“I’m sorry, I see now… You have also witnessed the ‘Truth’ and have realized that there exists a world that cannot be expressed with mere words. If that’s the case, there is only one way for us to converse!”
With a loud thud, the iron rod thrown by the man penetrated into the ground, sending up clouds of dust that soared dozens of meters high.
As the ground cracked with a sound, a faint sense of fear appeared in the eyes of the crowd.
If things went awry, the Mountain Court, which had a long-standing history, could disappear.
If the Saint willed it, no.
Even a slight loss of composure could make it a possibility.
“Let us converse with the physical body, yes… Come forth, to the realm of imagination!”
The Saint’s face, as one who had thrown the iron rod as if it were a restraining device, bore a weightless look.
The boy, with an expression full of anticipation, had a bright face. It was like the face of a child waiting for an exciting game.
The more this happened, the more I had to harden my body. A battle that would not allow even a moment of carelessness was about to unfold.
As I steadied my posture, the Lady Virgin Saint, who had been sobbing on the ground, gasped in surprise and shouted.
“I-an, what on earth are you trying to do…? Your body is already in tatters…!”
“Is this also the will of the divine?”
It was a question I had once spoken aloud.
It wasn’t just me; everyone must have felt the same.
‘Greed,’ Yulen, and even Guildford, whom we had faced before, must have harbored this doubt.
Where is the Heavenly Deity?
Why does He not save us?
In truth, it wasn’t a statement I had hoped the Lady Virgin Saint would answer. There was just a voice faintly lingering in my memory.
“If that is the case, I must obey.”
Before I could even raise a counterargument.
I took a step forward, and the Saint looked at me with a fierce smile.
It was a sign that he would grant the first strike once more.
There was no justification to refuse. Just as I let out a sigh and inhaled again.
Once again, the silver wave swept through the world.
Things began to stop one by one, the myriad of starlights rising into the vacant space of the void.
I gritted my teeth and took another step.
Erasure.
With that, the process along with the space was lost.
Before long, I had reached the front of the Saint. On his expressionless face, a smile still glimmered with joy.
Already the second time.
The time that this frozen world could be maintained was but a fleeting moment. Even this moment was only possible right after awakening. As the memory of having seen the ‘Truth’ faded, the duration of my stay in this world also grew shorter.
I didn’t mind.
I only needed to see the end now. If I could save the Lady Virgin Saint, anything would do.
A flame of silver danced along the blade. The last attack had been made in a moment of distraction, leaving a somewhat shallow wound, but I was not foolish enough to repeat that mistake.
I had to go deeper.
At least to the point of damaging the innards. Otherwise, it would be impossible to take down this monster.
With all my might. No, it had to be more than that.
The sound of my clenched teeth grinding echoed in my ears. A strike given with all my power left a silver afterimage in a colorless world.
And then it happened.
At the same time, a strange sound echoed, and my body froze.
It was a close to instinctual intuition. My gaze hurriedly chased the source of the noise.
The light had returned.
The Saint’s sky-blue eyes had regained their color and were following my sword’s path. A faint crack appeared in the frozen world.
My mind went blank for an instant.
How?
My imagination was not a power that could be explained with acceleration. There shouldn’t exist a being capable of moving through fully frozen time in this world.
Yes, definitely not.
Yet, the Saint’s smile was becoming creepily intense.
His parted lips conveyed a slow sound wave.
“I got you.”
And then, time began to flow again.
With an explosive force, the Saint’s arm tore through time and space, gripping my sword arm.
My exhausted body couldn’t withstand the pulling force. Before I knew it, I was on the Saint’s back.
It was a familiar sequence of motions.
My body, sensing the shock that would follow, struggled as if it were the last gasp of a dying thing. But the strength of the Saint, having discarded his weapon, far surpassed my imagination, and at the last moment, I caught a glimpse of his sky-blue eyes.
Before long, the world had reversed.
Holy Kingdom Vision, reversing the moon.
The ground heaved and exploded like a lake struck by a meteor.
Once again, a handful of blood sloshed through the void.
It was now a death without even form. It wouldn’t take long for the Lady Virgin Saint’s mind, which was just recovering its composure, to collapse.
