Chapter 125. The Head-rearing End of Days
Amidst the rain of soil pouring from all directions, Blanc saw its back.
The tree enjoying itself spreading branches toward the pouring moonlight.
The tree resembling the Void Tree was walking the moonlight swinging about.
As if it waited, as if it was enjoyable.
The tree, now glowing with a black light utterly unlike when it had first appeared, rippled as it extended its thick branches like hands, as if dancing.
And on its branch, the woman who spread Evil in Baltimere and broke the Void Knights here was riding.
-We will have business later again. Count.
Her purple lips not hidden by the veil were drawing a beautiful arc.
Evil, hard to guess how old it was, was smiling under the moonlight with the dancing tree.
Looking at that appearance, Blanc felt.
‘The world has collapsed.’
The world Blanc knew, the world he was standing on now was twisted bizarrely.
Things that should have been hiding in darkness usually had all jumped out as if it became their world, mocking the Goddesses under their eyes.
The End of Days.
The world known to humankind was crumbling.
“Count, we must move!”
However, Blanc could only look at that appearance.
Because he wasn't yet qualified to reach her.
If the one standing in this spot was the Grand Mage of the Illusion School Ulrich, or the last Sword Saint of the past life era Gornas Balthazar.
If it were them, they could have moved footsteps without hesitation and grabbed the collar of that woman disappearing beyond the darkness, splitting the rift of the world under the moonlight.
“……My world.”
However, Blanc wasn't as strong or massive as them yet, and thus wasn't qualified to reach the truth of the world.
“Shall burn white!”
Blanc just had to do what needed to be done right now.
That was the best he could do.
A massive wave of soil, which didn't lose its momentum even after breaking the Void Knights, was pressing in toward the knights.
“Everyone gathered centering on me!”
“Aaaah, what is that!”
“Everyone here!”
Instead of rushing at the tree disappearing beyond the darkness splitting the rift of the world, Blanc thrust his sword toward the massive wave of soil approaching them.
He decided to protect his knights rather than a vain single strike that would produce no result.
Although it was a massive wave enough to cover the forest and more, the white thunderbolt revealed its existence not yielding to it.
The shining thunderbolt wasn't powerful enough to put to sleep the roughly rushing wave of soil entirely, but it was sharp enough to cut a part of it.
A Single Sword cutting a part of the massive flow humans couldn't resist.
The woman moving her feet into the rift she created saw a small light splitting the house-sized black wave.
Although that light was faint, it was fulfilling its duty, and it was the only single light shining in the Black Forest where all sorts of dark things jumped out and ran wild.
She smiled looking at the flashing struggle Blanc created and said.
“Although a light of different color, you perform the same thing.”
The woman wearing a black veil recalled a young knight who thrust a sword at her a long time ago looking at that light.
A burning torch was engraved on that knight’s sword.
And the light of that torch was brightening the darkness like the sword Blanc thrust now.
***
“I tell you decisively, last night was the weirdest night among nights spent in my life.”
The moonlight that ran wild last night disappeared.
The time when the blue light of dawn harboring light stays in the clouds.
Franz was scraping away soil moving his hands and mouth ceaselessly.
Although that appearance was a shabby and strange spectacle to call a successor of a Meritorious Noble family, Franz was originally a person not bound by common sense.
“Found it!”
There was something catching on Franz’s fingertip digging the ground.
“Cough!”
The last dwarf buried in the ground was pulled out by Barzio, coughing up soil as he emerged.
“It is a great fortune that there are no dead people.”
Sten stroked his chest in relief seeing his subordinate pulled out last was in a living state, not a corpse.
“……That went well.”
Blanc put down his scabbard digging the ground listening to Sten’s report.
Blanc also appeared messy with sweat and soil.
Although it was a massive wave of soil as if the ground and sky overturned, the investigation team could preserve their lives thanks to the space Blanc cut out.
Sten remembered not only Blanc’s skill cutting the wave but also his appearance digging through soil piles in a messy state for his member.
That appearance was something that erased a little of the prejudice Sten held against humans until now.
“……Thank you.”
“Aren't we the same investigation team?”
Blanc smiled and patted Sten’s shoulder.
And stood up from his seat and looked around.
The sun just beginning to rise was illuminating the forest that was covered entirely in black.
“We can no longer call it the Black Forest.”
At Blanc’s words, Sten also looked around.
“Although I don't know much about evil or magic, I think I roughly know what that woman did here.”
The trees that were in the forest were all dried and twisted.
The trees that possessed black and hard outer shells had now lost that imposing shape and changed to gray-white, drying and dying as if caught in a disease.
It wasn't just trees.
The soil on the ground they were stepping on had also all become crumbly like sand grains.
The Black Forest had all its energy stolen.
“If it were normal times, we might have liked it, but…….”
It was the Black Forest that the dwarves of Brotswav found difficult to deal with.
Since it dried and twisted overnight, in a way it could be called good news, but.
“Seeing that crazy tree last night and this state now, even I don't know what to do…….”
Because they knew this matter occurred due to Evil, they couldn't just be happy unconditionally.
Around the group, there weren't only fallen and dried-twisted trees.
Hundreds, thousands of animal carcasses were scattered everywhere.
Things cut by Void Knights and torn by the wave created by the tree were scattered everywhere.
Dried-twisted forest and carcasses of black-dyed animals dead in droves.
The appearance of what used to be the Black Forest, where even the wind became dry, was desolate enough to make one wonder if the appearance after the world ended would be like this.
