Chapter 144
Sitting on a throne made of skulls, Titeo stared intently at the pool of black tears he had shed.
Inside the black helmet,
red glowing eyes watched him.
A challenger, a pilgrim.
Titeo glimpsed his ideals.
‘Different.’
The knights who had challenged him until now were countless.
Some for their own honor.
Others for power.
For wealth, they challenged him carrying their own respective ideals and desires.
Having endured a thousand years of time.
A new challenger was interesting to Titeo, who still kept his post.
‘A sword harboring nothing.’
Rather, precisely because there is nothing, the ambition that says it can hold anything.
Arrogant levels of self-esteem and confidence were reflected in his eyes.
He rather liked it.
[Proof is likely no longer necessary.]
He had already proven it.
If it had been just words, Titeo would not have moved either. However, his words were not empty illusions.
Because Titeo could fully feel the various auras the challenger harbored.
Fairy and Dragon. And God.
He had already harbored what could not be harbored.
With that, he proved it.
He clearly demonstrated that his sword could hold anything.
The qualification was sufficient.
Titeo closed his eyes.
A thousand years ago.
Bearing the deaths of his comrades on his back, he killed the dragon, and killed the demon.
However, the war was tight, and the power of a single person was insufficient to end the massive battlefield called the Dragon-Demon War.
But even so, his conviction did not break or bend.
He had the resolve to rush forward and cut the enemy's throat even if this single body shattered and he died a hundred times over.
However.
Not everyone thought the same as Titeo.
No other than the Saintess was like that.
The heroes representing each divine weapon united to end the war.
That was a completely different direction from what Titeo desired.
Dragon, Demon, and Human forged an accord.
They built a tower with the Giant as a witness.
The Giant's spear pinned down the fiercely rebelling Titeo, and he was sealed just like that.
Agathod.
For that was originally the Giant's spear.
‘I do not resent the Giant.’
The one wiser than anyone else.
He was the Giant.
His choice was the right one.
The Saintess and the heroes? They are the same.
Even their choices, reaching the present, can only be respected.
Thanks to that, peace came somehow.
During a thousand years of time.
Mankind grew prosperous, the dragon took rest, and the demon solidified its internal affairs.
However.
Titeo could not accept peace.
But sealed in this tower, he could not go out.
So he waited.
For his and his comrades' anger, their deaths.
For a knight to contain at the tip of their sword.
[Could your sword also contain us?]
He wanted to verify it soon.
* * *
The skull knight's spear pointed toward Callias. The shield was raised.
This is a place for proving.
He was telling him to prove it by overpowering him with strength.
He had his conviction.
What they desired was not grand.
What the Weeping Fallen wanted.
What the knights who sympathized with him wanted was simply the value of death.
A valuable and honorable death.
Because that was all they wished for.
‘I.’
Will defeat them.
And embrace all of them.
For originally, I came for that.
[Prove it!]
The spear shot out. At the same time, the Devouring Sword was swung.
Clang!
The dark stone chamber of the 4th floor.
Sparks flashed on the proving battlefield where the dead kept their posts.
‘The power I hold.’
Everything I possess.
I will show it here.
The moment he was about to draw out his sorrow and strike a single blow.
Rustle!
Callias's sword lost its target.
"……What is this?"
Suddenly, the forms of the skull knights turned into pale sand and slumped down. Soon, they completely disappeared.
The demons were the same.
There was no one on the 4th floor.
It felt as if he had dreamt it.
But it was not a dream.
[Could your sword also contain us?]
It was the lowest and most chilling voice he had ever heard.
Callias, who got goosebumps as soon as he heard it, did not relax his tension. He was also quite flustered.
The 4th floor was originally a place for proving.
A place to prove one's conviction.
Thus, Callias had to overpower all of them.
‘But they disappeared.’
As if proof was unnecessary.
It flowed differently from Callias's expectations for the first time since arriving at the tower.
He could not know if this was a blessing or a curse.
‘Us.’
Could your sword also contain us.
Was this a question?
Only one could ask such a question.
The Weeping Fallen.
"Titeo."
As he called his name.
As if waiting, a door opened.
A door leading underground.
Callias's fluster subsided. He soon regained his composure.
But he did not let his guard down.
Unlike planned, Titeo, he.
"Seems he wants to meet me."
Rather, it worked out well.
Callias headed straight for the door.
Taking the stairs down, he immediately opened the 5th floor.
"There's nothing."
It was a place where Titeo's memories should have originally appeared.
The reason he fell. The end of the war. The starting point of the fall that occurred because of it and the seal tied here.
A place where all of that should have come out.
But what was visible was an empty cavern with only a few candles lit.
Callias went down to the next floor with eyes that seemed to roughly understand.
Callias's footsteps stepping down the stairs echoed quietly.
Step, step.
The further down he went, the thick darkness and aura of fall whispered to him.
Digging up his days as a scoundrel and past agonies, it incited him to fall.
The agony from countless trials, the regrets forged by wrong choices—hovered by his ears.
However, without changing a single expression, maintaining a lofty posture, he reached the end of the floor.
6th floor.
The intaglio engraved on that door was only the Giant and the spear.
And the Weeping Fallen.
Thud.
Callias immediately pushed the door open with both hands.
