After the vampire disappeared, only a blood-soaked silence filled the Cloud Falls. It seemed the vampire had taken not only lives and blood but even the commotion along as it left. Those who could move struggled to pull the injured from the corpses, yet their movements were sluggish, as if their vitality had been stolen away. The Thunder Guardians gathered the living and the dead.
"Thunder Guild Master..."
Of course, even amidst all this, there was one thing particularly difficult to come to terms with.
Thunder Guild Master Elkid was dead, shattered to pieces. Beneath the dried blood, her withered flesh was visible. She didn't look dead, but rather like something broken. Though fixing her wouldn't bring her back to life.
Shea, who had once been her comrade in a time that no longer existed, looked down at Elkid with bitter eyes and muttered.
"To think Elkid was a Holy Swordbearer..."
The Holy Sword Order exists in all sorts of forms all over the world. Some even live without knowing they are part of the Holy Sword Order. It is because fate chooses them.
In a certain round, Shea had also been appointed to the Holy Sword Order. Elated by the sense of belonging, Shea initially truly believed she was a Holy Swordbearer. The power of regression was so mystical that it couldn't be explained unless it was the power of a god.
Of course, after passing through a few rounds, she realized how alien a power it was. Still, the comfort she gained while in the Holy Sword Order, where various strong individuals gathered, remained with her to this day.
Perhaps that was why she felt a sense of kinship with Elkid. Feeling a bitter emotion, Shea looked at the dead Elkid. In the distant past, it seemed she would have felt sadness at a comrade's death, but now, after going through regressions, only a slight regret remained. It was something she experienced often, and they would return anyway once she regressed.
Instead of being spaced out like Peru, Shea voiced a more constructive question.
"Why did it have to awaken now...?"
She could roughly guess the reason. She didn't want to believe it, but they said Hughes, whom she met by chance in prison, was actually the King of Humanity.
The King of Sin is an offshoot of the King of Humanity. The dregs discarded in the process of humans, chaotic beings of life, sifting through good and evil. She didn't know how it worked, but in the future, the King of Sin, an incarnation of a concept, would be born. Probably... through the King of Humanity.
That was what Shea understood, and she had been acting according to the Holy Court's will to prevent the descent of the King of Sin. If the King of Humanity had appeared, it made sense that the Holy Court reacted frantically. There was a possibility he could become the King of Sin.
"It... probably isn't a lie. He even revived Tirkanjaka's heart. Peruel said so too."
If so, it was truly regrettable. The King of Humanity appeared and reacted, only to end up stimulating Tirkanjaka of all things. In the process, Hilde played a trick, causing even Shea to fall out with them. She had intended to stand on the opposite side of the Holy Court this round to mediate the conflict, but things had deviated too far from the plan.
"Then that means Hughes is the King of Humanity before the King of Sin. Then his age is... Ugh. Didn't the King of Sin appear in the same way the Beast King is born?"
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However, perhaps even this was an opportunity. The information that the King of Humanity was Hughes was a clue hard to trade for anything else. It was more than enough to cover for the slight deviation from the plan.
As always, the regressor reassured herself that even this hardship was nourishment for the next round. And it actually was. Feeling a ray of hope, Shea suddenly had a question.
"...But why couldn't the Holy Court foresee Elkid's death?"
Tirkanjaka's darkness interferes with foresight. However, even if they couldn't know what lay beyond the darkness, they would certainly know that the darkness was there. Why did they send Elkid and Peruel there of all places?
Unlike her other questions, an answer to this one did not come easily. As the regressor furrowed her brow and pondered repeatedly, a pitch-black shadow approached from behind her.
Gripping a sharp spear tightly in both hands.
"Haah!"
The lightning-infused spear flew toward Shea's defenseless back. It was a threatening ambush that even contained the profound principles of Qi Gong as it thrust forward.
That is, if it were the Shea from about eight rounds ago.
Cheonbangyeong. A Qi Gong that reacts to the future through experience, possessing a similar effect to combat foresight yet with an entirely different directionality, moved Shea's body. Shea twisted her body and extended her arm. The spear and Shea's arm crossed. After reinforcing her arm with Qi Gong, Shea coiled around the spear like a snake and applied force. The spear shaft made of Refined Vajra broke into three pieces.
Shea asked the Thunder Guardian standing there in vain with an indifferent voice.
"What? Why are you suddenly attacking?"
The difference in their level of power was stark. The opponent was a formidable warrior who could fight even against a vampire. The Thunder Guardian trembled in helplessness. Despite being Thunder Guardians who had trained their entire lives, they couldn't play any role in the battle that had just occurred.
Other than shouting with emotion.
"You, the monsters you brought killed the Thunder Guild Master! And my comrades too!"
Shea was used to hearing this kind of resentment. Shea retorted listlessly.
"If you're talking about the Elder, I didn't bring them."
"It's the same thing! If it weren't for you guys, nothing would have happened!"
The sight of him shouting as if driven by malice was also familiar to the regressor. She had seen enough of crowds looking for a place to shift the blame when something happened. As she debated whether to ignore him or subdue him, another Thunder Guardian appeared and stopped him.
