Kuo-o-o-o-o-o!
The Beast of Jévaudan howled.
As when the leader of a wolf pack cries and the other wolves join in, every cryptid around it raised its voice in unison.
Thousands—no, tens of thousands—of cryptids howling at once was a sight steeped in gloom and grotesquery.
Just hearing it would have been enough to drive an ordinary person mad, or make them faint in terror.
Of course, to Phantos, such things were more insignificant than the flap of a mosquito’s wings.
Shaa-rururuk.
When Phantos swung his anchor chain, the colossal iron chain lashed through the air like a whip.
A massive ring formed around him—everything inside it was shredded into pieces.
It was an attack that spared neither friend nor foe, but that did not matter.
There was nothing but cryptids here anyway.
Keng! Keng! Grrr-r-r-rng!
Wolves with bloodshot eyes rolled back charged at Phantos endlessly.
Beasts that knew no fear or terror hurled themselves in overwhelming numbers, eager to tear the hunter apart.
The sight resembled a tidal wave crashing toward a tiny sailboat.
“Hup!”
When Phantos swung the enormous anchor, the cryptids caught in its path were ripped apart and scattered like fragments.
Black liquid-like remains splattered everywhere.
To Phantos, the scene looked like waves breaking against a cliffside.
It was the same now.
A cryptid rushing for his legs was crushed beneath his stomp with a crunch.
Its skull burst like an overfilled water balloon.
He remembered the feeling of bracing his legs on a ship’s deck during a raging storm.
The waves surged in.
But this time it was a black wave—made of beasts’ fangs, madness, and death. A sea consumed by a hurricane.
And just like then—
This was an ocean of death.
A trial he had crossed countless times before, and would have to cross again.
Unyielding, never faltering, and never stopping.
White steam rose from his body now straining past its limit, beyond the preheating stage.
With his Spirit summoned as well, it felt as though white sea mist was swirling around him.
Cryptids bunched together, forming an enormous wall.
Phantos hurled the harpoon in his hand.
The wall of cryptids struck by the harpoon did not merely break—it pulverized, opening into a tunnel.
A refreshing sight to behold, but Phantos felt nothing in particular.
He was slaughtering cryptids nonstop, yet from the beginning, his sharp intuition had been locked onto one single presence.
‘It’s coming.’
The very instant he muttered that inwardly—
Fwo-o-o-oosh!
A massive arm burst out from between the cryptid horde, trying to crush him.
It was the Beast of Jévaudan itself.
Having tracked its movements from the beginning, Phantos reacted immediately to the swipe.
Dodge? No. A hunter must never fear his prey.
Only a head-on confrontation.
Shaa-rururuk.
The monster’s arm, which was about to smash him, became entangled in the anchor chain.
Even before it could shake it off, a fierce pulling force dragged the creature’s arm downward.
Sway!
Its massive body lurched violently, losing balance for an instant.
Phantos did not miss the opening. He shot forward, climbing up the monster’s arm all the way to its shoulder, and swung the massive anchor in his hand.
Cheo-o-o-o-uk!
It sounded like a hundred layers of flesh bursting open at once.
Phantos’ eyes sharpened.
No matter how tough the prey, a blow like that should have taken its head clean off—but the Beast of Jévaudan merely had its head knocked slightly to the side.
Its durability defied reason.
The monster’s head snapped back to its original position, and the eyes burning deep inside its skull gleamed even more ferociously.
It seemed he had truly provoked it.
But Phantos did not stop either. He lifted the harpoon he held in his other hand and drove it straight into the creature’s eye.
He did not worry about whether Hans would suffer after returning to his original form.
There was no room for such leisurely thoughts now.
Here, there was only the razor edge between hunting and being eaten—life and death.
If one stepped onto this path, they had to throw in everything they were.
That was the road Phantos had walked until now, and the direction in which he would continue.
Kruaaa-a-a-a-aak!
The Beast of Jévaudan screamed as its eye was pierced.
To Phantos, the sound felt less like a cry of pain, and more like a wail of sorrow.
Not an illusion.
It was grieving.
A beast that had driven a nation into terror and chaos, a monster that held all the world’s fear in its grasp—
Was crying in sorrow.
“...So that’s how it is.”
Phantos muttered softly.
If someone asked him what mattered most to a hunter, he would answer without hesitation:
You must know your prey better than anyone.
Knowing the opponent—realizing what it was—that was the most important foundation of the hunt.
A prey’s habitat, behavioral patterns, thought cycles—
You had to know everything to hunt it.
