Chapter 95. The Sky is Falling (2)
The place where the Cadmus family mansion used to be, of which not even ash remained now.
A single tree was standing there.
The thing darker than darkness was giving a feeling as if not of this world.
And toward that place.
The sky was collapsing.
Dark sky, black clouds were collapsing toward the highest place in Norington.
Knights watching that scene felt some emotion they had been ignoring until now creeping up in their hearts.
An emotion they tried to ignore even on the battlefield, even at the moment facing death, was digging into their souls.
“Do not crumble!”
Nevertheless, knights stepped into darkness using their swords as torches.
Evil hands stretching in from all directions grabbed their ankles, but the knights did not stop.
Because they were also vaguely feeling it.
That they must not leave that evil tree as is.
The knight’s sense, the instinct of those pursuing honor, was saying so.
“These are no ordinary corpses!”
Noel and Aubert were standing at the very front, gritting their teeth blocking things rushing at Blanc.
“Different from the warlock bastard’s dungeon!”
Aubert saw a young child clinging to him with unbelievable grip strength.
It was an unbelievable strength to say it came from a small body.
The characteristic of Void forcibly triggering possessed potential.
Aubert, encountering that for the first time, panicked at the grotesqueness transcending common sense.
‘Don’t know if they are dead or alive!’
Noel looked around calmly and watched the unknown things surrounding the knights.
Ominous things staring at them with pitch-black eyes without a single white.
They all had pitch-black branches embedded in their bodies.
It was a black color darker than darkness.
It was like looking at a night sky without a single star visible.
“Baron Kamora……!”
Blanc ground his teeth toward his enemy who must have executed this deed.
Pitiful ones caught and bound by the Void, unable to die even in death.
Eventually, father’s enemy left a big scar on Norington and went.
“Don’t know what it is, but no time!”
Noel looked at the sky and shouted.
The collapsing sky was falling onto the tree settled in the highest place of Norington.
Darkness started from the ground and darkness started from the sky were about to touch.
The darkness they harbored was so dark that it felt as if the world they were treading on would break.
Crack of the World.
If one brought their gaze into that dark crack…….
“Get a grip!”
At Blanc’s shout, Noel was startled and returned to reality.
It wasn’t just Noel.
Knights who had lost focus as if possessed by something.
“Must not make eye contact!”
White Thunderbolt emitted by Blanc was shining.
Knights tried to regain their senses seeing that light and concentrate to deal with enemies in front of their eyes, but.
‘Not making eye contact!’
Predicting the opponent's movement through gaze is the basic of basics a knight must possess.
Knights who had acted so all their lives had trouble shaking off the habit moving on the line of instinctive sense even though they heard and understood Blanc’s words.
“Damn it!”
Numerous Voids were flowing out from inside the pitch-black eyes of those polluted by Void surrounding them.
There was no way right now to avoid the gaze and not accept fear.
Then only one way remained now.
Just not falling into fear.
“These wicked things-!”
Knights wrapped Auras around their bodies much stronger than usual.
They had no leisure to worry about stamina or Aura depletion.
All knights were burning their whole bodies to oppose ominous and evil things rushing at them.
Under the collapsing sky.
Under the tree darker than darkness.
Only torches created by honorable ones burning themselves were shining brightly.
Perilously, as if about to fall, but.
Still without crumbling.
Blanc evaluated their courage and noble spirit highly seeing such knights, but knew well that it wouldn’t last long eventually.
Noel and Aubert’s pallid expressions, and the blood seeping from between Hansen’s tightly shut lips, spoke clearly of their limits.
And yet.
Even so, Blanc had no choice but to speak to them.
“Open a path!”
Blanc, the only regressor in this world, needed help.
Desperately.
So that the error of the past is not committed again.
So that humanity does not perish.
Even knowing knights reached limits already, he had no choice but to push shining ones into harsh darkness.
Before darkness touches.
Aubert, who read Blanc’s expression, smiled with all his might even amidst his face turning pale.
“Prepared to burn myself anytime for brightly shining honor!”
With Aubert’s rough shout, 15 knights drove themselves more harshly and walked into darkness, into deeper darkness.
Like that, they burned themselves and opened a path for the regressor Blanc Cadmus.
“Go! Little brother!”
