The night was quiet.
Night was an hour of silence, a wordless span in which living beings sank into deep sleep.
Night was dark.
The thick black veil toyed with the eyes of every creature.
Light vanished, and the yawning space of nothingness instinctively shrank the mind.
Even with eyes, one could not see; a withdrawn heart shook the senses more than usual.
Everything blurred and dimmed, like a spell of chill that washed the world.
Paradoxically, that was why night was also a time of activity.
Creatures slipped away from predators’ sight and wandered for food.
Predators, in turn, moved to hunt them.
Those who ate and those who were eaten.
All hid within the darkness, pursuing secrecy.
Within the pitch-black curtain, a silent wilderness unfolded.
Life fed on death, and death gave nutrients for another life to grow.
One life vanished, and another became stronger—
only to become nourishment for a higher predator.
A revolving cycle.
The night was silent, yet within that silence pulsed the rawness of life—
wild, rough, and quietly beating.
Into that space came intruders.
At their arrival, the forest sank into a different kind of silence.
If the earlier stillness had been a warm hush, now an unmeltable frost settled over everything.
The cruel wild had its own rules.
Predator and prey lived by the order of nature, holding no resentment toward one another.
But the ones emerging now did not belong to that order.
From their stealthy movements, an intangible aura spread like shimmering heat haze.
It was a dark interior world—desire, intention.
That blatant, oppressive presence seeped outward, pressing down the forest’s inhabitants.
Predators quietly lowered their tails and withdrew; insects ceased their chorus all at once.
Even the wind that rustled the leaves stopped.
Step. Step.
Footsteps—minimized as much as possible—echoed faintly, repeating and disappearing.
They were remnants of the Bretus Holy Nation.
Not the home country’s legion, but those dispatched across the continent by the Lumenis Church.
Yet that did not mean they lacked skill.
Being sent abroad to spread doctrine required proven competence.
But compared to their powerful past, their strength had greatly withered.
Since the Holy War, their divine power had been fading.
Many had lost their abilities entirely and returned to being ordinary people.
Growing desperate, they had one task left:
to rebuild the Church, spread doctrine anew, and reclaim their lost divine power.
“Once we cross this forest, the mansion is ahead. Do not forget—our objective is retrieving the Saintess.”
A man who had once been a high-ranking holy knight murmured quietly.
They had already sent people several times to bring back the former Saintess, and all had failed.
“Even if she’s lost her strength, she was once the Saintess. Her power is still formidable, so remain alert.”
There was no reply, but after hearing the same warning countless times on their way here, all understood well enough.
No one stood here unprepared.
“......!”
The holy knight at the front raised his hand in a signal.
The rustling of grass ceased as every member of the group stopped at once.
—Someone stood ahead.
In the pitch darkness, something even blacker than the night sat atop a tree root, staring their way.
‘Who is that?’
At first, they wondered if it was a hallucination—
but when the clouds parted and moonlight spilled down, they understood.
A piercing blue radiance fell like a spotlight, illuminating the man.
He was a long-haired man, his hair brushing past his shoulders.
Under the moonlight, his appearance was so strikingly beautiful that admiration escaped the throat.
It looked so unreal they almost suspected a hallucination born of tension.
But it was no illusion, no dream.
It was unmistakably real.
‘Why is there someone here?’
And not just anyone—
the man looked as though he had been waiting for them.
Supporting himself with a staff, sitting calmly, the man gazed their way with blue eyes.
That gaze remained serene even before a group steeped in ill intent.
Too serene—almost as if he had expected this scene to unfold.
‘Don’t tell me... he waited for us?’
The meaning was simple:
Their night raid had been exposed.
As soon as the leader grasped the situation, he shouted:
“Enemy! They’ve revealed themselves first!”
Once discovered, a silent operation was impossible.
But the mission was not yet lost.
They could not stop here simply because the ambush had failed.
“Prepare for battle!”
It had been only recently that they heard the news—the Demon King was dead.
The root cause of their nation’s downfall.
Their greatest threat and enemy.
With his death, the Church’s remnants—who had been forced into hiding—were filled with hope.
Their biggest obstacle was gone. Now was the moment to act.
