Temiran McClair’s blood-red eyes closely watched the radiant holy sword aimed at him.
Even so, his mind was whirring at full speed, searching for the best way to break through the current situation.
‘All right, I’ve bought some time for now... So what next?’
The saint of the Main God Church and champion of the Main God, the Knight of Light, Heinrich Saint Landguard, had appeared out of nowhere.
The existence of the man who had shattered his inner world, “Behind the Twilight,” and forced his way in was far too great a variable.
So much so that, merely by showing up here, even escaping intact could no longer be guaranteed.
‘How irritating. I knew things were going too smoothly.’
Temiran’s eyes twitched at the sharp sword aura that seemed ready to pierce him at any moment.
His opponent’s pressure kept probing him from every angle, ceaselessly seeking an opening.
In response, Temiran twisted the currents around them and threatened the girl collapsed behind him.
Then the pressure that had been inching closer weakened and retreated, only to begin creeping around him again as though waiting for another chance.
“Phew— persistent, aren’t you?”
“Tch, that’s my line.”
For now, his opponent could not recklessly attack because of the girl lying behind him, but nothing good would come of this standoff dragging on.
For him, an apostle of a god exiled to the Abyss, this place was no different from the heart of enemy territory.
‘I managed to restore the inner world somehow, but... I should assume everything that happened in here has already been made known outside. And there’s no guarantee that something broken once won’t be broken twice.’
If only that old grand shaman had not interfered at the start, or if the High Elf’s intervention had been delayed by even a little, he would have secured his target without much trouble and slipped away at his leisure.
Coincidence after coincidence had piled up to seize him by the ankle, and at some point the situation had begun hurtling toward the worst possible outcome.
...No, in truth, he already knew.
This situation had not arisen simply because of coincidence. It was a disaster caused by his god completely losing the initiative over the law of causality that He had somehow maintained until now.
‘Everything He tried ended in failure, so of course there had to be a blowback.’
From the appearance of the Immortal King to the flood of madness, the revolutionaries’ secret maneuvers, and more.
There was no way one could plot disasters on a continental scale without paying any price.
Especially when those schemes had to be carried out while imprisoned in the worst possible environment, the Abyss; what more was there to say about the added burden?
And yet, most of the aggressive gambles made under such circumstances had ended in failure.
It was like scraping together every last coin to force a business venture forward, only to lose it all in one clean sweep.
The reason Temiran, who was still not fully prepared as an apostle, had been forced to act earlier than planned was also because of that.
It had been to somehow make the few remaining arrangements succeed, find a way to recover, and lay the foundation for a reversal, but...
Judging by the current situation, that too seemed hopeless.
“...Now that I think about it, I’m getting pissed off again. In the end, this means I’m supposed to clean up the mess after someone else made a complete disaster of things, doesn’t it? Ugh, what glory and riches am I suffering like this for?”
“On that point, we are of the same mind, Temiran McClair. Wouldn’t it be less tiring for both of us if you simply surrendered here?”
“Tch, if I could do as I pleased, I’d like to do that too...”
The boy with the youthful appearance smacked his lips at Heinrich’s words.
Unfortunately, however, he was not in a position to move according to his own will.
Since he was literally bound by a forced slave contract, even knowing the ship he was on was sinking, he had no choice but to stay with it until the end.
Temiran scratched the back of his head and grumbled.
“Well, what can I do? When they tell me to jump, I jump. If you think about it, you and I are in pretty similar positions...”
Then he stopped before he could finish his sentence.
His gaze dropped to his own feet.
‘Wait, my shadow...?’
It was purely by chance that he noticed that tiny sense of wrongness.
At a glance, the angle was so subtly distorted that one would feel nothing strange at all.
But he followed his intuition and immediately moved his body.
And right after that.
———!
A rupture beyond the range of hearing burst out.
It was a phenomenon that occurred abruptly, without even a moment of preparation, as though the intervening process had been cut away.
Rumble—!
Then, with a sound like air being ripped apart, a violent gale swept through.
“...A shame. You’ve got good instincts.”
And from the center of that storm.
A voice flowed out, cold enough to send a chill down the spine.
Step, step—
Along with the clear sound of shoes ringing out even amid the commotion, a man who seemed to have been standing there since who knew when slowly walked forward, the hem of his long coat fluttering.
A cold-looking handsome man, rubbing the blood on his fingertips several times with an expression that did not look regretful at all, despite what he had said.
His red eyes turned toward a corner where dust was rising.
In his other arm, he lightly held the girl who had collapsed unconscious.
“Mister—!”
Aaron, who had squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden gale and hugged his grandmother and Raffy tightly, brightened at the sight of him and shouted.
