Karnak, Monarch of Death

The Monarch of Death of the past. That statement from Emil was enough to catch Karnak completely off guard. If Emil, as Tesranach’s avatar, knew Karnak’s true identity, it meant that the God of Death himself was aware of who Karnak truly was.

How does he know?

Karnak, of course, was well aware that Tesranach had once been known as the Monarch of Death. Karnak had systematically oppressed Tesranach’s followers, from Demphis onwards, to extract every shred of information from them.

On the other hand, everyone who knew of Karnak’s past was bound to him. None had ever been taken by Tesranach. It made no sense. Had there ever been a case where someone knew Karnak’s true identity without being told?

Actually, there was.

Indeed, Martial King Lapicel had known about Karnak’s past. To this day, he had never found out how she had learned that truth. Fearing the collapse of her soul, he had never dared awaken her to ask.

Karnak’s hands pulsed with chaos mana. “Well, perhaps this is for the best.”

From experience, asking Emil how he knew would be a poor choice. It would only play into the enemy’s hands, which was likely why Emil had deliberately mentioned the fact.

“Either way, he was an enemy that needed to be defeated, but now I have one more reason.”

If he could dig deep into Emil’s soul, perhaps he could uncover the answer he had sought for so long. The longsword in Varos’s hand began to shine with silver light. “The only problem is... we have no idea how strong this enemy of ours truly is.”

Unlike with the martial kings or the archmages, there was no way to gauge the strength of the current Emil. After all, they had never seen him fight before.

Of course, through his sensing, Varos had also gauged the surface level of Emil’s aura. At best, it was only that of a purple knight. But could someone who was the avatar of Tesranach truly be that weak?

Emil scoffed softly before giving his sword a light flick. Brilliant streams of aura light rippled along the blade. It was a violently pulsating purple aura. Karnak and Varos’s expressions shifted oddly.

“Eh?”

“He’s really just purple-tier?”

A chill ran down their spines. For someone purple-tier to be this confident, what on earth was he hiding?

Gripping his aura sword, Varos stepped forward. “I’ll test the waters first, young master.”

“If it’s too bitter, spit it out.”

As expected from men who lived for food, even their metaphors were in poor taste. Silvery chains slithered like snakes toward Emil’s flanks.

Emil moved immediately. His purple aura blade slashed toward the incoming chain blades, the two clashing and tangling midair. The one to break was Varos’s aura chains. The shock knocked him back as he let out a groan.

The destructive force Emil possessed was on a completely different level. In terms of sheer power, it seemed comparable even to martial kings like Gellard or Dreltein.

Varos spat out the blood pooling at the corner of his lips. “Damn, that’s bitter.”

Emil tilted his head in confusion, not understanding the comment. Wiping his lips, Varos frowned. “Somehow, this feels familiar.”

***

Blue lightning surged down the corridor, destroying everything it touched and sending shards of stone scattering in all directions. Leven closed the distance while weaving through the falling lightning.

Delphiad Swordsmanship: Storm King’s Barrage!

His dazzling chain of strikes aimed for Diogres’s back just as the mage finished launching the lightning. The flurry was so quick that even a mage’s reflexes would struggle to react. Yet Diogres evaded with ease.

His entire body slipped sideways down the corridor like a breeze. It was the Wind Step spell Karnak often favored, set to trigger automatically in advance.

Dodging, Diogres glanced back at Leven, a murmur of admiration escaping him.

“Impressive.” Then, as if mocking him, he continued his casting. “Blossoming Flame Flower.”

Explosions erupted in the air, sending Leven’s body flying backward. Even though he had reinforced himself with aura at the last moment, his skin split open and blood sprayed into the air.

Leven crashed to the ground, rolling across the floor. Lapicel leapt forward in alarm. “Leven!”

Her purple aura gleamed vividly, splitting into six distinct streams.

Tascal Swordsmanship: Sixfold Slash!

Though named Tascal, it was practically Lapicel’s own original style now. Truthfully, anything past Fivefold Strike was uncharted territory. Each slash followed a mysterious trajectory, dancing like light through the air. A deeper smile curved across Diogres’s lips. “Truly strong.”

It was the moment the six slashes carved through his entire form. Suddenly, Diogres’s figure vanished, the sword lights slicing empty air in vain. “But it won’t matter.”

It was an illusion. Illusions that toyed with the human mind were the domain of necromancy, but illusions that manipulated light were firmly the realm of magic. With a gentle smile, Diogres created five additional duplicates around him. “Can you tell which one is real?”

Struggling to her feet, Lapicel took her stance, while Leven called out. “Don’t rely on your eyes! If you focus your mind, you can sense which one is real!”

“Yes!”

She answered obediently, though in truth, Lapicel had already been doing exactly that for quite some time. The two of them quickly pinpointed Diogres’s true form and struck as one. And yet, both of their blades sliced through empty air.

Huh?

I was sure I sensed the real one...

That, too, had only been an illusion.

“The essence of magic is in deceiving even your intuition,” Diogres sneered as he lightly swept down Dawnshroud staff. “Dance of Falling Frost.”

Dozens, then hundreds of ice arrows formed in midair and began to rain down like a storm. Leven and Lapicel’s faces paled. There were simply too many, covering far too wide an area. There was no way to dodge this!

Ah, damn!

Wh-what do we do?

Just then, accompanied by a sharp battle cry, a massive blue aura blade swept straight for Diogres.

It was truly enormous. A blade of light nearly ten meters long and a meter thick. Calling this a sword almost felt like an insult to swords themselves. The glowing beam swept through all five of Diogres’s illusions at once.

