Final Battle – 6
BOOM!
A gigantic flail shook the Imperial Palace courtyard. Cracks spread out like spider webs from the spot where the weight was anchored. Shattered marble scattered everywhere.
The middle-aged man responsible for that catastrophic destruction lifted the flail. It was a brute of a weapon, with the weight anchor more than twice the size of his head.
However, before he could fully pull it out, another flail struck him in the side. For a brief moment, the middle-aged man bent at an unnatural angle and flew away without making a sound.
THUD! His body collided with the wall. For an ordinary person, such an attack would have instantly burst upper bodies, but the middle-aged man only staggered and managed to get back up.
Of course, that didn’t mean he was in good condition. The cracked wall and his trembling legs, barely able to take a few steps, testified to that fact.
Stella walked toward him with an extremely cruel smile on her face.
“Why do you wear our symbol? To mock the Sun?”
The man’s armor bore a symbol representing the sun. Just that alone would make anyone go mad, not to mention the golden divine power he was using.
Every aspect of that was an intolerable insult to Stella. The very existence of that wretched being made her genuinely nauseous.
How dare he wear the insignia of the sun, using the golden divine power that represents it?
Moreover, it was a counterfeit made in her own likeness. Since realizing that fact, Stella’s mind had been consumed with the sole idea of punishing this heretic.
“You will never atone for that sin. So let’s just start by killing you, shall we?”
With a deadly yet cruel smile, Stella charged at the man. The flail was imbued with golden light. Despite his shaking legs, the man tried to counterattack.
It was a futile struggle. Stella’s flail effortlessly shattered the weight of another flail that intersected mid-trajectory. The shattered weapon fragments scattered in every direction.
She pushed her arm forward. Without a hint of hesitation, the flail swung down into the man’s right shoulder blade. With a CRUNCH, the shoulder bone shattered, and one arm fell limp.
Stella grabbed the man by the collar and slammed him into the ground. CRACK! A spine-chilling sound echoed as a human head shattered against the stone floor.
Yet, he was still alive. Despite having a shattered right arm and half of his head crushed, he weakly swung his remaining arm at Stella.
That was good because she could inflict even more pain. Stella threw the man against the opposite wall. His half-crushed body smashed right through a pillar and collided with the wall.
“How dare you try to touch me with that disgusting hand?”
A smile remained on Stella’s face, but it was merely a mask for her fury that had exceeded its limits and circled back to the usual expression.
If it were up to her, she would take that man alive to the Holy Kingdom and torture him until he was torn to thousands of pieces. But there was no time for that now.
‘I need to hurry and help the Holy One. It’s best to rush.’
It was unfortunate that she couldn’t offer endless suffering to this heretic, but helping the Holy One was of greater importance. Golden divine power filled the flail once again.
Even with one arm shattered and blood spilling from his broken head, the man charged forward and fought back. Stella leaped high into the air, bringing all her weight down onto him.
The weight of the flail crushed the man’s left shoulder blade as it came down. He was immediately slammed into the ground, leaving a new crack in the courtyard floor.
Stella leapt up once more to bring the flail crashing down again. This time, the man’s spine shattered. The squirming in his lower half ceased entirely.
From the way his upper body still twitched, he clearly wasn’t dead yet. To be alive despite a shattered spine and a crushed body was incredibly stubborn.
‘Good thing.’
For Stella, that was a good thing. It meant she could continue her final assault.
Infusing the flail with divine power, she jumped higher than in the first and second attacks, bending her elbow as she took aim with the flail.
“The sun shall judge you.”
Then, as she came down, she swung her arm.
As the head-sized weight slammed into the ground, the man’s head completely burst apart, along with its essence being crushed alongside the body.
A human corpse could not absorb all that impact. Half of the courtyard was obliterated, and the shockwave spread out, demolishing nearby walls.
On the utterly devastated floor, a large sun symbol was drawn where the flail had struck.
Seeing the sun’s emblem rise from the ground, Stella clasped her hands together with a satisfied smile. It was time to offer prayers to the sun and the living Holy One.
