Chapter 569: The Curse of Choice (1)
Three days had passed since Frey and his companions had parted ways.
Each of them had spent those days fighting in their own way, seeking to bring the Church—whose malice had scarred them—under submission.
Snow Lionheart, thanks to his direct bond with Vermithor, had uncovered one of the Church’s deepest secrets: the place where the High Bishop and his retinue were hiding.
He had been so utterly immersed in tracing the trails of that great tree that he lost all sense of time. It had taken him three full days to reach the tree, and two entire days just to return and escape from the labyrinthine forest he had wandered into.
But Snow’s first priority had been to find Frey Starlight. The last time they crossed paths—five days ago—Frey had been slaughtering the Church’s followers. Back then, the resonance of his SSS-ranked aura had spread so far and wide that Snow could feel it even from a great distance.
Now, however... there was no trace of him.
Unable to discern what had truly happened, the Empire’s Hero resolved to head to the last place where he had sensed Frey’s presence. The battlefield itself.
Using Void Step, it did not take him long to arrive at the destined place. Yet the moment he set foot there, Snow froze in horror at the grotesque sight before him.
"What in the hell happened here?!"
Step after step, Snow walked among the countless corpses piled before him.
Bodies drained of every drop of blood.
It wasn’t the number of corpses, nor the savagery of their deaths that unsettled him—he had grown accustomed to such scenes after fighting at Frey’s side against the Ultras.
His strange friend had long since become an unstoppable killing machine.
What stunned Snow this time was the state in which the corpses had been left. All of them, without exception, shared the same fate.
Kneeling by one, he examined the signs of death up close.
The mark of the sword was plain and undeniable—proof that Frey had slain the man with a single strike. That was how Frey Starlight fought—ending his enemies in one blow, one corpse at a time.
But the moment Frey killed them, something strange befell their bodies. Their skin shriveled, their blood dried away, leaving twisted husks—skin stretched tight over bone.
As if life itself had been stripped away along with every last thing the body once held.
This had been the fate of all the corpses around Snow—without exception.
He couldn’t understand what was happening... until, after scrutinizing more closely, he noticed something bizarre ..and familiar.
At once, he turned to another corpse. The same thing. And another. And another. All bore the same mark.
"Those damned scribbles again..." Snow cursed, as he recognized the same blood-carved language etched into the flesh of the dead.
An incomprehensible script, like lost runes from an ancient age.
Among the sea of thousands of corpses strewn around Snow, many belonged to angels as well—creations the Church had unleashed against Frey, it seemed. But he had felled them all.
And even across the bodies of those mechanical-like beings... the same bloody inscriptions sprawled.
Snow did not know their meaning, but from all they had witnessed thus far, he could only associate them with sacrifice.
"The Church... they have a way to sacrifice others, to summon something greater in return..."
It was a pattern that had repeated again and again—enough that they had even sacrificed the Saint, Eurasha.
"Don’t tell me... they deliberately sacrificed all these people?!"
Rage boiled within him as Snow began to grasp the Church’s true intent—and the nature of his enemies.
"They sent this many weaklings against people like me and Frey. There was never any chance they would survive. In other words, they sent them to die, under the pretense of serving the Lord of Light and His cause."
It was a twisted, filthy tactic—so vile that Snow saw no difference between the Church and the demons themselves.
"Sacrifice... blood... exploiting humans. Tell me—what difference is there between the so-called pure Church, and the foul demons they claim to oppose?"
The fury that consumed Snow nearly drove him to storm back and attack Blattier and the others himself.
But at last he mastered his temper, forcing himself to focus on finding Frey.
Drawing Vermithor, Snow gathered a torrent of flame through the holy sword, then raised it toward the heavens.
"This will draw attention—but we don’t have time to waste."
Through his blade, Snow launched a colossal fireball into the dark sky.
The flame soared upward, before exploding in a dazzling spectacle like a firework that lit the world around him.
The signal was clear. Even if they were miles away, his companions would surely see it.
Yet no matter how long Snow waited, there was no answer. Not from Frey, not from Aegon.
"Has something happened to them?" The thought invaded his mind.
But he quickly dismissed it.
"No... Frey would never fall so easily. Nor would Prince Aegon, who has survived far worse."
Charging onward, Snow resumed his search, desperate to find them soon.
His pursuit stretched on for a long while. Hours bled away, until Snow began to worry he might never find them at all.
And then—just as that dark thought took hold—he felt it. A strange, savage aura pressing in from afar.
A wild and dreadful pressure that sent shivers crawling down his spine.
He froze among the towering trees, staring in its direction, as silence fell over the land.
The oppressive aura was so ominous that his instincts screamed at him to turn back.
But instead, Snow felt a strange familiarity with that feral power—enough that he defied his instincts, and rushed headlong toward its source.
Yet Snow felt a strange familiarity with that feral aura—enough that he defied his instincts and rushed headlong toward its source.
Using Void Step, he crossed vast distances in the blink of an eye, drawing ever closer. With each step, cold sweat trickled down his back, for the pressure of that aura grew heavier, sharper, more suffocating.
"What cursed aura is this?!" Snow muttered unconsciously, until he reached the edge of a cliff overlooking another vast forest stretching beneath the dark sky.
At its center, nestled among the endless green, he finally saw it.
A colossal mass of violet aura blazed like a second sun—not of fire, but of pure, searing power.
It was immense, overwhelming, so heavy that Snow felt his own body grow heavier beneath its weight. Still, he pushed on, for now he was almost certain who this aura belonged to.
Drawing closer and closer, Snow reached the source at last.
Amid the trees lay a great lake, and at its center sat a lone man. His long white hair fluttered in the aura’s violent currents, his black garments whipping in the air as if on fire, bathed in the burning light of that violet sun.
It was Frey.