Chapter 189: Birth of the Sacred Territory
The battlefield was already broken beyond repair.
The Wall of Memories had crumbled, carving deep wounds into the earth, and the sky revealed black clouds through jagged cracks. Blood and mud, shattered armor, and soaked banners all blended together until land and corpses were indistinguishable.
And right above it all, something was blooming.
At first, no one noticed. Amid the red dust and the stench of blood, a single tiny ember floated upward into the air. A trembling ember that did not yet know what it had to burn—and then, at last, it turned gold.
It was Ella.
She was on her knees. Mud was matted into her hair, and her breath came in ragged, nearly broken gasps. Yet the light seeping from her chest was brighter and more vivid than anything else on that battlefield.
Above the palm of her hand, a small circle rose.
It was neither a prayer nor an incantation. The names she had repeated on countless nights, the faces she had desperately wanted to save—they tangled together and formed a single sigil. The back of Royce's figure, Marik's hardened expression, Basim's laughter, the Mountain Rabbits' boastful jokes…… All of it connected through fine golden threads, and a round ring took shape.
"Not from the sky……"
Ella whispered, barely audible.
"From here."
The ring of light resting in her palm trembled. The Divinity that had been about to shoot skyward spread instead across the ground. Golden light poured into the entire battlefield. Those who had been fighting over each other's deaths stared blankly at the sight.
The Mountain Rabbits were the first to respond.
Threads of light seeped into the exhausted, fallen members. Consciousness that had flickered at the boundary between the dying and the barely living grew sharp and clear. Someone called out Ella's name, someone else thought of Calix, and someone simply gripped the shoulder of the comrade standing beside them.
The face of someone dear, rising in each person's heart, flickered like a star and vanished. Those brief flickers gathered together and drew a vast constellation above the battlefield.
Golden threads connected one by one. Those threads crossed the trenches where soldiers fought for their lives and passed through the Silver Shield Legion standing firm. The mage Yelayen hurriedly concealed his own energy, and Adrian wiped the sweat from his brow and yielded to the flow of fate.
It was a wave invisible to human eyes, yet the mana flowed unmistakably along that path.
And at its end, at the very heart of the battlefield, an enormous dome took shape.
CRAAAASH!
The moment the golden dome was completed, space was overturned once more. The piercing shrieks, the clashing of steel, the screams of men—all of it was severed clean. The charging beasts froze mid-step in midair, and the Rite-Stone weapons were fixed exactly where they floated.
Movement ceased, but hearts still beat.
From the chests of those standing within the dome, rhythms of different tempos pulsed. Thump, thump, thump. The speeds were different, and the intensity varied as well. But soon, those heartbeats merged into a single, enormous wave within the golden dome.
And within it, Ella slowly opened her eyes. A golden circle spun and glimmered inside her pupils.
Her vision was blurred and her body had already reached its limit—yet she smiled. No longer did it flow from above to below. The faith they stretched toward one another was turning directly into light, right there and then.
"……It's a Sacred Territory. It's a Sacred Territory!!"
The Order's clerics revealed tearful, rapturous joy.
Meanwhile, at the very center of the dome, dark-crimson cracks were writhing. They were the remnants of Verhas, touched by the golden light. The form of the Legion Commander who had ruled the Wall of Memories was already half-crumbled.
His body was tangled somewhere between human and beast, flesh and bone. At the same time, thousands of afterimages fractured within his pupils and spread in every direction. The layers of Memory that had made up his skin began to peel away the instant they touched the light of the Sacred Territory.
With each layer that fell, the shadows hidden beneath rose into the sky. A child who had lost its name, a soldier who had gone to the battlefield for his family, the mother waiting for him, and a sickened elder…… They groped through the air as if searching for someone, then were swallowed by the light and vanished.
[Stop this.]
Verhas's voice shook the battlefield. But its resonance could no longer dominate sky and earth. Within the dome, his words dulled and fell flat, like shouting underwater.
Soon, the husks of memory cascaded from his shoulders, his waist, his legs. The scales of memory amassed over hundreds of years were stripped away in an instant, exposing the flesh beneath. He trembled with both hands and tried to hold them back, but he could neither grasp nor contain them.
[This light……]
A trembling voice leaked from his torn lips.
[Erases what is mine.]
At this, Calix shook his head slowly.
The Sacred Territory erased nothing. It was only returning what had been taken.
The memories that had been held captive scattered back to their rightful places. To those who had been forgotten, into the arms of those who wept, and back to the skies of ages already ended. Verhas's body grew lighter by that measure, and by that same measure, grew hollow.
The edge of the dome shuddered.
Verhas swallowed a scream and raised one hand. By instinct he tried to shield himself from the light, but shielding his whole body with a single hand was impossible. The new order created by the Sacred Territory was directly denying his obsession.
In that moment, Calix witnessed the very nature of him change.
Verhas could not become the god of a new world. Because he had lost his domain. He was nothing more than the remnant of a single human—writhing at the heart of a collapsed world, struggling to hold onto even a fragment.
Then, from the beast's arm, violet mana surged. The Surging Wall, Verhas, was preparing his final desperate act.
***
The moment light touched him, Verhas's body cracked and split.
But he refused to be erased.
[All memories return to one.]
The instant his voice rang out, the skin across his entire body erupted. Dark crimson blood gushed through every torn gap, mingling with the mana of darkness. When that blood fell upon the earth—the ground groaned.
From every carved pit, soil and shards of bone, putrid blood and fragments of memory were hurled upward. Someone's scream, a child's laughter, the name of a god and a final prayer. Every sound was vomited forth at once.
