Ch.1099Death’s Echo

‘Is this the end…!’

The moment the flame of destruction in Haschal’s hand fell upon his head, Paulus realized his fate had come to an end.

He had believed that even if killed by Haschal, his soul would return to Feirius, allowing him to be resurrected.

How could he have possibly anticipated a power that would annihilate the soul itself?

A fatal misjudgment, a trap with no escape.

There was no way to survive.

‘…Menes. Is this punishment you’re delivering to me?’

Paulus stared up with wide eyes.

The inescapable death falling upon one who relied on the dark power that deceived death, the art of soul manipulation. No, beyond death—the flame of eternal oblivion.

…And beyond that, the wavering moonlight of the full moon.

Ironically, it resembled the divine punishment that Paulus himself had so adamantly insisted was necessary.

Menes’s punishment upon the wicked who had committed heresy and evil deeds.

At least, that’s how it appeared to Paulus.

– Whoosh!

Flames bloomed on the old man’s dry, rough hair and spread rapidly.

Like a candle touched by a match, the old man’s head was engulfed in flames.

The flaming sword hadn’t even made contact yet, but the heat flowing through the air was already enough to incinerate a person in an instant.

“Keuuugh…!”

In the searing pain of his scalp, face, and entire head burning and melting away, his cooking brain flashed his life before his eyes.

The old man’s decades-long life. All of it flickered through Paulus’s mind in less than an instant.

The time when he was a talented and devout priest who carried pure faith in his heart and faithfully followed the divine doctrines.

Memories of his youth when he wandered as a pilgrim to see the world firsthand.

The countless contradictions and tragedies he encountered. The numerous atrocities caused by corruption, depravity, malice, and greed.

Bandits living like beasts. Lords who cruelly abused their subjects in their madness of desire. A priest who raped orphans. Brothers who stabbed each other to death for money.

The time when he rescued people suffering from bandits and entrusted their aftercare to a priest in a nearby village, only to later find those rescued people in the slave market.

Even a village of ignorant heretics who, seduced by cultists, killed priests and captured nuns to keep them imprisoned underground.

The bare face of the world he encountered after leaving the sanctuary of the Holy State was filled with lamentation, pain, and chaos.

– This cannot be, this cannot be! If the gods are truly watching over us, how can the world be like this!

That pilgrimage greatly twisted Paulus’s faith.

The young priest who had been a faithful servant of god disappeared, and in his place stood a disbeliever harboring deep doubts and confusion about god’s neglect.

Yet unable to completely abandon his faith, Paulus kept his doubts about god in his heart while outwardly continuing to serve god.

Until the day, some ten years later, when he finally understood the reason for that neglect, thanks to Feirius who came looking for him.

Heaven’s Wall.

Feirius realized. The god he had served, the other human gods, were not indifferent to earthly matters as he had suspected.

The gods were not indifferent but powerless, because of the constraint called Heaven’s Wall that they themselves had created.

Feirius tempted him, saying that if they could just break Heaven’s Wall, the world Paulus so desperately wanted would come, and after deep contemplation, Paulus took Feirius’s hand.

A world that moves according to god’s will and god’s doctrines. A world where all evil is reformed into good through god’s authority, god’s grace, and god’s punishment.

For Paulus, who had lived his entire life as a priest, this was like creating heaven on earth.

Of course, there was the problem that the influence of evil gods like Alfodhr would also strengthen… but Paulus didn’t care much about this.

He considered the ancient god Alfodhr a has-been who had been defeated by human gods and whose church had collapsed, so he thought that even if Alfodhr caused chaos for a while, he would eventually be suppressed.

At first, he thought this way due to lack of knowledge about ancient gods, and later, he stubbornly clung to this belief because he needed to be convinced he wasn’t wrong.

The life he had lived as an apostle. Its end was before his eyes.

‘Yes, this is as far as I go….’

His head began to melt from the crown down. In his rapidly evaporating consciousness, Paulus felt the emptiness of everything that constituted him scattering away.

‘…But my goal will be achieved.’

That was the final thought of the old man who had lived his entire life as both a clergyman and a heretic.

