Chapter 185: Forgotten Names
The clouds, stained red, split into several fragments. As pillars of light faded, the battlefield was filled with nothing but silent screams. Atop the land where the boundary between the living and the dead had dissolved, shattered armor and spearshafts jutted out like wailing cries.
Within it all, Ella knelt on one knee, steadying her breath.
‘I can't hold on any longer.’
The last ember of Divinity had not yet vanished. But it was no longer something she could lean on. The power was too feeble to call a miracle.
Yet there was still one lantern left burning.
At the motion of her hand, a pillar of light divided into 4 streams and poured down. A fragile yet vivid ripple spread outward.
It was a desperate call directed to the Mountain Rabbits scattered across the battlefield.
In that moment, Ella raised her head. She sensed faint traces of light flickering from several different directions. They were dim as Calix's—yet clearly still breathing. Already pushed to their limits, they were fighting fiercely across land untouched by divine grace.
She knew it instinctively. If those small flames were extinguished, the battlefield would belong entirely to Verhas.
The Divinity within her body had already scraped the bottom, and a faint ache rose from her heart. Only 2 paths remained: kneel, or rise again. The woman chose the latter.
Ella pressed her 2 hands together. Dust seeped through between her fingers. The Divinity within her body stirred in response, moving slowly. It was a breath of will that could not be expressed in words.
"Please…… go and reach them."
Ella's voice spread beyond the space around her. The remnant embers of light—golden particles—bloomed upward and scattered in all directions like stardust.
From the distance came the ringing of steel and the roar of beasts. Amid the cracks of despair and chaos, the small particles became a bridge connecting human breath.
Ella watched the sight and murmured softly.
"Not by the will of God…… but by our own will."
Then, from beneath the earth, a low resonance stirred.
The ground throbbed as though its heart had been seized. Within the grand stage Verhas had constructed, something began to move again.
* * *
On the left flank of the battlefield, the earth was boiling. The ground cracked into fine fissures, as though a cliff had formed upon the surface. At its center stood the Dwarf King—Bandipa—gripping a massive hammer.
Half his body had hardened into metal, and the rest was covered in stone and earth. He looked less like a dwarf and more like a monster that had just burst free from within a boulder.
"……Damn."
Basim had collapsed with his back against the cliff face.
The bone in his forearm was fractured, and the skin on the hand opposite his axe-grip had torn and bled. The sight in one eye was gone, and he could barely gauge even the direction of light.
Around him, the dwarf warriors groaned. Axes and hammers lay strewn across the ground. The broken shafts and shattered blades made clear just how brutal the battle had been.
Crash!
Royce, who had endured to the very end, was struck by a boulder and collapsed. Enormous slabs of stone floated through the air. From the ground, stone pillars erupted without end.
Bandipa was that powerful.
Thanks to Ella's golden radiance, they had seized the upper hand briefly—but the moment they failed to break through the Wall of Memory, the outcome had been decided.
Bandipa's voice reverberated with a low hum.
[A mountain will always be swept away by winter in the end. Have you forgotten, Basim? We were born as children of the earth, and we wielded fire.]
The Dwarf King's words shook the earth. Boulders that had burst through the clefts in the cliff rose into the air. They spun at Bandipa's command. Dark mana conjured a crimson vortex—and then, all at once, poured down toward Basim.
He hurriedly pushed himself up and swung his axe. Amid the flying debris, he barely kept his footing. The blood on the axe blade was unmistakably his own.
"Children of the earth……"
Basim laughed quietly.
[Look at your pitiful state.]
Rather than listening to his opponent's words, he gripped his axe and charged. Bandipa swung his hammer one-handed with casual ease. But the impact was anything but small.
The shock of the collision seeped through to his very bones. His left wrist shattered completely.
"……They said breaking makes you harder. Complete and utter nonsense."
[Indeed—such is the nature of dwarves in this age. They are weak, and they only regress……]
Then, without warning, Bandipa stopped speaking.
The dwarf Basim was sprawled on the ground, chuckling to himself.
[What's so funny?]
He replied, as if he had been waiting for it.
"I understand now."
Basim felt death closing in right before him. Even so, he refused to bend. He had looked upon Bandipa's true nature from closer than anyone.
"You're a coward. A thoroughly vile and lowly—"
And at the end of those words, his opponent was reflected whole within his eyes.
"Traitor."
That word rang through Bandipa's ears. At that supreme insult, his metal joints let out a grinding creak. Silence drifted for a moment.
Then his rage exploded.
Bandipa's grip closed around Basim's throat. It was the fused strength of iron and stone. A crushing force like grinding boulders pressed in.
His breath cut off, and his vision blurred to white.
Within that haze, the enraged Bandipa cast his final question.
[What is your name?]
It was a ceremonial question—posed to the dying, and to those about to be slain. The procedure for returning a dwarf's body to the earth. Around him, the dwarves closed their eyes and hung their heads.
Basim's lips trembled finely.
His breath snagged in his throat, and the shattered axe handle slipped between his fingers. Yet he did not let it fall. He gripped it again with blood-soaked hands.
