Ch.139Origin (3)

The crimson trajectory and Lorian’s prosthetic hand gripping the sword.

And Llewellyn, who had put down his hand axe and drawn out his favored battle axe, the Screamer.

He balanced the uneven weight of the beheading sword with the heaviness of the battle axe in his opposite hand. His body moved, gliding toward the golem.

It was a weakness of the Moon Shadow technique. After beheading, the distance widens, making it impossible to finish the opponent decisively.

If the beheaded enemy is the kind that doesn’t die even when its head is cut off, the fatal blow becomes ineffective.

Normally this wouldn’t even be considered a weakness, but now was different. Llewellyn swung his axe, which emitted a fierce roar.

Slash!

The golem’s body split open. Was it relying on its head for visual information? Llewellyn countered the directional imbalance created by swinging the axe with his beheading sword.

Crash!

And he repeatedly neutralized the imbalance created by the beheading sword with his axe.

The attacks were merely aftereffects. Llewellyn’s combo stopped only after the golem lightly jumped back to create distance.

The feeling was satisfying. Fittingly, the golem’s body was tattered and covered in gashes everywhere.

A level that would have killed a human long ago. Even Valterok, another golem Llewellyn knew, would struggle to remain intact with such wounds.

Yet this golem was still standing.

‘Is the neck not a vital point?’

Its head was severed, yet it still moved. Normally, one would despair upon seeing this and thinking the vital point was missed, but Llewellyn’s brain was unusually flooded with divine power and blood.

His intuition, approaching precognition, greatly enhanced his cognitive abilities.

‘No, that’s not it. If it weren’t a vital point, it would have ignored my combo and counterattacked. This is…’

As Llewellyn pondered, Lorian’s blood-formed arm shifted above his shoulder. What returned to his outstretched blood hand was the hand axe, North Wind.

Holding a total of four weapons, Llewellyn thought.

‘Is this a conversation?’

The golem moved exactly as Llewellyn had thought.

It picked up its fallen head, and the detached head rolled its crystal eyes and spoke.

“I was careless.”

The usual Llewellyn would have dismissed this with “Making excuses after getting thrashed,” but there was an atmosphere that prevented him from doing so.

There was still an intuition stimulating his mind. His haunted intuition whispered that the situation was still dangerous.

The ring Ortemilia had made for him was also indicating that the battle situation had not yet ended.

So Llewellyn remained silent, quietly glaring at the golem.

“I thought there would be no problem since I had fallen. I thought I could preserve my strength and reserve the opportunity to take revenge on everything that deserved it.”

The golem spoke in a voice like scraping metal, spitting out the words. Listening to that voice, Llewellyn felt an inexplicable anxiety.

A feeling that something was going wrong. Even Lorian, who briefly lingered in Llewellyn’s mind, couldn’t hastily comment on the atmosphere.

In the midst of this, the golem spoke.

“I was stupid. I was dull. I didn’t properly do what I should have done and instead thought about ‘next.'”

As an eerie feeling spread, the golem spoke. While smiling.

“Revenge isn’t like that.”

That was the moment when the eeriness turned into certainty. Llewellyn discerned what he had failed to realize amidst the intuition racing down his spine.

“Revenge is about putting down everything I have, and I pretended not to know that!”

The surroundings shook with the thunderous cry. Neither Llewellyn nor Lorian knew if it was safe to charge in, so they remained still.

And judging by the results, not charging in was the right choice.

It would have been a meaningless act.

“Revenge is knowing that you will burn today and not see tomorrow’s sun, yet I was so dull!”

The mountain shook.

It collapsed. No, it was more than that.

It felt as if the entire mountain was being uprooted. Only then did several memories flow through Llewellyn’s mind.

“This is why I lost my divinity, this is why I lost everything I had to a pathetic being while my eyes were wide open! I was so, so dull!”

A giant face, a giant body, which had taken the form of a mountain.

A village where countless golems lived.

“But no more!”

The golem smiled. Its mouth twisted into a smile. It was chilling. Unpleasant. But more than that.

