SSS Gacha Master: I Can Only Gacha Bikini Warriors

Chapter 84: 84. I Caught Him When He Fell and He Repaid Me With Information I Was Not Ready

"I razed villages to the ground to secure the components."

"I corrupted men who were loyal to their kings, turning them into hollowed-out puppets."

"I kidnapped the innocent and chained them to an altar to feed a god of hunger."

He didn’t take Lucian’s hand. Instead, he stepped even closer to the edge, the wind whipping the scent of ozone and ancient blood toward them.

"This isn’t just a tactical necessity, Lucian," Corvus said, his voice gaining a final, ironclad resolve. "This is my redemption."

"Or at least, the closest thing to it that a monster like me is allowed to have."

The air grew heavy, thick with the metallic tang of blood and the suffocating pressure of the divine dome. Serenia took a step forward, her movements uncharacteristically heavy, as if the very atmosphere were made of lead.

For the first time in all the years Lucian had known her through wars, through the rise of darkness, through the very shaping of the world, he saw her veil shatter. Tears, crystalline and bright, traced paths through the dust and sweat on her cheeks.

The goddess was weeping.

"Let me make it painless," she whispered, her voice a fragile thread in the howling wind. She reached out a hand, her palms glowing with a soft, soothing warmth. "Let me wrap you in the light, Corvus."

"Let the transition be a sleep, not a slaughter. At least... let me give you that much."

Corvus turned his head to look at her, and for a moment, the madness in his eyes was replaced by a terrifying, lucid peace.

"No," he said, the word firm and final. "No healing... No numbing the edges..."

"Let me feel it, Serenia."

"Let me feel every thread of the ritual tearing away from my marrow."

"It’s the last honest thing I can do. To feel the weight of what I’ve built... to feel the cost of what I’ve done."

He didn’t wait for her protest. With a sudden, violent grace, he raised his staff.

The weapon was no longer a tool of command; it was a conductor of agony. The light bleeding from the crystal at its tip was a nauseating, beautiful swirl of violet corruption and Serenia’s golden purification, a bruised, flickering radiance that looked like a dying star.

He didn’t point it at the Calamity. He didn’t point it at the warriors or the encroaching darkness.

He pointed the tip of the staff directly at his own chest, right where the largest anchor point was woven into his heart.

Then, he triggered the severance.

The sound that tore from Corvus’s throat was not the grand, operatic cry of a fallen hero in the legends. It was something much more primal, much more devastating.

It was the wet, guttural sound of a man whose very bones were being unmade. It was the sound of a soul being shredded by a thousand invisible hooks.

CRACK.

The sound of a major magical artery snapping echoed across the plateau like a whip. Corvus’s body arched backward with such force that his spine seemed to groan under the tension.

A spray of dark, violet-tinged blood erupted from his mouth, splattering the stone and the hem of Lucian’s cloak. He wasn’t just dying; he was being dismantled.

Every second of the minute-long ritual felt like an eternity of exquisite, unmitigated torture. He gripped the staff so hard his knuckles turned white, then purple, as the corruption surged through his arms, visibly bulging beneath his skin like writhing serpents.

Above them, the Calamity reacted.

The massive, hundred-foot manifestation of the entity shuddered violently. The stable, terrifying presence it had established began to ripple and fray.

The eyes, hundreds of them, staring from the darkness, blinked in a frantic, uncoordinated spasm. The anchor points, the metaphysical tethers that had allowed the god to claw its way into their world, were dissolving.

One by one, Corvus burned them away, sacrificing his own life force to cauterize the wounds in reality.

The sky, once choked with violet miasma, began to brighten. The colossal entity began to retract, its massive, fleshy limbs pulling back into the chasm with a sickening, suction-like sound, as if the void itself were swallowing the monster back down.

The edges of the chasm began to grind together, the earth groaning as the rift started to seal.

As the last anchor point vanished, the light in Corvus’s eyes went out. The tension left his body all at once, his muscles turning to water, his strength spent in the most violent expenditure of will in history.

He fell.

He didn’t fall like a man; he fell like a broken doll, limp and hollowed out.

"CORVUS!" Lucian screamed, lunging forward.

