"You're looking healthy. It's good to see you, Milited."
Belluna, hefting a large box, flashed Milited a bright-eyed smile.
There wasn't a speck of goodwill in that smile — only killing intent and rage, brimming over.
"Killing you while you were a sickly little wreck wouldn't have felt nearly as satisfying."
"...I was your master, once."
Milited wiped away the tears welling at the corners of its eyes and murmured the words.
"Shouldn't you show at least the bare minimum of respect?"
"Oh my, let's not twist the truth."
She smiled sweetly and slowly raised a finger.
"What? You were married?"
Its eyes widened as if it had genuinely never considered it.
"Didn't know that. To think there was a human out there who'd take in a bitch like you... well, if what you're saying is true, then I'm honestly being slandered here. I had no idea you were married, so how could I have ordered your husband's death? Though, if you're sore about me missing the wedding, I'll gladly apologize for that."
The mocking words were barely out of its mouth when Belluna's smile vanished and she swept her arm out in a wide arc.
The gust caught Milited and sent it flying.
"I never said my husband was human."
Her voice trembled, finely splintered by rage.
"So. How. Did. You. Know. That?"
Sprawled where it had landed, it gave a crooked grin.
"...Heh. Been so long since I saw your face, I got careless and slipped up."
That was answer enough.
"What the actual fuck... what kind of situation is this?"
Ahn Do-hun muttered the words like he couldn't believe his eyes, greatsword drawn in one hand and a tall flagpole gripped in the other, a massive banner snapping at its top. He clicked his tongue once more in disbelief and swung his arm in a sweeping motion. The huge banner whipped through the air with a sharp, savage crack.
"Let no evil, nor any sin, take root beneath this banner!"
As if answering his thunderous shout, the flag rippled and faint motes of light spread outward in a wide arc.
Notification windows promptly began stacking one after the next — all stats rising, a blessing settling over the group, health and mana beginning to recover.
"Hah!"
Jin Ye-jeong was hurling potions in every direction with everything she had.
Each time a bottle shattered, the smoke that billowed out sent the clones recoiling in panic, and any clone that couldn't escape fast enough — the instant the smoke touched its body, it began to dissolve with a stomach-turning hiss.
A moment later, something rippled up from her shadow and took shape.
It was Henir's Shadow.
It cut down two or three clones that were closing on Jin Ye-jeong, then launched itself straight back toward Jin Ye-seul's shadow.
"Hahh..."
Watching Henir's Shadow return, Jin Ye-seul let out a small sigh and murmured to herself.
"Now I can actually fight."
Then she glanced at Jin Ye-jeong and whispered, voice barely above a breath.
The conversation would have to wait until they were alone.
"...Why on earth is my sister here? I'm sure I told her to hide somewhere safe."
With that, she hurled herself at the clones again.
It wasn't only her. Between Ahn Do-hun's buff and the arrival of Belluna, Ahn Do-hun, and Jin Ye-jeong, the rest of the group caught their breath and regrouped.
Three people, that was all. But their appearance had tipped the whole atmosphere onto our side.
In the middle of it, Belluna — still pinning Milited down with steady gusts of wind — made her way over to me.
"Things are uglier than I thought, hm? I came tearing over here assuming you'd be wrapping this up fast."
"...Yeah, they're trickier than I expected."
I had no excuse, so I just said the first thing that came to me. Belluna burst out laughing.
"Hah! 'Trickier than expected' — about a Seven Calamity!"
"More importantly, how did you even get in here? Not just anyone can step inside this place."
I meant it literally.
Entering this space, sealed off from the outside world, required wearing a ring forged from my scales.
Ahn Do-hun and Jin Ye-jeong had already had their rings, but Belluna hadn't.
She grinned and lifted a ring on a cord around her neck for me to see.
The moment I saw it, I knew it was Rauné's.
"Borrowed it from a kindred spirit. When I mentioned I'd be coming to help you, they handed it over without a second thought."
Then she set the large box she'd been carrying down on the ground in front of me with a heavy thunk.
"That is..."
"The Smith of Yado told me to deliver it."
She said it while glancing back and forth between someone bound up in the World Tree's branches and my face, nodding slowly.
