Chapter 190: The Name of Victory
Verhas struggled desperately. He reassembled his body over and over. Blood and flesh, remnants of memory—sewn together by the dark energy. His form had already broken free of a human frame; new tendrils grew from every fingertip.
Dark crimson threads stretched in every direction. The energy that had bored into the sky, the earth, the very air seemed to be reweaving the seams of the world.
Order.
The law of memory he was trying to rebuild. A framework of stopped time. But that order would no longer be permitted.
Calix raised his sword. His mismatched eyes blazed brilliantly. Gray rippled along the blade, and with each step forward, gold was etched into the earth beneath his feet.
One step. Two steps.
He advanced as though treading on the wind, without raising so much as a cloud of dust. Verhas's energy closed in from all directions, yet Calix slipped through it with a peculiar rhythm in his stride.
Rhythm lived in the tips of his feet.
He had reached the summit of swordsmanship, yet its roots lay in the Dance of the Wilderness that Gregor had taught him. The rhythm of war, the rhythm of survival, and the rhythm of the dance. Rotating his upper body, he let Verhas's grip flow past him like water.
Then he drew the blade back in. The dark energy that had been pouring from above was drawn in along the path of the sword's advance. The flow was within his will.
It resembled Master Imran Akran's style—and yet it did not.
There was a trace of the clumsiness of his first days as a mercenary, yet the movements were as fluid as those of a deep-sea diver from the mines. It was rooted in the aggressive swordsmanship of Niboria, yet its center was as firmly planted as that of Latia's style. When the enemy's force surged, he drove straight through it; when attacks came from behind, he evaded them with elegant ease, without even looking.
Again, he leaned into his body and swung. The darkness within the air was rent cleanly in two. Faint faces rose from within the streams of energy.
Young children, elders, soldiers—all memories trapped within Verhas's embrace. With every graze of Calix's blade, their expressions flickered past.
He did not stop for a single moment.
He was not striking—he was dancing the dance of the battlefield. Within the rhythm where life and death, breath and stillness crossed, Calix's will spread across the entire space.
‘Who ruled this place?’
It was not Verhas. Not anymore.
[Stop! How dare you destroy the order!!]
Every time the beast cried out, the walls of the Sacred Territory trembled in fragments. The dark crimson lines thickened once more, and the earth shook violently. The wind, swept up in the shockwave, let out a tearing shriek.
And yet, a new order was already being established.
Calix pivoted on his toes and slashed low. The arc carved a semicircle, leaving a trail of gray light behind.
Chaos and darkness collided. Shortly after, the dark crimson energy was pushed back entirely, and the space warped. The currents swirled; the very grain of the world shifted ever so slightly. The living and the memories of the dead vied one after another for their place.
Verhas's arms stretched toward the sky. From the dozens of outstretched hands, threads of dark energy poured down like a waterfall. A darkness that could have swallowed the entire battlefield blanketed the space in an instant—but—
Calix's blade tore through it.
The gray arcs cut through the air again and again. The shattered remnants of energy turned to golden dust and scattered. That light flowed back into the inner walls of the Sacred Territory.
Verhas ground his teeth.
[It was already……a completed world.]
"No, it wasn't."
Calix cut him off.
His voice rang out—quietly, yet with crystalline clarity.
"It was nothing more than the world you dreamed of."
The moment those words left his lips, the sword moved.
Calix stepped forward. Severing and cleaving through the darkness, shattering the blood-woven order, he calmly expanded the domain that was his own.
And at the end of it, the destination drew near. Verhas's body—the beating of his heart—was clearly visible.
***
From Verhas's every fingertip, order was redrawn; the shattered space was mended as though stitched back together. But that order was already like a net riddled with holes.
Where Calix's sword had passed, gray rifts appeared, and from each rift, golden dust rose. It was not destruction—it was reconstruction.
The instant the distance between the two closed, the center of the battlefield shook and split open. From beneath the ground, the shape of a crimson heart was laid bare.
It was a massive pulse.
It beat not with blood but with darkness and memory.
Writhing as though alive, it drew in all the darkness and expelled it in turn. Within it, thousands upon thousands of memories were layered atop one another.
Verhas's eyes flashed. He knew his core had been exposed—and in the next instant, he thrust his arm toward it.
[Yes, that is my true essence! The beginning and the end of this body!]
At that moment, the replicas surrounding him came hurling inward. They came rushing from outside the Sacred Territory, as though trying to punch through its walls. Most were destroyed instantly, but they kept crashing against the surface until cracks began to form.
The replicas bore in with nothing short of desperation. One by one they dissolved and vanished, pouring every last ounce of strength into the main body.
The end of the battle was at hand.
The beasts were the first to sense it; then the Mountain Rabbits; then the soldiers at the edge of the dome—one by one, they came to a standstill.
Calix leveled his sword before him.
Gold and gray swirled together, radiating a soft luminescence. It was unmistakably not the color of death. A force that fused instead of destroyed, that flowed without ceasing.
Verhas screamed as though in agony.
