An eerie silence fell over the National Crusade Coliseum, where the high-profile Sword Master Festival was being held.
“Allen…?” Lia whimpered.
“N-no…,” Rose said, her eyes darting about.
As a stir swept through the venue, Reia found herself speechless. Her mind went to a warning she’d once received from Daria Rodol.
…This is a disaster, Reia thought. This is the one scenario we were supposed to avoid at all costs.
The 100-Million-Year Button made by the Time Hermit had weakened the seal. Allen had unintentionally formed a pipeline to Zeon through a series of deadly battles against formidable foes.
The vessel was just destroyed in an extremely unstable state with the seal still in place…
The worst-case scenario was Zeon fully recovering. He may have been reduced to a Spirit Core, but he was still an otherworldly monster. If he was reborn in this world with his old strength back, he would bring about incredible, irreversible destruction.
Slow down. What’s the priority right now?
Reia suppressed her grief for Allen, her anger at Shin, and her fear of Zeon and sprang into action.
“Listen up, everyone! We need to get out of here! There’s no telling what could happen next!” she yelled to warn the people around her.
It was then that Reia noticed something.
“What the…?!”
A beautiful darkness had started to spill from Allen’s body. It was smooth as black silk and didn’t feel the slightest bit evil. The best word to describe it was “holy.”
It was what Emperor Barel Ronelia of the Holy Ronelian Empire feared more than anything: the Rodol Clan’s darkness.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Huh…? Where am I?”
I awoke in a world of white. The brightness extended forever in all directions.
“Umm… I was fighting Shin, and then…,” I said, trying to remember what had happened.
“Hey, you finally made it here,” a female voice said behind me.
I turned around and saw a figure made of faint white light. It was human in shape but too hazy for me to make out its face.
Yet my instincts told me I could trust this person.
“Umm, who are you? And where am I?” I asked.
“Oh… Right. You wouldn’t know, would you?” she replied, a great sadness in her voice. “I’m a guardian. And this is another world. A secret base not even that idiot Zeon knows about.”
“U-uhh…”
Guardian? Another world? Secret base? I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
“…Still, you took quite the detour getting here…,” she said, seeming to stare off into the distance. “That button really threw everything off… I’m sorry, Allen.”
The faintly glowing woman smiled apologetically, but then a repulsive blackness began to rise from below us.
“So this is where you were hiding, you bastard?!” Zeon’s voice cried out, angry enough to make my hair stand on end. It came from the abyssal black substance.
“Wow, you already found us. That was fast,” the woman said.
It sounded like they knew each other.
“What the hell d’you think you’re doin’? You wanna die?!” Zeon threatened.
“Oh, how scary. There’s no need to glare like that,” the woman said, seemingly unbothered by his anger. “Zeon, you’re probably the strongest person in the world. I mean that literally. But you’re a Spirit Core now, and in this world, I have the advantage.”
She snapped her fingers, causing a flood of holy darkness to surge forth from the white world. It gently wrapped itself around Zeon’s darkness.
“Goddamn it… I’ll make you pay for this! Don’t think you’re gonna have your way for much longer!” Zeon bellowed angrily before the darkness fully enveloped him.
An earsplitting roar rang out, causing cracks to form all across the white world. The cracks became tears, which broke open into large holes, and the whole world began to shake.
“Haah… He’s been reduced to a Spirit Core and had his strength greatly shackled, and yet he still manages this much power in a world under my control… That man defies understanding,” the woman said.
Despite her sigh, she sounded slightly happy for some reason.
“Now, then… I wanted to tell you so much more, Allen, but that will have to wait for another opportunity. We’re clearly out of time.”
She looked up at the crumbling world, smiled sadly, and reached a hand enveloped in white light toward me.
“This is for you. It’s the Rodol Clan’s darkness. That buffoon has been hiding it from you all this time.”
The woman pressed her index finger to my chest, and holy darkness that shone with a faint white light erupted from my body.
“What the…?!” I gasped.
It was warm, gentle, and clear as the sun—completely different from the wicked darkness I’d been using until now.
“This is the King’s Power. It will let you fight Zeon on even footing and draw out the true strength of your Soul Attire, Rapacious Demon Zeon. Use it well.”
