Chapter 217: Collapsed Time
Each time Calix's sword pushed back the darkness, the black energy scattered only to gather again. What had seemed like severed space merely caught its breath before forming a curtain thicker than before. Whatever was cut away was immediately replenished.
A blade carrying chaos drove back the opponent's. Yet it could not unleash the lethal force it once had. Before it could cut through the enemy's mana, the flat of the blade tilted and glanced off to the side.
Calix shifted his center of gravity and drove the sword inward. The air tore with a shriek as fragments of darkness flew up, but instead of piercing the enemy's torso, sword and sword tangled in a chaotic mess.
‘I'm being read completely.’
A balance of sorts was being maintained. That was Calix's assessment. Yet he was not winning. No—if anything, small losses were accumulating and his wounds were multiplying.
At that moment, his neural accelerator let out a brief cry. An output warning. A signal that the strain on his body was building.
[Combat Facilitation Active, 5.6x]
[User's Neural Network Overload Detected.]
Once more, the distance between them widened.
De Generitum still stood exactly where he had been. He neither advanced nor retreated. He read the trajectory of Calix's attacks and moved only as much as necessary. That made it all the more certain.
Darkness pooled around him as its center. With every assault, its density rose by a fraction. As though the pressure of the battlefield were being stacked, layer by layer.
Calix spat out a mouthful of blood.
The Mountain Rabbits' encirclement still held. Yet holding and being stable were two different things.
The arms of those gripping shields began to sag without realizing it, and spear tips wavered. Some were busy catching their breath; others kept glancing around and swallowing hard. Catastrophe had not yet arrived. Not yet.
But every one of them felt it.
That at some point, the weight of the battle would tip to one side.
Countless Corrupted surrounded them, waiting in silence.
Calix raised his sword again. The only choice available to him was endless advance. He pressed forward, cleaving through the darkness—but the sensation beneath his feet grew heavier with each step.
What his eyes saw and his actual movements were falling out of sync. His mind read the next move, but his body responded half a beat too late.
Just like his days as a conscript, he raised his sword not to win, but to keep from crumbling.
***
When Calix charged again, Royce shouted loudly.
"Hold your positions!"
He made a cold-headed call. The Mountain Rabbits' formation was wavering by small degrees. One by one, their feet began to stir—not to flee, but from the urge to charge forward.
Royce's gaze swept over the battlefield surrounding Calix. The weight of the front line, the remaining strength of his allies, the density of the Corrupted.
All of it was bad.
The monsters had begun to move.
Whether it was by De Generitum's command, he could not say. It simply felt as though pressure was closing in from every direction, as if to say: ‘do not interfere with their fight’. The Corrupted were not hasty, nor savage—they slowly devoured the space, step by measured step.
"They're coming in from the left!"
"Rear line, close the gap!"
The Mountain Rabbits moved on reflex. Trained responses. Each found their place, and axe, shield, and blade locked together. In short order, several Corrupted fell, and severed limbs rolled across the ground.
But as many as were cut down, that many refilled the gaps.
"Damn it……"
Volga cursed and swung his sword. Even smashing three or four down in one blow, four or five more climbed over them in the next moment. It was not a fight decided by force—it was a battle that demanded attrition.
Through it all, De Generitum did not spare them a single glance.
The Mountain Rabbits' interference was an unaccounted variable. A meaningless resistance. That gaze was the cruelest thing of all.
At that moment, Calix closed the distance. Chaos blazed at his sword's tip. He read the direction the darkness was flowing and slashed at its thinnest point.
This time—he connected.
His sword cut through the energy coiled along the opponent's blade and drove inward. Far deeper than before. Calix felt the resistance through his arm in full.
But an instant later, the sword stopped.
Calix's eyes snapped forward. His sword had caught on De Generitum's cross-guard. That exquisite deflection halted the attack, and now—
He would have to pay the price. The opponent's blade flashed, grazing Calix's side.
Blood flew.
"Calix!"
Ella's voice shook. She drew on her Divinity, but the light could not reach him. A thick, dense darkness blocked the space between them.
At that moment, De Generitum opened his mouth.
[How is it that life and death differ so.]
It was a question directed at Calix, and a question he turned upon himself.
[What is it you struggle for. Is it to forestall your own death, to spare the deaths of your comrades? Or is it for your own glory?]
Calix stepped back several paces and checked his side. It had been cut fairly deep. The worst of conditions were stacking, one by one.
By then, the opponent had spoken his conclusion. It was a shout filled with conviction.
"Yet the direction is wrong."
With those words, the pressure across the battlefield rose by another degree. The Corrupted surged inward like a flood. Gregor's shield was pushed back; Marik's sword was knocked aside. When the veteran mercenaries stumbled, the newcomers stepped forward to fill their places.
For the first time, a single word surfaced among the Mountain Rabbits.
Defeat.
Yet no one spoke it aloud. Because it was not over yet. Royce cut through a Corrupted and calculated the next move.
