Chapter 246
“You can’t handle Elvie now, and you have no one to help you. If you lose, everyone left in the tower will die.”
‘When he said I couldn’t handle it, did he mean this…….’
He was certain. Cadel had planned to handle Elvie’s heart himself from the beginning. At least Cadel knew the dangers of the top floor, and he intended to bear them alone.
All Lumen did was leave scratches even with his strongest swordsmanship. It was an unreasonable decision. Should he be glad that Cadel had changed his mind at the last minute?
‘I don’t want to make Leader’s judgment a mistake.’
Cadel chose to trust his subordinate over his own sacrifice. He wanted to live up to that trust, he wanted to live up to that expectation. He thought he could.
With a mighty twist of his tattered limbs, the thin ice that bound him broke. Lumen slid off the wall, barely, and plummeted to the floor, unable to estimate the height.
“Ug, ugly. Pathetic.”
A painful groan echoed through the quiet interior. Lumen touched the floor and slowly raised his body.
As his strongest technique was reflected, Lumen’s condition was at its worst. If he didn’t have scale armor, he would have been killed instantly.
His face, mangled with his blood, turned to face Elvie. Although his eyelids were torn and his eyes were half-open, the gaze staring at Elvie was surprisingly vivid. Elvie lowered his gaze and muttered.
“What are you staring at……? Make, make me want to kill you……”
At the same time, Lumen’s feet began to freeze on the ground. Lumen’s face contorted as the thick ice quickly crawled up his legs.
“I, I was curious to see how, how you’d fight,…… but I’m not going to watch anymore.”
Even though I managed to cut through the ice and get out, my legs froze again as soon as I stepped on the ground again. Lumen, who had tried to escape several times, launched himself and rushed at Elvie. And the moment when the sword drawing technique started right in front of his nose.
Creak creak.
“No one can beat, beat me here.”
Faster than his sword drawing technique, the ice rose, covering his waist in an instant. For a moment, Lumen’s immobilized eyes filled with a deep murderous look.
Before him, Elvie pursed his lips as if considering something, then looked up at Lumen with a strangely recollected expression.
“Don’t, don’t you realize that fighting me is a waste of time, or have you just.…… forgotten your friends? Then, then, let me remind you.”
Leaving the frozen Lumen behind, Elvie rushed to the heart and crouched down, grabbing a handful of things before scrambling to his feet and running back to Lumen’s side. When he returned, he held a small cube-shaped machine in his hand. And when he touched the machine somewhere.
“……!”
Four sheets of ice appeared in the air, and the images of his comrades appeared on them like a screen. Seeing Lumen’s expression of agitation for the first time, Elvie smiled in satisfaction.
“Sis, Sister Emilia made this for me, so I can watch the whole thing.”
Lumen’s eyes trembled as they scanned the ice sheet one after another. His barely maintained composure was crumbling at a rapid pace.
“I, I think they’re all going to die soon. Do you have the leisure to play with me like this……? Of course, you’re all going to die eventually.…….”
It was a hard sight to take in, the sight of his comrades, the ones who had been through many life-and-death situations with him, likeable or not, falling apart.
“Just, just so you know…… if one of you dies here, the, the rest of you die, too. I’ll digest it all.”
Elvie’s mouth opened wide as if to tease Lumen, and his teeth clicked together. What he meant by ‘digest’. Lumen didn’t have time to think about it.
The first floor.
Van, who had to handle a large army of monsters, was desperately swinging his greatsword with goblins hanging all over his body. Even though his flesh was being bitten, he showed no signs of pain. He was simply engulfed by the overflowing aura and continued his instinctive killing spree like an animal.
He felt no pain and steadily ate away his own body. Lumen couldn’t even tell whether the blood that soaked Van’s entire body was his or the monster’s.
The second floor.
Lydon was falling, but before his body hit the ground, ice puppets came flying at him from both sides. In his haste, Lydon wrapped the shield around himself, but the puppets’ arms shattered the shield and crushed his body.
Blood spurted from the air, soaking the transparent bodies of the puppets. Only then did Lumen realize that the puppets that filled the hall on the second floor were all stained red.
The third floor.
Garuel braced himself on the sword sheathed on the floor. Through his tattered robes, Lumen could see the lacerations that covered his entire body. He began to heal with the power of his demonic energy, but the luminaries were faster than his wounds could heal.
Like shuriken*, the luminaries were aimed solely at Garuel. Garuel’s body shook with the movement of the luminaries as they cut into him without mercy, and finally, unable to hold on, he fell to his knees. It was a terrible sight.
*A shuriken is a Japanese concealed weapon that was used as a hidden dagger or metsubushi to distract or misdirect. They are also known as throwing stars, or ninja stars, although they were originally designed in many different shapes.
And the fourth floor.
