: Those Who Respond
Red light consumed his field of vision.
The air flipped, the earth bent. The space around the wall folded inward like a crumpled sheet of paper.
The sky rippled pale and flowed in reverse. The soldiers' footing shook beneath them, and wails erupted from within the rising mounds of rubble.
"Fall back! Regroup the formation!"
Master Sevi Belgrado's cry rang out.
When he raised his head, thousands of figures were walking out through the red mist. The majority bore the likeness of Verhas. The same face, the same gait, the same breath. Yet among them, warriors from entirely different eras were intermingled.
Knights in breastplates, soldiers in worn chainmail, monks with swords in hand. All were beings carved out of the Wall of Memories.
As the enemies surged head-on, the front line was torn apart in an instant.
Each duplicate was a knight-class combatant. On top of that, they rose again every time they died. When one fell, another immediately filled its place. It was like a net woven into a single mass, linked by the power of dark energy.
Ella's divine power still had no effect. Her strength stretched out into empty air, then shattered into fragments and vanished without a trace.
"A land where the name of Kriya……does not reach."
Sevi stood at the front line alongside his disciples. He scattered his blade without pause, yet the entire front gradually began to give ground. Only Helmut Barben and a handful of knights held firm; the rest were losing their lives before they could even act.
He steeled himself for the worsening of his injuries and drew out his full power.
White radiance surged from the tip of his blade. The Apex of Annihilation. The force that draws all things in and erases them revealed its true nature. 3 were cut down with a single stroke of the blade. Rather than relying on swordsmanship, he overwhelmed the enemy with his own energy alone.
That was when it happened.
Claaang!!
A single sword ray grazed past him. A shockwave erupted over the crossing blades. When he raised his gaze, a familiar face was standing beyond the mist.
"……Ingdwan."
The man who had once trained under the same master, and had been a lifelong friend.
"So you too were swallowed by this wall."
Sevi's voice trembled.
Ingdwan's eyes were dead black. Instead of answering, he raised his sword. A strike that fell like a thunderbolt. Rather than the distinct human color of a living person, dark energy swirled through it.
Sevi reflexively raised his sword to block. Metal rang out and sparks scattered. His body was aged, yet the movement of his fingertips was sharp.
"You haven't lost what the master taught us."
The 2 swords clashed repeatedly.
Slashes and thrusts intertwined, and their figures exchanged positions in an instant. At the end of it, a quiet murmur of admiration escaped him.
"You were so obsessed with reaching a higher realm, and yet……only in death did you obtain what you desired."
Ingdwan's swordsmanship was even more perfect than it had been in life. He had absorbed the memories of others to compensate for his weaknesses. The level of it was enough to dare aim for a gap in a master.
As he unleashed a flurry of blows, Sevi slowly retreated step by step. The joints of his wrist screamed, and the energy within his body was left in turmoil.
Yet this was a deliberate withdrawal.
"Ugh!"
Here and there, the allied knights and his disciples were losing their lives.
Immediately after, Sevi's sword rays erupted as if to explode. His body's movement was divided into fine pieces, cutting down the surrounding duplicates all at once.
He had bought the soldiers time to catch their breath and realign the formation.
At the same time, a grey flash of light streaked from beyond the mist. There was a single person sprinting toward the Wall of Memories.
It was Calix.
* * *
At some point, Ella stopped reciting the prayer. Instead, she practiced an act that high-ranking clergy had long forgotten. She crushed herbs with her mouth and treated those who groaned in pain.
Though it was no more than briefly halting their suffering, it was the best she could do.
"O Kriya, grant us your answer!"
The Crusaders cried out as if in lament, yet the prayers found no resonance. Light disappeared before it could even take shape.
On a battlefield rife with blood and screams, Ella bowed her head.
The woman felt her own powerlessness. Her prayers now could not reach Kriya. No—even if they did, they would only return distorted through the wall.
Ella did not waver. She was simply facing a profound question.
‘The divine had always answered.’
Her own voice rose from within.
The battlefield was still a deep, vivid red. The echo of blades, blood, and battle cries stretched out long. The entire plain seemed trapped behind a thin membrane, spreading distant and faint.
"Watch yourself, wife of Kriya!"
In that moment, Gregor slammed a Corrupted that had broken through the front line aside with his shield. Adrian cut down the enemy with refined swordsmanship, and countless mercenaries pressed forward one after another.
Every single person was locked in a desperate struggle.
Suddenly, her gaze drifted to the far distance. It fixed on the one person pushing through the enemy ranks at the very front.
It was Calix.
He called no one's name. He received no orders, recited no prayers, and swore no oaths. He simply raised his sword and stepped toward the path he had to walk.
"……How does he fight like that."
Her lips moved ever so slightly. Among the countless shadows pouring out from the Wall of Memories, he alone was not blurred.
‘Perhaps the reason Kriya is not answering……is because the answer is already in our own hands.’
Ella closed her eyes.
Perhaps, at this moment, the ones who needed to provide the answer were themselves.
* * *
Calix advanced without cease.