The shadows on the verge of being freed were reabsorbed into Verhas's body, and his form grotesquely swelled.
[Don't forget me! Don't abandon me!]
Thousands of voices burst from a single mouth. Verhas's arms, legs, neck, heart—not a single part of him was truly his own.
From every direction, different faces erupted. Someone wept, someone smiled, and someone screamed.
Above, a sigil spread in stark contrast to the golden dome. Crimson threads, bleeding outward, twisted thick and dense into the shape of an enormous brain. Below, in opposition, the earth boiled like a blood-filled basin.
And within those gaps, shards of light flew wildly in every direction.
Corrupted memories drifted through the air. Countless silhouettes. Soldiers who had been standing on the plains collapsed one by one, clutching their heads.
"Uggh……"
"Stay back! That—that was back then…… It was just a mistake!"
One person saw someone they had loved, another saw a sin they had committed, and another glimpsed the moment of their own approaching death in advance. Fear and euphoria, regret and fury crashed down all at once.
The Mountain Rabbits and the mercenaries, even the knights, were engulfed in hallucinations. Eyes rolled back as each person's past and present were resurrected. Fallen comrades, scattered families, brutal massacres. Those memories all revived at once and bore down on the human heart.
[I am their names, and their final gaze!]
Verhas screamed.
His body was no longer a single form. Hundreds of faces and thousands of hands continuously grew and perished upon it. His entire body vibrated like one enormous neural network, tearing itself apart and weaving itself back together.
The surface of the Sacred Territory's dome shook violently. The flood of memory hammered at the dome's inner wall, desperate to break free.
The shards of memory that had ricocheted to the surface flashed against the dome wall, striking it without pause.
BOOM!!
The light of the Sacred Territory and the darkness of Verhas collided. Gold and dark crimson crossed at a single point, ripping space apart.
And then—
Calix felt the gap. It was the crossroads where the world was dividing. He slowly steadied his breath and raised his gaze.
The beast before him still writhed with thousands of faces. Visible through the gaps was a trembling pulse with no fixed form—
Verhas's core. That was the true target.
"Let's move forward."
Calix's gaze narrowed.
"Toward tomorrow."
Without hesitation, he threw himself into the darkness and the light.
***
At the moment light and darkness clashed, a void was born at the very center. As though the world had paused for an instant, not a single breath of wind stirred.
Only Calix stood within that center.
Beneath his feet, 3 shadows overlapped. The child he had once been, his present self, and the phantom of a future not yet arrived. The 3 shadows clung to his ankles and trembled finely.
He murmured quietly.
"Chaos does not break order."
His voice filled the void.
"Order is simply reborn within chaos."
At that moment, his left eye held a grey vortex, and his right eye held a golden Divinity. The two did not deny each other. Instead, they layered over one another and became a light that returned to one.
He shook off his own shadows and took a step forward.
Immediately after, time trembled. Past and future split beneath his feet, then joined back together as though following in his footsteps. He was not simply walking—he was rewriting the flow of things through his very existence.
Then, dark-crimson fractures tore through the Sacred Territory and drove inward. It was Verhas. He gathered the mana of darkness and unleashed it in hundreds of directions. It was like a violent storm. A net woven from hundreds of years of obsession.
Calix raised his sword and met it. For a moment his upper body lurched—but a hand came from behind and steadied his back.
"Calix! We're almost there!"
"Let's give him one!"
It was the Mountain Rabbits.
Even within the torrential darkness, they had still followed in his wake. Royce raised his sword with eyes burning red, and Marik silently cut through the shadows on the left. Basim snorted and said,
"No mountain range stands alone!"
Volga nodded while holding the standard. The Mountain Rabbits' sigil fluttered as though it might tear apart at any moment. But in the end, it held.
Their voices seeped into Calix's back, one by one.
He realized it.
After reaching the realm of Top-Rank Swordsman, he had passed through many stages.
Clear Mirror—it had clarified his consciousness. Empty Heart—it had emptied his mind. Flowing Water—it had let the empty mind flow naturally. And the next step was—
‘Becoming one with everyone.’
He saw the wall that had been blocking his path. Not Verhas's wall, but the towering wall of the realm called ‘Master’. Calix stepped over it as though it were nothing.
The neural accelerator's notification rang out quietly.
[Ashapel's Instinct/Avatar of the Battlefield risen by '7%', currently '90%']
[User has stepped onto the Path of the Sword.]
He said nothing and raised his sword. In that instant, the timeline vibrated finely.
The Calix of the past—the boy who had trembled in fear—disappeared, and only the Calix of the present remained. He stood together with his comrades.
Verhas's black arm came crashing down upon him.
But this time, he cut it. As the tip of the blade cleaved through the air, grey and gold scattered simultaneously. On the surface it appeared as though Verhas's arm had been severed—yet it was space itself that had been cut. Though the blade had not touched him, a part of the beast simply ceased to exist.
Verhas let out a howl. Blood and darkness poured endlessly from his body.
Calix took one step, then another step forward. His inner calm did not waver in the slightest. He had already dismantled himself.
And in doing so—
He transcended.
Following in his wake, the shadows of the Mountain Rabbits overlapped with his. The path they walked together connected as a single golden thread toward the heart of the Sacred Territory.
‘Even if I forget myself, they will remember me.’
That was Calix's answer.
Then, the tip of his sword pointed at Verhas's heart. Light and darkness, past and future—every sound was simultaneously sucked toward him.
In that moment, the world was bound by a single heartbeat.
Selflessness.
It was the beginning of the Master's realm.