C721
Mary kept her eyes tightly shut, repeatedly opening them again. As her blurry vision cleared, Dyfus's figure became more distinct.
“Ugh...!”
Upon examining Dyfus's condition, Mary unconsciously covered her mouth.
He had eighteen fist-sized holes all over his body, and his lower half was twisted in the opposite direction.
It was truly a hellish reality.
“Now, my sanity has returned...”
A single drop of blood dripped from Dyfus's dry eyes.
He recalled how he had fallen into corruption and the atrocities he had committed after his corruption.
And he knew what he had to do now, what he had to tell Mary.“You say you’ve regained your sanity? And you expect me to believe that I shouldn’t kill you?”
Mary alternated her gaze between the sword embedded in Dyfus's hand and his eyes.
‘Even this could be a trap set by the corrupted Dyfus. But if he really has returned, what should I do...!’
Should I pull out the sword and stab Dyfus again, or should I listen to his story?
She couldn’t grasp the situation.
“Mary... listen to me... If the curse activates now, everything will be over. And... don’t follow my path, keep fighting bravely, like the younger one.”
Dyfus struggled to keep speaking, then his pupils closed.
“Dyfus oraboni!”
Mary quickly pressed her ear against Dyfus's face and chest.
She could faintly feel his breath and heartbeat, and Mary immediately made up her mind.
I have to save him for now.
Even if he ends up dying again, I need to hear the reason why he did all this.
If she couldn’t hear directly from Dyfus the reason behind this nightmare, she had no confidence in continuing to live, in not succumbing to despair.
The temporary alliance fleet was preparing to retreat.
‘Signal flare! I need to fire a rescue signal...!’
However, most of her belongings had been destroyed along with Viper.
When she reached into her pocket to take out the bag, all that came out were crushed paper pieces and sand.
She screamed at the sky several times, but her comrades didn’t hear her cries.
Under normal circumstances, her voice would have resonated across the battlefield, but now she was too exhausted to even control her body.
Still, Mary desperately tried to lift Dyfus and move, reaching out her hand several times before shaking her head.
Unless a Magician like Valeria sealed him or a healing Magician of the level of a Holy King helped, it was impossible to move Dyfus while keeping him alive. ＲàƝ𝙤ᛒĚ𝙨
In the end, all Mary could do was wait for someone from her allies to come.
She fervently prayed that Dyfus’s breathing wouldn’t cease until then.
-----------------
Meanwhile…
“You’re quite tenacious, Prophet,” said Jin.
The battle between Jin and the Prophet was reaching its climax on the other side of the battlefield.
[Kuu...]
The Prophet's enormous figure, which once filled the entire Rikalton castle, was nowhere to be seen, replaced only by flames that engulfed everything.
Jin was purifying the remnants of chaos with eternal flames.
Only five pieces of chaos remained.
With each slash of his blue sword, Jin's rage manifested, and the Prophet let out agonizing screams.
“But now, it seems we’re finally reaching the end.”
Three, two, one piece of chaos disappeared.
[Stop... S-S-Stop!]
“Since I learned of your existence, I’ve been waiting for this day.”
Eternal flames surged like a typhoon from all directions, embodying Jin’s wrath.
All those eternal flames were replacing the remnants of the Prophet, the manifestation of its true self.
Three, two, the last one.
Jin stomped on the remaining piece of chaos and opened his eyes wide.
“It’s finally over.”
Thud!
The blue blade, flickering with celestial light, struck down the last piece of chaos.
Then, the piece of chaos shattered like glass, and sharp fragments scattered. But those fragments weren’t made of chaos; they were composed of another power.
Shadow Energy?
Shadow Energy.
In the past, Dox had seen the Prophet’s Shadow Energy in Rikalton and mistakenly believed it was somehow connected to Jin.
Jin, like Dox at that time, felt puzzled, but only for a moment.
He had long been aware that there was a connection between Shadow Energy and chaos.
[Don’t you wonder how I can manipulate Shadow Energy? Twelfth Flagbearer. Let’s make a deal! If you release me now, I’ll work for you in the future.]
“Prophet.”
Interrupting the Prophet's words, Jin turned his chaos-infused sword.
“There are humans in this world who never fall into corruption. Those people would never make a deal with you, and I am one of them. The reason you can manipulate Shadow Energy? It’s obvious. Solderet must have blessed Heluram in the past, or perhaps Heluram usurped his authority.”
[Aaaargh! You’ll regret rejecting me, even if you can make me suffer, you can’t destroy me! It’s an impossible task!]
Indeed, the Prophet's last piece of chaos didn’t disappear, even as it burned and shattered.
However, Jin silently amplified his eternal flames.
Although he was unaware of the criteria for the Prophet's “destruction,” a clear sensation emerged from the blade.
The sensation of the eternal flames devouring the Prophet's vitality.
There was only one thing worrying Jin.
