Doo-duh-duh—
Ramashthu's world was rising with a dizzying sensation of floating.
Like a bubble trying to break the surface of the water.
Each time the bubble rose, deep cracks were carved into Ramashthu's purple sky, and the false concentric circles beneath it collapsed helplessly from the outside.
"...It's rising into reality! Soon this world will completely fall apart!"
In the collapsing world of Ramashthu, only this island, where the trees were rooted, stood firmly.
Watching the concentric circles outside collapsing as if they had been waiting, Vlad could tell that this entire scene had been planned from the start.
"She planned to throw it all away from the beginning."
It seemed that Ramashthu only cared about the safety of the children.
The warlocks who followed her were also being cast aside with dark screams, as if they were nothing more than tools for her to achieve her goal.
Thud!
"Watch out! Reality is approaching!"
Vlad looked up in response to Nibelun's loud warning, and his eyes widened as he saw the scene above him.
"...What is that?"
The strange sight of the sky crumbling above me.
However, Vlad was even more startled by the enormous shadow coming closer and closer from beyond the shattered sky.
"A bell tower?"
A completely dark church in Achiuk he had seen before coming here.
The bell tower of the church that hung at the highest point was approaching from beyond the purple sky.
Like a landscape beyond a window, toward this world that was collapsing.
"This is madness!"
Ding! Daaang—
Amidst the borders of colliding worlds, the sky crumbles, and the bell tower falls.
In this surreal situation, the only thing that made sense was the loud ringing of the bell echoing in his ears.
In the middle of the clash between the two worlds, something over which Vlad had no control, the only thing he could do was bow his head.
Kwakwakwakang!
"Ahhhh!"
"Damn it! Why the hell did I come all this way?"
A heavy sound emerged from the gap between reality and the world that had crashed together so violently.
It was like a hard acknowledgment of worlds that had no choice but to move apart because they couldn't exist together.
But this time, what was rejected wasn't the black tears that Ramashthu had shed but the real world.
"...Ugh! Cough, cough!"
Vlad lowered his head as debris from the church rained down on him.
The only things visible amidst the thick, suffocating dust were the church bells ringing here and there.
Seeing the bell from Achiuk lying helplessly, having fulfilled its duty, Vlad finally realized that he had escaped into the real world.
[Vlad, snap out of it!]
"Wake up, bastard!"
In the thick dust that hung in the air, voices were calling out to Vlad.
Vlad regained his senses when he heard a voice inside him. Turning his head toward a voice behind him, he could see the old priest calling out to him.
"Look over there! We don't have time!"
"...!"
In front of the group, who had risen in the midst of the battlefield, stood an army of dark-toned undead, who had been battling the Northern Allied Forces just moments ago.
However, Pedro wasn't pointing at an immediate threat but at something writhing above.
"...What is that?"
The tree branches were rising, and the roots were floating.
A woman, standing high above, raised both hands, reciting something aloud.
It was her last attempt to reject this world, her great rebellion against God.
"It's the world-creation spell. The worst kind of magic, where she wants to become a god."
An apostate trying to create her own world, not the one created by God. Ramashthu.
There were black drops of water rising from the spell she was chanting.
The wolf-black colored drop of water, starting from a small point, gradually grew as it consumed the black tears gathered by Ramashthu.
"...I never imagined I'd witness something like this in my life."
The sight of the black water drops made both the living and the dead look up in silence.
However, even with this distant scene in front of him, for some reason, only a strange smile appeared on the face of Bishop Pierre.
"Pedro?"
Even in moments of despair, his smiling face was like that of a fanatic.
An exorcist priest and heretic inquisitor who had wandered through the darkness all his life. Bishop Pedro.
He smiled as if he had finally found the reason for his birth amid a crisis that felt like a revelation.
"...Standing here, under the darkest sky. Isn't this God's true desire, the torch that lights up in moments like this?"
Pedro's face was twisted in an indescribable way, as if he were both laughing and crying.
Why does the blind joy on his face overlap with the smile of Ramashthu that I just saw?
"Perhaps God prepared me as a person for this moment? Don't you think, Vlad?"
With those words, a white light began to emit from Pedro's staff.
That was the faith and will Pedro had carried throughout his life.
Though it was bright and mixed with madness, the light now visible was also the will of God reaching the darkest places.
"This must be my destiny, given by God. Let it burn with the greatest intensity!"
Taaang!
Pedro's divinity remained unshaken, even when he had burned countless unbelievers.
That divinity was now spreading through the sword the dragon currently held.
"So go and cut those damned things down. Vlad Aureo!"
The mystery and divinity were alive and breathing between the swords that embraced my world.
However, despite the brilliant sword he held, Vlad's face showed only deep annoyance.
"...You're obsessed with God until the end."
"What?"
A blond knight who somehow seemed unholy despite carrying the will of God.
Vlad, with his left eye closed, slowly stood up and began to point in the direction of the tree in the sky.
"Can you only see God above and not the people dying around you?"
The places Vlad pointed to were filled with black death.
Soldiers dying from the undead army, and ugly roots.
And from the lake where the trees were rooted, to the fragments of white bones from the women emerging.
All of these were dull worlds that died in places where no one cared.
"...If this is truly God's will, then both are the same."
All causes are justifiable.
But in the end, extreme ends did not discriminate between means, and to Vlad, both Ramashthu, who killed women for her children, and Pedro, who said Ramashthu was an opportunity to prove God's will, seemed the same.
