Chapter 142
Chapter 142 — The One Who Inscribes the End
The earth held its breath.
The wind did not blow. Yet perfect stillness did not mean peace.
Thud-crack!
With each step Kohtan took, black water surged upward in reverse. The waves spread through the fractured ground, scattering an eerie resonance. Clods of dirt and shards of stone only rose — never fell.
"……What is this."
Marik muttered under his breath. Before his eyes, the region reduced to rubble laid bare. The plains had become highlands riddled with cliffs and boulders. Lava seethed in patches, and steam rose, exhaling toxic gas.
[I am the One Who Inscribes the End.]
A familiar voice rang out. This time, far closer. Beneath Kohtan's helm, from eye sockets where not a trace of light existed, a crimson thread spread.
It walks.
No sword was drawn. No surge of energy erupted. And yet, by presence alone, every living creature on the field's outskirts was overwhelmed.
'This is completely different from Midra.'
Calix steadied his breath and fixed his gaze on that figure. Wherever Kohtan stepped, the earth's crust cracked and belched a foul stench.
Behind him, Captain Royce warned in a ragged voice.
"The sword…… Is heavy. Be on your guard."
The Mountain Rabbits recognized in an instant that they had stepped into Kohtan's domain. A crimson knight. Yet what wrapped the armor was not metal. It was a shell of mingled blood and shadow — a mask concealing the hollow emptiness within.
[Even time rests within my grasp.]
The moment those words rang out, two knights drew their swords and charged forward. There was no signal. Only the oppressive presence before them had goaded them forward.
"Die!!"
Energy shaped like flame swept and billowed, and the sound of cleaving air tore through the space. At its end, a blade tip came to a stop before the Legion Commander's throat — and slid back.
No — it rewound.
As though the thread of time had been yanked in reverse, each movement of the knight's body ran backward to its origin. Reality and illusion, truth and falsehood tangled and left their traces hanging in the air.
And then.
Crack!
"……Kugh!"
The scream came one beat too late. Both knights had their throats slashed by the very arcs of their own blades. The energy explosion ignited not in Kohtan, but in the chest of the humans.
Flesh, bone, armor — shattered on the spot.
The surrounding fell silent in an instant.
"Stop! Do not approach on your own!"
Gregor roared as he sensed the danger, but another knight had already hurled his spear. The thrown lance, brimming with force, vanished just before it pierced Kohtan's heart.
Crack-thud!
In the next instant, the speartip erupted from behind its owner. It crumpled the knight's armor and drove inward, shattering the spine.
Only then did the death squad's movements cease.
'This is why…… Reverse Flow.'
Calix felt a chill as though ice water had been poured beneath his skin. Even without the neural accelerator's warnings, he had felt the instinctive sense of crisis.
At that moment, Kohtan moved forward another step.
[Your every footstep and breath…… Are mine.]
There was no more room to hesitate.
***
The death squad formed their encirclement in silence. The Mountain Rabbits filled the vanguard, and along the flanks and rear, the swords of the knight order rose quietly.
The monsters, meanwhile, had already been absorbed — dissolved into streams of blood. The roars that had once filled the battlefield, the weight that had once shaken the earth, had all evaporated. What remained was only stillness and silence. Had they been ordinary humans, the sheer disparity in numbers alone would have suffocated them.
Yet Kohtan remained arrogant.
He stood in that self-important manner, flaunting his own strength. As though no lion had ever feared an ant, he gazed quietly at the humans standing before him.
It was around that moment that Calix lifted his foot.
[Combat Acceleration Active, 3.9x]
Bang!
The mere act of pushing off the ground sent a shockwave rolling outward. Simultaneously, Imran Akran leapt in alongside him on his left.
'From the very start, we go with full force.'
Even at this very moment, the allied forces would be fighting a desperate battle, and the death squad had already paved this road at the cost of dozens of lives.
The energy of the two men surged in unison. One was the pinnacle of order; the other was flame carrying chaos within.