They had gathered every possible fighting force.
Failure was something none of them had allowed themselves to imagine.
All of this was to finally tie off the three years of decline.
Toward the enemies brimming with murderous will, Ludger spoke— sounding genuinely unimpressed.
“Shouting so loudly in the middle of the night. Even if you weren’t invited, your manners are atrocious.”
His voice wasn’t raised, yet it carried clearly to all their ears.
Magical resonance naturally amplified it—unintended but effective.
The commander holy knight bit his lip.
“He’s a mage! And based on that, likely a highly skilled one! Use every means necessary to bring him down!”
Had they remained unnoticed, the matter might have ended without casualties—
but that option was gone.
“Do not forget! Our goal is the Saintess! And as of tonight, this entire disgraceful situation—never happened!”
No witnesses—none allowed to exist.
Even if that meant erasing the entire village.
“Yes!”
None objected.
They were comrades bound by shared resolve, willing to use any means for their purpose—
even if it meant slaughtering innocent, defenseless people.
“A misguided choice.”
Ludger’s blue eyes grew even colder as he saw their determined expressions.
It felt like a storm laced with frost might erupt at any moment.
“The moment you saw me, you should have knelt and begged for mercy.”
“By the name of God—!”
The Church’s priests recited sacred arts.
God no longer existed, yet they still shouted His name.
A truly ironic sight.
Weakened though they were, they still held divine power.
Brilliant golden light arose, taking on lethal form.
The radiance tore through the forest’s darkness as lances, pillars, and masses of energy all shot toward Ludger.
Excessive force for a single man.
Just before the attacks touched his body—
“Ater Nocturnus.”
Around Ludger, pitch-black shadows surged like crashing waves.
The midnight darkness swallowed every incoming sacred art.
In a way, it looked as though the shadows devoured them.
Darkness overcame light.
The priests’ and paladins’ faces stiffened.
“What... is that...?”
Slowly, their gazes rose upward.
Ater Nocturnus was growing.
Like a massive tidal wave after an earthquake, it surged past ten meters, then twenty.
The shadows spread left and right, forming an immense wall—
a wall that encircled the entire forest, trapping the Church remnants inside.
“Is... this even possible?”
The writhing wall of shadow resembled a magic beast—one influencing the entire forest.
Magic beasts grew stronger in proportion to their master.
Meaning:
the strength of the man ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) before them was beyond imagination.
“Everyone has finished a long day and is resting.”
Raising the shadow wave, Ludger spoke with a frigid tone:
“At a time when even silence is too precious, I won’t tolerate anyone being noisy or irritating to the eye.”
The massive shadow barrier conjured by Ater Nocturnus devoured not only the sacred arts cast by the Church remnants, but even their noise and light.
At this very moment, no matter what occurred in the forest, not a single sound would leak outside—
even if a large-scale bombardment were unleashed here.
“For the rebirth of the Church!”
The holy knight at the front clenched the air.
A massive golden hammer of dazzling radiance materialized in his grasp—
a technique unique to holy knights who forged divine power into weapons.
The brilliance and density of such a weapon depended entirely on the knight’s rank and skill.
And judging from the hammer now in his hand, this one possessed a considerable level of mastery.
“Die!”
He kicked off the ground and charged toward Ludger.
Even with their diminished divine power, holy knights had trained their bodies for years; that alone placed them far beyond any ordinary human.
And this man was a high-ranking holy knight.
His movement rivaled that of a superhuman.
KA-BOOM!
The sacred hammer swung toward Ludger’s head, sending out a shockwave with a thunderous roar.
Such a strike was no different from a siege ram—anything it struck should leave behind no trace whatsoever.
“What...?!”
Yet Ludger remained unscathed.
He had simply lifted his staff with one hand, effortlessly stopping the descending hammer.
A mage, stopping that—
not with defensive magic,
but with nothing more than the staff itself?
The knight strained, trying to push the hammer down, but it merely trembled in place, unmoving.
“H-How can a mage withstand my attack—?!”
“You must be quite proud of your own strength. The reason is simple.”
With a light push of his staff, Ludger knocked the hammer aside.
