Chapter 72: Become… a Shoreguard?
Crack.
It was the sound of something shattering, echoing through the deathly silent Frostwater Town.
Grey, who had been desperately resisting the maddening whispers in her mind and trying to maintain her sense of self, slowly opened her blank eyes.
Then, she saw it—the center of the night sky, the source of the countless threads—that grotesquely writhing moon of flesh and blood now bore a faint, almost imperceptible crack.
At first, the fissure was so slight that one would miss it without careful observation.
But within a few breaths, it rapidly widened and quickly spread across the entire surface of the moon.
Boom—
The moment the crack appeared, that illusory blood moon dimmed slightly.
Half of the threads hanging down from the sky also snapped apart.
At the same time, the blood mist enveloping the two of them began to rampage violently, as though provoked.
It completely abandoned its original effort to corrupt Grey, and the blood mist that had once shrouded the entire area of Frostwater Town was now swiftly dissipating.
Like the receding tide at dusk, the houses and streets once hidden beneath the mist quickly became visible again.
And in Grey’s ears, those seemingly endless maddening whispers and the corrosion also vanished.
But correspondingly—
In the distance, beside the silent boy who had raised his sniper rifle—
The blood mist was condensing, gathering, nearly solidifying.
Then, it turned into black flames and suddenly ignited.
It was the source of the corruption—frightened.
Having been tainted by a trace of the evil god’s aura and transformed from an inanimate object into a pollutant, it was, after full activation, granted the concept of life.
Like any living creature, it gained the instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm, the primal fear of death.
Until now, the source of corruption had always lurked patiently in Frostwater Town, using threads to corrode and manipulate minds, turning invaders one by one into its puppets—because no one had ever truly threatened its core.
As for the puppets being destroyed by invaders, that was a trivial matter… As long as the invaders were corrupted, new puppets could always be made.
But now—
In front of Rast’s sniper rifle, in front of that radiant shot that pierced through night and blood mist like a lighthouse, unavoidable no matter the angle—
For the first time, the source of corruption heard the whisper of death and felt the crisis of life.
Though it could not understand why this boy—who had gouged out his own eyes, whose aura only reached the second tier, far weaker than any previous intruder—could unleash such terrifying, inescapable power.
But the instinct for survival that came with full activation forced the source of corruption to give up on its greedy desire for the power of fate that had already half-eroded Grey.
To survive.
It spared no effort, pouring all remaining blood mist onto Rast.
At any cost, it had to kill this boy whom it had previously ignored.
Under unlimited compression and extraction—
The once vaporous, formless blood mist had now condensed into jet-black flame.
Clinging like a malignant tumor, the black fire wildly coiled around Rast.
Under the effect of the black flame, his hair and the blood in his eye sockets were quickly incinerated by extreme heat and curses.
Even his body was rapidly being consumed, his skin burned away, his flesh scorched.
…
Freed from the maddening whispers and the binding blood mist, Grey was finally liberated.
The moment she regained mobility, she ran like mad toward the center of the black flames in the distance.
However, she had barely taken two steps—
When the black flames surged again, converging like a whirlpool.
Then, in the next moment, it erupted like a bursting solar corona.
Grey’s small frame was helpless before it, instantly thrown back by the scorching wind unleashed by the desperate outburst of the corruption’s core.
The intense heat of the inferno stirred up a terrifying storm due to the temperature difference, and the pressure pinned Grey to the ground so tightly she could no longer move.
The only thing she could do was force her eyes open under the weight of the storm and watch everything unfolding within the black flames.
It was a tide of jet-black fire.
And at the heart of that tide, Rast’s body had already been partially burned away.
First his skin, then the softer flesh of his abdomen.
Until eventually, one could even see the bronze-colored bones beneath the charred flesh.
Yet Rast’s movements remained steady—without the slightest tremble.
It was hard to imagine the level of pain caused by being burned alive, his flesh scorched by flame. Even the most elite special forces soldier couldn’t complete a full operation under such conditions.
This was a biological reflex, like instinctively withdrawing a hand from a hot object.
But for Rast, this searing pain had long become familiar.
During the cycles in Deep Blue Port, in that void of numbness and self-destruction, he had thrown himself into the molten steel of the smelting factory countless times, experiencing in detail the process of his limbs and body being melted by the liquid metal.
