Chapter 638: Voices Over the Battlefield (1)
The barren lands of the Ultras once again hosted one of the bloodiest battles yet ..
Hollows and their forces against the Empire.
Soon after, the world witnessed the fall of one of the oldest Hollows of all: Pontiff Sulyvahn.
He died ..and with him, the story that would never be told.
Only Frey Starlight, the man who slew him, knew it.
Frey finished the Pontiff swiftly, then returned to the fight as if nothing had happened.
Near the site of their duel, Frey’s friends approached the Pontiff’s corpse at a slow, wary pace.
What they found was wretched: the body ruined by Frey’s brutal technique—those relentless, lightning-fast cuts the Pontiff could do nothing to stop.
Standing over the Hollow’s remains, the former Temple students struggled to process what they had just seen.
“So this is what Frey is capable of now…” said Seris Moonlight as she descended from the sky.
She’d been nearby the whole time, ready to help the instant Frey needed her.
But he handled his foe with ease—and it was the Pontiff who would have needed saving, not Frey.
“I’ve heard a lot about him, but this is the first time I’ve seen him fight right in front of me… He really went easy on me that day,”
Frost Moonlight said with a strained smile, recalling his friendly spar with Frey.
After watching Frey fight seriously ..with the intent to kill ..Frost realized Frey had never taken him seriously at all.
“He’s grown so strong he can keep fighting right after killing a Hollow… like he’d just cut down an ordinary soldier. I can’t believe he’s the same person who was once my classmate at the Temple.”
Examining the Pontiff’s corpse, Dawn Polaris remembered the days he trained alone with Snow and Frey.
Once, he’d been their peer.
He’d always been strong ..but never out of reach.
Now, they couldn’t even grasp his shadow.
The gap had become immeasurable.
And before that overwhelming power, everyone present could only wonder:
“What did he do? What did he have to sacrifice to gain strength like this?!”
They were exhausted from battle, so they took a moment to breathe.
Strength soon returned as a soothing golden light washed over them.
Turning toward its source, they saw Uriel joining them.
“The Saint…”
“Good work, all of you. Let me bring you back to your best as thanks for what you’ve done.”
Uriel’s new golden power was far stronger than the old holy Aura ..its effects cleaner, deeper.
In moments, everyone felt themselves restored simply by basking in that radiance.
“Seeing you and Frey here… does that mean the fight against the Church is over?” Ellen White asked, coming up to Uriel as an old friend would. Uriel nodded.
“Yes. We won.”
As her words faded, thunderous explosions rolled in from every direction.
Snow Leonhart was there too, shaking the battlefield with an endless arsenal of elements.
Vermithor gleamed in his hands brighter than ever; he had become a flamboyant, terrifying war machine.
The pressure Snow gave off was anything but ordinary; everyone quickly realized he, too, had grown far stronger than before.
Even Daemon Valerion stood out ..his feral style and the way he crushed foes with his bare hands set him apart.
In these final stages of the battle ..when the ancients and the great had fallen ..
the new generation became the Empire’s main strength.
Without them, the war would have been lost long ago.
Ironically, most of them had survived the purge of the past ..
the very talents the Ultras had once tried so desperately to kill. They failed, and now they were paying for that failure.
“Our allies are strong, but they can’t win alone… so please, fight at their side,” Uriel urged, inviting everyone back into the fray.
For a moment it seemed like people like Frey and Snow could do everything by themselves.
Uriel stressed that wasn’t true.
No matter how small help may seem, it matters.
She feared their friends might feel inferior before Frey and Snow’s overwhelming power.
Seris’s reply proved otherwise.
“Don’t worry, Uriel Platini. Even if you’d said nothing, I planned to fight anyway.”
Unfurling her ice wings, Seris rose into the air again.
“Because this isn’t their war alone ..it’s ours.”
Frey, Seris ..each had their own reason to fight this war.
That had never changed.
It seemed everyone present shared Seris’s resolve, and Uriel felt relief.
They all returned to the battle, with Uriel supporting them from the rear.
Chaos deepened ..and with the Pontiff’s fall,
the Empire seized a crushing advantage.
The barren Ultras wastes, as ever, cradled one of the bloodiest clashes ..
Hollows and their hosts against the Empire.
And when Frey and Snow tore through hundreds of enemies with terrifying speed, the tide broke ..
especially once Frey plunged deep into the puppet ranks.
Slash!
With a single sweep of his blade, he triggered dozens of explosions, turning puppet bodies into shrapnel.
He was too fast. No one could stop him.
“Simon Manus! Show yourself!”
He roared it, shredding more and more puppets.
Earlier, when he spread his Aura, Frey had only sensed the Pontiff—meaning Simon hadn’t been nearby.
But that wasn’t certain.
So Frey tried to draw him out. Simon Manus could see and hear whatever his puppets saw and heard.
“I know you can hear me… Simon ..come out and face me!”
Slash!!
Leaving ruin in his wake, Frey pushed farther in.
“Do you plan to keep hiding until I smash every precious puppet you’ve made? Is that it?!”
Slash!!
“No problem then! I don’t mind!”
Slash!!
“I can fight your flimsy toys for days and they won’t even scratch me!”
Blades whirling, Frey turned the battlefield into a vast graveyard of puppets.
He could handle them all ..but somewhere inside, he was genuinely surprised by their numbers.
It was as if Simon’s puppet army had multiplied many times over since their last fight.
Simon had a grotesque method for turning people into puppets using a strange blue substance ..worse, in its way, than foul demon blood.
It was how he’d turned Clana Starlight into a puppet in the past and sicced her on Frey.