Chapter 258: Anastasia, the Princess Protected by the Thunder Emperor
Ivan the Terrible was thrown back by his own power.
His colossal body tore through layer after layer of boundary, shattering them like thin glass drifting in the inner Sea of Stars. Those boundaries were akin to places like Avalon, fairy paradises floating between worlds.
But in front of Ivan's scale, no miracle looked dignified.
He was a Primal existence.
A top tier Primal existence.
On par with Surtr, and in some ways, a monster even more complete than Surtr.
A fully matured Beast King.
Yet the destruction of those boundaries was not accidental.
It was deliberate.
Ivan, tyrant of a Lostbelt that had already been pruned and then fully collapsed, retained a trace of human rationality. He had fused with the greatest beast of his world, the Mammoth, but unlike Surtr, who was destruction given form, Ivan still understood one simple rule.
To survive, seize every chance.
To survive.
Even without seeing Surtr's head severed in a single stroke, Ivan could feel it. The sting of danger on the tip of Rowe's blade was unmistakable.
If he took that hit, he would die.
And Ivan did not want to die.
"ROAR!"
His roar shook the inner sea. The shattered boundary fragments, stirred by the phantom Mammoth's swaying trunk behind him, surged toward Rowe like a storm of shrapnel.
Rowe narrowed his eyes, Gluttony in his hands. Golden red light bloomed within his gaze.
In midair, he twisted his waist and shifted his body, letting boundary fragments brush past. The explosive wind lifted a corner of his suit.
Then he lifted a foot and stepped onto a fragment, bending his knee and driving down.
Like stepping on duckweed to steal momentum.
The counterforce instantly crushed the fragment, and the recoil became acceleration. Rowe's speed surged, sharper and more vicious, carrying him even closer to Ivan.
Gluttony swayed through the inner sea, dark devouring radiance spiraling around the blade.
Piercing.
Devouring.
The seven swords were not merely weapons. They were carriers.
Each sword held one principle of humanity, and one sin of humanity. They were keys Rowe had forged to further awaken and activate the Mooncell.
Seven parts, disassembled from his own body, used as foundations.
Each carried one function.
What they contained was authority from the Mooncell that humanity as a whole could bear.
But because they were disassembled, none of them were everything.
The Mooncell, a super quantum computer on a Solar System scale, had recorded all information since its birth. Infinite. Endless. Coldly complete.
Even with Rowe's strength, even with the planet's human order, even with the Proof of Heroic Spirit woven from the radiance of the Throne, it was still impossible to receive it whole.
So Rowe did not split authority.
He split function.
Wrath was the materialization of the record of destruction.
And Gluttony was the manifestation of the record of devouring.
Authority climbed.
Sixty percent.
Star creating output.
Devouring the Primal Light.
The dark stream swept out, blooming like a spiraling black hole flower across the inner Sea of Stars around Earth. Wherever it passed, the sea became void. Wherever it touched, boundaries withered like dry grass and dispersed.
Energy was consumed.
And the sword tip only grew brighter.
Ivan's roars grew frantic. Boundary fragments hurled by the rising trunk hammered toward Rowe without pause, yet each was cut apart, or worse, used.
Stepping stones.
Acceleration plates.
In a blink, Rowe was in front of him.
The sword was already there.
Ivan tried to struggle. Then he realized the Great Wall had tightened at some unknown moment.
Like a long whip, it bound him.
The Arbiter would not strike directly, but as an insider, Ying Zheng still offered assistance.
Enough assistance to make sure Ivan could not escape.
Enough assistance to ensure Rowe could kill him.
Gluttony approached, dark and profound. The spiraling bloom churned the Sea of Stars into turbulence. Ivan's eyes widened.
His crown and robe sagged, the posture of a king collapsing into the posture of prey.
Despair and powerlessness filled the space behind his gaze.
Then, at the final moment, light appeared in those eyes.
From the sword.
From Rowe.
Ivan saw the world where human order blazed in brilliant possibility.
It was dazzling.
So dazzling it stung the eyes of the king who had become a Gluttonous Beast.
"Why…"
"Why can you do it?"
A golden scepter shaped like a scythe appeared in his hand. The grey blue gem embedded within it glowed, thunder condensing and compressing as Ivan raised it high.
Then it spread, all at once.
Not broken lightning.
A pilgrimage.
A re manifestation of imperial majesty.
A desolate world buried under snowstorms.
An era of stampeding beasts.
An era where the Thunder Emperor stood at the highest point and roared at the sky, raging against the injustice of God.
It was the re manifestation of the Lostbelt.
A world already pruned.
A world already destroyed.
Rowe's sword pierced into it.
And as he stepped inside, he saw the Emperor's full story.
Gluttony was gluttony.
That era faced extinction. In the sixteenth century, a world swallowing blizzard descended, freezing everything.
Ivan, tyrant of northern Russia, chose brutality as policy and survival as justification. To keep civilization's flame alive, he conscripted mages and forced research into an adaptation technology.
Beasts that could survive ice and snow.
Humans fused into beasts.
A body that could endure any environment.
Russia's first Tsar was worthy of the name tyrant. He acted arbitrarily, using immature methods, transforming all humans into what was essentially magecraft itself.
Yet an emperor was still an emperor.
He did everything he could to make the world continue.
To make the empire stand within disaster.
The empire survived the blizzard.
Then faced a greater verdict.
Pruning.
Humans turned into beasts had no future branches. They had no potential for development.
They became fantasy crystal monsters, and the world rejected them.
After pruning, the world crawled toward extinction.