He caught him just before he hit the blood-slicked stones, the impact jarring Lucian’s own bones. He collapsed to his knees, pulling the broken man into his lap, cradling Corvus’s head against his chest as the silence of the retreating storm settled over the plateau.

Lucian pulled him close, his arms trembling as he tried to anchor the man to the world of the living. Corvus felt unnervingly light in his arms as if the sheer weight of his sins and the massive, dark presence of the corruption had been the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

Now that the ritual was severed, the bulk of that dark energy had burned away, leaving behind a man who felt fragile, hollowed out, and terrifyingly mortal.

Corvus’s breathing was a ragged, wet struggle. It was the sound of a man whose lungs were fighting a losing battle against the fluid in them, a rhythmic, desperate hitching that served as a grim countdown.

Every inhalation sounded like a crack of dry parchment; every exhalation was a shuddering rattle that vibrated through Lucian’s own chest.

Serenia was there in an instant, her divine grace replaced by the frantic, precise movements of a battlefield surgeon. Her hands hovered over Corvus’s torso, tracing the invisible ley lines of his anatomy, her eyes glowing with a soft, diagnostic light as she scanned the wreckage of his body.

"He’s alive," she whispered, though the word lacked the triumph of a victory.

Her voice was tight, strained by the sheer intensity of the task. "But barely. The severance... it tore through his meridians like a scythe through wheat."

"The corruption is mostly gone, which is the only reason his internal organs haven’t been completely liquified by the magical backlash."

"If the darkness had stayed, he would have been a husk." She looked up at Lucian, her eyes brimming with a devastating, helpless sorrow. "But he is fading, Lucian."

"His essence is leaking into the world. He will be gone before the first light of morning."

Corvus’s eyes drifted open. They were clouded, the vibrant violet replaced by a dull, glazed stare, but they were fixed on the sky.

The heavens were changing; the bruised, suffocating clouds of the Calamity were dissolving into a pale, sickly grey as the entity retreated into the depths of the sealed chasm. The world was returning to normal, but for Corvus, the world was ending.

"Tell her..." he began, but the word broke into a wet, hacking cough that sprayed a fine mist of crimson across his pale lips. He swallowed hard, his throat working convulsively. "Tell her... I’m sorry."

Lucian leaned closer, his heart aching at the sheer vulnerability of the man who had once commanded armies with a single glance. "Who, Corvus? Tell me who."

"Seraphina," Corvus breathed, the name barely a ghost of a sound. "I was the storm... while she was the shield."

"She was fighting with everything she had to keep the capital from crumbling, to keep the people safe... while I was... while I was tearing the foundations out from under them."

"Tell her... the architect regrets the design."

"I’ll tell her," Lucian promised, his voice thick with emotion.

He gripped Corvus’s shoulder, trying to pour his own strength into the dying man. "I swear it, Corvus. She’ll know."

A terrifying silence fell. Corvus’s chest stilled.

For five, ten, fifteen seconds, there was no movement, only the sound of the wind whistling through the newly quiet battlefield.

Lucian’s breath hitched, a silent prayer dying in his throat, until a sudden, violent gasp forced its way out of Corvus’s lungs, a desperate, shuddering reclamation of life.

Corvus’s gaze shifted, focusing on Lucian with a sudden, startling clarity that seemed to pierce through the veil of death.

"Your father," he rasped.

Lucian froze.

The name hit him like a physical blow to the solar plexus, stealing the air from his lungs. "What?"

"He was... just like you," Corvus whispered, a ghost of a recognition flickering in his eyes. "A man of iron... and a man of grace."

"A good heart. A warrior who knew the cost of peace."

"He died fighting a Calamity... long ago. Not a god of hunger, but a shadow of the same kind." A heavy, rattling cough shook his frame, and he winced, his face contorting in a mask of agony. "Ask Ironheart..."

"The old man... he remembers. He’s known the truth since before you were even a thought in the stars..."

His voice trailed off into a soft, exhaled sigh. The tension in his jaw vanished.

The frantic, desperate light in his eyes flickered once, twice, and then dimmed into a permanent, peaceful stillness.

His eyes closed, and the heavy silence of the morning began to settle over the broken man in Lucian’s arms.