Clicking his tongue, Diogres retreated backward. No matter how well he hid, there was no way to guard against an attack that swept away both reality and illusion in one fell swoop. All the illusions shattered, and the spell he was casting broke apart. Thanks to that, Leven and Lapicel narrowly escaped the crisis.

“Are you both alright?”

“Y-yeah, sis...”

Returning her aura blade to its normal size, Serati leapt forward once more. Diogres once again spread his illusion magic around him, five copies of the archmage appearing to face her.

But unlike Leven and Lapicel, Serati didn’t even try to distinguish between the illusions and the real one. Sense the true one if you focus?

How the hell am I supposed to do that? No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t tell them apart. So what was she supposed to do? Simple. Just don’t bother distinguishing them!

She slammed her left foot down on the corridor floor. Then, she kicked the marble upward. A stone slab several meters across floated into the air. She launched a powerful side kick, sending it flying.

Who cared if it was real or an illusion? If she swept them all away, she’d hit something regardless! The enormous stone slab hurtled toward all five of Diogres’s forms at once.

Watching the massive chunk of rock bearing down on him, the archmage clicked his tongue. This was certainly not something such a pretty woman should be doing. “How utterly brutish!”

At the same time, Dawnshroud staff flared with light. A beam of lightning split the air with a sharp crack. Ignoring finesse to push through with sheer force alone? Sorry, but when it came to pure destructive power, he had the upper hand!

The lightning bolt shattered the stone slab and shot toward Serati. It was impossible to expect her to pull off the refined, instantaneous aura defense that Leven or Lapicel could. She simply took the searing lightning bolt with her bare body.

With a scream, the young woman’s body smashed through the temple wall, flying out the other side. The wall crumbled, massive debris clattering in all directions, shaking the entire temple.

Moments later, through the settling dust, Serati emerged, covered in blood, pressing a hand to her forehead. “Owww, that hurts...”

Diogres shook his head in disbelief. “What a peculiar girl...”

To take that hit head-on and only complain that it hurts? Normally, she wouldn’t even have had the chance to cry out, because her body would have been obliterated.

I truly don’t understand... How can she be this strong, doing things like that?

Leven and Lapicel’s strength was within the realm of comprehension. Weren’t they both talents destined to become martial kings someday? They were simply unfinished products, not yet complete.

But that red-haired woman was different. She was by no means a master. Leven and Lapicel’s swordsmanship was far more precise and intricate. Even from a mage’s perspective, that much was clear.

It was simply that her base abilities were absurdly high. If Leven and Lapicel were like the most ferocious lynxes in the world, Serati felt more like a slow, dim-witted grizzly bear. But no matter how fierce a lynx was, one swipe from a grizzly bear would kill it instantly.

As he examined her, Diogres’s expression subtly shifted. “She’s undoubtedly strong, but I can’t understand why she’s strong.”

That aura enveloping the woman’s entire body was unmistakably aura, yet within it, a strange, other kind of energy seeped out. He had felt something similar to that before. “She’s just like Sir Emil.”

Emil had never truly unleashed his full power before him or Giyen Ren, but he had occasionally displayed the Grace of Tesranach. From Serati now, he sensed an energy much like the light Emil commanded.

Could it be that she, too, was wielding Grace? Impossible. In this era, there could be no Grace apart from that of Tesranach. “But then... what on earth is this?”

Serati herself was just as bewildered. “Emil? Emil Strauss?”

Was there really another human like her? And he was the Avatar of Tesranach, no less?

A being once called the Monarch of Death had sent an avatar, and that avatar was similar to another Monarch of Death’s vassal? It was ominous.

To anyone watching, the connection would have seemed clear. But there were more pressing matters at hand now.

Drawing forth her massive blue aura, Serati hurled herself forward once more. I’ll save the world first and think about this later!

***

Varos’s aura blade danced, weaving a brilliant net of rapid strikes that occupied every angle as it pressed forward. Like lightning darting through the clouds, his slashes rained down upon the enemy.

Delphiad Swordsmanship: Thunderclap Sky!

Karnak, too, gathered his chaos mana, unleashing spell after spell. “Creeping Flames of the Dark Heavens!”

Amidst the raging flurry of strikes, black fireballs bombarded the target. It was a flawless, relentless combination of assault that left not a single gap.

Yet Emil showed no sign of panic. “Futile!”

His purple aura blade tore through both the slashes and the spells, shredding them as if they were nothing. Like a storm scattering all before it, every attack was thrown off course, striking the temple walls and corridors instead and causing explosions.

All the strikes and spells they had unleashed were rendered useless. It was only a single counterattack, yet the power imbued within it was overwhelming beyond reason.

Karnak shook his head after taking a step back. “No doubt about it.”

Emil’s level and his actual power were on entirely different planes, just like someone else he knew.

Varos clicked his tongue. “Sir Leven will be disappointed.”

Before the battle, Leven had come to Karnak with a quiet request.

—Is there no way to save my brother?

—Hm? Emil?

—Yes. You saved Sir Drel and Master Dios, didn’t you?

—That was under very particular circumstances...

He had promised he would at least try. But now, it seemed that promise would be impossible to keep. The Emil before them now was no weaker than a martial king or an archmage. And it was all because of that incomprehensible power—Grace.

Wait, does that mean Serati is using Grace as well? At this point, it was the most reasonable hypothesis. But even that made no sense. Whose Grace would that even be?

Tesranach’s Grace was the only one that existed. The Grace of the Twilight Serakal? A goddess who didn’t even exist was bestowing Grace?

This is absurd. Karnak’s eyes cooled, hardening with resolve. My reasons for ripping into Emil’s soul just keep piling up.

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