If Dyfus died before the eternal flames could finish off the Prophet, the situation would completely reverse.
[Boong!]
“Jin!”
A white dimensional portal opened, and Syris and Valeria appeared again.
The two had rushed to Jin while searching for remaining allies on the battlefield.
It was because of the marble.
Valeria had brought the marble, the “Heluram Record Device,” that Jin had obtained from Joshua’s village in the past.
Before going to the Kaldran Snowfield, Valeria discovered that the Prophet had emerged from that marble.
So, in this operation, Valeria brought the marble for further investigation and had just finished the analysis.
When Valeria pulled the marble out of her pocket and handed it to Jin, the Prophet's resistance against the eternal flames quickly destabilized.
Unlike when they first obtained the marble in the village, the one Valeria held in her hand was now tinged with a violet hue.
[Oh, how did you bastards get that...!]
The Prophet couldn’t even imagine that the marble would suddenly appear.
He had no idea that Joshua possessed a Shadow Energy marble or that Jin had taken it from him in the past.
After Joshua’s fall, he never mentioned anything about the marble to the Prophet.
If he had revealed that such a thing had happened, it was obvious how he would be treated.
“Jin, destroy it with your Shadow Blade.”
Valeria revealed that the marble was a connection between the sealed Heluram and the human world.
As long as this connection remained, even if the Prophet's physical body disappeared, its soul would return to the marble.
The reason the Prophet said, “You can’t destroy me,” became evident.
Jin accepted the marble.
[Give it to me! How dare you destroy something that must not be destroyed!]
“We need to go find Dyfus immediately. Right now, he’s barely clinging to life to stop the curse.”
Jin's pupils widened.
“Clinging? To stop the curse.”
“It seems he has regained his sanity. It can’t just be a whim.”
“...Understood.”
Once again, a white dimensional portal opened, and Jin gripped the violet-shadow energy marble tightly in his hand.
[No, please. Mother, mother! Can you hear my voice...?]
Soon, Jin tossed the marble into the air, unleashing his first Shadow Blade technique, Soul Slash.
[Aaah, Aaah! Mother!]
Jin swung his Shadow Blade, shattering the marble into countless pieces.
The purple fragments scattered like drops of blood, and finally, Jin could see the Prophet writhing in agony before his eyes.
Grrroooar!
The chaos consumed by the eternal flames dispersed in all directions, annihilating itself.
The Prophet’s voice was no longer heard, and at that moment, Jin was engulfed in an intense, indescribable intuition.
He felt a sharp sensation in his heart, a direct intuition that, right now, somewhere on the battlefield, Dyfus had exhaled his last breath, succumbing to the embrace of death.
The power of the malevolent god that Dyfus possessed was not finally returned to Rosa.
Instead, the power of the malevolent god that remained with Dyfus after his death was running rampant.
A gigantic black sphere emerged over Dyfus's lifeless body.
The chaos forming the sphere no longer empowered Dyfus as before, nor did it corrupt the nearby people.
It simply triggered a tremendous explosion. Chaos gushed incessantly from the sphere, as if hundreds of volcanoes were erupting simultaneously.
Jin immediately rushed towards the sphere.
If he left it alone, the retreating allies would be massacred en masse.
The first person who appeared before Jin's eyes as he reached the sphere was Mary.
She was kneeling before Dyfus's corpse, sobbing.
“Save Oraboni... We have to bring him back... Ah...”
Someone’s breath brushed against her like a soft breeze.
Dyfus's body disintegrated into particles.
Mary distractedly reached out her hand towards the scattering particles, then collapsed and fell forward.
In front of her, a white dimensional portal and a steel gate opened, revealing Valeria and Orgal.
Orgal looked fatigued, as expected.
He had been interfering with the malevolent god all this time, just as Jin had anticipated.
[Jin, now it’s just you and me. If we can stop the explosion and escape, the mission will be a success].
Jin struck a piece of chaos protruding from the sphere towards the opposite sky.
Each piece possessed the power to inflict mortal damage on the fleet.
Meanwhile, Valeria examined the records Dyfus had left in the place where he disappeared.
She wondered if there would be any record that could be passed on to Jin and Mary later.
Mort took Mary away.
Silently, Syris and Valeria stood in front of the white dimensional portal, facing the fleet.
Jin nodded, as if urging them to proceed.
“Valeria, relay this to Beradin. Instead of launching a signal flare, have Kozec’s main cannon fire above the sphere. The explosion could obscure the signal flare.”
“Understood. Come back safely.”
As Mort disappeared, Jin and Orgal charged towards the malevolent god’s power that had turned into a sphere.
About ten minutes later, Kozec’s main cannon passed over the sphere.
Before crossing the steel gate, Jin briefly looked back at the place where Dyfus had disappeared.
If Dyfus hadn’t returned until the end, if he hadn’t been able to resist death until the Prophet's destruction...
This mission would never have succeeded.
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