"Stop! He helped us."
"Helped? Claudia treated them as VIPs and served them generously! They returned kindness with enmity!"
Thunder Guild Master Elkid was a Holy Swordbearer. But even before that, she was the Thunder Guild Master. It is difficult for a leader of a group to receive a good evaluation in their own time, but it seemed the Thunder Guild Master had achieved that difficult feat. Enough for the Guardians to vow revenge.
Placing the blame on Shea, who had tried to save Elkid until the end, was a meaningless attempt, but no persuasion would work on them now that their emotions had intensified. Ordinary people would need a place to cling to. Instead of making a meaningless effort, Shea answered with a sneer.
"I'm sorry. You'd only be satisfied if we brought Elkid back to life. But we can't do that, so..."
The moment she started to say that.
Lightning struck with a flash. At the same time, Elkid's eyes snapped wide open. Before anyone's brain could process the situation, Elkid rose eerily and creaked like a puppet on strings. Unconcerned by the torn flesh visible between the dried bloodstains.
Even for Shea, who was accustomed to the deaths of comrades, a dead comrade moving again was a bewildering thing. Shea was so shocked that she even felt a hint of fear and stepped back. However, realizing that no vitality could be felt from Elkid, she narrowed her eyes.
"What? Dark Magic?"
Dark Magic, the life-medium magic that corresponded to White Magic, which used objects as a medium.
A living creature's body creates its own small world isolated from the outside. Even if it were physical, there was sufficient meaning to it. Dark Magicians collapse the small system of life and use that power to bring bizarre miracles into reality.
Naturally, and harshly, the thing humans could most easily use was a human body. Dark Magic had always required human corpses, or bodies that would become corpses, and because of its cruelty, it had been despised and persecuted. It was an extremely natural phenomenon, not caused by anyone's orders.
Shea felt the same way. Disgusted by the use of a human corpse, and displeased at the thought of a comrade's corpse being insulted.
"Did Kabila cast a Dark Magic spell before leaving? What a sick taste!"
"...No."
Somehow, the answer came from Peru. Exhaling deeply, Peru raised her hand. At her fingertips, a mystical thread that radiated a mysterious power drifted through the air like a cloud. As Peru wiggled her fingers, a light flashed from the thread as if in response.
And a moment later, hundreds of strands of lightning were sucked into Elkid through her wounds. The sight of the lightning flowing through her blood vessels was clearly visible. As if the lightning were her soul, it seemed like light briefly entered Elkid's eyes.
Now finding the culprit, Shea asked.
"Jannok Guild Master? What are you doing?"
"...Trying to fix the Thunder Guild Master."
Frowning at Peru, who spoke as if she were fixing a mechanical device, Shea asked back.
"What? Fix? How?"
Peru felt the mystical thread and the power of thunder coming from the Thunder Guild Master.
She had learned alchemy and even mastered her Unique Magic Path. Because of that, she had no difficulty accepting the power of the Golden Mirror. The Demon God's Elixir touched Peru's Unique Magic Path, so the power was formed in a way she could understand.
However, the Demon God's Lightning Nest did not belong to Peru. The power had chosen Peru, but Peru had almost no knowledge of how to handle it. She only understood it limitedly at the intersection of lightning and alchemy. If she wanted to handle the power more skillfully, she needed someone proficient in that power, like the Thunder Guild Master.
Here, Peru reached one conclusion. If she could revive the Thunder Guild Master with the power of the Golden Mirror, she would be able to overcome the chaos that had befallen Claudia and properly utilize this power.
This was also why Peru had asked Tirkanjaka to leave. If the vampire were here, she would hinder Elkid's resurrection and bring chaos to Claudia. She had to make up some excuse to get her away from here, and with Hughes's help, she succeeded. He had urged Tirkanjaka away from this land.
It was not a wild guess. He didn't explicitly state it, but Hughes actively passed his power to Peru. Moreover, he even arranged the environment to unleash that power. Anyone else might not have noticed, but the one who received it realized that fact more clearly than anyone.
What on earth the King of Humanity was testing, or what he wanted her to do with this power, she didn't know. But Peru had a principle. No matter the situation, no matter what others expected, she only kept to her own principles.
To make the world more valuable.
"...The Thunder Guild Master was created. Alchemy and the power of thunder form her body and mind. It's complex and arcane, but with the power of the Demon God, it might be possible to restore that."
If the living were more valuable than a dead corpse, then the act of bringing someone back to life with alchemy was worth attempting.
Regardless of how those around her looked at her, Peru acted on her genuine belief.
And somewhere far away, a Saintess closed her eyes.
Reality was the future in the past. In the past, the Saintess had clearly seen this future. She had wished that the Thunder Guild Master would not die, or rather, that everyone there would die, so that the time when human dignity would be tested would not come.
However, only a god can move the future as they desire. Regrettably, the Saintess was not a god. Foresight shows the future but cannot move it as one wishes. The moment she sees the future and tries to intervene, the future the Saintess touches becomes distorted.
The Saintess could only pity and grieve.