A branch cut from the tree could not keep living without roots.
How could an emperor accept that?
The cruel and greedy emperor waited.
Centuries passed.
At the final moment, when the remaining energy was collapsing, he took the last step.
He devoured the Lostbelt.
He devoured the people.
The land.
The air.
The dust.
The wind and snow.
The Gluttonous Beast devoured the world and became the complete Demon Emperor.
The Emperor of Beasts.
And now he roared toward a world with infinite possibility.
The world he displayed was the collapsed world he had eaten.
The last pilgrimage before he swallowed everything.
The last coronation before the final radiance fell.
"What is an Emperor?"
"I am the Emperor. I am the Russian Tsar. Even if the empire collapses, I must live."
"Because…"
"I am the nation."
The declaration echoed through the frozen time space.
The thunder radiance from the raised scepter crashed outward and obstructed Gluttony's advance.
Rowe stepped into the world of wind and snow.
Looking up, he saw the phantom of the Beast, a mountain like silhouette, nearly ten thousand meters tall, standing at the world's center.
Ivan stared down.
His trunk and tusks rose, and at the same time his abyssal maw opened, revealing a terrifying gravitational pull.
He recreated the moment he had swallowed the world.
As if he would swallow Rowe too.
However, the abyss shattered in an instant.
As Rowe set foot on the snow, he rose from a kneel like a bullet leaving the barrel. The tiny human figure shot upward, crossing ten thousand meters in a flash.
Rainbow radiance swept past. Falling ice and snow struck Rowe and were pushed aside by his ascent. From a distance, the rolling white looked like rugged wings folding down as they rose.
Rowe held the greatsword in a reverse grip.
Body tensed.
With a crash, the abyss burst apart, and the shock made the Emperor in the center of the world sway backward.
But the high raised trunk fell, grey green and oppressive, like the heavens collapsing.
Rowe switched grip midmotion. Reverse became forward.
Dark devouring radiance flared, splitting the falling tusk in two.
Slash became stab.
The giant elephant was cleaved apart.
And at that moment, the world was split as well.
Wind and snow froze.
The Beast Emperor's roar halted.
"You lost."
Rowe stopped in midair, hovering before the severed trunk, looking directly into eyes that seemed insignificant compared to that mountain sized body.
Ivan's eyes flickered.
He had lost.
Gluttony had pierced the Beast King's shell.
The Tsar let out a long breath and looked down.
He saw his people.
Beasts kneeling across mountains and rivers buried in pale snow.
Welcoming their Emperor.
Was that last imperial pilgrimage truly the last?
He had once sworn he would lead them out of winter.
He had sworn he would carry them through the empire's collapse.
But even an emperor could not do everything.
Even devouring the world could not create spring.
"But you still left a seed."
Rowe held his sword horizontally. There was no mockery in his voice.
Only affirmation.
"I will use this sword."
"To devour you, and devour this ruined world."
"Oh Emperor of a foreign land, believe this."
"Winter has come."
"And spring will come."
This was not a victor's cruelty.
It was the creation of hope.
A hand extended into despair.
Ivan's enormous body turned illusory. The dark stream that cut beast and world expanded, its traces spreading into layered fractures like broken mirror lines.
Then darkness engulfed them.
But at that moment, Ivan stared at Rowe, his gaze rigid.
Then his eyes widened.
"Is it you… my Lord?"
The tyrant was also a devout Christian. He could confess in church in the morning and torture rebels in the afternoon without the slightest contradiction. When the world collapsed, he had prayed for forgiveness.
He had prayed for salvation.
Yet until the end, he never touched the heavenly ruler he invoked.
And now he understood.
The Lord had always been there.
Before him.
Waiting for his self salvation.
Ivan's colossal form dissipated.
The elephantine body became a majestic mountain, and atop its peak stood a monarch in luxurious robes and a dignified crown.
His body had become ice, yet his posture remained solemn.
Behind him, within a castle sculpted from snow and ice, a white princess lay sleeping in an ice coffin, waiting for spring.
Clear as snow.
Fragrant even in cold.
"Anna… from now on, I leave it to you."
The last Emperor's voice drifted like wind.
Eyelashes fluttered.
The pure white princess opened her eyes.
Anastasia.
Grand Duchess of Russia.
Successor of the Russia founded by Ivan the Terrible.
The only seed Ivan had not turned into a beast, meant to continue the empire when spring finally returned.
The princess protected by the Thunder Emperor.
Rowe slowly drove the Sword of Wrath in his other hand into the mountain.
Dark devouring radiance swallowed the world of ice and snow.
But it was not destruction.
It was integration.
With this sword, he would merge the Lostbelt into Earth.
As Surtr's remains had been swallowed by Earth and turned into nourishment, so too would this collapsed world become part of the planet.
The difference was simple.
Surtr was dead.
This Lostbelt had been devoured by Ivan, yet it continued, preserved within him.
So after the merge, the Lostbelt would live inside Earth.
The Russia of that world would continue.
The territory protected by that stubborn monarch would finally see spring after the long winter.
Anastasia stepped out of the ice coffin and lifted her voluminous skirt, walking slowly out of the castle of ice.
What met her was sunlight.
Colorful.
Warm.
It fell on her fair skin and lit it into crystalline translucence.
The wind carried a warmth she had never known.
Hills rolled in lush green.
Beautiful.
This was Earth.
The true Earth.
A world she had never experienced.
The princess, who had only ever lived in frozen time, widened her eyes.
Everything she saw and felt was unbelievable.