How could he not be glad when the person he had been longing for had appeared so dramatically and rescued his sister?
Of course, he was grateful to the saint who had helped them in their moment of absolute peril, but from the perspective of a young boy, he could not help being even happier that Heinz, with whom he had a personal connection, had come.
“...What the hell? When did you get in?”
At that moment, a low growl rang out from the place Heinz was looking.
Temiran’s small frame emerged from between the slowly settling dust clouds.
Blood dripped from one of his arms, which was covered in dust.
“I definitely didn’t detect anyone intruding. So how...? And this...”
His gaze turned to the wound on his arm.
It was not a particularly serious injury, but what mattered was that he had taken unilateral damage from an unexpected ambush.
Worse still, for some reason, the wound was not even regenerating properly.
No, now, far from healing, the cells around the struck area were beginning to necrotize little by little, as though some deadly poison had seeped in.
Fwaak—!
Temiran tore out the wounded area with his own hand and incinerated it, then frowned.
‘...This isn’t poison. It’s a contest for dominance between vampiric factors of different natures.’
Blood bearing hostile will had infiltrated his body like guerrillas.
But even after grasping the situation, he still could not accept it.
That battlefield was his own body, his home ground, and the defending forces were by no means of low caliber either.
And yet he was being reduced to this state, unable to deal with just a few drops of the opponent’s blood injected into him?
“What the hell did you do?”
He could not know it, but in truth, that phenomenon was not so strange.
Heinz II’s vampiric factor was the very pinnacle of evolution, having undergone tremendous mutations and pushed efficiency to the absolute limit.
Against an ordinary immune system that simply relied on the individual’s rank, it was only natural that it would become a monster capable of fighting a thousand alone.
“Who knows?”
Of course, Heinz II had no intention of answering his opponent’s question and merely raised the corner of his mouth arrogantly.
He lifted his hand, now clean without a single drop of blood, and lightly swept back his glossy black hair.
“That’s not what’s important right now, is it?”
A single remark mixed with provocation and a faint sneer.
Temiran, who had been frowning at him, flinched.
Then he hurriedly stretched a hand to the side and threw himself away once more.
Kwaaaang—!
A streak of dazzling radiance rapidly swelled, and beautiful waves of platinum light surged.
Like a beast finally freed from every restraint and released from its cage, waves of brilliance swallowed space without hesitation.
Temiran, who had barely blocked the attack and now had one hand burned black, ground his teeth.
“Kh! A surprise attack! For someone called a saint, you’re unbearably petty...!”
“Mm? That’s a rather unexpected reaction. And quite a carefree thing for a hostage-taker to say.”
But Heinrich merely let out a faint laugh.
They had been in the middle of watching each other for openings and waiting for an opportunity, so in that situation, wasn’t the one who carelessly let his attention wander elsewhere at fault?
...Well, he had been the one to induce that situation in the first place.
“More importantly, haven’t we talked enough already, Temiran McClair? If you still have something left to say, I would gladly hear it.”
The silver-haired handsome man, spreading wings of light and cloaked in a sacred aura, wore a gentle smile.
“Of course, before that, we’ll need to go through a small procedure. So that we can converse more comfortably and safely. Will you cooperate?”
“...Ha, hahaha. Damn it.”
The flow had already completely turned against him.
Temiran’s eyes busily darted around, searching desperately for some move, but the two showed him not the slightest opening.
‘Taking a hostage again...’
It was impossible to seize the girl who had been his original target.
That “Vampire King” he had only heard of in rumors was personally protecting her.
The single move just now had been enough to tell him that the rumors about him were no exaggeration.
And that he was an opponent whose compatibility with him was nearly the worst possible.
If Saint Heinrich was his natural enemy as a hunter who stood at the opposite extreme, then Heinz was his natural enemy as one of the same kind and as a superior predator.
Because he had been forced out into the world before being completed as an apostle and had therefore been unable to fully escape the framework of his race, Heinz, who was Divine Blood and the sovereign of all Blood, could only be an extremely difficult opponent for him.
‘As for the other humans... Tch, because of that High Elf, I can’t do this or that.’
At some point, Lydia had gathered not only the injured grand shaman but also the residents caught up in this affair into one place, mobilizing all the spirits to establish an ironclad defense.
Rather than joining the saint to face the enemy together, she had completely trusted that side to him and devoted herself to minimizing civilian casualties so that he could fight without worry.
In this situation, if he carelessly charged over there and got bogged down, it would only make things more troublesome.
‘There’s no helping it. There’s no hope like this. Even if I have to accept the loss, I have no choice but to get out of here first.’
