Free Web NovelA faint trace of dim morning light leaked down from the edge of the clouds, but it was far from enough to illuminate the entire sky.
Muen drew in a deep breath, feeling that fleeting warmth, then wiped the blood from his face. Under the glare of the spotlight, he gradually walked toward the top of the stairs.
With every step he took, the wounds on his body recovered a little more, and the scene behind him—the ground strewn with corpses, the blood flowing like a river—shrank a little further.
Until he reached the highest point.
Aside from his clothes still being somewhat torn, all his external injuries had almost completely healed. Behind him, everything had become empty and bare. Apart from some extremely striking broken walls, ruins, and enormous craters, there was no longer any trace that slaughter had ever occurred here.
Everything was the same as last time.
No, not completely the same.
At least this time, because he had improved his strategy, iterated a new method of attack, and systematically optimized the details, Muen was not entirely spent. He still had a little mental strength left, which gave him slightly more confidence than last time.
Donna before him seemed to notice as well that Muen still had the strength for another fight, and compared to last time, her gaze became a little more grave.
“Go on.”
This time, Donna naturally still chose to step aside.
Rather than gamble her life against a madman capable of killing his way through the palace, it was better to buy time, wait for reinforcements to arrive, and ensure a one-hundred-percent kill.
After all, in her view, someone like Muen, who had forced his way through Saint Haze Palace by relying entirely on his own strength, was actually not that great a threat to Saint Peron V. It meant he had no means of dealing with the Grand Barrier and was purely relying on brute force.
And the reason they watched Saint Peron V so strictly was only to guard against that one-in-ten-thousand possibility, while also making it convenient to carry out the later plan.
From that perspective, Donna truly was worthy of being Gaius’s left arm. Her actions were indeed strict and cautious. If it had been anyone else, there might not have been even the slightest chance of breaking through her blockade and harming Saint Peron V behind her.
Unfortunately, no matter how cautious she was, for her, this was still her first time facing the enemy before her.
She did not know that the enemy before her was not.
“Thank you.”
Muen smiled and thanked her. That handsome face and courteous manner made Donna pause slightly, and an inexplicable sense of incongruity suddenly rose in her heart.
She did not dare be careless, and immediately replayed everything that had just happened in her mind. Caution was her nature. She would never let even the smallest bit of incongruity or wrongness slip past.
But no matter how she reviewed it, her actions were without question the most correct choice.
“Am I being too wary?”
Donna frowned and murmured, still thinking.
But Muen could no longer be bothered to care about that. After confirming Donna would not stop him, he walked straight past her and entered the bedchamber.
The gauze curtains swayed. The withered old man was right before his eyes.
His entire body was dried and shriveled, his shape like a mummy. There was no way to tell that this was the ruler of a nation. Combined with the obscene air permeating the room, one could roughly guess just how thoroughly the Salvation Society had wrung him dry in order to keep him from slipping out of their control.
It was truly enviable... no, wrong, truly contemptible.
But none of that had anything to do with Muen anymore. What mattered was that he had once again reached the final stage, and once again faced this boss who looked weak, yet was incomparably troublesome.
It could not be called easy.
Muen could have reached this place in a much easier way. For example, he could have used the Grand Barrier’s control core in his hand to remove its lock on his aura. Then, relying on his extraordinary aura-concealment ability, which could even deceive the Witch of Repentance, he could have very easily infiltrated this place.
He could have calmly played the assassin he was good at, instead of a berserker.
But he had not done that.
Because change meant unknown changes would occur afterward as well, and for the current Muen, the unknown was risk.
There was no need for him to take an unpredictable risk by changing something that was already certain.
He had a route he had already explored long ago.
It was only a little more difficult.
And that kind of difficulty was something he had long since grown used to.
“I can finally put an end to everything.”
Looking at Saint Peron V on the bed, Muen was filled with emotion. He always felt that everything he had done before this was one long marathon, and now, the finish line was right before his eyes.
Since the finish line was right before his eyes, naturally, it was time to sprint.
Without wasting time, Muen once again tightened his grip on Elizabeth and approached the bed.
Black flames rose bit by bit, twining around the white blade, eerie and holy interweaving together, before gradually aiming at Saint Peron’s heart...
“So it really was just my imagination?”
Beside the bed, Donna’s gaze fixed tightly on Muen. When she saw that he looked completely unaware of what was about to happen, merely stupidly taking out a short blade and approaching the old thing on the bed, she also relaxed.
It seemed she really had been overthinking it. That one-in-ten-thousand probability absolutely could not happen before her.