—-

Immediately after Paulus disappeared from the world completely without even leaving a corpse.

The illusions created by his power also disappeared without a single exception.

All those who had been trapped in hallucinations regained their senses. Most of them lacked the intelligence to understand what this meant.

“Groooooo…?”

The river of dark mana spread widely like blood vessels beneath the great desert. Various monsters swimming in it lifted their heads in unison, groaning with confusion.

The void monsters, which had stopped circling and been guided to one place since the moment Haschal confronted Paulus’s illusion.

Now that Paulus’s illusion that had lured them here was gone, the monsters could finally sense it.

The starlight-like divinity felt from the ground high above their heads.

“Krrrrrr…!”

Why? Just recognizing that power caused an inexplicable infinite hostility to surge.

“Kyaaaak!”

“Grooooo!”

The void monsters were beings that moved like beasts, by instinct rather than reason.

Therefore, without a moment’s hesitation, they burst out to the surface and rushed toward the ground all at once.

It was like thousands of streams of black lava erupting simultaneously.

—-

– Kwaaaang!

The quiet desert sand burst and shattered, scattering a thunderous roar.

Sand dust gushing like a fountain. Explosions echoing like reverberations. It was a scene reminiscent of a battlefield raining with artillery fire.

The river of dark mana overflowed like oil gushing through the ground, and monsters covered in sand emerged from it, lifting their heads and roaring.

“…Ha, this bastard Paulus is causing trouble even after death.”

In the midst of the sand dust rising like fog.

Facing the army of void monsters that had emerged immediately after destroying Paulus and now filled the horizon, Haschal let out a hollow laugh and simply shrugged his shoulders.

‘So this is what he was stalling for….’

Was it just for this?

Void monsters so numerous it was meaningless to count them, filling every direction.

It was a sight that would make even a saint or hero shudder, but to Haschal, it was merely laughable.

If Paulus’s plan was to defeat her with these creatures, then his plan was nothing but a delusion flawed from the very premise.

Even if they filled the entire horizon with monsters, they were just insects that would be annihilated in a single strike, unless they could block space-time cutting.

In truth, Paulus’s real plan was nothing so simple, but even Haschal couldn’t see into a person’s mind, so that remained unknown.

Therefore, with a smile completely devoid of tension, Haschal awakened the divinity of stars and dawn, intending to simply cut down all these monsters and return.

– Whaaaak!

The released divinity. A halo resembling a crown of thorns appeared behind Haschal’s head, and a purple dress full of starlight spread like an aurora, extending below her feet.

The blue-hot cross star at the center of her chest.

In the gradually settling yellowish-brown fog, the presence of the released divinity powerfully dominated the entire area.

“Kiaaaak!”

“Graaaaaaaa!”

All the monsters in the area turned their heads at once to look at the source of that presence. The blue starlight flickering like fire on the desert that had turned into a black lake.

And.

In the deep underground cavity left after the World Tree burned to death. From within the rift leading to the void created by the shattering of space.

【 Found҉̨͚̥͈̟̙̾͆͒͝ you҉̜̝̀̍̔̕͢…! 】

A roar mixed with anger and ecstasy shook the darkness of the void.

The thunderous sound echoed throughout the entire void. The being who had been watching the ground through the eyes of monsters rejoiced at the sight of the Goddess of Stars and Dawn.

Because he had finally found his enemy who had devoured one of his arms.

From within the sea of dark mana like an abyss, an enormous, truly immensely enormous being raised an arm that had been submerged in darkness and grabbed the spatial rift to widen it.

– Crack!

The widening gap in the world, breaking and shattering.

Forcing the gap wider was wasting tremendous power, but the giant in the void no longer cared about that.

He simply thrust his head through the gap, widening the rift with his entire body and jumping through.

That woman was just beyond. The woman who had taken his arm. That was enough for the giant of the void.

It was rage, not reason, that guided him.

According to the plan of the dead apostle who had been concealing his vision by covering the monsters’ sight with illusions.

【 Grooooooooooooo!! 】

And so, the bastard child of death who had been thrown into the void descended upon the ground.

The evil god of jealousy, the being called Invidius.