Chapter 8: Test (3)

The first sword strike that signaled the beginning.

Sching.

The moment the hero’s arm was raised, the cold air hanging in the arena was split apart in an instant.

Slash!

The massive greatsword swung upward, and a huge blade of sword aura rose from the tip of its gleaming edge.

Kaaaang!

A red blade collided with Cain’s sword.

Crack!
Crack!

“Ugh!”

What I felt from that first collision was defeat.

‘As expected, I can’t win this.’
‘This is insane.’

Slash!

The second sword strike came immediately.

Crash!

What I felt from the second strike was certainty.

The difference in our levels was simply too great.

There was no way a piece of trash who had merely worked hard could defeat the hero who had once been called the strongest.

Clang!

Crack!

The moment my sword broke, I quickly used the recoil to leap backward.

But.

Whoosh!

The hero was already in front of my eyes, swinging his third sword strike.

“Fck…”

I’m going to die.

There was no way to dodge.

There was no way to block it.

This was an illusion that wielded the strongest hero’s power exactly as he had possessed it in life.

Against him, none of the methods I possessed would be of any use.

I swallowed dryly as I watched the cold, flickering specter of death.

‘I didn’t want to use it, but I have no choice.’

I clenched my fist and raised my arm.

Slick.

My arm bent at a ninety-degree angle.

Black mana flickered around my elbow.

Watching the greatsword swinging toward me, I muttered quietly.

“Burn.”

Whoosh!

Flames erupted across my entire arm.

As the flames ignited the flickering mana, a small explosion erupted from my elbow.

Boom!
Boom!
Boom!

My fist struck the side of the swinging sword.

The powerful blow, like a cannon blast, knocked the sword’s straight trajectory off course.

Boom!

I quickly raised my other arm.

Slick.

My right foot stomped down with a heavy thud.

Using the foot planted into the ground as a pivot, I launched myself forward toward the illusion.

Whoosh!

“Burn.”

Boom!
Boom!
Boom!

My fist flew toward the hero’s abdomen.

I twisted my waist with all my strength, maximizing the force transferred into my punch.

Bang!

Throb!

Intense pain shot through the fist I had thrust forward.

What I had collided with was the hero’s greatsword.

As countless droplets of blood scattered through the air, a scream of pain escaped my mouth.

“Uaaaaaah!”

Boom!

Watching the illusion fly toward the opposite wall, I shook both of my arms.

“That was my trump card…”
“Tch!”

The punch I had thrown contained three different spells.

Mana Bomb.

Burn.

Moment Acceleration, which accelerated one second of time.

They were basic spells.

So basic that it was embarrassing to even call them magic.

Low-level spells with a difficulty suitable for children that anyone could use.

An explosion that should have been nothing more than a brief flash became a devastating blow within my arm.

Slick.

I lowered my stance again and raised my arm.

[…What is that guy?]
[Is he really human?]

A god muttered softly.

A long silence followed.

The gods all watched Cain in silence, holding their breath.

Sssssss…

Burned skin.

An elbow stripped of flesh.

Unable to withstand the impact of colliding with the hero’s greatsword, my wrist dangled limply, blackened like a withered leaf.

[He knows how to use Moment Acceleration like that…]

Accelerating one second.

In other words, the speed at which the arm was swung was accelerated by one second.

The explosion at the elbow and the speed at which the arm moved were accelerated simultaneously.

One second became one second faster.

An instant accelerated by another instant.

A single blow that could transcend the limits of humanity.

That was one of the fangs Cain had been hiding.

However.

[His arm is broken.]
[Well, there was no way an ordinary human could throw a punch like that and remain unharmed.]

That fang had bitten Cain himself as well.

[The reason he didn’t use that against the monsters…]
[Don’t tell me he was saving it for the end?]

[He’s insane.]
[Even after nearly dying so many times, he kept it in reserve until the very end?]