The wall reflected in his eyes swelled like a living creature, then subsided. Its surface heaved, and newly spawned duplicates crawled out from the ground. One step, then another. Where the tips of their feet touched, a dark crimson spread across the ground.
‘The center of the offensive must not break.’
That was all he had thought at the very beginning. He had to draw the enemies' attention to ease the burden on his allies. Yet at some point, the screams of soldiers and the clang of metal had grown distant.
He had advanced further than anyone. And at the heart of the Wall of Memories, he was surrounded by hundreds—perhaps thousands—of duplicates.
The hand gripping the sword trembled faintly. That trembling signaled that the neural accelerator was pushing out power at its limit, and energy erupted from his heart like an explosion.
As the chaos energy flowed along the pathways within his body, the duplicates' movements reflected in Calix's eyes.
Soon, dark energy poured down toward him.
Calix stood his ground as if to declare it his domain. He drew chaos out from the tip of his blade and swept away a wide area to the right in a single stroke. Where the energy poured, fragments of ice sprouted in abundance.
He then kicked off the ground and charged to the left. The chaos reversed the flow of darkness, shattering the enemies' blades the moment it touched them.
At the same time, those coming from behind were pressed flat alive by the activation of the pressure field.
However, his domain was not yet perfect. Minute gaps were exposed in the process of cutting down enemies, and the duplicates drove into those gaps.
Their swordsmanship achieved perfect balance. Thrusts, rotations, and slashes meshed together like interlocking gears. Kalahim's curved blades, Latia's flexible swords, and Elvra's spearwork. The combat experience of dozens of generations was housed within a single body.
Paradoxically, the domain forged from metal was far more solid than Calix's. Failing to block the blows several times over, minor injuries accumulated. The muscle in his forearm split, and his knee buckled.
Yet Calix did not immediately counter. Instead, he quietly closed his eyes. Even without seeing the enemies' movements, the flow of energy was felt just the same. It was the wave of a great shadow surging in like a tide.
‘There are no gaps. It is perfect.’
He did not fall into despair, but searched for the answer.
‘But there is no such thing as a perfect sword.’
The duplicates of Verhas extended only the most effective trajectories. Among them there were none of the mistakes made by living, breathing beings. Because all of them followed the correct answer, they could not step outside the flow. Calix detected that subtle gap.
Within a perfectly sealed space, a single line of a crack was visible.
"Memory is fixed, and does not waver."
He deflects the sword strikes pouring down on him with a gentle flow. He brings 4 blades to the side of his own blade and carries them outward away from his body.
"But a human……learns by wavering."
Calix's both eyes chased after the enemies' movements. His bloodline reacted. The sense that reads the flow of energy. Rather than crushing with force, he watched his opponents' skill and mirrored it.
Linear trajectories accumulated in his mind. Over them, exquisite curves were layered. A swordsmanship he was encountering and experiencing for the first time. An ancient method now lost to the world.
And so, the history of the continent's warriors was read through in full, by a single man.
[Bloodline Ability Change Detected]
[Ashapel's Instinct/Avatar of the Battlefield '4%' Increase, Currently '83%']
[4th Awakening Unlocked]
In that instant, the world surrounding him transformed violently.
A new vision opened.
Time flowed the same as before, yet it did not slow. Instead, the way he perceived the world changed. Calix's breathing, the beat of his heart, and the energy around him connected and merged into one.
"……The Domain of Propositions."
Now, the laws of the domain were his to set.
The darkness clinging to the duplicates' blades was drawn in, centered on Calix. Not a single thread of energy remained. Soon, with a crack—a hairline fracture ran through the swords.
The metal structure collapsed.
They had held a firm and stable form, yet were denied the permission to exist.
Even now time flowed, but that flow could not surpass his thoughts. Only what he was conscious of remained in reality, and all else ceased to exist.
The red mist split and was driven back.
And in that moment, a fierce light blazed from behind him.
It was Ella.
In the place where the divine had fallen silent, the Mountain Rabbits were answering the call of their companion.
* * *
Ella saw the sight of a grey tempest raging. At first she thought it was nothing more than a simple flash of light, but she soon realized that it was Calix's will.
A faint tremor arose from deep within her chest. A question that had long been buried finally surfaced and echoed.
‘It is not the divine who performs miracles.’
Ella looked at the Mountain Rabbits standing beside her. Gregor raised his shield and shouted to ‘clear a path’, and Adrian raised the veteran mercenaries to their feet.
‘It was something made together with those who stand under the name of Kriya.’
The Mountain Rabbits had always been that way.
As if they knew to be heard, their battle cries rang out again. At the center of it, Ella reached out her hand. The blood on her fingertips gradually became enveloped in golden light.
"Ella, rise now. We have to move forward."
A whisper sent to herself. All at once, her eyes became clear as a lake. Despair and bewilderment were washed away entirely, and nothing remained in the empty space.
It was not a prayer. She called no one's name. There was no need to reach out a hand to receive divine power.
The answer was within herself.
‘I have to help clear the path.’
In that instant, the golden light burning in her grip exploded outward. It was not a miracle bestowed by the divine—it was a response she had summoned through her own power.