Rumble!
The door opened, and the first thing that caught Callias's eyes was black water.
Black water flowing in toward his feet.
Green torches dimly lit the surroundings, casting the appearance of an endless underground.
And at the end of it.
The Weeping Fallen.
Titeo was sitting on a throne made of skulls, shedding black tears.
Without a word, Callias just stepped with a splash through the tears he shed and advanced toward him.
[I have fallen.]
Callias's feet did not stop.
[My sword and body that volunteered to stop the war refused peace at its end.]
Callias drew his sword.
[At the beginning of peace, I fell myself and resurrected my pitifully dead comrades.]
As if welcoming him, the Weeping Fallen slowly rose from his throne.
[I became a sword myself. Becoming a sword, I embraced them.]
Centered around Titeo, an ominous wave began to spread as if swaying. The landscape of the cavern where only darkness settled fluctuated and faced change.
From the empty darkness.
Thousands of skulls slowly began to rise.
That distant past.
The heroes who rose up crying out only for peace. And those who threw away their lives to save Titeo.
They rose up all at once, blocking Callias's path.
It was a solid wall, an iron fortress.
[So I ask.]
In the middle of horrific despair.
An endless wait.
But Titeo was not alone.
With thousands of resurrected comrades standing by his side, he raised his head toward Callias, who stood alone.
[You who received the fairy's love, and harbor the dragon's wrath. Can that sword serving the divine also contain us at its tip?]
Before his eyes was a boundless darkness.
Lined up were formidable heroes too frightening to even count.
But Callias stepped forward.
Sword aura fluttered from his sword.
The fluttering sword aura, like smoke, soon took the shape of flower petals and scattered.
He did not bother to answer.
As if showing them through action because words held no meaning to them.
The knight with the sword acted without hesitation, and his gaze did not waver, so the Fallen One watched quietly.
Soon, the knight threw away his bracelet.
An enormous silver divine power erupted out as if encroaching on the surroundings.
However, its purity was insignificant.
But his comrades faltered.
[Hmm.]
He seemed to know the reason.
A purple aura mixed by the knight's side.
And soon. The aura of hegemony.
A crimson mad dragon intertwined.
The colorful energy currents flickered around his body and became one.
The tears he stepped on were black.
But his fluttering outer garment was white.
Clear black and white.
Among the blackened dead, he was a pilgrim. Alone, he was pure white.
But right now.
The momentum he emitted was gray.
Covered in gray energy currents from head to toe, he was neither black nor white, but gray.
Titeo's eyes held regret. No, they held ash.
The corner of the Fallen's mouth drew a smile.
All the lined-up comrades were surprised.
For the past thousand years. He had never smiled.
[Hahaha! Is this not the pinnacle of imbalance!]
A novice who hadn't even broken through his limits.
If the sword could be explained as weak and strong, he would undoubtedly be a weakling belonging to the weak.
However, the Fallen could not denounce him.
[…….]
Drawing up all kinds of auras, he broke through his limits.
No, he was breaking through them.
Assimilating with it, his body too was breaking through its limits. Even his initially sluggish mind was growing at a steep rate. His mindscape was growing larger by the second.
His will dominating the area.
The Weeping Fallen could feel it.
It was a thirst for power.
It was the will succeeding the predecessor's legacy, and the spirit declaring he would be different from her.
In the middle of the enemy lines.
He was saying this.
[In ash, I will contain everything.]
The red glowing eyes recalled an old memory.
Petals rampant in all directions.
She who, even for a moment, made him picture a flower in a corner of his heart on the harsh battlefield. Stella.
‘Was he her inheritor?’
But the memory fades.
The petals changed. Not petals, but ash.
Ash spread rampant in all directions.
The Fallen's gaze wavered.
‘This too. Is beautiful.’
Ash fluttering in all directions.
The Knight of Ash standing tall in its center.
He was trying to surpass the limits.
The limits of humans. His own limits.
With everything he harbored.
Containing it all in a single sword strike.
His mindscape kept growing.
The dwelling will dominated the area.
Suppressed it.
Could the aura contained in a single speck of ash be this lethal?
It was so ridiculous that a hollow laugh escaped.
The ash harbored an impossible heat.
But it did not burn.
It was different from ordinary heat.
As a lined-up knight reached out his hand to a fluttering speck of ash, it seeped in.
And soon, the bare bones crumbled into ash and fell.
‘If flames burn from the outside, does ash burn from the inside?’
Not only did each of these carry heat, but sword aura was contained within them.
No, it was being supplemented in real-time.
The sword aura took the form of sword force. This meant it contained will.
How could he contain such a profound principle?
‘Is it because of the fairy and the dragon?’
It must have been so. Otherwise, it made no sense.
He must have contained the powers of those two, which were rooted in the forces of nature, within his sword.
Furthermore, what made that possible was precisely the mindscape he possessed.
That made the impossible possible.
[You absurd bastard.]
The imbalance rather formed a balance.
All of it was breaking through limits.
No, it had broken through.
The Fallen was satisfied.
At the end of a thousand years of waiting, he had finally met him.
[What is your name?]
Only now, the Knight of Ash, having formed his own world, answered.
"Callias."
And then, his sword cleaved the Fallen's world.