"And it looks like I made it in time, thank goodness. See? I don't know what's going on, but you nearly carried that one for the rest of your life, didn't you?"
At her words I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding, and gave one deep nod.
She shrugged and gave me a quick wink.
"This is a bit of a stretch, I know, but seeing the state you're in, you probably can't use it properly. Want me to handle it this once?"
"No."
Belluna's hand stopped mid-reach. She looked at me.
"I'll do it."
I reached toward the clone bound in the World Tree's branches.
I tore the branches away with a sharp crackle and twisted my body. A bullet of lead shot through the space I'd occupied a heartbeat earlier. I grabbed the wrist that thrust the gun out from the gap and wrenched it sideways. Beside me, Belluna murmured,
"Oh my, full of fight, isn't she."
I yanked the child out of her cocoon like a radish pulled clean out of the soil. Then I pinned the thrashing thing down, restrained it, and threw open the lid of the box.
"......"
The clone looked up at me with a blank face and spoke.
"Oppa."
I met her gaze — my sister's face — and answered.
"Shut up."
With that, I stuffed the thing into the box and slammed the lid down.
It was the first time I'd ever held the item, but somehow I knew exactly how to use it, what it was for, everything. That had to be because the thing had been made solely for me.
With a sharp mechanical click, the box sealed shut and something that worked like a lock clamped into place.
One of the flower-shaped markings carved into the lid filled with color and glimmered.
The box, which had been thumping and bucking in protest, soon went still.
"Ta-da. Packaged and sealed."
Belluna clapped her hands together beside me.
I leaned my head against the box without a word and exhaled, deep and slow.
"...Thank you, Belluna."
"Hmm?"
"I mean it."
With that I slipped the box — no, the coffin holding my sister's clone — into my shadow.
Then I slowly raised my head and looked at Milited and the clones it had created.
Even in that brief moment, the clones had kept multiplying.
If we let our guard slip, this whole space could fill up with the things — that was the kind of momentum they had, like they meant to swallow every last one of us whole.
"What was that box?"
In the middle of it, Milited turned to me, perfectly at ease, and asked.
I didn't answer.
"I was going to summon your little sister again, but... strange, it feels like the essence, the roots, all of it has been ripped clean out. Why don't you give her back? She's one of my treasured pieces, you know. Shadow Walker."
"......"
"Oh dear, the silent treatment. You're really going to override the choice an adult woman made for herself? Smothering a grown sister like that — what an unpleasant kind of sibling affection. Did your uncle teach you that?"
...This time too, I gave no answer.
Words coming from her mouth might have shaken me. Words coming from its mouth couldn't move me an inch.
It made a face like it had lost interest, and then turned its gaze toward Belluna.
"Oh, that's right. Belluna. Do you remember these faces, by any chance?"
"What? Don't get chummy with me, it's disgusting."
Milited smiled — a pleasant, friendly smile — and gestured. Two lumps detached from its body.
The masses squirmed and took shape — a blond man, and a reindeer caked in jagged ice.
"This one served under me for a long time... and was a friend of yours, the one you killed. The other... hmm, I really can't place who this one is."
"......"
Belluna stared at the blond man in silence.
The man looked, to anyone's eye, exactly like Ivan Hunt.
"His name was, if I recall... Brix Hunt, wasn't it?"
"I'll kill you!!!"
The instant the words left her, Belluna's body exploded outward where she stood.
Then, no longer in human form but as the wind of nature itself, she hurled herself at Milited.
The ice-encrusted reindeer, the clone of Brix Hunt, and several clones with unusual powers moved to intercept her, as though they'd been waiting for this all along.
[A disgusting trick, as always....]
Sbeungali clicked his tongue.
[It's always wanted the blood and flesh of strong, unusual people. Even while it was sealed, its underlings must have been gathering these things for it.]
Even she wouldn't hold up long under concentrated fire like that.
More than anything, she wasn't sparing herself a single thought the way she normally would — she was throwing herself in headlong.
When I looked at her through Insight, the cuts on her body — small and large — were multiplying by the second.
"Mother..."
Watching her, Ivan murmured the word in a daze.
