It had happened.
The premonition that had been gnawing at Noa's instincts since the first clash finally took shape in the world of the living. The Saint, who by all laws of nature should have been a cooling corpse with a cavernous hole in her chest, was standing. She rose with a terrifying grace, her aura no longer a flickering flame but a furious, unrelenting dawn. The very air around her began to thicken, heavy with the suffocating pressure of a higher existence.
[Judgment Prism (Unique) → Acquired]
[Judgment of Sanctity (Unique) → Exalted Judgment (Legendary)]
Noa skidded to a halt, his boots carving deep, jagged furrows in the pulverized masonry. His eyes widened, reflecting the golden supernova blooming before him. He had anticipated a 'second phase', which was precisely why he'd tried to end it with a decisive, brutal stroke. But destiny, it seemed, had a very pushy publicist.
"Give me a break," Noa turned fully toward Jain, his expression shifting from exhaustion to a dark, entertained irritation. "Now others are interfering as well? What is that, Jain? Your god?"
He stared into the golden radiation bleeding from her pores. He could feel it—the weight of Liara herself pressing through the girl's skin. It was the unmistakable, stagnant scent of the divine; the god Liara had reached across the veil to tip the scales.
"It is time for the execution," Jain said.
As she pointed her manifested spear at Noa, the jagged wound in her chest knitted together in a flurry of golden stitches. Her hair began to glow, turning into a river of liquid light that cast long, dancing shadows behind the ruins.
"Heheheheh—Hahahahah! Fuck your god!" Noa barked a laugh, raising a blood-stained hand to give the heavens a very clear middle finger. "Tell her to come down here if she wants to fight me herself."
His own deep wounds had stopped their frantic bleeding, the edges of the gashes turning a dull, bruised purple, but he was far from 'healed'. His body felt like a house of cards held together by sheer spite.
I need to find a way to break this damn barrier.
Noa's mind raced, scanning his repertoire. The Aureate Silence was suffocating him, dampening his most lethal tricks.
No skills, no artifacts, no entities… wait. Entities!
An idea sparked in the dark corners of his mind, catching like dry tinder. A wicked, sharp smile cut across his face as the opportunity revealed itself. He gripped Acheron's hilt, the sword's sentient hum vibrating through his weary arm.
As they stepped into the second round, a constellation of radiant golden symbols ignited around Jain, orbiting her like miniature, vengeful suns. Spears and spheres of pure light condensed from the symbols, accelerating toward Noa with the speed of falling stars. He didn't retreat; he sprinted into the storm.
Clang—Clang—Clang!
BHOOOM!
He danced through a minefield of divinity, parrying spears that felt like solid lead and dodging explosions that erased the ground beneath his feet. Acheron moved in a desperate, rhythmic blur, waving left to right to deflect the barrage. Noa's arm screamed in protest, the muscles feeling as though they were ready to detach from the bone under the sheer force of the impact.
Splshhh!
Jain was on him again, her golden spear a streak of light that drew crimson from his shoulder. He was fighting a war on all fronts: blocking the autonomous spears on his flanks, parrying the Saint's relentless thrusts at his front, and leaping clear of the light-spheres that detonated whenever she pulled back.
The mechanics of her power had shifted. Before, there was a limit to her control; now, the golden objects moved as extensions of her own will, infinite and autonomous as long as her Aether remained.
"Do you really have to keep this barrier up even now?" Noa asked, sliding through the dust to avoid a crescent of energy that leveled a nearby chimney. "The people are already gone. It's just us and the ghosts, Jain."
"I don't know why," she replied, her smile radiant and terrifying as she launched another slash, "but you seem to be not able to use your main skill somehow."
"Tsk!"
[Blink]
BHOOOM!
The sky rained gold as Noa held his breath, weaving through a sequence of explosions that buried entire buildings in seconds.
---
Clang!
The moment Kaelen's blade left its sheath, Nill was already descending from the air, his sword a vertical line of aura-infused light. Kaelen met the strike with a casual, almost bored precision, blocking the impact and shoving Nill backward with a flick of his wrist.
"Have you not even learned Aura Blade yet?" Kaelen asked, his voice low and steady.
He adjusted his grip on his sword, a small, mocking grin playing on his lips. Nill stumbled back, his boots dragging in the dirt.
What was that? He just blocked a full-power strike with a normal sword? The confusion tasted like copper in his mouth.
"I think that'll be too much for you," Kaelen said, glancing at his blade before locking his ocean-blue eyes onto Nill. "So, this much should be plenty."
Clang—Clang—Clang!
The two blurred into motion, the rhythmic shriek of metal echoing through the broken street. One blade glowed with a vibrant green energy; the other remained silent. Yet, every time they met, it was Nill who gave ground.
"Is that some power given by your god?" Nill gritted out, his eyes wide with frantic energy. "What god do you worship?"
Nill was cycling through his skills like a drowning man, trying to find a single opening, a single flaw in the man before him. But the result was a wall of perfect steel. Every skill failed. Every trick was parried. And through it all, Kaelen didn't activate a single skill, leaving Nill trapped in a spiral of surprise and creeping fear.
Kaelen didn't answer immediately. He stared at Nill with a calm, vacant expression, fighting as if he were in a sunny training courtyard rather than a blood-soaked battlefield.
The man tried to fly up to the heavens, but he had no wings like an angel. He then begged for wings, but his wish wasn't granted either. So, instead of waiting to be chosen, he decided to forge his own right to choose. And the 'heaven' he chose was much closer than the stars.
