Chapter 65

“…Is this the end?”

More painful to Hector’s heart than the bone spear piercing his shoulder was watching his men fall before his eyes. Though clad in the finest armor and weapons bestowed by Rian, their lines crumbled like sand before the endless waves of the dead and the lullaby of the “Weeping Tree” that gnawed at souls.

‘My lord… I am ashamed.’

Hector looked bitterly, smiling at the surge of death rushing toward him. He sensed defeat. But the blade of shadow had not learned to kneel and meet death.

“Hear me, all of you!”

Hector drew on his remaining strength and roared. His voice carried a steel will unbroken even in despair.

“We are the shadows of the Aster family! The lord’s blade! Even in death, we die standing! And we’ll drag as many of these filthy corpses to hell with us as we can!”

He tore the bone spear from his shoulder and hurled it violently. Blood spurted like a fountain, but he paid it no mind; the pain only sharpened his resolve.

“My aura… my soul… I offer them all! Aura Burst!”

Hector slammed the sword’s pommel down onto his own chest. His aura-amplifying armor screamed and began to overload. The blue aura pouring from his body became an uncontrollable storm that began to consume everything around him. It was a self-sacrificial, suicide technique that offered himself as the vessel for a final blaze.

At the same time, inside the cavern.

“Fools.”

The priest’s face—twisted from writhing insects—grinned grotesquely and struck at Cypher with dozens of black tentacles. Cypher was the Valerian Empire’s top spy. His senses had already detected the priest’s murderous intent.

Without hesitation, he shoved the back of his last remaining man fighting the shadow wraith beside him—the “Ghost.”

“Kraak!”

The loyal man, bewildered, became a living shield before the oncoming tentacles. As they pierced and tore his body in that instant, Cypher coiled like a snake and slipped away. There was not a trace of feeling in his eyes for his comrade’s death—only anger at nearly failing his mission and murderous intent directed at the monster before him.

“You…!”

“For ruining the Grand Garden, we will repay you by feeding your souls to the earth.”

The priest finished off the last Ghost and turned his body back toward Cypher.

‘There’s no winning a head-on fight. Killing that thing isn’t my mission. My objective is only that crystal… the Dragon’s Heart!’

Cypher made his decision. He drew a pitch-black orb from his chest pocket: the “Shadow Pearl.” It was the Valerian intelligence service’s trump weapon, condensed to the extreme with darkness energy.

Feigning a throw at the priest with the orb, he instead hurled it with all his strength toward the real target—the Plague Crystal.

“Foolish…!”

The priest had expected Cypher to attack him, but when he realized the true intent he was horrified. He lunged desperately to stop the crystal, but it was too late.

Kwoaaaaaang-!

The instant the Shadow Pearl struck the Plague Crystal, there was no simple explosion. Instead, all the condensed darkness energy unleashed and violently collided with the crystal’s power. When the two alien forces met, space warped and a massive magical backwash swept through the entire cavern.

“Kraaaak!”

The priest was caught in the magical storm and screamed as he was flung away. The cavern’s walls and ceiling began to collapse. Cypher too was swept by the storm, feeling bone-crushing pain, but he gritted his teeth and reached for where the crystal had been.

In his hand he clutched a shard broken from the crystal by the blast. The fragment pulsed with an ominous dark-red light, beating like a living heart.

‘…Got it.’

Spitting blood, Cypher made his escape from the collapsing cavern.

When he barely crawled out to the cave mouth, his eyes met a massive blue blast. Hector’s final flash—bought with his life—was consuming all the remaining dead.

After the blast faded, only silence remained by the lakeshore. Hector and his men had vanished without a trace, and only shattered pieces of armor lay scattered on the blackened ground.

Cypher watched the grim scene for a moment. He despised Kairos’s dogs, but he felt a strange flicker of emotion—if only briefly—at their foolish devotion that had opened a path for others at the cost of their lives, even if they had been enemies.

He tucked the crystal shard firmly into his chest. It emitted an ominous chill, like it was sucking at his life force.

He was now alone. His men were all dead and he himself was mortally wounded. Yet in his hand lay a shard of the “Dragon’s Heart” that might change the fate of the Empire.