“Ah, ah… Aaaah! Stop, stop it! No, no, please… I-an. Don’t do this!”
It was truly an overwhelming sight.
The world had literally turned upside down.
It was not limited to the story centered around I-an. Though it was but a moment, everyone standing there had witnessed it.
The world itself was flipped over.
The Saint didn’t cast I-an to the ground. Instead, he sent him crashing into the sky.
It was merely a human body.
There was no way it could bear the weight of an entire planet.
Blood vessels burst in every part of the body, and bones and muscles were mixed up like a slush. Liquid that was a mix of blood and brain matter spewed from his nose and mouth.
It was a ghastly sight.
Out of all the deaths I had witnessed until now, it was undoubtedly the worst. It wouldn’t be strange for the Lady Virgin Saint to scream with her eyes covered.
Even though I-an had reached the High Expert level, the Master was a being of an entirely different caliber.
The outcome of the confrontation was clear. After just two exchanges of attack and defense, once again, the Saint had seized complete victory.
At least on the surface.
But the Saint, who had sent I-an reeling, wore a dazed expression. And just as a pit dozens of meters deep formed in the ground, a late injury appeared on his shoulder.
Blood spouted out suddenly.
The Saint’s eyes gradually turned upwards. There, a hand axe was spinning through the void, tracing a silver trajectory.
A dazed mumble escaped the boy’s lips.
“He must have died….”
I-an’s body, struck directly by the reversing moon, was crushed to the point of not being able to be broken into pieces. Naturally, there should have been no time to throw the axe.
But he threw it.
That left a second wound on the Saint’s body. Since attaining Master, it was one of the few deep wounds he had received.
Perhaps only that brat obsessed with swords had inflicted a serious injury like this.
However, there was one more surprising thing that awaited the Saint.
Heaving, panting.
From the epicenter of the tremendous aftermath, a sound of gasping could be heard. His sky-blue gaze, filled with doubt, turned toward that source.
A bloodied man was rising.
He had no intention to kill. Before his soul departed, he had meticulously restored his body. But due to the aftermath of successive battles, there’s no way he could stand up immediately.
That man was outright violating the laws of physics.
As if flipping life and death like the Saint.
After several seconds of silence, a faint smile formed on the Saint’s lips.
“…I see.”
With a cough, laughter flowed from the Saint’s throat.
As if he was having too much fun to contain himself.
“That was your imagination, brother! An unyielding will that cannot be broken even if you die! Does it twist even a reality that should be deserving of death and immobility!”
And with that, the atmosphere shifted.
Thud, thud, thud.
The Saint’s body began to swell rapidly. The robe that covered his upper body could no longer contain his growing frame and burst apart. Solid muscles forcibly straightened the Saint’s spine.
The body, expanded to its limits, was unrealistically muscular. Only after all the muscles across his body swelled beyond the point of further growth did the Saint’s transformation come to an end.
A height exceeding 2 meters.
The spectacle of muscles filling that vast area resembled a statue crafted by the gods for war. It was indeed a body suitable for those ultimate martial artists who train their bodies without limits.
As the size of the Saint increased, his voice grew even louder.
His booming voice was so powerful that some with weaker hearts had to cover their ears.
“However, a single imagination can only contain one miracle! How you managed to stop time, I do find it puzzling… but very well! You, more than anyone else, have the right to receive this humble servant’s true heart!”
With his sky-blue aura igniting, the Saint inhaled. The posture he assumed radiated a powerful aura, shaking the world around him.
Woosh, woosh, woosh!
Light, heat, and wind, among all sorts of forces, were being sucked into the vortex.
Even the premonition alone was anything but ordinary.
I-an tried desperately to move his trembling body, but instead, blood spewed forth first.
His hazy gaze turned toward the Saint.
“You may take pride in this… The only one who has received this final strike for decades is you, aside from that brat obsessed with swords, who would be out of place in the Empire!”
Once again, the commotion began to rise with the boiling voice.
It was a chaos of a scale that could not be compared to anything before it. Because there wasn’t anyone who existed in this place who didn’t know of the ‘events from decades ago’ that the Saint had mentioned.