The remaining headcount, the retreat paths, and the possibility that still remained—uncertain as it was.
His eyes darkened and sank deep.
As a captain should, he showed nothing on the surface. But the shadow of a decision was settling quietly upon his shoulders.
Flames surged from the tip of Royce's sword. An imperfect Falling Fire. The Corrupted let out sharp cries as the flames scorched their flesh.
Yet instead of taking the enemy's life, he looked out across the battlefield.
Calix's breathing had grown markedly shorter. He was still moving, but the intervals between each inhale had shrunk. In the time between, the number of his wounds had grown.
The situation was bad.
Above all, the Mountain Rabbits' formation was being pressed inward as well.
‘It's only a matter of time before it collapses.’
The longer it dragged on, the greater the losses accumulated. Stated the other way—past a certain point, no matter how well they fought, it would be irreversible.
"Captain, are you just going to stand there and watch?"
Basim's shout rang in his ear. Royce did not answer.
"What is the main force doing!"
Volga shouted, swinging his sword. Someone swallowed a curse; someone else looked back, driven by a faint hope.
It was not the wrong thing to do. The Alliance Forces outnumbered them more than ever. But they could not get through to this point. And even if they did, it would mean nothing if it was only ordinary knights and soldiers.
The Great Gromchi.
That massive presence held the center of the battlefield in its grip. Around it, the silhouettes of Masters were entangled in combat. The sound of colliding mana carried even from a distance, and there was no sign of it being resolved quickly.
In other words—no reinforcements. No Master's intervention. No retreat route. The space between the main force and the Mountain Rabbits was packed dense with Corrupted.
Then what remained was—
‘Split into two.’
Royce turned his head toward the rear. The movements of the beasts had already changed. No cries, no roars. And yet their eyes burned with fierce light. Since someone had appeared, an indescribable longing had settled into their gaze.
De Generitum.
The moment he stood across from Calix, the enemy had solidified into something incomparably harder than before. Quieter. More certain.
But Royce paid it no mind. He had not been trying to gauge the enemy's strength. This was effectively his final confirmation.
He measured how many he would need to cut open a path. He sorted those who would remain on the field from those he would send away.
It was not fleeing—it was securing what came next.
Royce looked at Calix one last time. Calix was resisting with everything he had. And yet in the end, he could not reach. Whether it was physical deficiency, inexperience, or a matter of mana, he could not say.
But the conclusion had been reached.
Only one choice remained.
"Gregor."
In the middle of the battlefield, Royce called the name of the old man who had lost his memories.
Gregor moved toward the captain shortly after. He wiped the blood from his shield on his sleeve and clicked his tongue.
"So it comes to this in the end."
Regret showed on the old man's face. If they had dispatched Marcaron even a little faster, there might have been time to pull back. If everything had gone according to plan, the situation now would have been better.
But they both knew that regret was worthless.
"Is this the moment?"
"……Yes. It is."
"I see……"
Any further exchange was unnecessary.
***
Calix's vision lurched and distorted for an instant.
The world had not slowed. Quite the opposite—what had appeared slow came rushing back to its proper speed all at once.
The neural accelerator's hum fractured into a torn, jagged sound. He realized too late that he had already exceeded his limit. The sensation running into his limbs broke apart in fragments, and the strength left the wrist gripping his sword.
He gritted his teeth and took one more step forward.
But that one step was the last.
[Calix!!]
De Generitum's blade swept across his chest. It moved at a speed his eyes could not follow—yet everyone saw the blood that scattered through the air.
The impact traveled through his ribs. Calix's body was violently flung backward, rolling across the ground before coming to a stop. He did not lose his sword, but he could not rise. His body could no longer carry out the commands his mind was giving.
The Mountain Rabbits' pillar collapsed.
De Generitum looked down at him. His eyes held something indescribable.
[……You know nothing of giving up.]
Something of the past surfaced in De Generitum's—no, in Ashapel Raimund's—eyes, only to vanish in an instant. The memory was too old to resurrect fully.
His emotions had been weathered and worn away by time.
Only a single fact remained.
[Your life belongs to me.]
At that moment, the Corrupted rushed inward as one, toward the center. No cries, no roars. With the Lord's permission granted, they moved with steps full of certainty.
At the same instant, fierce flames erupted from within the Mountain Rabbits.
It was Royce.
He broke from the formation. Without any order, he drew his sword and hurled himself forward. He had poured in far more mana than was sound, and his neural accelerator cried out a warning once more.
It did not matter.
Blood ran from his eyes, his neural accelerator burned—but there was only one man his gaze held. He had to save the one who was his member, the one who would bring the Mountain Rabbits their tomorrow.
At the very edge of Calix's vision, Royce's flames shone.
He opened his mouth to shout, but no voice came.
In truth, Calix had known. The captain would not flee. He would not abandon him. A man for whom the Mountain Rabbits were everything could not possibly abandon the Mountain Rabbits.
And the one who knew that fact better than anyone—
Was Royce himself.