[Ah…]
[I want him even more now…]

Crack!

The broken bones shifted with a grating sound.

I looked at my limp wrist and muttered quietly.

“Four times at most…”
“No, maybe five?”

I knew myself better than anyone.

I was the worst of the worst.

Not merely behind everyone else…

I hadn’t even started from the same starting line.

For someone like me to survive among geniuses, I had to throw away something that I possessed as a human being.

Whoosh!

What Cain had thrown away was everything he had.

His body.

His life.

Pain.

The very things an ordinary human being naturally feared and desperately tried to protect.

To Cain, even those desperate things were nothing more than disposable pieces.

To hunt monsters, you had to become a monster yourself.

‘Nine years…’
‘It was nine years.’

I had spent nine years on battlefields where countless lives were extinguished, having abandoned the things a human being was supposed to hold dear.

“That’s enough.”

That’s why I smiled.

Because I considered this level of crisis something I had experienced countless times before.

Thud.

Step after step, I moved forward.

With every step, I continued asking myself questions and repeating the answers in my mind.

What are my chances? / 0%.

How much time does Lilac have left? / I don’t know.
But I know it’s urgent.

Will my remaining trump cards work? / Uncertain.

“….”

It wasn’t an opponent I could defeat, but I couldn’t retreat either.

There was no time to recover.

All I could do was move forward.

Whoosh!

The hero leaped toward my rear in an instant.

The hero was completely unharmed.

Seeing his flawless condition, without even a single wound, I let out a deep sigh and twisted my waist.

“Fck.”
“Would it kill you to at least pretend you’re hurt?”

‘Meanwhile, I’m already a wreck after just two hits.’

Fragments of my broken sword caught beneath my feet.

I quickly kicked the fragments, sending blades flying toward the hero’s face.

Clang!
Clang!
Kaaang!

As I approached the hero blocking the blades, I grinned.

“You really weren’t kidding when you said I was going to die.”

Thud!

“Yeah.”
“I can’t win.”
“I admit it.”
“How the hell am I supposed to beat this?”

The difference in strength was obvious.

If this were a straightforward fight, there was no doubt that I wouldn’t even be able to lay a finger on him.

But.

Ssssss…

I said I couldn’t win.

I never said I couldn’t kill him.

Dense murderous intent poured from Cain’s body.

With a flickering black aura behind me, I raised my fist toward the hero.

“You’re obviously going to take the victory.”
“But…”

I widened my eyes and thrust my broken fist toward the hero.

“I’m taking your head.”

Definitely.

“Burn.”

Boom!

Slash!

The hero’s greatsword grazed the edge of my cheek.

The wrist that had deflected the greatsword tingled painfully.

‘I’m probably not going to be able to move this for about ten seconds.’

I quickly leaped forward and raised my other arm.

Whoosh!

At the same moment I jumped, Father’s sword swung toward my neck.

I quickly lowered my stance and twisted my neck aside.

Slash!

A red blade of sword aura grazed past my ear.

I immediately thrust my fist toward Father’s abdomen.

“Burn.”

Boom!

‘Got him!’
‘That landed perfectly!’

Seeing Father fly backward clutching his stomach, I immediately began running toward the sealing stone.

“Burn.”

A Mana Bomb flickered beneath my military boot.

The moment the flames ignited, the resulting explosion launched my body slightly into the air.

Boom!

‘Thank goodness my foot is still intact.’

But the sole of my boot was gone.

My arm was one thing, but if I injured my legs, my mobility would drop dramatically.

‘If that happens, it’s over.’

The pure-white sealing stone was getting closer and closer.

I raised my arm to smash the sealing stone to pieces.

Then.

“Hssss…”

I heard the sound of wind stirring.

The flow of air began gathering and being sucked toward a single point.

‘Fck…’
‘Don’t tell me…’

It was unmistakably the sound of someone drawing in a deep breath.

