Chapter 100: Saint Ilarion Hospital (31)
At the deepest point in the abyss of Saint Ilarion Hospital, where the "Cathedral of Flesh" lay, the thunder of the catastrophic explosions that had been grinding the upper floors faded away.
The roar of the mad battle between the three S-rank monsters ceased abruptly, as if an unseen cosmic blade had severed the cords of their voices and souls together, erasing their existence from the fabric of reality.
A silence heavier than mountains prevailed.
A sepulchral, viscous silence, in which nothing could be heard except the sound of Eva’s ragged breaths as she bled from the spears of light, Sia’s muffled groans, and Kyle’s rattling breaths as he was pinned to the fleshy floor by a glowing spear piercing through his entrails.
Kyle’s four limbs were shattered, broken at impossible angles, and his crimson eyes overflowed with tears of pain beyond what the human mind could comprehend. He wept silently, his crimson blood covering the living tiles.
As for Valisera, she lay motionless, the spears of light pinning her to the ground, her eyes staring at the vast, dark void in the collapsed ceiling where the battle had raged mere seconds ago.
Then... something broke that silence—something utterly disproportionate to the scale of destruction surrounding them.
Sshhh... tick... Sshhh... tick...
The sound of footsteps.
Very slow, staggering footsteps, barely audible, descending from between the hanging debris of concrete in the dark void.
As if their owner were stepping down an invisible staircase in the air.
Saint Ilarion, clad in his pure white robe, took an involuntary step back.
The golden light that radiated from his body like an incarnate saint began to tremble for the first time in centuries.
His radiant golden eyes narrowed, piercing the dense darkness above.
As an S+ rank entity, his etheric senses could perceive the pulse of an ant from kilometers away and read and classify human souls.
But now... he sensed nothing.
The void before him was completely "blind."
There was no energy, no heat, no killing intent.
There was a moving black hole.
From within the dust of concrete and the crimson shadows of the cathedral... it appeared.
It was not a massive monster like the Executioner, nor a bloody nightmare like the Viscous Reaper.
It was... just an old man...
An elderly man who looked as though he had surpassed a century and a half of age, his skin clinging to his bones like a dried mummy.
He walked with a severely hunched back, curved like a drawn bow on the verge of snapping, barely able to lift his feet off the ground, dragging his worn wooden sandals with a faint scraping sound that sent chills down the spine.
He wore an old Japanese haori, faded in color, tattered at the edges, filthy and stained with unknown blotches, exuding no sense of threat.
The old man’s hair was white as snow—thin, disheveled, and dirty.
His face was a map of deep wrinkles resembling the furrows of a barren land that had never tasted water.
As for his eyes... they were completely closed.
He looked as though he were wandering in a deep dream, walking in his sleep, unaware of the place, the time, or the shattered corpses around him.
His head swayed slowly from side to side like the pendulum of a broken clock.
And between his dry, cracked, toothless lips, he whispered.
His whispers carried no wise words or magical incantations.
They were insane mutterings, utterly incomprehensible—like a circus of shattered sounds within a mind that had lost its grasp on reality.
He was rambling.
A completely senile old man, mentally unfit, who had lost his way into the heart of a demonic slaughterhouse.
And in his right hand—thin, trembling, and covered in dark spots—he held a Japanese katana.
The sheath was scratched black wood, and the handle was wrapped in worn cloth.
He held it weakly, like a cane supporting his unsteady steps, as though he might drop it at any moment.
The scene was surreal—pitiful, even laughable in any other context.
But...
The horror that froze the blood in Saint Ilarion’s veins, that made Valisera’s heart stop for a full second, did not stem from his appearance.
It came from the absolute "nothingness" surrounding him.
Regional kings of rank radiated ether that pressed on the air, making it heavy and shattering minds. Saint Ilarion radiated light that erased darkness.
But this old man... radiated nothing.
He was zero.
Except in one place.
All of his etheric energy—every drop of his incomprehensible cosmic power—was suppressed, compressed, and entirely packed, with terrifying density that broke the laws of physics, onto the "edge of the blade" of the sword resting in its sheath!
The sword itself did not shine or glow, but the air around the sheath was "bleeding."
The fabric of spacetime wept and warped merely from the sword’s presence.
"Who are you?!"
Saint Ilarion spoke, his melodious voice losing its angelic calm, replaced by sharp tension.
The golden light around him flared like the midday sun, turning the Cathedral of Flesh into a furnace of sacred radiance.
The old man did not stop. He did not open his eyes.
He did not turn toward the blinding light.
He continued dragging his feet, his back hunched, his insane mutterings unceasing.
He was like a broken machine, a shattered biological robot devoid of awareness.
He did not hear Ilarion’s shout, nor feel the sacred heat.
"I am asking you—who allowed you into my sacred domain?!" Ilarion roared, raising his right hand as immense light energy gathered within it—enough to vaporize a mountain.
"How did you manage to kill the three vault kings above at the same instant without causing a disturbance in the ether?! Answer me, or I will turn you into forgotten ash!"
The old man stopped.
He let out a long sigh—a rattling exhale like a soul leaving a dead body.
He did not open his eyes. He did not look at Ilarion.
He merely tilted his head slightly toward the source of the voice, his lips continuing to whisper.
In that bare moment—when Ilarion saw the way the old man stood, and the absolute void that isolated him from the world...
Saint Ilarion realized who stood before him.
This was not a rogue Awakened. This was not a monster.
"You..." Ilarion muttered, taking an involuntary step back. His golden eyes trembled with pure, primal fear he had not known for centuries.
"You... are one of the Six Voiders..."