Ironically, to the prey, the hunter—who sought to kill it—was also the one who understood it best.
Phantos understood the Beast of Jévaudan.
He had come to know the cryptid feared by all.
“You were simply sad from the beginning.”
The reason the Beast of Jévaudan harbored unconditional hatred toward living beings—was sorrow.
Cryptids were supernatural phenomena born from the accumulation of every negative element in the world.
A madman bounding with spring-loaded legs.
A lizard-shaped human.
A monster resembling a dragon said to live in the depths of a lake.
Such sightings were always accompanied by fear and unease from witnesses.
Because these beings were manifestations of negativity itself.
Those many cryptids could be hunted down and eradicated by human hands—
But as long as the root cause existed, cryptids would never vanish from this world.
And the Beast of Jévaudan, standing at the apex of all cryptids, instinctively understood this truth.
It knew why it was born—and that even if it died, another would eventually take its place.
Yet the ones who had created it looked at it only with hatred and fear.
Understanding that—was why it felt such sorrow.
And so the monster wept.
Endlessly, because it was too sad.
“...Pitiful.”
Phantos pitied the Beast of Jévaudan.
He knew a hunter should not pity his prey, but he chose to be honest with this emotion.
Perhaps because, somewhere inside that monster, was still his comrade Hans.
Whether it heard his words, or sensed the genuine compassion shining in his eyes—
The Beast of Jévaudan’s murderous aura softened.
Barely, like a volcano calming from eruption—yet the hostility had not vanished entirely.
In the end, someone would have to finish this fight.
If not for the light descending from the sky at that moment, that someone would likely have been Phantos.
Krrr-r-r-rng!
The cryptids aiming for Phantos froze and jerked their heads upward.
The Beast of Jévaudan—and Hans within it—did the same.
A beam of light fell from the heavens, followed by a massive gale as a gigantic entity with pure white wings moved.
‘That...’
Phantos’ superhuman vision captured a being with six pairs of wings.
‘It’s the same as that one.’
A prey he had once targeted.
A being dwelling in the deepest parts of the sea, only rarely surfacing to bask in sunlight while exhaling massive sea-mist.
A part of the great natural world.
The Lord of Water, who resembled a colossal whale.
This being was its equal.
The Lord of Wind was fighting something.
Despite the radiance covering it, Phantos immediately realized—
It was fighting a human.
To kill one person, the Lord of Wind was unleashing its full strength.
It created massive cumulonimbus clouds, compressed them, and raised the air pressure to its maximum.
Not satisfied, it sharpened its wings and swung them like blades.
Finally, its movements became so fast that even Phantos could barely follow them—
and then it split the cloud-filled sky perfectly in half.
Clouds were ripped apart as if being rolled upward into the sky, and through the ruptured gap a pitch-black night sky unfolded—a sight one would likely never witness again for the rest of their life.
‘It lost. The Lord of Wind.’
Even more astonishing was the fact that despite unleashing a blow of such magnitude, the Lord of Wind had failed to kill a human.
In the end, the Lord of Wind plummeted toward the ground and was reverse-summoned mid-fall, vanishing without even leaving a trace.
With the disappearance of the Elemental Lord who had been keeping the air clear around the citadel, the sky was once again swallowed by thunderclouds.
And beneath that sky, now completely blackened—
the only thing shining was the one who had defeated the Lord of Wind.
Salesin.
Krrr-r-r-r-r!
The wolf-type cryptids glared at Salesin, their instincts bristling with wariness.
Without realizing it, the wolves stumbled backward, retreating step by step.
They felt fear from Salesin—fear of the one who stood above all things, bathed in light.
‘Even those monsters feel fear?’
Phantos felt something similar.
His skin pulled taut, and every fine hair on his body stood on edge, a razor-sharp instinct flooding him.
A crushing presence so overwhelming it could be felt from afar.
The kind of strength that would force anyone who faced it to bow in awe.
But then—someone began fighting that Salesin.
“......”
Ludger Cherish. No—Heathcliff.
The man who had once led him.
That man was now fighting a being barely even resembling a human.
Even the Beast of Jévaudan watched the scene.
Phantos found himself wondering what the creature was thinking.
At that moment—
The Beast of Jévaudan, its once-wild eyes now strangely calm, muttered toward the shadow clashing with the light:
[Brother......]
“......”
In that instant, the beast’s savagery sank like a tide beneath the deep sea—
and Hans’s long-slumbering reason began to rise.
* * *
Ludger remained silent.
Just as he was about to open the astral gate he had sealed away, Salesin forcibly shut it.