The blades tore through the darkness.
Two exceptions who stood outside Kohtan's rule. Imran's pure and righteous energy seized the distortions surrounding them, while Calix's Falling Fire drove into the space between.
Boom-boom-boom!!
The sound of the explosion stretched far beyond the battlefield. Black droplets swirled through the air, and brilliance scattered in all directions as though the sky itself were splitting.
And soon, steel met steel.
Skreeee.
A single exchange was enough to measure each other's strength. Calix and Imran drove their blades forward in near unison, but Kohtan drew the sword at his hip and deflected them with ease.
The distance he gave was barely half a step.
Calix grasped the opponent's strength in an instant.
'Strength and speed — neither falls short of ours.'
In the meantime, at the edge of his vision, Imran's energy and the Legion Commander's force tangled and coiled. They contested every inch, neither willing to concede the smallest opening.
Calix knocked the opponent's blade aside and pressed into a follow-up attack — when a wicked whisper bored into his ear.
[Is this the choice you have made. You barely lived, yet you have returned to seek your place of death once more.]
The two men answered with their swords.
Swish.
The attack swordsmanship unique to the Niboria Empire came into its own. Straight-line sword trajectories, footwork without a tremor, the momentum of endless advance — it unfolded before their eyes.
Steel tore through air, aiming for throat and chest; when blocked, the next motion followed in an unbroken chain.
'There — an opening in the side!'
The very instant Imran's straight blade drove for the opponent's heart — Calix swept horizontally as well, targeting the gap.
Yet Kohtan, with a single casual sweep of his hand, bent that line aside.
Ka-boom-boom-boom!!
The energy carried in the blades skidded away and overturned the ground to the right. The follow-up strike from Calix was likewise deflected — with half a rotation of the shoulder.
"……!"
Without warning, Calix's eyes widened. It was not that Kohtan's power had gotten to him. There had been no unreasonable conditions. They had clashed purely by each other's ability alone, and not the slightest advantage had been gained.
That figure was not merely shaped like a knight — it was the real thing.
Bang!
Even so, Calix drove his foot down again. Imran charged from the opposite side. This time, they shifted their approach. One rotated his body, targeting the lower half; the other cleaved vertically down the upper body.
Timing measured with a ruler, a perfect cross. The waves of energy the two men unleashed swept the surroundings with ferocity.
But Kohtan read both lines in full. He drew his foot back and tilted his upper body. Simultaneously, he pressed the flat of his own blade against the opponents' swords and pulled them toward him.
In that instant, the blades of both men grazed and collided against each other, their movements overlapping and their feet grinding to a halt. And through that gap, Kohtan's blade tip raked across Imran's jaw, leaving a shallow wound.
Drip, drip.
Blood fell in drops.
Calix's pupils trembled faintly. The opponent he had expected only to defend had found his opening and struck back.
'……And precisely at the moment the balance broke, too.'
The wound was Imran's, but the pain was shared.
"Collect yourself. Nothing is over yet."
Imran Akran noticed that look and murmured low. His breath was growing ragged by degrees, yet Kohtan's bearing remained unshaken.
The assault continued relentlessly even after.
Three times, four times, ten times. The sound of steel on steel grew ever fiercer, yet the initiative was tilting all the more toward the red knight.
***
One after another, fine-grained exchanges of blades passed between them. Calix and Imran coordinated their breathing and delivered consecutive strikes, and Kohtan absorbed them all with smooth, effortless motion. A taut tension hovered between both sides, neither retreating a single step.
Yet the sight as seen from without was different.
"Hah."
Captain Royce felt a chill spread through his chest. Each time blade crossed blade, the sky inverted and the earth surged like a wave. The clash of energies thundered, and from the shockwaves alone, the surrounding knights staggered backward.
A thousand-strong death squad stood together, yet the fight belonged solely to three. In that moment, a murmured remark reached his ear.
"……They're being pushed back. Akran's physical condition is not intact."