With a terrible suspicion forming in my mind, I slowly turned my creaking neck.

Only then did that suspicion become certainty.

“Crazy…”
“Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy!!!”

A sword held in both hands.

A lowered stance.

The left knee serving as the axis for the rebound.

I knew that technique.

“Don’t tell me he can even use that?!”

“Hssssssss!”

“You’ve got to be fcking kidding me!!!”

Whoosh!

I turned with all my strength, trying to move as far to the side of Father’s diagonal line as possible.

Without taking my eyes off Father, I continued accelerating my legs.

Rumble…
Rumble…

Veins bulged across his twitching arms.

The breath he had been drawing in stopped in an instant.

The trembling of his left leg intensified.

‘And this vibration…’

The trembling of my skin made it feel as though the ground itself were shaking.

‘…It’s coming!’

Rumble!
Rumble!
Rumble!

The earth shook throughout the enormous cave.

Crack!
Crack!

The floor began splitting apart.

The stalactites hanging from above looked as though they could fall at any moment.

But none of that mattered.

Not compared to what was about to come.

Any moment now.

The ultimate technique available to a hero was about to be unleashed.

“Hoo!”

Clang!

Dozens of blades of sword aura appeared in an instant.

Red blades of light floated through the air.

With a single swing of the hero’s sword, the enormous blades flew toward me all at once.

Thud!

‘F*ck!’
‘It’s already hard enough to move with the earthquake, and now the stalactites are falling too?!’

A massive stalactite crashed down beside my foot.

The vibration was so powerful that it was impossible to believe it came from a human being.

Every stalactite in the cave began falling, pouring down upon the ground like a rain of death.

‘Sword aura in front…’
‘Stalactites above…’

Getting hit by even one of them would be the end!

“…Sorry, Lilac.”

I tried to make it back alive, but this isn’t going to work.

I don’t think I can keep my promise to let you eat chocolate.

I closed my eyes and gently placed a hand over my heart.

Crackle.
Crackle.

My body was hot.

My heart tingled painfully.

Even I, who had walked countless paths of heresy, had decided that this was one technique I must never use.

Crack…

My mana circuits were torn and battered beyond recognition.

I would forcibly overload those mana circuits and temporarily surpass my limits to obtain an extreme level of power.

‘It is theoretically possible.’
‘But practically, it is impossible.’

Mana circuits.

They were organs in the human body just as sensitive as the nervous system.

What I was about to do was forcibly overload such a sensitive organ and squeeze out power that it could never produce.

‘And I’m doing it to circuits that are already practically in tatters.’

I could tell from the sensation throughout my body.

The moment I used this technique, my body would be torn apart beyond recognition and I would die.

‘I wanted to see your face one more time…’

[Good morning!]

“…I guess it can’t be helped.”

It’s a shame.

If I’d known this would happen, I should have at least said goodbye.

Maybe because we’d parted so abruptly, I regretted it even more.

What would she say if she saw me like this?

Would she be surprised?

Or would she be angry?

Heh…

Either way, it’d have to be one of those two, right?

She’s so easy to understand.

She’s such an innocent brat.

What would she do first after being freed?

She’d probably devour all the apples in front of her.

No.

Maybe not.

Now that she’d tasted chocolate, she might wander around looking for it.

What if she grabbed some stranger and started asking about it, only to run into some weirdo?

That couldn’t happen…

Drip…

“Ah…”
“What am I supposed to do?”

“Thinking about her…”

“Made me not want to die…”

Hot liquid flowed from my moist eyes.

As the tears rolled down my cheeks, the hero’s sword aura reached the tips of my arms.

Whoosh…
Whoooosh…

I want to see her again.

I want to meet her again.

I want to save the precious friend who became a small light in my life.

It was a feeling I naturally had the right to possess.

And yet, reality was so cruel that those two desires could never coexist.

“Haha…”
“This is so damn heartbreaking.”

Whoosh!

Goodbye…

Lilac.

