From the center of the explosion, something sharp began to fly. It was Maltiel’s fingernail. Right before he was about to be struck by an attack that concentrated massive lightning into a single point, Maltiel, in a last-ditch effort, ripped off his own fingernail and hurled it towards the boy’s forehead.
Had this happened under normal circumstances, a small hole would have undoubtedly pierced through the boy’s skull.
But the boy once again twisted his head to dodge it. A light graze appeared on his forehead, but the wound was small enough that it didn’t even warrant concern.
Not long after, the boy’s body slowly came to a halt mid-air, then he began to fall towards the ground.
Maltiel, who had taken a direct hit from a massive amount of energy, was also plummeting down helplessly like a wet paper kite.
Even as the boy fell, he extended his finger, still targeting Maltiel’s body.
There was still over four minutes left in the duration of his enhanced state.
Although the boy had unleashed a tremendous amount of lightning just moments before, his mana reserves were still abundant. This was thanks to his ability to manipulate external electricity rather than relying solely on the electricity stored within his own body.
In the depths of Maltiel’s chest, as he fluttered down towards the ground, something faint began to flicker.
It was Maltiel’s core.
Without the slightest hesitation, the boy swung his arm.
Instantly, a brilliant white flash erupted from the blue sky. Creating such a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky was effortless for the boy.
The lightning branched out in dozens of directions through the ionized air. It didn’t matter. The main root of the attack was homing in directly on Maltiel’s core.
The thought of victory flashed through his mind.
At the same time, a faint odor of a coffin wafted past the boy’s nose.
Vivid images of the soldiers who had perished in the blazing forest that night passed before his eyes like an old silent movie.
Even the boy himself hadn’t foreseen that these memories would resurface at such a moment.
Unbeknownst to him, deep within his heart, there had lain a sense of guilt for those who had lost their lives because of him.
“…It’s over.”
With those words,
Right at the moment everything was about to end,
“Maltiel.”
Maltiel’s charred lips whispered that name once again.
*
Dirt swept past Rex’s eyes. A small pebble struck and bounced off his thick eyebrows. The wind scratched his back dryly.
Rex felt a chill in his abdomen. When he turned his body and tilted his head down, his blood-soaked torso came into view.
His abdomen was rotting. Like being injected with some toxic fluid, his body was rapidly necrotizing.
The first emotion he felt upon seeing the wound was fear.
I’m dying.
The realization of this fact hit him with startling clarity.
‘What am I doing here?’
But soon after, a powerful question overwhelmed his fear, filling his mind. Rex turned his head to survey his surroundings.
The area was full of dirt and dust. His vision blurred at the edges, and his arms and legs felt powerless.
Where am I? This question naturally arose in his mind.
“Sammael.”
That low, eerie voice sent shivers through his entire body, resonating in his eardrums.
“…General.”
It took a moment for Rex’s mind to piece the situation together.
‘I was in the middle of battle.’
Maltiel and General Bin were engaged in one-on-one combat. Rex kept distracting Maltiel, pretending to use a horn.
As a result, Maltiel used Sammael, his last-minute trump card, on Rex, treating him as nothing more than an expendable appendage.
Sammael quickly subdued Rex.
And now Rex lay here, waiting for death, with a hole in his abdomen.
It didn’t take long for Rex to understand this entire sequence of events.
‘Damn it. Did I black out for a moment? My limbs still move. I can still breathe faintly. I can still fight. Assess the situation. How is the battle between the Grand Marshal and the General going?’
Struggling, Rex forced his sprawled body off the ground and turned his head towards the source of the sound.
There, Maltiel, blackened and charred, dropped helplessly like a soaked kite.
‘Did the General win? Alone?’
The usual Rex would have focused on covering Sammael to help Bin finish off Maltiel now that the tide of battle was in their favor.
The situation was clearly advantageous for Bin. Unless an extraordinary variable intervened, Maltiel was moments away from death, a fact that had become a foregone conclusion.
‘…Is it over?’
But Rex was not in his usual state.
He had just come to after a brief blackout. His brain hadn’t been sufficiently oxygenated, and the massive pain from his abdomen was just beginning to hit him.
Moreover, it was Maltiel who was dying.
The very same Grand Marshal whom Rex had fought alongside for three years.
The tragedy that unfolded in that forest didn’t linger only in Bin’s trauma.
‘…Finally!’
Suddenly, the vow he made in front of his comrades’ corpses that day flashed through his mind.
The vow to become stronger, to kill Maltiel, was still fresh, the smell of that day’s events as vivid as ever.
The squeaky sound of the coffin carts carrying his comrades occasionally filled his ears.
Rex felt a tingling in his mechanical arm, and his chest swelled with overwhelming, complex emotions.
And those emotions temporarily clouded the judgment of this warrior.
“Grand Marshalllll!”
That scream triggered something irrevocable.
“…!”
Rex shuddered and turned his head at the desperate roar from behind. There, standing with his wings spread wide and his knees bent, was Sammael.
‘Damn it.’
Rex realized too late that he needed to focus on the strange sensation in his chest. He had to pull out the horn quickly and blow it to prevent Sammael from interfering in the battle between Maltiel and Bin.
Fine particles began to flow out of his chest, piercing through his skin.