‘Perhaps…… this is my end.’
His heart beat slowly—yet with a heavy weight. At that moment, Ella's call echoed faintly from somewhere far away.
The Mountain Rabbits were calling for him.
Basim closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. With the end upon him, all the things he had agonized over suddenly felt foolish.
He had mocked the human caste system. Knights looked down on mercenaries. The same humans who spoke of nobility to your face and plundered behind your back.
But truthfully, Basim was no different. He had prized the honor of dwarves, and had lived as an outcast, driven from his tribe.
What had any of it been for.
There was no need to find a reason. What mattered now, in this moment, was that his answer had already been decided.
Beneath the long silence, Basim murmured lowly.
"……Brock."
The moment that single word fell, the air came to a dead halt. The dwarf Nuri Sarui tilted his head and muttered. It was a name he had heard somewhere before.
"Brock? Ah…… Basim's son……"
Even in this precarious situation, the dwarves' faces lifted all at once. Some swallowed breath in what sounded like lamentation, others wore expressions of disbelief.
And then, Basim said it clearly.
"I am the father of Brock, a dwarf who had forsaken his name…… Basim."
Bandipa's expression crumpled violently. His eyes darkened to a red deeper than blood.
[To invoke the name of a dead child! A dwarf places only the name of a great ancestor at the fore. Do you mean to reject even your own roots!]
He roared as he tightened his grip. He had discarded a king's name and placed a child's at the fore. To Bandipa, there was no greater insult.
But the light in Basim's eyes did not stir.
Instead, he slowly raised his head and gripped Bandipa's arm with both hands. Then, with his thick, stubby grip, he slowly pried the metal fingers apart.
Excessive force tore through the calluses and drew blood—but in exchange, Bandipa's hand opened with a metallic screech.
"Then sneer at it."
His voice cracked, yet rang clearly.
"I will fight under that name."
In that instant, golden particles drifted down from the sky. They seeped through the dust and blood, and gently enveloped Basim's shoulders.
Bandipa had released Basim, and Basim scooped up the axe from the ground. The axe blade absorbed the golden light. In that gap, his mana intertwined with it, and a resonance was born.
The grain of the metal trembled. Basim's twin axes shivered and rang out long. The pulsing of the earth answered that resonance.
‘Just as iron veins lie sleeping within a mountain—so too do I.’
His eyes flashed. In his field of vision, the grain of iron appeared sharper than it ever had before. The metal composing Bandipa's body was laid bare in full to the dwarf's gaze.
It was then.
Hmmm.
Basim felt a vibration within his chest. It did not come from within his heart, but from a force that originated outside. Following where his bloodline pointed, he reached into his breast on instinct.
His fingertips touched something. Cold metal. When he drew it out, dried blood and earth dust fell away.
Basim recognized it in an instant. It was the King's Mask. It had stood alongside great kings—Rodain, Ekan, Sudira, and others—and had once belonged to Bandipa as well.
But now it had become the possession of a father who had lost his child. At last it had departed the grasp of a corrupted one, and found its way into the hands of a rightful heir—a descendant of kings.
Brock Basim.
He raised the iron mask and covered half his face. The exposed side belonged to a Mountain Rabbit—blunt and humorous, with a manner of speaking that could seem brash and rude at a glance.
The hidden half was the face of a father soaked in grief.
No—perhaps it was the other way around.
Basim hid nothing any longer. He did not stumble, did not rise, did not run or walk. He simply stood firm in place like a mountain, and looked down upon a coward who had left of his own accord.
"Bandipa…… I can see that the time given to you is running out."
The mountain sent a single gust of wind, as if answering his words.
Basim raised his axe. In that movement, there was no longer any fear, nor despair. He stood in stillness, and met his enemy's rage with equal quiet.
The next moment—
Bandipa's hammer and Basim's axe collided.
2 collisions were not needed. A deep resonance burst outward. The grain of iron and earth intertwined, and the collapsed ground surged once more.
So too did Bandipa's body.
As the dark mana was washed away by golden radiance, the body made of earth and iron collapsed in an instant. The red metal melted away, and those made of stone shattered to pieces.
The sound of those fragments striking the ground rang out with unusual force. Neither enemy nor ally let out a cheer. Expressions of shock. The dwarves in particular only moved their mouths without being able to utter a single word.
At the end of it, Bandipa's form was absorbed into the earth and vanished without a trace.
At the perfect obliteration, a complete stillness arrived.
Within that stillness, Basim stood in silence. The breath behind the mask settled only after a delay. But he knew.
The golden light that had seeped into the axe blade had not yet gone out.
The Mountain Rabbits were calling for him.
From the distance, the mage Yelayen raised his head. Before long, his gaze met Adrian's. The 2 of them realized the same thing—in slightly different ways.
Unmistakably, they heard the sound of a crack forming in Verhas's barrier.
"……The mountain has awakened."
The fissure was still spreading. Yet they knew. Beneath the mountain, names long forgotten were awakening.