Salesin had placed his hand upon a power that belonged to Ludger alone, one no one else should have been able to interfere with.
“You look surprised. Why? Did you think only you could do that?”
“...I see. I do not want to admit it, but you and I share the same blood.”
“Your vessel was merely the largest—never the only one.”
As if proving his words, Salesin forcibly sealed the astral gate Ludger was trying to open.
If it had fully opened, things might have been different, but stopping it beforehand was entirely possible.
“In other words, you judged that if I used this power, even you would be in danger. That is why you stopped it, is it not?”
“I will not deny it. But that is only if you manage to use it. Now that your most important ability is sealed—how exactly do you plan to fight me?”
“How laughable. This power is only a portion of what I possess.”
Ludger constructed a formation around them.
Constellations of blue mana took control of the space, encircling both him and Salesin.
Simultaneously, ships of solid ice manifested on all sides and charged toward Salesin.
Salesin snorted softly, lifted his hand, and gave a casual horizontal sweep.
Crrrack!
He did not even touch them, yet the distant ships shattered like brittle glass.
Through the rain of scattered ice fragments, Ludger calmly prepared his next spell.
“How about this?”
Around Ludger, pitch-black wraiths materialized and lunged at Salesin with bared fangs.
“Oh. Magic without formations?”
Magic without a ritual system.
The true magic used by ancient mages long before the modern era—now extinct.
“A magic woven from faith and belief... that sort of mystical power.”
Salesin murmured, then added:
“But I have already seen that as well.”
Salesin—no. The being within him was a conglomeration of karma that had lived for more than a thousand years.
That power and knowledge, passed down under the name of succession since ancient times, encompassed even the true magic Ludger now displayed.
As if to show he was not bluffing, Salesin raised his hand.
His radiance intensified, and a soldier woven of pure white light was summoned as if stitched from threads.
White armor, white wings spread from its back—
like an angel descending from the heavens for a holy war.
The soldiers of light tore Ludger’s wraiths apart.
Kyaaa-a-a-ak!
Even those powerful wraiths were no match for the soldiers of light.
“Did you really think wraiths could defeat soldiers of God?”
Ludger did not relent. He prepared the next spell.
Behind him rose the towering form of a great tree.
The entire Tree of Sefirot began to shine, compressing into a single unified force.
That extreme, condensed power surged toward Salesin.
The soldiers of light rushing at Ludger were swept away and erased by the Sefirah.
“This one is somewhat dangerous.”
Salesin formed a white disc above his head.
It was the same force that had forcibly shut the astral gate Ludger tried to open.
The disc hovered in front of Salesin like a mirror, expanding wide.
Now transformed into a shield, the disc devoured the magic Ludger fired.
Then the devoured power burst out from the disc again.
Ludger quickly threw himself sideways to evade.
The white beam carved the sky at an angle, pierced the clouds, and disappeared into the far distance.
Moments later, an explosion blossomed atop the distant clouds, and pale light faintly illuminated the surroundings before fading.
Realizing this would not work, Ludger enveloped his swordstick in mana and rushed at Salesin, swinging it toward his neck.
The mana turned black, becoming shadow, and within that shadow dwelled power sharp enough to sever space.
A mistimed movement would let it cut even the wielder.
Facing that lethal force, Salesin created a sword of light in his hand and blocked Ludger’s strike.
“Close combat?”
With that remark, Salesin immediately stepped in and swung.
Blades of light embroidered the air. It was «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» not random slashing—it carried the technique of someone who had wielded a sword for countless years.
“I quite like this as well.”
Ludger was not lacking in experience either.
Their technique was equal, but Salesin’s sheer power and compatibility were superior—Ludger was forced backward.
Just as Salesin moved to finish him—
Others could no longer stand by.
The masters who had recovered their bodies struck from Salesin’s blind spots, aiming for vital points.
Not once did the thought of dishonor or cowardice cross their minds.
“You still have not realized?”
Salesin swung his sword in a wide arc, flinging them all away.
Johan was blown back toward the spire, but Alex reached out and caught him.
Reinhardt was sent flying, and Terrina steadied him.
“You cannot defeat me. In the end, you are merely frail humans.”
Salesin spoke as if stating an obvious, universal truth.
“...Is that so?”
Fwuuk!
In that instant, a black blade thrust upward and pierced Salesin’s heart.
His eyes widened as he looked down at the blade, then turned his head.
“What about a demon, then?”
Suruna—his cracked skin splitting further—wore a triumphant smile.