This moment was merely a repeat of the past—he had even overcome his own instincts.
He ejected the old casing from the 「Sevenfold Perspective」 and loaded a new round, calibrating direction with his sixth sense.
Finally, with his index finger—now stripped of skin and most of its flesh, leaving only nerves, tendons, and finger bones—he pulled the trigger.
Bang.
The muzzle of the sniper rifle rose again, spitting out a blinding flash.
Its barrel had already been scorched red-hot by the extreme heat; if not for the Nightworld-enhanced 「Emblem Armament」, it would’ve exploded long ago.
But that pointed round, transformed from his vision, was still fired.
The lighthouse-like brilliance shone again.
It pierced the blood mist and tore through the pitch-black night sky, temporarily eclipsing even the light of the blood moon.
Only this time, the bullet’s trail was no longer pure white—it was blood-red, like the mist itself, as though bearing the weight of hatred and fate.
Carrying the final warmth of ten thousand departed souls, it ignored the shifting, roiling blood mist.
It struck true, piercing the very heart—the source of all corruption.
…
A breath of silence followed.
In the sky above, the cracked blood moon shattered.
It broke into countless crimson shards of light and scattered.
Then—
The world also collapsed.
Light twisted, and both time and space reversed.
The entire world—houses, towns, sky, and night—began to fall apart.
Grey tried to keep her eyes open in the searing winds.
But the last thing she saw was the boy, flesh nearly burned away and only bronze bones remaining, standing with his massive sniper rifle.
He stood amid the tide of black flame, beneath a sun-like blaze.
Grey ran forward like a madwoman.
The black flames parted before her like seawater, as if fate itself had orchestrated the miracle.
Unknowingly, Grey had finally grasped the power hidden within her—the power of fate, which she had never fully controlled.
But when she stepped through the black fire and arrived at his side, she saw that the boy’s shattered form had already become countless points of light, dispersing into the nightfall from nowhere.
In the next moment, twisted time—
Took everything away to somewhere else.
…
When Grey opened her eyes again, she found herself under a clear, sunny sky.
What met her gaze was no longer endless night and fog, but a vast blue sky.
She stood in the wilderness, amidst the ruins of a massive town.
A collapsed clock tower, broken houses, crumbling walls, rotting wooden floors, a rusted tavern sign whose letters were unreadable, dust-covered alleys…
Grey could faintly make out the outline of Frostwater Town in the ruins before her.
But as she instinctively reached out to touch a book on a nearby shelf—
The moment her fingers made contact, the book crumbled to dust.
It was the work of erosion—time had worn away everything here, leaving only fragmented shells.
This was the real Frostwater Town.
In the endlessly twisted flow of time, everything in the town had aged for decades. The once-prosperous little town had long since weathered into ruin.
That lively place, filled with voices and laughter… had merely been a recurring dream forged by Grey’s distorted time.
Now, the dream had ended.
All returned to reality.
Grey stood amidst the desolate ruins, dazed and silent for a long time.
Thud.
Something slipped from her arms and fell to the ground with a dull thump.
Grey came back to herself and picked it up.
It was a silver badge, roughly engraved with the shape of waves.
Beside the lines, a pair of simple silver wings enclosed the coastline.
It was the Wing Emblem of the Shoreguards—scarred and scorched black from the fire.
It was also the final gift Rast had given to Grey during their late-night conversation.
Grey gently held the worn Shoreguard emblem in her palm.
The badge still carried a faint warmth, as if the boy’s residual warmth lingered within it.
She closed her eyes.
In her mind, the light beam that pierced the blood mist and the final figure reappeared.
The boy’s shattered form stood in the firelight, his ruined body glowing with a bronze hue.
…
“So you see, Grey… you really don’t understand what a ‘Shoreguard’ is.”
“They’re just a bunch of lunatics… desperately trying to live up to their lofty words and grand promises.”
…
“It’s a pair of shackles. A yoke. Even… a curse.”
“Before you decide to bear this curse, don’t go around saying you want to ‘become a Shoreguard’ so lightly.”
…
Rast’s voice still echoed in her ears.
A long while later, Grey opened her eyes once more.
She looked at the broken Shoreguard wing emblem in her hand, and a faint light flickered in her emerald eyes.
“To become…”
“A Shoreguard?”
—