After the door to the top floor was opened, the one remaining door was blocked by a wall. Cadel was left on the fourth floor. It was a deadly place, with traps popping up every few seconds, but at least Cadel was safe, somehow. Lumen had to believe Cadel was safe because that was the only way he could climb the next floor.
However.
“……Leader.”
Cadel’s reflection in the ice was far from safe. His robes were stained with dark red blood beneath his shattered armor as if he’d been caught in the trap too many times already.
Lumen’s trembling gaze caught the image of Cadel desperately reinforcing his barrier under the rain of harpoons. He seemed to have a harder time maneuvering his mana than usual.
The moment he focused on the screen, trying to figure out why. A harpoon pierced the barrier and fell, aiming for Cadel’s shoulder.
“E, enough with the sentimentality…….”
With a timid voice, the ice plates that illuminated each floor vanished. Even though he could no longer see his comrades, Lumen’s gaze remained fixed on the void.
The blood vessels in his wide eyes burst, and the muscles in his tightly clenched jaw stood out.
“Are you now willing to die a gentle death……? Or do you want to, to keep battling?”
The corners of Elvie’s mouth twitched with amusement. His young face was filled with a meanness that didn’t match his bright features.
“Shut up.”
A harsh voice escaped through clenched teeth. The anxiously shaking eyes suddenly calmed down, but beyond them was a bomb of uncontained rage.
“Shut, shut up, you say.…? If you keep talking arrogantly―”
Elvie’s words did not continue. It wasn’t because Lumen had sliced through his body.
“I told you to shut up.”
The hand that escaped the ice grabbed Elvie’s head in one fell swoop. Elvie rolled his eyes as Lumen’s grip was so strong that his fingertips turned white.
He knew that no matter how many times he slashed Elvie’s flesh, it would continue to regenerate, so Lumen withdrew his strong grip as if he were going to crush Elvie’s head, and placed it on his sword sheath.
In his head, the situations on each floor that Elbi had shown were endlessly repeated. Van, Lydon, Garuel, Cadel. Their desperate battle made him impatient. The cruel scene he saw with his own eyes made Lumen clearly aware of death.
‘I’m out of time.’
A blue flash neatly sliced through the ice that shackled his movements. Without hesitation, Lumen launched himself toward Elvie’s heart.
The hasty sword drawing technique drew several diagonal lines across the heart. But of course, there was no way he could break what even his strongest skills could not break now.
Rumble!
A shock wave equal to the amount of the attack was reflected, and Lumen’s body was pushed back. Lumen barely withstood the shock wave by strengthening his legs, and blood welled up in his mouth. Spitting out the blood, Lumen continued to charge toward the heart.
Rumble!
Even though he knew he couldn’t break it, he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.
Rumble!
Even though I was pushed back several times and continued to sustain internal injuries. Lumen rose to his feet and lunged. He shattered the ice that held his ankles, cut into the heart, and took all of the pain back. The shockwaves, repeated as fast as they came, chewed away at his life.
‘I’m running out of time.’
His unfocused gaze stubbornly stared at the heart, but his battered body staggered as if it were a struggle to stay upright.
His insides were already mangled from the shockwave his bare body had taken. Taking any more hits would have been suicidal, but Lumen didn’t have time to think about that now.
Once again, the sword drawing technique that cut the heart was reflected.
“Cough, cough…….”
His body bounced into the distance, no longer able to hold on. After rolling for what seemed like an eternity, Lumen finally dug his nails into a crack in the floor. He lifted his face, limp and white and lifeless.
Coughing up blood, he tried to pull himself back up somehow, but his body, already at its limit, wouldn’t listen. His vision was blurry, and he could barely make out the outline of the heart.
That thing needs to be cut down. I have to destroy that thing. The sole purpose filled his head as if to brainwash him.
He had to do it, even if it was impossible. If he didn’t, everyone would die. All the deaths he’d suffered so tediously in the past, he’d repeat them with his own hands.
To never feel such despair again, he swung his sword with the intention of dying. To mourn the ones who have passed through his hands. To never lose someone precious again.
But how come?
‘All that effort, for nothing……?’
Was he still just a weak boy who couldn’t protect anyone and lost his precious people helplessly?
“Try, try a little harder. It’s boring….”
Unable to pull himself upright, Lumen stretched out his arms and crawled. Elvie giggled in amusement at the sight of Lumen dragging his ragged body along.
‘What should I do? If I do something…….’
Is it possible for them not to die?
A trail of dark blood followed Lumen’s path. The closer he got to the heart, the more foggy his consciousness became. His breathing was thinning. Lumen sensed that he was dying at a rapid pace.
‘I can’t die like this.’
It wasn’t for the simple reason that I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t die here like this, without accomplishing anything. He has not yet achieved revenge for those who died because of him, nor has he become a person great enough to stand proudly in front of them.
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