A peace that was hard to associate with the human who had just obliterated the Imperial Palace courtyard.
Selene melted into the shadows, surveying her surroundings.
No ray of sunlight pierced through the curtained windows. The chandelier on the ceiling was in ruins, and all the torches were extinguished. Only darkness existed, and it was eerily quiet.
But for Selene, those factors were hardly a problem. The darkness was merely a means to showcase the moon’s holiness. The darker it grew, the brighter the moon would shine.
With her ears perked up, Selene strained to listen. There seemed to be no one in the room besides herself, but that was not the case. There had been multiple fights in this room from earlier.
As if to prove that fact, a sickening scent of blood lingered in the air. It was difficult to gauge how much blood had been spilled; the smell made it hard to identify the location of her opponent.
Of course, it was all the enemy’s blood.
PLINK.
Finally, Selene heard the sound she had been longing for.
‘I found it.’
The sound of a tiny drop of blood hitting the floor. It was so faint that an ordinary person couldn’t even hear it, but Selene didn’t miss it.
Divine power gathered in her rapier. The blade turned a silver hue, symbolizing the moon. This entire process took less than a second.
Having finished her preparations, Selene darted out from the shadows. Even in the pitch-black darkness, her violet eyes spotted the target precisely. There was absolutely no way to miss.
Selene thrust the point of her rapier into the shadow near the wall. SPLAT, the sound of a blade tearing flesh resonated.
“Your sins shall be confessed in hell, heretic.”
As the spot she pierced began to reveal a human shape, it was a man wrapped in an opaque cloth from head to toe, wearing only gauntlets and leg guards instead of armor.
The tip of the blade had precisely pierced the center of his forehead. Realizing that, Selene pulled out the rapier roughly. The nature-pierced man’s body crumpled to the floor with a THUD.
How dare he mimic her and create a heretic, Selene simmered with rage inside. It was regrettable that she couldn’t interrogate him since she had to hurry to help the Holy One.
Sunlight once again beamed through the curtains. The sun, having briefly stepped aside to avoid interference, now returned to the fight between the Inquisitor and the heretics in the lunar domain.
Selene clasped her hands together before her chest and offered a prayer to the moon. Meanwhile, the man’s corpse turned to black mud and evaporated away.
“Inquisitor!”
While she prayed, Selene heard someone approaching in a rush. Leading the charge were Aurora and Nix, followed by the Silver Dawn Knights and the Inquisitor.
In truth, almost everyone who had remained in the audience chamber was now gathered here. Shaking off the blood and flesh from her rapier, Selene spoke nonchalantly.
“How did you all make it here, Your Imperial Majesty?”
“We need to get to Delta right now. He is in danger.”
Hearing that the Holy One was in danger drastically changed Selene’s expression. The Holy One was as important as the Pope, perhaps even more so. It was something she could never overlook.
“I understand. What do I need to do?”
“I will explain.”
WHOOSH, suddenly, a bright mass of white light appeared before the eyes of the eight. Having seen it once when with Delta, this was the second time, but that didn’t mean they weren’t surprised.
The first to react were Stella and Selene.
As soon as they realized the Sun and Moon had descended to this place, they fell to their knees to pray, only to hyperventilate and collapse to the ground.
The others couldn’t faint, but their reactions were generally similar. Save for Nix, who was somewhat accustomed to divine beings, the other five knelt involuntarily.
Divine beings descending before humans were that kind of existence.
“Goddess, were you with Delta…?”
Nix asked, utterly bewildered.
After bringing Selene, he had intended to ask the goddess about Delta’s location, but he never imagined she would appear right before them without even being prayed to yet.
“Delta went to face that alone. My role was to prevent the immortal centipede from consuming this world.”
Eclipse’s tone had become very calm and quiet.
“So, the reason you came here is that the immortal centipede has all disappeared?”
“You hit the nail on the head.”
At some point, the immortal centipede, which had been flooding from outside dimensions, abruptly stopped. It wasn’t just fewer in number; not a single one was coming.
That was an extremely bad sign.
This meant that the power of the creature that devours the world had become strong enough to warp even the distortions outside the world.
