He crossed the Demonic Sea by himself, killing countless nightmare creatures that lurked within those waters.
And in the end ..
he made it to the other side.
The moment he breached their shores, he found them waiting.
The Four Lords of the Ultras.
Gavid Lindman,
Madam A,
and a tall, filthy man wearing a black mask that hid his disfigured face .. the former lord, Val.
Along with another figure clad in a plague doctor's robes and crow mask—
the former lord, Everblack.
Four SS level lords gathered to meet him.
"I see... so you were waiting for me."
Unleashing the full pressure of his nine-star Starlight Aura, Abraham walked toward them with a face full of impatience.
The Dark Sister gleamed coldly in his grip ..
and without warning, he attacked.
That day, an earth-shattering battle broke out.
Abraham Starlight versus the Four Lords of the Ultras.
"I fought with the intent to kill.
But they were too damn stubborn."
Each of them wielded monstrous demonic contracts that turned their bodies into weapons beyond human limits.
And worse still ..
they unleashed horrors against him.
Creatures shaped like humans, but utterly distorted ..
with black blood oozing from their eyes and mouths.
"They used them as cannon fodder...
Every time I cut them down, all I felt was disgust."
"I remembered what you told me about the Ultras ..
about how their society worshipped blood."
The Ultras Continent was like another world entirely.
A world the Empire knew nothing about.
In that land, blood itself was sacred.
Those born with tainted blood had no future ..
their bodies doomed to rot away, infected by the very demonic power that ran through their veins, until they mutated into abominations.
I clenched my fists as I watched it.
This horror...
was ultimately my crime too.
As the author—the creator of this world—
I bore some responsibility for what was happening there.
Those monsters that attacked my father... were once humans.
Humans who had been forcibly infused with demonic blood.
Sometimes the process would succeed, creating what they called the "High-Blooded."
But those cases were exceedingly rare.
More often, the demonic blood acted as a deadly poison, killing us humans, twisting us into grotesque abominations...
Into the creatures that assaulted my father without end.
Sometimes, mutations would occur... turning the corrupted humans into even more horrifying monsters.
The stronger the demonic blood infused into them, the more powerful the resulting creature.
These monsters had roamed the earth for over three hundred years…
I closed my eyes against the bloody battle unfolding between my father, the Lords of the Ultras, and those hideous beings.
Those monsters…
They were what we now call the Nightmare Creatures.
The very creatures humanity hunted across the Empire, the same ones I had faced countless times myself.
They weren't monsters.
They were people.
Humans hunting humans ..
all this time.
A truth that should never be known.
My father... Abraham Starlight...
he knew it.
After a grueling battle against the Lords, the strongest Human Demon finally intervened ..
Dragoth.
He wielded one of the most powerful legendary swords in existence ..
the Moonlight Sword.
The aura released by that sword devoured all other forms of aura,
and even my father struggled against the onslaught as Dragoth and the four Lords surrounded him.
In the end, my father was forced to retreat ..
barely escaping with his life, thanks to the intervention of Maekar Valerion.
That battle only escalated the animosity between the Empire and the Ultras even further.
After that infamous incident...
my father continued to live.
He continued to grow stronger.
In gratitude for the help he received, Emperor Maekar invited my father to a grand banquet within his imperial palace.
"Maekar Valerion was a man of profound vision.
He saw further than anyone else.
His insight was genuinely admirable, alongside his overwhelming talent.
Though he was older than me,
he too had reached SS+ rank ..
and that alone was astonishing."
My father respected the Emperor.
And the Emperor, in turn, was intrigued by him.
"That day, Maekar invited me to a one-on-one duel ..
A friendly match to strengthen our bond."
True warriors spoke with swords,
not at dining tables.
It was an unspoken rule.
And so, the duel was arranged in secret.
Only a handful of the highest-ranking officials even knew about it.
The battle lasted a long time ..
fought deep within the Eastern Nightmare Lands between the Empire's greatest spearman, Maekar Valerion,
and the miracle swordsman, Abraham Starlight.
And after a brutal, hard-fought duel ..
for the first time, Maekar's back touched the ground.
He lost.
From that moment, it became clear:
this man from the minor Starlight branch was the real deal.
Many believed he would be the next great hero after Kazis Valerion.
But the Church denied such claims ..
for the Sacred Sword Vermithor had not chosen him as its master.
Yet my father never needed that sword in the first place.
The Dark Sister alone was more than enough.
His name was now on every tongue across the continent.
He had finally reached the height he sought.
But not the goal he truly desired.
He refused to give in to despair.
He had always seen this life as a gift.
"I made sure to live every day to its fullest,
out of respect for the blessings given to me."
Yet despite everything ..
he could never forget his family.
Even after thirty long years.
He never gave up.
He endured the hollow emptiness their absence left behind.
And then...
came the meeting that changed Abraham Starlight's life forever.
"The former lord ... Izan Starlight had finally reached his limits."
At last surrendering to the illness that had slowly consumed him.
An illness that had no cure.
Izan Starlight had fought it bravely for a long, long time.
He had lived an astonishingly long life.
But in the end, he could endure no more.
In his final days, he pleaded ..
he begged Abraham Starlight to become the next Lord of the Starlight Family.
"I didn't even know how to refuse...
not to the man who treated me like a son all those years."
My father, lost and adrift,
found himself unable to accomplish so many of the things he had once set out to do.
He couldn't find his family.
He couldn't break past the SS+ rank.
And no matter how much he searched, he couldn't locate that mysterious Engineer.
Abraham Starlight had reached a dead end.
He stood at a crossroads where he slowly began to surrender to this new life...
and become a true part of this world.
"I accepted."
He accepted the offer ..
to become the new Lord of the Starlight Family.
"But there was a problem."
Abraham Starlight did not possess the pure bloodline of the main family,
and despite his overwhelming strength and achievements, many opposed his ascension.
That was when Lord Izan Starlight made a proposal .. one that changed everything.
"He asked me to marry her... his only daughter."
Lord Izan had many sons, but only one daughter .. a fragile girl who had inherited his incurable illness, leaving her so secluded that Abraham had never seen her before.
At first, my father refused.
He couldn't forget his family, no matter how many years had passed.
But under the relentless pressure of a dying man ..
he eventually agreed to meet her,
if only once, to judge for himself.
And so, it led to that day.
Inside an isolated garden belonging to one of the Starlight Family's main estates,
my father met her for the first time.
She sat quietly in a wheelchair ..
her legs had been paralyzed since birth.
Her body seemed frail,
and yet... it radiated a quiet, undeniable elegance.
When I saw her face,
I froze.
Just one look was enough.
I knew instantly who she was.
She was the mother of Frey Starlight.
The mother of this body I now inhabited.
Her face...
She looked like a more mature version of my sister Ada ..
as if I were standing before her twin.
"That woman was like a blooming rose...
A rose whose roots wrapped tightly around my heart, stirring emotions that had long since died within me."
I listened to my father's words,
expressionless.
"Even after all those years...
She succeeded where everyone else had failed."
It was almost absurd ..
how one woman managed to fill the void
that had hollowed out a man like my father for over thirty years.
I didn't understand the feelings he spoke of.
Those emotions he described...
I had none of them.
But I had no right to judge him.
I—who broke after just two years,
who tried to end it all the moment despair crushed me ..
How could I ever blame a man who endured for thirty years?
How could I fault him for falling in love...
for finding some sliver of salvation?
That woman... became my mother in this world.
Her name was:
Anna Starlight.