Helmut Barben. The words of one who had once been Knight Commander of Richterkreutz — one who had reached the level of a Top-Rank Swordsman.
Even from so brief a sentence, Royce grasped its meaning immediately. What looked like an equal contest on the surface was something else in reality. The red knight was not merely holding on — he was gradually claiming the flow of the battlefield as his own.
He surveyed the faces of those around him. Not one among them dared to think of stepping in against Kohtan's overwhelming display.
Truth be told, he was the same.
'The movements are barely visible. At my level, holding down one ankle would be the best I can manage.'
In contrast, the cost would be steep.
'Save for Calix, no one here is free from Kohtan's influence. If someone charges recklessly, they might just die a meaningless death.'
The Mountain Rabbits' captain sorted through his given conditions one by one. Quietly, he considered what he could do, and in turn what he would have to give up—
"Lady Ella, I ask for Kriya's blessing."
He made his decision.
"……Captain, the sacred technique won't last very long."
"A moment is enough."
The woman with the gentle face tried to dissuade him, but he was human.
Faithful to his desires, he moved for his own gain. He had suffered under the weight of his own shortcomings, and he had filled that gap by belonging to the Mountain Rabbits.
'This is the best I can do right now.'
And so, in this very moment, he was prepared to do something foolish.
Ella's divine power wrapped itself around Royce's body. As a soft radiance spread, he moved his feet without a word. He paid no mind to the heavy sword, the sensory distortion, or the warped ground.
One step, then another.
The neural accelerator pushed its output to its limits, and both hands gripped the flat of his blade, arms extended straight ahead. His gaze was fixed on nothing but Kohtan's chest.
In the instant the storm of energy roared around him —
The Mountain Rabbits' captain drove himself through the gap.
And at that moment—
[A futile struggle.]
Beneath Kohtan's helm, the dark-crimson pupils flared.
Crack!
Without even bringing weapons to bear, it simply extended a hand and seized Royce's blade. For an instant, a cold sensation passed — and the light of divinity dimmed.
Yet he did not waver; he pressed harder still.
"Kk—!"
Energy surged in reverse through the hand gripping the sword. It was unmistakably his own, yet bowed to Kohtan's power, it turned and invaded its user. From the corner of his mouth came a surge of blood, his breath grew sharply labored, and a tingling sensation climbed through his joints.
A single collision had wounded him within.
Even so, Royce did not, in the end, let go of his sword.
'Whatever the case — I drew a reaction.'
He had bought Calix a moment of time. Kohtan's grip was closing in before his eyes, but it had been worth the risk.
He truly believed that.
Grab.
In that instant, someone's hand touched the back of his neck.
In a split second, Royce's body was yanked backward, slipping out of the attack's path. The front of his armor was torn away like strips of flesh, yet his life was spared.
It was Adrian.
The one-armed swordsman, with unfocused eyes, read beyond the flow of time itself. One had been saved — now his own safety had to be secured.
'Damn it all……'
Dozens of branching choices overlapped and erased themselves in his mind. Royce's death; the sight of losing his remaining arm; a future where both fell together. Adrian, at the end of it all, chose the path that left the fewest wounds.
Scrape!
Kohtan's blade grazed the left shoulder and scattered blood. His expression was a mixture of pain, displeasure, and relief.
By the thinnest of margins, he had slipped outside the attack's reach.
'For now…… I'd say the price has been paid.'
Only the skin had been cut — the injury was not severe. Perhaps owing to the memory of losing one arm to Legion Commander Midra, cold sweat streamed down the back of his neck.
But something had been gained. As the scent of blood spread, the sight of the two men struck at the heart of the death squad.
"……The initiative's been taken from us."
Silver Falcon's Knight Commander, Nuvel Groxat, tightened his grip on his sword hilt. Helmut Barben seized his trembling forearm and stepped forward.
The blades of the Top-Rank knights were the first to flash — and then that spark spread in all directions. From that point on, the battlefield no longer belonged to three.