[You don't understand! A world without order is destined to collapse!]
Calix answered his opponent's words with composure.
"Then."
He said.
"I will embrace a world that collapses."
Calix thrusts his sword forward. The instant the tip cleaves the air, a gray shockwave spreads outward. The darkness was swept back in an instant, and at the end of that arc's path lay Verhas's core.
There was no explosion as the sword advanced. No burst of flame.
Instead, the world folded.
Sound vanished. Space curled inward upon itself. As though tearing and folding a sheet of paper, the energy surged inward and devoured every trace of light. For one moment, every color disappeared, leaving only gray particles drifting through the air.
Apex of Annihilation.
The Master's art—which should have gathered radiance at the sword's tip—suppressed beneath the energy of chaos, quietly revealed its true nature.
And then, the masterwork blade, Srna, pierced through the source of that energy. Without the faintest resistance, it slid through smoothly.
In that instant, Verhas clutched his chest and swallowed a scream. The body he had barely maintained reached its limit. His regeneration could no longer keep pace with the speed at which his flesh was tearing apart.
The Legion Commander's power crumbles.
The crimson energy vanished without a trace, and all around, only gray and gold swirled through the air.
Into everyone's hearts, the same question as before came flying in.
‘Who rules this place?’
[……Calix.]
Yes—it was the domain of that very man.
Verhas felt his body come apart. But even as his heart shattered and fell to pieces, he did not stop speaking.
[Memories do not disappear…….]
Calix quietly lowered his sword.
"Perhaps that's true."
He watched as the thick shell of memory cracked open and gray particles came pouring out from within. The memories drained from Verhas's body.
Soon, the beast's vision blurred. The countless faces conjured from memory were consuming one another. A mother's face, a disciple's gaze, those he had saved and those he had killed—all tangled together into an indistinguishable mass. He tried to call every one of those names, but what came from his lips was nothing but meaningless noise.
His head was already half gone, and speech was no longer possible.
"That's why you let them go."
Instead, Calix spoke the final words.
Fragments of death and regret, love and vows filled every corner of the Sacred Territory. They had found their freedom. The gray particles rose beyond the golden Sacred Territory and ascended into the sky.
That was Calix's creed.
***
The moment Verhas's core shattered, everything stopped. Sound and light reclaimed their shape—yet no one opened their mouths, and so the silence held.
Instead, the world rang out.
Centered on Calix, the remnants of darkness came surging in. In an instant, his vision was blanketed by memories.
Thousands of scenes overlapped all at once. A young child smiled above a rye field. Soldiers returned home and came face to face with their families; parents and children gathered around a dining table.
Despair and regret retreated, and a storm of happy memories swept in. Line by line, voice by voice—they seeped into his mind.
"I want to live."
"I'm afraid."
"I love you."
Calix heard every word. No—it was not merely hearing—it was feeling.
His heart ached as though it were being wrung dry. Voices rang from beneath his skin, and with every breath, someone's cry was woven in. Within that strange experience, he made no effort to understand.
He simply let them flow.
Before long, his vision brightened in an instant. Before him, he saw the road he had traveled. The moment he was sold away from the Marquis's household, the escape from the mines, the very first battle with the Mountain Rabbits—all of those memories flowed through him like a gray river.
The sensation of looking down upon the world—a fleeting illusion that he had become a god. Yet it was not a feeling close to omnipotence. He simply existed within it—as one person.
Calix understood.
He was not one who looked down from above—he was a single breath, breathing together within the current of countless lives.
Gradually, his vision returned.
A faint gray seeped into his pupils, then slowly blended with a warm hue. It was ash-white. A cluster of light born from the mingling of death and life—a color that flowed without ceasing.
Calix slowly raised his head.
Behind him, upon the Sacred Territory, figures were rising. It was the Mountain Rabbits. Royce braced himself with a sword broken in two; Marik, arm soaked in blood, raised a companion to his feet. Hadiya and Volga caught sight of each other and broke into quiet laughter.
They were imperfect.
Every day was steeped in blood; their words were rough, and their actions were bold to the point of seeming reckless. Yet that very imperfection was proof that they were alive.
Calix's hands trembled.
By instinct he moved to withdraw his energy—then realized there was no longer any need. Gray lines shimmered through the air.
Those lines stretched toward the sky and touched the golden Sacred Territory. The 2 lights did not collide. Instead of pushing each other away, they slowly melted together into a single band.
The light breathed.
Chaos and order, destruction and rebirth—woven into a single breath.
Calix gazed upon that sight and closed his eyes. Within the stillness, he felt life pulsing.
Just then, the light of dawn illuminated the golden remnants.
Above the sky, the scattered afterglow transformed into stars. The names that had been held captive by Verhas were inscribed upon them, one by one. They were not the language of prayer, nor divine revelation. Simply the ordinary names by which humans had once called out to one another.
For a long while, not one of the allied soldiers moved.
And then, right after—
"……We won!"
"We're victorious—!!"
A roar of cheers swept through everything.