"You asked what god I worship, right?" Kaelen said, stepping into Nill's guard. He shifted his weight, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. "That's the god I worship."
"!!?"
Nill followed the direction of his thumb as they exchanged sword strikes, and what he saw was not something one could call a 'god'; it was human, a human who couldn't even fight properly.
It was Vionette.
Nill's face contorted with disgust. The idea that someone would deify a woman who had just participated in a slaughter was an insult to his very soul.
"You call her a god? Have you lost your mind?" Nill roared, lunging forward with a desperate strike.
"Then tell me," Kaelen said, blocking the attack with an effortless parry, "have you ever seen what your god looks like? Do you know her purpose? Do you know if she is 'good' or 'evil'? Do you even know if she's real?"
"..."
The man had long since ceased his prayers to distant gods—those silent arbiters who answered only through vague signs and unseen authority, never once lowering themselves within reach. What remained before him now was something else entirely: not a presence wrapped in divination, not an unreachable existence veiled in sanctity, but a god that stood before him in human form, close enough to be seen, close enough to be questioned, one that walked the same ground and carried its own selfishness as openly as any mortal.
Kaelen was nothing like Jain. He was not selfless, nor did he possess any noble desire to save everyone; he wanted to save only his kingdom…or rather, he wanted be a knight.
Knights protect their kingdom, and he followed that rule for glory.
It was not compassion that guided him, nor any sense of duty, but something far more fragile and far more selfish—an ego, raw and unrefined, belonging to a child who did not seek to protect, but to become, clinging not to the act itself, but to the image it cast.
"You disrespectful wretch… you dare mock the divine?" Nill backed away, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "I will kill you, and then I'll carve the heart out of that bitch."
Kaelen's eyes didn't just sharpen; they turned into shards of ice. "Bitch?"
"Ye—"
[Aura Blade]
Before Nill could finish the word, Kaelen finally ignited. The blue, ocean-like aura erupted around him, and Nill's voice died in his throat. The air shifted, the atmospheric pressure doubling in an instant. It wasn't just energy—it felt as if Kaelen's very existence density had been promoted to a higher tier.
Splsshhh!
Huh?
Nill looked down at his chest. A clean, deep diagonal cut had appeared, blood welling up to soak his tunic. He looked back at Kaelen, but the man was still standing in the same position; his sword hadn't even moved.
"Surprised? This is the next stage of Aura Blade," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a terrifying chill. "Blade Projection."
There's a next stage to Aura Blade? Nill thought, his mind reeling.
Aura Blade is one of the most basic skills, something nearly every person manages to acquire. It served well in the early stages, but was quickly abandoned once one reached the realm of Unique-class skills or beyond. The 'skill' [Aura Blade] itself was nothing more than a convenience granted by the world—a refined method that allowed the user to infuse aura into their weapon with ease, turning what would otherwise require control and precision into something effortless.
But what of someone who never received that skill, who was instead forced to grasp aura through their own hands, without guidance, without structure? What of someone who was forced to learn Aura Blade instead of [Aura Blade]? The difference between a shortcut and something earned through hardship was not merely efficiency—it was depth, it was ownership, it was something far more difficult to replicate.
Even so, Aura Blade itself required no Aether to activate. And so the question remained—where did the vast quantity of Aether within Kaelen's body go?
Nowhere.
It did not flow outward, nor did it take form as a skill; it remained, contained within him, circulating endlessly, forced inward where it could find no release. And in doing so, it refined him, tempered flesh and bone alike, shaping his body into something capable of enduring its own excess, lest it collapse under the weight of its own power.
And beyond even that, there was his existence—risen, thickened, made heavier still, further amplified by the Fable Mark.
Thud.
Nill fell to his knees. His sword clattered to the stones. He looked up at the dense, suffocating presence standing over him, sweat pouring down his face as his lifeblood pooled on the ground.
"...Monster," he whispered to the silence.
Shinnn~
---
Wrssshhhh…
Noa glided through the jagged rubble of the destroyed district, the force of Jain's legendary skill pushing him back like a leaf in a gale. He ran through the hollowed shell of a building, crashing through rotted walls before jumping from the second floot directly toward the saint who was hunting him.
Thud-Thud-Thmm
The moment his feet hit the ground, he closed the distance. They engaged in a blur of hand-to-hand combat, Noa trading punches with the glowing woman until a spear manifested from the side, forcing him to leap backward into the dust.
"Bye-bye."
Jain's eyes widened, her golden brows furrowing. Why say goodbye now, when he was the one pinned?
[Blink]
He vanished.
Noa had spent the last few minutes carefully leading her into this specific alleyway, using the surrounding skeletons of buildings to block her divine sightlines.
Step—step—step.
Noa wasn't running out of fear. He was a predator following a scent he'd laid out himself.
Then, he came to a sudden halt, his boots resting mere inches away from the black, fading figure of It—the entity that had been kneeling in the dirt, abandoned by the fight.
Grab.
His fingers locked around the creature's neck, a wide, predatory smile splitting his face.
[Echo Reclamation]
As Noa activated the skill, the weight of the thousands of lives It had consumed finally broke. The sheer weight of that misery rushed into Noa like a tidal wave. He didn't recoil; he welcomed the embrace.
Then suddenly, the world suddenly went silent. The sounds of battle, the golden light of the barrier, and even the feeling of his own heavy breath vanished. Everything went blank—no touch, no smell, just a vast, echoing emptiness of absolute darkness.
Then, out of the void, a shape began to emerge.
"Keyla, what are you doing here?"
...
...
[Illustrations]