"Nibelun, I think I have to go up there."
So, if no one else will, I will.
The black tears shed by the women, the images of the children playing by the bonfire.
"If God wills it, then I'll do it."
Even now, Ramashthu's black water drops continued to grow, blocking out the sun.
Vlad, who knew very well the kind of sadness from which the drops came, silently raised his head and gazed at the writhing evil roots coming toward him.
※※※※
Boom! Boom! Boom!
"Duke! The roots are rising from beneath the ground!"
"..."
The allied soldiers shouted as suddenly wolf-black roots pierced through the ground.
But instead of the pain the soldiers emitted, Timur the Iron Duke merely looked up at the Dragulia banner above.
"Hold the formation."
"But Duke!"
"I said don't break the formation!"
In front of them was the undead army, and behind them were the forces of the central army.
The Iron Duke Timur, trapped in the middle, knew very well that the current formation must not collapse under any circumstances.
"Don't leave any gaps. Fall back slowly, very slowly."
Even now, soldiers were dying from the rising roots, but Timur did not waver at all.
Because the Iron Duke, who represented the North, had a great duty to fulfill.
"...A small loss is inevitable. If the army breaks here, the North is finished."
For my cause and not for the screams of another.
It was a very reasonable decision, but the price of that decision had to be paid by the soldiers still crying out.
Boom! Boom! Boom-boom!
-Ahhhhh!
-Roots! Roots!
-Save me!
"...Frausen."
The tree roots swayed over the Dragullia banner.
The emperor and the oldest dragon, who had come back to life after leaving behind the deaths of soldiers devoured by the roots, were now staring at each other.
"You've lost your strength since last time. Where is the glory you displayed when you split the most perfect dragon?"
Frausen and Sarnus finally locked eyes, with countless roots still writhing behind their backs.
These were the roots of Ramashthu, hungry for fragments to create a new world.
"...You've finally consumed the fragments of the imperial family, Sarnus."
"The fragment of the most perfect dragon also belongs to me, rightfully."
With their swords crossed, Sarnus smiled while Frausen stood firm.
However, it seemed that the resurrected emperor, despite having returned to life, was struggling to face the oldest dragon, who only grew stronger.
Little by little, his sword began to be pushed back, driven by Sarnus's strength.
"I knew you would do this."
But Frausen remained calm, even as the balance increasingly shifted against him.
It was because he knew he still had one chance left.
"That's why I left that fragment with the imperial family. So you'd consume it."
"What?"
The mastery of a killing strike lies in surprise.
However, the unexpected did not necessarily start with the sword he held.
"You must remember how I killed the most perfect dragon, Sarnus."
A drop of dark red blood began to flow down the swords they had clashed.
It was the emperor's blood, one of the proofs of the alliance.
Sarnus's eyes widened as he saw Frausen's blood gradually dripping toward him.
"...Among the many memories I lost, I still cling to that one."
Already shattered, but the emperor's pieces that had shattered once more flowed along with the drops of blood.
As if he couldn't hear the countless screams behind him, Frausen merely smiled as he watched the drops of his own blood seep into the dragon.
Watching as his world spread over the dragon who dreamed of perfection.
"Frausen—!"
***
A woman trying to create a new world for her children.
A priest who only sees the wicked beings for the love of God.
A monarch willing to make sacrifices for his land.
A dragon striving to become the most perfect being, and even an emperor revived to stop the dragon.
"Run, Nibelun! Run now!"
They all had just and noble causes, but to achieve them, they had to accept inevitable sacrifices.
Like the soldiers who were dying at that very moment, or the already dead women—beings so unseen, shining so dimly that everyone ignored them.
"Run faster!"
"I can't! This is my limit!"
But Vlad, as he climbed the tree riding the magic carpet, was the only one who saw their pain.
The boy from the alleyways, who had once fallen into the mud, understood the suffering of those trapped in misery better than anyone.
"Everyone's going to die! At this speed!"
Neither a dragon, nor a servant of God, nor a noble, nor a successor to the emperor—just a boy from the alley.
Yet, at that moment, it was the insignificant boy who rushed toward the sky to stop the pain that everyone else felt.
"This carpet was one of my grandmother's most precious things!"
Dodging the roots that surged at him, he climbed the enormous, terrifying tree, so high that it was difficult even to look up at it.
Thus, riding his tattered carpet, a star ascended toward the sky.
While continuing to slash through the horrible roots attacking him, that star pressed on toward the dark night sky before him.
"...The moon."
"..."
There, waiting for him in the sky, was a black moon, covering Vlad like an ominous eclipse that blocked out the sun.
That moon, arrogant, cast its shadow over the entire battlefield.
"I don't like the moon."
"What?"
Like the blue moon that once destroyed my home.
Though the color was different, Vlad recalled that old scene as he looked at the moon still floating above him.
That place was the smile of a rose.
The guts were completely filled with blood.
And it was where the boy's world had shattered.
"I hate the moon."
And even now, as he watched Ramashthu's world devour someone else's world, the blue moon from back then surfaced in Vlad's closed eyes.
The blue moon he had promised to destroy but could never reach.
But this time, sensing that he might finally reach it, Vlad raised his sword—imbued with his own world—toward that moon.
"So this time, I'll destroy it."
For all the stars the heroes here had ignored.
The name of the star rising in their place was Vlad of Soara.
Vlad's world, shining alone in the dark night sky, suddenly merged with the blue light of the moon he had been staring at.