If he had known it would turn out like this, he would have acted immediately after the saint appeared!
Since being greedy for no reason might make the situation even worse than it already was, moving now was the best option.
Rumble—
Along with his resolve, the inner world “Behind the Twilight” shook violently.
This space was a small world constructed from the manifestation of part of his will and existence.
Simply blocking off space with a barrier was not its only use.
‘Of course, using it as a disposable tool like this will cause more loss than gain. But now that things have come to this, I can’t afford to worry about that.’
Kwa-gwa-gwang! Bang!
Following his will, the world became hostile toward those within it and began sharpening its fangs in an attempt to exclude them by any means.
With a fierce earthquake, the ground split open and lava surged up.
The air transformed entirely into toxic substances, lightning flowed through the atmosphere like waterfalls, and lethal radiation erupted from the earth.
It was an extreme environment where an ordinary person could not endure even an instant.
“Pointless!”
Along with Heinrich’s shout, his wings spread wide.
In an instant, a holy sanctuary spread in all directions and protected those inside it.
Because the space itself was causing its own collapse and its energy was surging endlessly, it could not be cut apart as easily as when he first entered, but enduring like this was well within his ability.
Of course, that was exactly what Temiran had wanted.
‘This has tied the saint down. Now what’s left is...’
It probably would not last long.
In the end, once all its energy was exhausted, this space, burning its final flame, would collapse helplessly.
But right now, he did not even have the leisure to feel regret over that.
“I can hear the sound of your petty scheming from here.”
“Heh, that’s all I ever saw and learned from those above me!”
The Vampire King Heinz blocked his path.
As a vampire, he knew through instinct.
His opponent was, quite literally, his natural enemy—someone he could never defeat if he faced him head-on.
‘But in the current situation, with the entire inner world running wild, if I focus only on avoiding battle and escaping...’
He was not an opponent against whom that was completely impossible.
All the more so if his opponent had a piece of baggage hanging from his arms!
“Farewell! Let’s never meet again!”
In the end, he managed to seize a fleeting opening and slip out beyond the inner world.
Immediately afterward, he barred the door fast once more, so they would not be able to follow him out right away.
That brief delay would be more than enough time for him to escape completely through the Abyssal Rift.
‘Still, it wasn’t only a loss. Now that I’ve observed the child who already holds the fragment, tracking them won’t be as difficult as it has been. The situation wasn’t favorable this time, but they won’t be able to keep that child tucked under their wing forever.’
Since he had lifted the veil of causality once, there would be plenty of opportunities to create another chance from here on.
Just as Temiran, forcing himself to rationalize it that way, took one hurried step to move elsewhere—
Gooooong—
His body froze for an instant under an unidentified pressure that weighed down on his entire being.
“...What is this?”
His gaze followed the flow of energy and rose of its own accord toward the sky.
And what greeted him there was—
A vast magic circle covering the entire sky of Tarak.
“You finally came out.”
At the center of that magic circle— in the sky directly above Temiran’s head as he looked up.
Lee Se-a, who had long since received the signal and prepared in advance, looked down with a faint smile.
It was said that a mage, given enough time and materials, could display miracles that far exceeded their own abilities, but in that respect, she possessed an ability that was even more special.
“How long has it been since I was able to prepare magic this comfortably and leisurely?”
Her unique skill, 「Infinite Power」, explosively increased the energy she could handle to something near infinity.
But the “energy” included in that did not refer only to the mana that served as fuel when casting magic.
Gugugugung—
It also included mental strength, an essential resource for constructing spells yet impossible to quantify precisely, as well as various forms of brainpower, such as thinking ability and calculation capacity.
So long as she could properly become aware of and perceive them, those too were excellent “energy sources” she could make full use of as she pleased.
‘Well, this only became possible for me recently, too.’
There was no way perceiving such abstract concepts as clear numbers could have been easy.
It must have been growth born from overcoming all manner of trials until now.
With the battle against the Immortal King not far off, the fact that their fighting strength had grown even stronger was truly welcome news.
Lee Se-a looked down with haughty eyes.
A being struggling somehow to move and escape, even within this painstakingly layered prohibition.
That man had to be the “unknown threat” the saintess had foreseen.
She could not allow such a variable to slip away here.
Gugugugung—
The enormous magic circle, carefully built up layer upon layer, rotated intricately like the mainspring of a clockwork mechanism.
And then—
[“Stop.”]
At the Word Spirit (言靈) of the mage who had newly ascended to transcendence, time froze at a single point upon the earth.
It was no more than a brief instant.
But it was time enough for the predator who had hastily emerged from the inner world to seize the fleeing man by the nape of his neck.