She only needed to quietly watch from here, mock his helplessness when he suddenly awakened to the truth, and then wait for reinforcements to arrive and kill this ridiculous intruder completely.
“It has already been two hours. No matter how slow the reinforcements are, they should be almost here. The other side is only a group of thugs. What difficulty could they possibly cause? So for this man, this is nothing more than a dream that remains useless no matter how much he struggles.”
Donna glanced at the time, the corner of her mouth curling in ridicule.
And Muen continued forward.
Saint Peron V was right before his eyes, and in his perception, he existed there as well. But Muen knew that if he stabbed down like this now, just as he had last time, he would not even hurt a single hair on this old thing.
And this was exactly the scene Donna was waiting for.
Because although this old thing called himself a mighty ruler, he had chosen the vilest, most selfish method. He had fused himself with the Grand Barrier, making this powerful creation, which was originally meant to protect the city, exist specifically to protect him and him alone at every moment.
But this was not unsolvable.
Because of someone’s betrayal of him, this method had left behind its only loophole.
And that loophole was now on Muen.
Muen took another step forward.
The final step.
Hum.
A faint resonance came from his body.
“No!”
Donna’s gaze suddenly sharpened as she noticed something wrong.
Muen was still there.
She could see him, and her perception was equally clear.
But as the magic stone overhead flickered, she was horrified to discover that Muen’s figure had actually become slightly more ethereal and dim than before. It was as if he were leaving this place, heading somewhere very far away.
It was a very small change.
So small that most people would only think it was a shift in the light, nothing wrong at all.
But Donna did not think so. Everything she had done was for the sake of severing that one-in-ten-thousand possibility, and thus she was incomparably clear on Saint Perod’s current state. Combined with the incongruity she had felt earlier, the most terrifying conjecture surfaced in her mind.
What if... this man really had grasped that one-in-ten-thousand possibility?
What if he had deliberately refrained from exposing that thing the entire way here, and had been waiting for this very moment?
If that were the case...
“No! I absolutely won’t let you succeed!”
Donna erupted in an instant, without the slightest hesitation.
She had let Muen pass earlier because she believed Muen posed no danger whatsoever to Saint Peron V. But now that the situation had reversed, and this Muen Campbell seemed to already possess the ability to harm Saint Peron V, or even kill her, how could she possibly sit still?
“Die!”
From the very beginning, Donna used her full strength.
She smashed a fist toward Muen. Though she was clearly barehanded, the entire bedchamber shook violently.
But that punch struck empty.
It passed straight through Muen’s body, as if it had struck air.
Donna’s expression changed abruptly. She knew she had made a grave mistake. In that short half minute while she had been so pleased with herself, this man had already activated the Grand Barrier’s control core and begun invading the space beside Saint Peron V.
Another Grand Barrier control core.
The central core of the Grand Barrier that neither Saint Peron V nor the Salvation Society had managed to find!
But why? Why was it on this man?
This was what Donna could not understand most of all. Even though she had guessed it just now, she still could not understand the reason behind it.
The other core had been taken away by Saint Peron V’s royal uncle. That royal uncle had fled for the sake of “greater righteousness,” that is, the safety of this country. How could he possibly have handed such a thing to an outsider so casually?
To say nothing of the fact that Muen Campbell was not a member of the Kingdom’s royal family. He had even only arrived in the Kingdom recently. Logically speaking, it should have been absolutely impossible for him to come into contact with such a thing!
Donna could not understand it, and she had no time to understand it.
She only knew that she had indeed been very cautious, yet had overlooked such a tiny thing.
No, how could this be called overlooking it? How could something that should not have existed in the first place be called an oversight?
And yet, this impossible possibility had happened to Muen Campbell.
There was absolutely something wrong with this man!
Something she had not yet discovered for the time being, yet which had directly led to all of this!
“Muen—Campbell!”
Donna roared.
At that moment, the light dress on her body abruptly tore apart. Savage limbs covered in scales suddenly thrust out from beneath her fair skin, carrying slick fluid as they lunged and unfurled.
That fluid was terrifyingly corrosive. Just dripping onto the ground instantly ate large holes into it and gave off a foul stench.
And Donna herself was even more terrifying. In an instant, she had already lost all human shape. Beneath her skin were thick tentacles, intertwining with one another and barely outlining a feminine form, as if her beautiful painted skin had been torn open directly, exposing the hideous inside.
Yet those tentacles were not indescribable like the things polluted by Evil Gods that Muen had encountered before. They were real and visible.
As if beneath that lovely skin, she had never been human at all, but some terrifying monster from the deep sea.
And at this very moment, that deep-sea monster was staring fixedly at Muen with the enormous eyes on either side of its round head.
