The SSS rank itself was intoxicating. It was the reason Blattier once dared call himself a god simply for attaining it. And he was not the only one.
Arrogance. Overconfidence. Ignorance. That was the true sickness of humanity.
"In the end, Kazis, the great houses, and I chose the Readers’ side. We chose to hold back, to trust their warnings. But I’ll admit the truth—even we believed deep down that the warriors might be right. That fighting was the braver path."
To strike first rather than sit idle, waiting for the next wave. With such strength at their command, many believed it was the only correct choice.
"We did not realize... that had we not stepped back at the final moment, humanity would have been wiped from this world long ago," Liora said bitterly, and silence fell over the others.
To explain, she showed them the vision. The day it happened.
A host of proud warriors standing before the Rift. Dozens of titans, their ranks led by monsters of the SSS rank. A force that, in this present era, could have ended the war with the Ultras in mere months.
The previous wielder of Balerion, Cheon Ma. The wielder of Dark Sister, Avalon. And countless more.
They were not men. They were monsters in human form.
And they marched boldly through the Gate, into Helmund itself, determined to wage war against the race that had tormented humanity for so long.
"That day... our greatest warriors left Earth behind, setting foot upon a land unlike anything they had known. They carried with them the hopes of our entire race. That day marked humanity’s first attempt to confront the demons directly."
Liora paused, her expression a mixture of sorrow and bitterness.
"And that day... was the last we ever saw of them."
"What? You mean to tell me all of them—all those SSS-rank monsters—died, unable even to escape?!" Snow burst out, shaken, Uriel’s face mirroring his disbelief.
Only Frey remained calm, for he alone understood the horrors that waited on the other side.
"We lost all contact with them the moment they set foot through the Gate. Days passed, then weeks, then months. We waited, but no word ever came. They never returned. It was as if they had been erased. Slowly, despair consumed us, and we gave up hope."
"Some even volunteered to follow them, to discover their fate. We gathered at the Gate more than once, but none of us dared to enter."
"And then... after all that time, from the countless who had gone with pride, carrying the hopes of mankind... only one ever returned."
"Through the Gate, only Avalon—the man once hailed as the Sword God—staggered back."
"But what returned was not the man we once knew. Avalon left proud and unshakable... but came back broken, terrified. His body frail, his form mutilated. The light had been stripped from his eyes, leaving him blind. Whatever he faced on the other side destroyed him—body and soul. Nothing remained of the great warrior but fragments."
It was a tragedy beyond words.
Kazis Valerion and the others rushed to him at once, desperate to know what had happened in Helmund. To uncover the truth.
But the shattered Avalon refused to speak. He fled from them, lips sealed.
Whatever torture he had endured had shattered his spirit completely. And so no matter how they pressed, no matter how they begged, they never learned a thing.
That incident rekindled the terror humanity had long forgotten after its fleeting victories—reminding them that the horrors were far from over.
"We didn’t learn what had truly happened on the other side until much later... but we discovered that all our comrades had been massacred. They died unable even to fight back."
"In Helmund, there exists a demon who never leaves, one who remains dormant yet ever-present. I never saw him with my own eyes, but what I heard was enough to make me fear him without facing him..."
"The First Seat of the High Demons... Crimson, the Red Moon."
The First Seat never once leaves Helmund, remaining there for countless years as the immovable guardian of the path leading directly to his king.
For Cheon Ma and the others, it was misfortune without equal—they ran headlong into him, along with the Fourth Seat, Wesker, who happened to be nearby.
The battle was one-sided. So much so that the great Cheon Ma, one of the strongest humans to ever live, was killed with a single strike from Crimson.
A single blow that shattered Balerion, the Black Terror, into pieces—and with it, Cheon Ma turned instantly to dust.
It is said Crimson slaughtered most of the humans who dared set foot in Helmund, while Wesker took a handful alive—keeping them breathing only to torment, to mutilate, and to break their spirits.
Wesker was infamous for his sadism, his games of torture. And among those few victims... was Avalon, the only one who somehow returned alive.
"The Readers had warned us this was exactly what would happen... but we did not believe them. The strength we had gained filled us with arrogance. And in the end, we were forced to face the bitter truth: no matter how strong one becomes in this world, there will always be someone stronger.
The gulf in power between those who merely reach SSS rank and those who reign at its peak is vast beyond imagination."
Liora’s words fell heavy. Snow and Uriel remained silent, both struggling to process what they had just heard.
But Frey was different. He wasn’t surprised—he saw it as inevitable. After all, these fools had dared not only to invade Helmund, but to pit themselves against Ag a roth, the Demon King himself.
Agaroth alone would have been more than enough to annihilate them in seconds. But with the strongest of the High Seats also present?
Victory had never been possible to begin with.
Still, something in Liora’s account caught Frey’s attention.
"Liora... you said Avalon refused to speak to the end. Then how did you learn what happened on the other side?"
It was a sharp question. If Avalon had kept his silence, then how did she know Crimson had struck Cheon Ma down? How did she know Wesker had been there?
Frey wanted the truth—and Liora did not hide it from him.
"I was about to get to that... the meeting that changed everything, the one that made us forge the vow that has led us to this very moment."
The vision shifted again, showing them a different memory.
"The one who told us what had happened to Cheon Ma and the others... was not human at all."
He had appeared before them from nowhere, one fateful day.
"He was the one guiding the Readers from the shadows. A strange man none of us trusted. But the Readers followed him blindly, and so we tolerated him—despite the fact that he was neither human nor of our kind."
The memory sharpened, and Liora revealed the figure that had warped the fate of humanity itself.
When the scene came into focus, Frey Starlight could only clutch his head as confusion and dread stabbed through him.
The man who walked into the council of humanity’s greatest warriors, the one who stood at the forefront of the Readers, was cloaked in black, his features hidden.
But his blue eyes... unmistakable. Eyes Frey could never fail to recognize.
It was none other than the Engineer—Gehrman.
"He told us what had happened to Cheon Ma and the others. And then he showed us a future... a vision of a world where we all died, sharing the same fate as our fallen comrades."
"The Readers agreed with every word he spoke. He declared that we had no chance of victory. That we would be crushed, humiliated, no matter what we tried."
"But in the end, he added a condition: not in our era. Not in our time."