The bulky holy knight—muscles thick and hardened from years of battle—was flung back pathetically easily.
“I’m stronger than you. Far, far stronger.”
“Y-You! Shut up!”
He swung the hammer again, faster and harder than before.
No complacency—he drew out every ounce of power he had cultivated through decades of training, muscles exploding with effort.
Ludger drew the swordstick from his staff and slashed.
Sssk!
The hammer of divine power split cleanly—
and so did the arm that held it.
The severed limb, cut through with a smooth, perfect surface, fell to the ground.
Ludger looked at the holy knight, who stared in shock at his missing arm.
“Even the famed Three Grand Captains, even the Cardinals, even the Holy Emperor couldn’t kill me. How exactly did a nameless wretch like you expect to capture me?”
“Protect the commander!”
Priests hurried to cast healing arts on the severed arm, while the other holy knights charged at Ludger.
“You said it yourselves. That tonight, nothing would happen here.”
Ludger gripped the swordstick and lowered his stance.
Blue mana wrapped around the blade—
compressed to the absolute limit, vibrating with an almost feral intensity, as if it might burst free at any moment.
Ludger suppressed it with overwhelming control, compressing it further.
Then, atop that condensed mana, he inscribed an arcane formula.
“I agree.”
“Stop him!”
Sensing danger instinctively, every remnant priest and holy knight unleashed sacred arts.
They poured out every ounce of power they had left.
Fwoooosh!
It wasn’t as immense as the shadow barrier of Ater Nocturnus,
but a large, sturdy fortress of light materialized before them.
“Tonight, in this forest, nothing happened.”
And with that, Ludger swung his swordstick—
activating the spell carved onto its blade.
Space magic.
[Severance]
The arc of his swing appeared to create nothing.
The rising surge of blue mana vanished like a mirage.
Everyone stared in confusion—
and then noticed something was wrong.
Their vision had... shifted.
Skewed.
“Uh?”
The sound slipped out instinctively—
a death rattle born from pure instinct.
For a diagonal line—drawn with Ludger at the center—
had been inscribed across the world.
And along that line, reality itself had split into layers, misaligned left and right.
A natural phenomenon caused by excessive mana?
An extreme hallucination?
No.
Craaaack—
Space itself.
Along the very path Ludger had swung his blade,
space had torn open.
The fortress of sacred light,
the priests and holy knights behind it,
and even the trees deeper in the forest—
All were caught in the spatial rift and suffered the same fate.
The colossal bastion of light split cleanly in half, turning to dust.
Bodies, severed into upper and lower halves, collapsed to the ground.
Spatial Severance.
Refined far beyond what he used during the Holy War—
his magic displayed its perfected form.
“It’s still troublesome to use.”
At the time, he had blamed its difficulty on the restrictions he had been under—
but that had simply been an illusion.
Even without restrictions, space magic was irritatingly difficult to wield.
He had encased the swordstick in a massive amount of mana to reduce the risk to the absolute minimum.
But even that alone was enough.
The strongest attack—
one that pierced through any and all defenses.
“Krrgh...”
“You’re still alive, hm? Your vitality is stubborn at least.”
There was one survivor—
the commander whose arm Ludger had severed.
Even without his lower body, he clung to life.
Proof of a holy knight’s tenacious life-force.
“C-Cough... It’s... not over... There are others... Our comrades... already...”
“I know. You mean the ones who circled around while buying time.”
“......!”
“Judging from your face, you’re wondering how I knew. From the moment you all stepped into this forest, I knew everything.”
Ludger turned his head.
“It seems the fight over there is almost finished too.”
The instant he said it, an explosion erupted from deeper in the forest.
Not from gunpowder—
but from raw, overwhelming physical force.
Multiple explosions approached rapidly until finally—
a massive tree snapped in half and a pale silhouette flew out.
Rolling across the ground was a high priest, bones shattered throughout his entire body.
The high-ranking holy knight’s eyes widened.
That was the commander of the separate squad sent to abduct the Saintess.
Who could have done this—?
“Whew. Maybe it’s because these ones were strong, but beating them up was actually kinda satisfying.”
From beyond the smashed tree, Catherine emerged.
Her expression was more exhilarated than ever before.