Then he snapped out of it, raised the arm where the magic bow had manifested, and aimed —
"Ngh."
A chill ran up my spine.
The kind of chill that came when you brushed up against something your body refused to accept on a basic, gut level.
And I wasn't the only one who felt it.
Lee Ye-eun was rubbing her own arm too, like she'd just shivered.
Me and Lee Ye-eun.
There was only one thing that made both of us react like this at the same time.
I turned my gaze, naturally, toward Kath Ryle.
Above his head, a scroll easily several meters long had unfurled, radiating an eerie light.
"...This is not how I clawed my way through everything to end up here."
It was the first time I'd ever heard his voice burn like that.
Then things began bursting out of the scroll one after another, and they fell into ranks beside Kath Ryle.
An army of homunculi — easily several dozen of them.
They all wore different faces, but every single one of them was Kath Ryle.
"Oh."
For once, Milited looked genuinely surprised, its eyes widening as it clapped its hands together.
It murmured in a voice that sounded honestly impressed.
"Remarkable. Any ordinary one would have their brain melt out in seconds, but he's holding together beautifully."
The man wearing Kath Ryle's face smiled, satisfied.
"As expected of one born from my own essence... should I be calling you my son? Anyway, even if a homunculus is only half a thing, if the source seed is good enough, this is what you get? Now this I didn't see coming."
"Shut up...!"
Kath Ryle cut it off, breathing ragged, and shouted —
"I have lived to kill you, and I am standing here right now, Milited!"
His fury was the signal.
A swarm of Kath Ryles surged toward the clones, and Milited's clones charged back to meet them. Several hundred figures crashed together and tangled into one writhing mass.
Until that moment, I'd never seen that many people fighting at once. I'd vaguely pictured something like a movie or a drama — every fight flashy and chaotic, each combatant their own spectacle.
But what played out in front of me looked more like lines pressing against lines, planes shoving against planes, each side fighting for territory.
When one side gave ground, the other pushed in; when a flank wavered, the rear ranks surged forward to plug the gap.
And both sides repeated it, over and over.
A few special types aside, Milited's clones were heavily weakened.
And Milited knew every one of Kath Ryle's techniques inside out.
Those two factors balanced the fight on a razor's edge.
"Haa."
I deliberately drew in another deep breath and let it out slow.
I could feel that the mind that had been on the verge of caving in moments ago was steadying again.
What was left was just rage at it, and shame at myself.
I slowly began to peel off the outer coat I was wearing.
"Oh my."
Evangelline Loengreen, who had stepped over to spray potion on my wounds, blinked her eyes in clear surprise.
I looked at Kath Ryle — nose bleeding, body shuddering — and at Alice Blesbuck, who was bracing him with both hands on his shoulder and back.
"Senior, clear me a path through the center."
[Authority 'Dragon Blood' will be used.]
"What? Ji-hyeok, what are you — what are you talking about...?"
Kath Ryle, who had been looking at me as if I'd said something nonsensical, stopped speaking, his expression going blank.
He wasn't the only one stunned.
Alice Blesbuck, Jin Ye-jeong, Ahn Do-hun, and the others who didn't know about this were wearing the same horrified look.
Evangelline Loengreen, standing right beside me, let out a "Hyaaak?!" — a shriek nothing like her usual composed self — and scrambled backward.
[Your heart pumps out the blood of a dragon, and the blood of a dragon begins to flow through your veins.]
[You will soon become a dragon.]
[The dragon will soon become you.]
[If anyone gets caught in this, that's not my problem.]
With those words, my field of vision began to change.
Somewhere, I heard someone murmur faintly in a daze.
"...Oh my god."
They weren't the only ones thrown by it.
Milited, still wearing Kath Ryle's face, was visibly flustered, scrambling for footing.
"M-Minerva?! No, no. That's not that bitch's form, it's close but it's different. Don't tell me, don't tell me...! Even for the owner of the pendant, how could a human possibly...!?"
[Wasn't that fun?]
I grinned and asked it.
[I'm having a great time myself.]
The next instant, a violent storm tore out of my mouth.
The storm swallowed Milited and its clones in a heartbeat.
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