Chapter 580: Frey Starlight vs Joseph Blattier (1)
The condition was fulfilled, the revelation descended, and the sacrifices were made.
In the War of Darkness—on that starless night—the world witnessed a calamity.
A catastrophe that claimed millions of innocent souls—poor souls whose only crime was their naiveté, their folly in following that so-called god...the Lord of Light.
Believing those accursed words were a revelation from Him, they hurried to carve them into their own skin—and into the skin of their sons and daughters.
They thought that by doing so they would secure the protection of the god they revered, that the Lord of Light would grant them the radiance to survive the War of Darkness.
They did not know their fate was nothing but the black of endless death—a darkness with no escape.
In mere minutes, millions of bodies hit the ground uncounted and unmeasured. They died—every last one of them.
Their faith killed them. Their ignorance killed them. And thus the calamity began.
The world rang with screams and wailing; humanity had never witnessed an extermination on such a scale—not even the war had reaped so many.
Thirty-five million humans perished—thirty-five million lives offered up.
What followed was breathtaking and terrible.
Millions of stolen souls flared with pure light, then rose into the sky.
They ascended in unison, like meteors from the void—racing as one toward a single destination: Noctera, the City of Eternal Night.
The city blazed as every spirit fell to a single point.
They streamed into the corpse of the man who should already have met his end—yet rose anew
—in a different guise, a heavenly aspect that froze every witness where they stood, while a crushing pressure bore down on them. The weight of thirty-five million souls stacked one atop another for a single purpose, to serve a single man.
"Joseph Blattier—Aspect: Tower of God."
He had changed utterly, scarcely human by any measure. Whether he was even still a man was now in doubt.
Clad in a colossal golden cuirass, his face buried behind a helm, no feature could be discerned.
A titanic spear in his right hand, a vast shield in his left, he strode from the pillar of light with a white mantle of aura trailing behind.
It was power from another world.
"I am the Church, and the Church is me." Blattier spoke from behind the golden helm.
His voice had changed—deep and resonant enough to roll across the entire island.
He had not been exaggerating before. It was no overstatement to say Blattier now bore the whole Church within himself, attaining the summit of that cursed Path of Sacrifice.
Uriel Plattini—the saint who had moved almost mechanically until now—collapsed from the sky once her task was done, after transmitting the "revelation" Blattier wanted.
Snow Lionheart rushed to catch her, while Frey stood before him, eyes wide on the figure that was Blattier.
Aegon did the same. Fear showed plainly on Ramiel Callistis’s face.
"This pressure...this aura," Aegon said, and Frey Starlight confirmed:
"This far surpasses SS+. Blattier has shattered the threshold and done the impossible."
They all suspected as much; now suspicion became fact.
Josef Blattier—the old bishop who had bowed his head again and again, who had lost so often he had forgotten the taste of victory—had finally climbed to that legendary height spoken of only in tales:
"The SSS rank."
The first human to stand there since Abraham Starlight—whose ascent the world never knew. To the eyes of humankind today, Josef Blattier was the first in centuries, since those ancient heroes.
Blattier took a single step, and with it the pressure multiplied many times over, forcing everyone but Frey down to one knee.
"The Lord of Light abandoned us long ago, leaving us to live by a lie of our own making. We endured and endured—now comes the change.
"The Lord of Light has abandoned us, and no faith can stand without its god. So here and now, I will become that god," Blattier declared, spreading both arms wide.
"I shall become the new Lord of Light." His proclamation rolled like thunder as he drove even more pressure onto Frey and the rest.
"I will unite mankind under one banner—no more division, no more wars. From this day, all will fight for one being. And to achieve that, many must die—beginning with you, enemies of the Church."
Spear in hand, Blattier declared war on everyone present—claiming he would replace the god who had forsaken them.
"He’s gone completely mad," Frey said, stamping the ground until his foot sank deep.
As he did, he unleashed his full aura to clash with Blattier’s.
Though the bishop had ascended to SSS, Frey Starlight met his pressure head-on, drawing Blattier’s full attention to him.
"Snow ..take Uriel and get out. Now," Frey said, drawing his blades. But Snow moved to object at once.
"I’m fighting too—"
"You don’t have the strength. His first blow will kill you." Frey’s voice was iron.
"That bastard made SSS. He did it by twisted means, so I don’t know if the power will last—but right now he’s SSS, beyond doubt."
Balerion in one hand and Dark Sister in the other,
Frey Starlight sharpened every ounce of his strength.
"He’s probably not used to this power yet. That’s my only window."
Facing Joseph Blattier, Frey’s thoughts raced.
He swept his gaze over Aegon, Snow, Callistis...everyone.
No matter how he looked at them, all he saw were liabilities. None of them had the strength to withstand what was about to happen.
Blattier has broken into SSS, but he’s barely stepped into its first stage—the Throne Beyond Existence...
In other words, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that Joseph Blattier was currently the weakest SSS-rank combatant in the entire world.
Even so, merely breaching that rank brought a terrifying leap in power. The gulf between SS+ and SSS is vast—an entire world lies between them, a world that has shattered the dreams of countless gifted warriors.
There is an absolute law in this world—
—a law no one has ever broken:
"You cannot defeat an SSS-rank fighter except with another SSS."
Frey knew that law perfectly well—an absolute even he could not overturn.
But what choice did he have?
Everywhere he looked—before him and behind him—he found only a bitter reminder that in this world, power is all that matters.
’I can fight for the Empire and save it again and again, as many times as it takes. But when a monster like this appears, I find myself on my own...’
His only ally in battles like this was nothing but his own strength.
Frey considered retreat—fleeing far away.
But if he left Blattier to grow accustomed to that power and return later, it would be a catastrophe—one they could not afford.
Which left only one option: fight.
Snow Lionheart refused to withdraw to the very end, intent on joining the battle no matter the gap in power, but Frey sent a massive wave of aura crashing into him and hurled him away.
"Go! Now!"
In the same instant, Frey surged forward like a blazing black meteor and collided with Blattier, who charged to meet him.
Blattier’s spear of light clashed with Frey’s shadowed blades, their impact unleashing an earthquake of aura.
A terrifying shockwave obliterated the surroundings and flung everyone else through the air.
The temple collapsed from a single clash; only the golden tree remained standing.
Shadow-aura poured from Frey in torrents as he desperately tried to push back that overwhelming light—light forged from thirty-five million souls.
At first, Frey held, gritting his teeth against the pressure. But within seconds the light completely overwhelmed the dark, and Frey was sent flying, both arms shattering.
The blow hurled him an absurd distance; he crashed through the far forest and its trees, far from where they’d begun.
"He sent me this far...with one strike?"
Staring at his ruined arms, Frey finally reintroduced himself to it—the power that had haunted his nightmares:
the might of those in the SSS rank.