“Burning.”

“Where could he possibly have gone…?”

Lilac murmured helplessly, anxiety written across her face.

It had already been two days since Cain disappeared.

Soon, as the sun rose on the third day, the moment when Lilac’s long, long fate would finally come to an end was approaching.

“Couldn’t you have stayed with me…”
“At least until the very end?”

When she saw the numerous stone sculptures before her, tears began falling from the corners of Lilac’s eyes.

“Ah…!”

She had thought she had become accustomed to the piercing loneliness.

She had been trapped in the gap between dimensions for more than 100,000 years, and had spent more than 2,000 years sealed within Roflerum without meeting anyone.

But now, she was suffering through an unbearable loneliness, sobbing in pain.

“Sniff…”
“Ugh…”

The reason was simple.

‘Because now I can’t meet him anymore.’

It had been a lonely life without any deep connections.

There had been people who watched over her and worshiped her, but there had never been anyone she could call a friend.

“Cain…”
“Cain!”

At first, it had simply been curiosity.

Curiosity about how such a weak human could be so close to death.

Curiosity born from the fact that, despite being so close to death, he somehow didn’t die.

A strange human who remained untouched by death despite standing closer to it than anyone else.

That had been Lilac’s first impression of Cain.

Lilac closed her eyes and recalled the words Cain had spoken.

[So what if you’re a god?]
[What about it?]
[Are you saying you can’t stand it because the sins I’m carrying are too filthy?]

She had thought he was an incredibly insolent human.

To think someone would recklessly act so familiar with a goddess who had waged war against all the gods.

‘He was truly ridiculous.’

An irredeemably arrogant human.

That had been Lilac’s second impression of Cain.

[Don’t act like such a little brat and worry about what others think.]
[Smile.]
[Smile, you little brat.]
[Don’t make a face that doesn’t suit you.]

The sight of him pushing an apple into her mouth while trying to offer some awkward form of comfort.

It had been funny.

It had been foolish.

He had told her not to make faces that didn’t suit her, yet he himself kept doing things that didn’t suit him.

She had thought he was incredibly shameless.

‘But… I really liked that clumsy kindness.’

A clumsy, yet incredibly kind human.

That had been Lilac’s third impression of Cain.

Lilac slowly opened her eyes and raised her head toward the ceiling.

“Don’t tell me…”

Tears continued pouring from her eyes.

“Did you…”
“Did you abandon me?”

Lilac had lived a miserable life without a single friend.

Cain had been the same.

After learning about his past, Lilac had felt a deep sense of kinship with him.

Two people who had lived completely different lives, yet were so much alike.

Two people who stood in completely different positions, yet faced each other from such similar places.

The audacious man who had dared to establish himself as an equal to a god.

That was why she had thought:

“How could the two of us…”
“How could we not be friends?”

She believed that the person who could truly understand her was none other than the human standing before her.

Lilac’s head drooped helplessly.

“Haha…”
“Then it was all meaningless.”
“All of it was pointless…”

At that moment.

Clang!

The chains wrapped around Lilac’s body shattered.

“Huh?”

Lilac’s eyes widened as she stared at the broken chains.

Dozens of chains lost their strength and fell away with a clatter.

“Why?”

The chains had never broken before.

As divine artifacts forged by the gods, their durability was virtually guaranteed.

There was only one thing the destruction of the chains could mean.

The power of the seal binding her had weakened.

“Why?”

Just as an incomprehensible question arose in her mind, a possibility flashed through Lilac’s thoughts.

“Don’t tell me…”
“Don’t tell me!”

Lilac shook her entire body, desperately struggling to look behind herself.

“Cain!!!”
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone there?!”

Clatter!

The remaining chains around her body tightened with even greater force.

But.

“Cain!”
“No!”
“Don’t!”
“Stop!”
“I said stop!”

Lilac continued struggling without stopping.

“Cain!!!”