Noel shouted while striking a Void-polluted one rushing at Blanc.
Blanc looked forward finding a gap instead of saying thank you to Noel.
It was seen.
Ominous tree.
The darkness he wanted to cut down so much.
A single streak of light capable of cutting down the huge malice eating away humanity.
“My world is white…….”
Blanc invoking his mental world with one eye closed.
However, he was late.
Just a little.
“This is!”
Darkness connected.
Huge dark clouds touched the darkness of the ominous tree located at the highest place in Norington.
Darkness and darkness connected, creating a scar on the world created by Goddesses.
Crack of the World.
Void flowed out from inside that crack and began to wrap around the Void Tree.
As the ominous tree began to stretch, ominous flowers bloomed inside it.
Within it, flowers opened ‘eyes’.
-The Void propagates through gaze.
“Everyone close their eyes!”
With the regressor’s scream, ominous flowers bloomed in profusion.
-And transmits through fear.
However, knights could not close their eyes despite Blanc’s scream.
Numerous ‘eyes’ bloomed stuck to the pitch-black tree, blinking wildly and rolling.
A sinister gaze started from deep, deep universe brought a huge finger to the scar created in this world, pried it open, and was stealing looks at the knights.
It was trying to make eye contact.
Knights eventually ended up feeling fear at the huge wickedness trying to transcend the world.
“Aaaaaah!”
Overwhelming presence.
Knights who ended up facing ‘it’ tore at their eyes and fell to their knees.
Ominous and sinister gazes were stabbing and digging into the souls of shining ones mercilessly, polluting them.
“Stand…… Stand up!”
Blanc shouted toward sinking knights, but knights with no experience with Void were just floundering trapped in inescapable darkness.
‘Damn it!’
Torches lighting up the darkness went out one by one.
Noble and honorable ones ended up captured by Void.
However, even at the moment torches were going out, just a single light did not go out.
“I think I will give up here!”
The regressor who jumped over 30 years gritted his teeth, stood up, and took a step again.
Void-polluted ones clung like a swarm of rats toward the only shining light and began to gnaw at him.
‘Eventually…….’
Blanc was alone.
Perhaps the regression plan failed from the moment it was only him alone who fell into this timeline.
“Still!”
Still, he must do it.
Even if he dies trying.
Because there was only him here.
The solitary regressor walking into darkness taking a difficult step while shaking off waves of numerous black hands stretching from all directions.
Huge pressure making it hard even to breathe.
And Void and darkness.
Loneliness and burden the sole regressor holds pressed down on his shoulders wildly.
Blanc carrying those things too heavy alone was being crushed.
However, at that moment.
There was a light shining brightly behind his back.
“……!”
Not only Blanc but also Void-polluted ones.
And even up to numerous eyes bloomed on the Void Tree.
It was such an ecstatic light that any existence had to look momentarily.
“Flag is…….”
The flag was shining.
The flag drawn with a black wolf held by Cadmus knight Rakshar.
Under that black wolf, there was another pattern lighting up bluely.
“Lord Ulrich!”
The white flag that marked Vicious' Gorge Where Even Tears Dried Up.
That flag was lighting up light by itself opposing Void.
‘Night Watchers.’
The glorious pattern signifying the search party of the Liberation Front was lighting itself bluely under the black wolf.
The wizard trapped in the past 190 years ago and the glorious search party annihilated 30 years later were lighting up Blanc’s back.
They were still watching the night.
And under that blue light.
Blanc’s knights were waking from the nightmare.
Blanc was not alone.
“Make a path for me!”
Blanc howled to them.
“Help me so I can cut that down!”
Knights of blue light who woke from the nightmare and heard Blanc’s order raised their swords.
***
Although they couldn't know how it happened, knights realized the flag Rakshar was holding exerted mysterious power and made them wake from the nightmare.
“Gather around the standard-bearer of Cadmus!”
Although knights were frantic having just woken from a terrible nightmare, they followed Noel’s instruction with instinctive sense.
Knights forming a formation around Rakshar holding the flag and opposing Void-polluted ones following Noel’s instruction.
“Huff…… Huff…….”
However, even while knights were fighting hard, Simon’s view was looking at another place.
He was still having his gaze stolen.
A middle-aged woman standing across darkness.