The world crumbled around us as the woman spoke. There were now massive holes everywhere, which grew larger as pieces of the world continued to shatter and fall.
The woman waved, and she began to sink into the ground while I was sucked upward toward the sky.
“H-hey, wait! What am I supposed to do? I need more of an explanation! …Mom!” I cried out. I wasn’t sure why I called her that.
“You’re the center of everything, Allen. The coordinates to fixing the world. Don’t worry, I know you’ll overcome the trials ahead of you. I—we believe in you.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ngh…”
I opened my eyes to see clear blue sky.
“Oh… I’m back.”
I raised my legs above me, then swung myself to my feet.
“…I feel weird.”
Information I hadn’t been conscious of until then—the scents of spring, the smell of the air, the feeling of the breeze on my skin—seemed to slam into my body. I also felt incredibly refreshed, like a weight I’d been carrying for years had been lifted off my chest.
It was like I was seeing the world in a brand-new light.
“Haah… The air tastes so good,” I said, taking a deep breath.
The next moment, cries of shock erupted throughout the coliseum.
“Huh… WHAT THE HELL?!”
“H-how is that possible?!”
“He was stabbed through the chest, wasn’t he…?”
Shin was no exception as he stared at me, his mouth agape in shock.
“I-impossible… I know Imperial Decree worked! Your heart should have stopped!” he cried.
“…It did,” I told him.
Now that I thought about it, my heart wasn’t beating.
“Then… Hah!”
I concentrated my power into my chest. Bright light spilled out of me, and my heart started beating again.
“There we go.”
It was a temporary measure, but it would hold for a while.
“Did you just…will your heart to start back up again?” Shin asked, dumbfounded.
“Wh-wh-what in the world just happened?!” the announcer shouted excitedly. “Allen Rodol has made a full recovery after being stabbed through the heart! Is he truly human?! Actually, I think we all know the answer to that! He’s definitely not!”
I calmly held my black sword before me.
“Let’s get back to it, Shin,” I said.
“…For someone who was just killed, you’re raring to go. Where’d you get that confidence from?” Shin asked.
“It’s actually curiosity, not confidence, that’s driving me right now. It took me ages, but I think I’ve finally become a Soul Attire Wielder.”
“…Are you right in the head? You’re already holding your Soul Attire.”
“Ah-ha-ha, sorry. Don’t pay that any mind.”
I had been mistaken about the power of Rapacious Demon Zeon. I’d always believed it to be a versatile self-strengthening Soul Attire that wielded darkness, but it was capable of much more than that.
I solved one mystery, too. The darkness didn’t belong to Zeon; he’d stolen it from the Rodol Clan.
I’ll save that for the next chat I have with Zeon. For now, I simply wanted to enjoy this moment and use the darkness and Soul Attire ability I’d just obtained.
I’ll start with the Rodol Clan’s darkness.
I slowly exhaled and enveloped my body in the gentle, holy darkness.
Shin gave me a puzzled expression.
“…White darkness? Are you trying to change your image?” he asked.
“Ah-ha-ha, something like that,” I replied. “Shall we begin?”
I leaped lightly off the stage toward Shin…
“Huh…?”
…and before I knew it, his severed left arm was flying through the air.
I-incredible…!
I had only meant to step close enough to try out a practice swing, but I’d ended up getting right in front of him and chopping off his arm.
This new strength was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. The white darkness’s self-strengthening ability greatly surpassed my expectations.
“Ah! Ngh! Aaaaaaah…!”
Tears streamed down Shin’s face as he held his shoulder, and he started to bawl like a child. He was crying loudly during a duel despite all the people watching… He truly didn’t care about proper decorum.
“A-are you okay?” I asked.
Shin answered by glaring hatefully at me. His breathing heavy, he picked up his left arm and held it to his shoulder.
“Haah, haah… Shin Rex’s arm attaches!”
His severed arm perfectly reconnected to his shoulder.
Interesting, he can do even that with his ability… Imperial Decree truly was an almighty Soul Attire.
“That hurt… That really freaking hurt!” he screamed shrilly, erratic spirit power bursting from his body.
…That’s absurd. Shin was practically a mass of spirit power in human form. There was no doubt that he had the highest volume of spirit power of anyone I’d fought, and it wasn’t even close.