But it was already too late.
Bang!
A pitch-black shadow narrowly passed overhead. A sharp gust of wind brushed across his cheek.
‘Slumber…’
Rex didn’t have the strength or opportunity to stop Sammael.
‘Isn’t my enemy you?’
‘I’m still alive. This horn doesn’t bother you, does it?’
‘Do you intend to sully the sacred duel of warriors?’
All sorts of meaningless thoughts raced through his mind, but none of them provided a way to delay Sammael even by 0.1 seconds.
Perhaps, no words could stop that monster anyway.
“Kill me and gooo!”
Despite everything, Rex couldn’t help but shout. The particles flowing out from his chest still hadn’t formed into the shape of the horn.
‘Worst-case scenario.’
As soon as he recognized his mistake, a chill ran down his spine, and cold sweat gathered at the nape of his neck.
Regardless of what Rex said, Sammael didn’t halt his wingbeats.
Like a bullet, Sammael hurtled towards his Grand Marshal, who was approximately 1,000 meters away.
As a result, the bodies of Maltiel and Sammael collided spectacularly, their forms exploding into pieces.
The scattered chunks of flesh and bone quickly gathered in the air around Maltiel’s core and began to coalesce, swiftly reconstructing his dark skin and wings.
“Show-off.”
Even in the face of this sudden change, the boy covered in lightning did not waver. With the same nonchalant gesture, he summoned celestial punishment, and a second bolt of lightning thundered through the clear sky.
Maltiel’s body, which had been rapidly reconstructing itself, was enveloped in black smoke. The belated thunderclap echoed throughout the battlefield. Rex felt a chilling despair rising from his stomach, tightening around his neck.
“…Impressive, Sammael.”
Amidst the dark smoke, a low voice emerged.
“Let’s witness the end of the world together.”
From the smoke, the sound of vigorous wingbeats rang out. Moments later, the dark veil lifted, revealing Maltiel with his entire body perfectly restored.
“…”
The boy, covered in lightning, grimaced as though witnessing something grotesque and revolting that he should not have seen.
Rex saw it clearly through his vision, which was red with pain and regret.
Sammael raced towards Maltiel, faster than any crossbow bolt, colliding with him.
The act was to quickly strip away any damaged cells from Maltiel’s core.
Simultaneously, Sammael disassembled his own body, separating his core from his flesh.
This core detached from Sammael’s body transformed into dozens of fragments, which were instantly absorbed into Maltiel’s core. Immediately, foul blood vessels erupted and covered the dark core in seconds, allowing Maltiel to reconstruct his chest and arms at an unprecedented speed.
Maltiel used these regenerated limbs to block the thunder that continued to strike down. They turned into black ash instantly, but that ash too regenerated in an instant.
‘What am I doing here?’
An adolescent boy barely seventeen years old overcame his limits to take down a Grand Marshal one-on-one.
And yet a seasoned warrior who’d spent their entire life on the battlefield made such an absurd mistake.
Rex couldn’t bear how pitiful he was at that moment.
How could this error, borne from a fleeting moment of indulgence, reverberate against the continent’s people? He dared not even imagine it.
‘In the end, I accomplished nothing.’
Rex was aware of how unsuited he was to serve as a General’s shield.
There was no doubt that the boy would become a Mage of Sword Saint caliber within three years. No matter how hard Rex tried, he could never match the boy’s growth.
He had worried when he was first offered the position of the boy’s protector. Was he truly the right choice? Shouldn’t a more reliable and stronger warrior be entrusted with this task?
Still, he accepted the role.
He wanted to repay the boy for trusting him.
‘And this is the outcome.’
Indeed, this was a moment of despair that left him reeling.
The Grand Marshal, whom he had almost killed, had restored his condition by absorbing a high-ranking ruler he had been tasked to mark.
Rex didn’t want to achieve grand accomplishments or leave a lasting impression. He only wanted to fulfill his duty, to die if necessary.
Valleland was such a battlefield.
Where warriors of similar strength perished every day in numbers exceeding a hundred—it was the battleground of the Grand Marshal versus the General.
Yet, look at him now.
Not only had he failed to protect the General, but he couldn’t even grab the ankle of the demon right before his eyes, letting go of the victory that was already within grasp.
The desire to ‘fulfill his part’ was far beyond Rex’s grasp.
General Bin would face not only Grand Marshals but Demon Kings and devils in the future. Compared to him, Rex was just an ordinary talent, incapable even of restraining a high-ranking ruler.
This is the moment when the scope of his talent and limitations became painfully clear.
Crack!
Rex’s prosthetic arm ground against the ground, spewing forth red flames as he stumbled and repeatedly tried to rise, collapsing again and again.
His fractured calf trembled violently, the spreading pain throughout his torso stiffening his muscles.
‘But this fact…’
The screws on Rex’s prosthetic began falling off. The heavily painted steel plate with the number ‘6’ etched on it in red emitted a squeaky sound.
‘Won’t serve as an excuse to lie prostrate in despair on a place like this.’
Rex, with his heavily bruised legs, struggled to push his heavy body up.
In his hand, the horn given to him by the boy was tightly clenched.
“Biiiiiin!”
The warrior cried out loud.
