Free Web NovelChapter 80: Who are you? [Part-3]
Alen fell into a deep silence, unable to utter a single word. The leviathan had almost taken his life in the last battle, and now she was telling him that the monster was one of the weakest creatures in her realm.
Then just how much stronger were the other monsters?
He didn’t know, and he certainly didn’t want to find out.
Ravena looked at him and summoned the dark sword back into her hand. A faint crimson line shone along the black blade, heavily contrasting with the pure white space around them.
"It seems wherever this place exists, I cannot sense the ’Laws’ of the World affecting it. It is as if this space is completely devoid of any laws, existing outside the absolute ’Order’ of the universe..."
She smiled, though the warmth didn’t actually reach her cold eyes.
"Interesting." She tilted her head.
"So, are you going to use it, or should I put it away and send you back?" freēwebnovel.com
She spoke calmly, but Alen knew that if she really intended to send him back, she wouldn’t have brought him to this realm in the first place. She was just bluffing. She would never let him go until she got what she wanted.
Alen looked at the sword, and then back at her emotionless eyes. It was incredibly difficult for him to read her. In fact, this was the very first time he found himself completely unable to read another person.
After surviving in a cruel world for several years, Alen had learned how to differentiate between people. He could read their behavior, their psychological attachments, and their motives—not by reading their minds, but by taking careful notes of their posture, their eye movements, and their subtle reactions. It allowed him to guess what they were thinking with a high degree of accuracy.
But he couldn’t read Ravena at all.
It wasn’t just that she was deliberately hiding her thoughts; it was because there were absolutely no emotions showing on her face. If she really was hiding her true expressions this perfectly... then she was the smartest, most scheming person Alen had ever met in his life.
He stepped forward. Bracing himself, he raised his hand to take the weapon.
Ravena gently placed Godless into his palm. frёeωebɳovel.com
The moment Alen’s fingers closed around the hilt, his entire world turned crimson as a dark red hue swallowed his vision.
...
Alen’s POV:
’What is this feeling? Why does it feel like my hand no longer exists? Was it destroyed by the sword?’
My vision was flooded with crimson. I was no longer standing in the pure white room—or at least, that was what I thought. Everything around me was bathed in red. I was standing on top of an endless expanse of blood-red water. It remained completely still; only the gentle ripples created by my presence disrupted the surface. I couldn’t see past the thick, crimson fog surrounding me.
In my hand was the menacing sword I had taken from her moments ago. It stuck to my palm as if it had always belonged there.
Oddly, I couldn’t actually feel the physical weight of the sword. Not because the sword was an illusion, but because it felt like a natural extension of my own body. It felt as if my very consciousness was flowing directly into the blade.
I no longer needed to think about what I was supposed to do. I instinctively realized what was required of me.
I raised the sword high above my head, its blade emitting that same menacing, crimson glow.
For a split second, a dim flicker of red flared in my own eyes. Without hesitation, I slashed forward in a heavy, vertical arc.
A wave of crimson energy followed the arc, violently cleaving through the red fog. The attack tore the dense fog apart, and the pure white space of the room began to bleed back into my vision.
The sword didn’t actually feel overwhelmingly unique or overpowered in my grasp, but I felt a sudden, profound sense of comfort while using it—as if it had been forged specifically for me.
Slowly, the sword began to dissolve, vanishing into the air like dark ash.
I looked up at Ravena, who had suddenly appeared directly behind me. However, I completely failed to notice the tiny, imperceptible smirk forming at the corner of her mouth.
...
Ravena’s POV:
As Ravena watched the boy, her mind raced. Offering him the chance to try Godless wasn’t actually a test of his physical capability. It was a test of his audacity—to see if he truly dared to go against the Will of the World after she had explicitly warned him of the consequences.
She knew that even if he held the weapon, it should have been completely useless. Either Godless would kill him instantly—since the sword did not allow anyone without the capability to defy the World to hold it—or, by some miracle, he might actually be capable of wielding it.
She had calculated the chances of him being able to wield the weapon at just 0.1%, and even that felt generous. She had only offered it because she sensed a minor, mysterious potential hidden deep within the boy.
A thrilling sensation washed over her just thinking about what would happen if he could actually wield it. Several centuries had passed since a person capable of holding the weapon had last appeared.
For the first time in an eternity, she felt a flicker of true emotion awaken inside her chest. Was it excitement? She wasn’t quite sure. Outwardly, her face remained completely expressionless, her eyes as cold as a corpse.
As the boy had stepped forward and taken the weapon from her hand, she had felt a brief pang of pity. If he couldn’t wield the blade, it would consume his entire lifeforce and kill him on the spot. But feeling pity didn’t mean she was going to save him. It was his decision to wield it. If he died, it would be entirely due to his own stupidity.
But the moment the boy’s fingers closed around the hilt, everything changed.
Suddenly, she felt an invisible, pressure erupt from Godless. Her spirit form was violently sucked directly into the core of the sword before she even had the time to react.
As he swung the blade, what truly shocked her wasn’t that he survived holding the weapon. The shocking part was that her ancient energy actively reacted to his presence. She hadn’t given him control, yet he was still somehow able to steal her power and channel it into a strike.
As the crimson arc cleared the space, she was summoned back into her physical spirit form.
She stared at the empty space where his vertical arc had cut through the air. To a normal Awakener, the attack would have looked like any ordinary elemental slash. But that wasn’t what Ravena saw. With her ancient eyes, she saw a minute, terrifying fluctuation in the very ’Order’ of the Universe.
She realized that even this isolated white realm was under the influence of the Universe’s Order. And this boy—a mere fledgling who couldn’t even defeat a weak sand worm—had somehow managed to slice into that absolute Order.
She looked at the boy once again. He was staring at the fading arc with a silent, confused gaze, completely unaware of what he had just achieved. He had no idea he had just defied the laws of reality.
’How naive of you...’
A tiny, imperceptible smile graced her lips, and for a fleeting moment, the coldness in her crimson eyes brightened with undeniable thrill. She quickly calmed herself and looked at him indifferently.
’It seems the time has finally come.’