She had an ominous branch stuck in her neck and was looking at Simon with a strangely bent neck.
It was Mother.
Mother with her whole body covered in blood was spreading her arms and approaching him.
“Mother…….”
Simon knew.
That the sinister thing in front of him was not his mother.
However, her appearance digging into the end of Simon’s gaze was clearly Mother.
The place where he could obtain peace in this darkness was only Mother’s embrace approaching him now.
“No!”
Void looked at Simon with pitch-black eyes and spread two arms.
Void held Simon tenaciously and did not let go.
He was still inside the nightmare.
“Sob…… Sob……!”
Simon, who was chosen as a Knight of Void in the last life.
Simon, who possessed outstanding talent but was steeped in despair about the world along with a sensitive nature, fell into Void’s call too easily.
And even now.
There was a dark thing riding in through his delicate and sharp sense and dyeing his soul.
In gasping breath, Simon tried to close his eyes somehow, but Void having found prey did not let him go easily.
Void having found a crack in his soul dug into it tenaciously.
Blue light spreading from the flag was not reaching Simon, whose gaze was stolen.
Simon was feeling his soul gradually crumbling down.
It was becoming empty (Void).
He tried to close his eyes somehow, but it felt as if someone was forcibly grabbing and lifting his eyelids.
“Ugh…… Ugh……!”
Simon held tears and struggled to avoid the gaze of the huge thing trying to gnaw at his soul.
In front of Simon rolling his eyes wildly and avoiding gaze, instantly.
Someone’s back was seen.
A black-haired man walking forward heavily step by step out of the flag’s protection.
His back figure heading through darkness was huge, but shabby because he stood alone, and pitiful as much.
Cursed things were rushing from all directions of Blanc.
They rushed mercilessly at the lord he cherished like life, scratching, stabbing, cutting, and wounding him.
However, his lord was walking forward step by step without yielding to them.
Step by step, step by step.
Perilously, only alone.
Despite the knights’ fighting, the blue light of the flag had yet to reach him.
In darkness, Blanc was alone.
Simon Diez ended up shedding tears seeing such a back figure of Blanc.
Despair greater than when he received cold gazes of half-brothers and cold father as an illegitimate son of the Diez family.
Despair and helplessness greater than then rippled inside Simon’s soul.
‘Again I am!’
When he collapsed in darkness and groaned in pain, only the light called Blanc reached out a hand to him.
But what is he doing right now?
When his lord is heading through darkness lonely alone, what on earth is he doing?
‘Again!’
He was merely frustrated and despairing at things blocking him in front again.
Simon was angry at himself looking only helplessly like this.
“Huu…… Huu…….”
Now he had to stand up by himself.
Like his lord heading through darkness in front.
Only then would qualification to stand by his side be given.
“Simon!”
“Come back!”
Simon walked one step to his lord out of the flag’s protection range by his own will.
“Ugh!”
There were terrible things clinging roughly through his gaze still.
They rode in Simon’s eyes and bit his soul roughly.
Things too dark, heavy, and fearful for a mere human to carry.
As if not of this world.
Gaze of a huge thing whose end couldn’t be known even looking and looking.
Simon looked at the back figure of the lord carrying that alone and vowed.
“Cannot leave him alone anymore…….”
Huge malice was knocking on Simon’s soul through eyes that wouldn’t close.
Mother covered in blood was seen.
‘If I cannot close my eyes!’
Simon lifted his sword and brought it to his eyes.
That sword was an honorable sword his lord bestowed personally.
“Si-mon!”
Hansen realized what Simon was trying to do now and screamed in astonishment, but.
Darker than darkness.
In ominous darkness that seemed to have gathered the most terrible things in this world.
Simon concentrated only on the sword.
Only one thing seen inside his gaze forcibly opened.
Only the shining sword the lord bestowed.
To the sword given by the glorious one who pulled him out of the abyss of despair.
That sword, faint light shining from that sword.
Was the last light Simon saw in this world.
SLICE.
Red tears flowed from Simon’s eye rims.
Those tears flowed down along the sword the lord bestowed.
Like that, Simon lost light.
Things called Void could not cling to Simon who lost light anymore.
“I am coming. My Lord.”
Simon who lost light opened his eyes in pitch-black darkness.
He opened his Mind’s Eye.