“……Count.”
While Blanc and Sten quietly captured that scene in their eyes, Rakshar brought a helmet crumpled here and there.
“You managed to find it.”
It seemed Rakshar found what was buried in the massive wave of soil using the Werewolf’s unique sense of smell.
A fishy smell flowed out from the helmet.
Blanc quietly lifted it to look and carefully lifted the visor of the helmet that was down.
CREAK-.
The visor opening made an unpleasant sound because the joints didn't fit as it was crumpled.
“……As expected.”
Blanc, having lifted the visor, met eyes with the thing inside the helmet.
Two pitch-black and void eyes.
It was void eyes he had seen countless times in his past life.
“Aleid…….”
However, the knight who possessed these eyes showed an appearance different from the ones stained by the Void he knew.
Blanc stood still looking at the void-stained eyes.
From when did it go awry, from where did it change.
The woman who disappeared taking the tree dancing under the moonlight.
And knights stained by the Void acting one step closer to humans unlike the past life.
Things that didn't appear in the past life due to the branch point called himself were coming up continuously.
Clearly he thought he approached one step closer to the truth, but it felt like he was still trapped in fog.
However, there was one thing Blanc perceived certainly.
‘If I advance, someday I will meet it.’
That was that he must advance forward.
The path he had walked until now was moving following the stars Ulrich planted.
Although Ulrich’s stars didn't light the front right now, the direction Blanc had walked meanwhile was correct.
Therefore, if he does as he does now, and in the future, someday.
Someday the opportunity to reach the reality of the Void would come again.
“Lord Sten. Let’s return.”
Brotswav’s warriors and Blanc’s knights who rushed in to find the cause of the accident happened in the Black Forest.
They achieved the intended purpose.
The dwarves found the existence of the woman who dyed the Black Forest with Evil.
And Blanc could reach the truth about the Void even a little through that Evil.
And the comradeship formed between Blanc’s knights and Brotswav’s warriors who relied on each other under the crazy moonlight was also something that could be called an achievement of this investigation.
The investigation team leaving the gray-white forest.
In the spot they left, only a single crumpled helmet lay alone.
***
A battlefield where countless banners are fluttering.
“Prince.”
A middle-aged man with hair swept back neatly entered Aleid’s tent.
“Report.”
Aleid was looking into documents without even turning his head.
“We failed to retrieve the Void Tree born by Evil.”
“…….”
Aleid looked at Ensadu over the documents.
Unlike the reddish-red hair that gave a warm feeling, his eyes were cold beyond measure.
“If you failed to retrieve it, did you cut it down?”
Ensadu, who always treated Aleid with a confident attitude, had no choice but to bow his head just for now.
“Failed that too.”
Aleid glared at Ensadu for a moment but soon turned his head to the documents.
“She was a person who always looked at different things although the goal was the same.”
Aleid thought of the woman wearing a black veil.
“……They say Count Blanc Cadmus was at that spot.”
Aleid, who didn't blink an eye even when hearing the operation failed, lost his composure when the name Blanc Cadmus came out.
“Count Blanc.”
Aleid’s pupils recalling Blanc in his memory deepened.
“It seems he thought one leg of Count Cohen was insufficient as a gift sent to me.”
Aleid felt Blanc rooting far away in Norington more troublesome than his eldest brother with whom he had to fight a battle sooner or later.
“He always appears at the decisive moment and hinders me.”
“They say he followed her traces in Baltimere all the way to the Black Forest.”
Blanc and Aleid, who eventually reached her in the Black Forest although the flow of the start was different.
Just as the Regressor Blanc noticed Aleid’s existence, Aleid also clearly perceived that the existence called Blanc was one blocking his task.
“……Dealing with a nearby enemy takes precedence over a distant enemy.”
And Aleid also made the same choice as Blanc.
To advance one step at a time dealing with the task given in front of him first.
“Another one leaving us like her won't appear again, right?”
“Of course.”
“Can you be certain?”
Ensadu was an Evil who lightly surpassed human lifespan, but even throughout the long time he spent, there were few shining ones like Aleid.
When the old Evil Ensadu saw him, Aleid was an existence possessing the talent of a King.
“Of course. We are ones who already swore deeply to greet a new world under the Prince’s banner.”
That was why Ensadu decided to lift the banner called Aleid.
“We were created by Goddesses, but our existence wasn't recognized. We know well that there is nowhere for us to stand in this world.”
Ensadu said with shining eyes.
“Unless we set up a banner ourselves and create a place for us to be.”
One of Gartaria’s banners, Aleid.
New banner, new order.
“We will do our best for the new world the Prince will create.”
And a new world.
Things unrecognized in the world were trying to raise their heads.
“Good.”
Hearing Ensadu’s words, Aleid lifted the tent and stepped outside.
Battlefield.
His soldiers were setting up camp toward a massive castle.
Gartaria’s capital, Weimar.
Aleid stood in front of its massive majesty.
Where he was born and raised.
“I will no longer wait for the world to recognize me.”
The place where his mother burned to death.
Aleid’s eyes looking at that place burned coldly.
Inside his eyes, the image of his mother dying quietly burning amidst terrible pain without being able to shout injustice for her son was engraved.
“Now I will make you recognize me.”
The Prince whose existence was threatened and those hiding in darkness knocked on the gates of Weimar.
The End of Days raised its banner high and shouted.
That they are here.