Some energy that had been raging wildly in Llewellyn’s heart was being taken away. The divine power of revenge was returning to its rightful owner.

To the golem, who had grown calm and was slowly closing its eyes.

“I will no longer hold back.”

“…What are you doing?”

“Revenge.”

A beaming face. An unburdened smile that one wouldn’t have believed could be expressed on a golem’s face appeared on the golem’s face, twisted by divine power that overflowed and did not hesitate to be consumed.

“The fulfillment of my role.”

When Llewellyn’s eyes turned toward the golem, the golem’s body stiffened and no longer moved.

It wasn’t dead. It had abandoned its vessel.

The moment he realized this, Llewellyn’s understanding reached beyond intuition to precognition.

It was at that moment that Llewellyn reflexively covered his ears.

“Fellow brethren, behold me—!”

A horrific sound that seemed to shake the very soul. Blood gushed from his mouth.

“I, ■■■■, shall take your revenge today—!”

With those words, Llewellyn’s body lost control and collapsed, rolling on the ground.

He realized belatedly.

The mountain was moving.

*

Elimul ran. His characteristic was mobility, different from his younger sister Elize.

His body, a mix of moose, horse, and snow leopard, allowed Elimul to “escape” outside with outstanding mobility.

Of course, questions naturally arose.

A shapeshifter had died. A shapeshifter’s life, far more precious than tens of thousands of ordinary people, had been taken.

Revenge would be the right choice. Contacting the Empress and thoroughly erasing that inferior something would be right.

But he couldn’t do it. Strangely, from the moment Llewellyn ordered him to run away, Elimul couldn’t even think of such reasoning.

So Elimul ran. He recalled all the passages they had traversed and climbed back up, covering them with minimal movement.

Despite his incredible speed, it took a long time. The passage itself was excessively long.

It was a march that took a long time even for two shapeshifters with superhuman physical abilities and a homunculus with infinite stamina, and even for a blood clan member who had essentially achieved immortality.

But isn’t this too long?

It was at that moment that Elimul began to wonder. He belatedly saw light and ran toward it.

The slope is steep. No, it’s becoming steeper. Strange?

But there was no need to question, because as soon as he burst outside, he saw an unimaginable sight.

“…What?”

The mountain was moving.

It’s an impossible thing. Impossible without a transcendent being.

However, there was no characteristic “antipathy” of a transcendent being. Then how?

Elimul didn’t know the answer.

It was inevitable since there were few beings in this world who knew the answer.

But the Empress would have known the moment she saw it.

After all, she had sent two expendable clan members because she had anticipated this.

As Elimul escaped from the body of the giant in the form of a massive mountain and floated in the air, the giant roared.

Ancient language that Elimul couldn’t understand. The language of gods that once filled the pantheon.

Elimul vomited blood. His eyes burst, and all his internal organs ruptured, turning into a handful of bloody water.

He fell toward the ground. Though he didn’t die because he was a shapeshifter, the injury was severe enough that death wouldn’t have been surprising.

The wound was profound because he had escaped from the giant’s eye level.

‘Ah, I’m dying.’

It was when Elimul was about to close his eyes and give up.

“The ‘guest’ has been secured.”

A mechanical voice was heard. The floating sensation in his body stopped with a violent reaction, and Elimul blinked his eyes while vomiting blood.

His eyes were regenerating, but he could barely see.

“…What, go.”

“Please rest. The situation will improve quickly.”

He heard a dog barking. Mixed with whimpering sounds, Elimul closed his dazed eyes and lost consciousness in the net.

It was a golem that put down the unconscious Elimul.

Countless golems with different appearances walked in sync with speed and rhythm.

Dresses, work clothes, gambesons that guards might wear.

Countless attires and countless appearances. But all had the same voice and all were beings with the same fragments.

The largest and most numerous fragments that a certain divine figure once possessed.

Fragments of the Craftsman. The only one missing among them was the blacksmith. The countless golems saw the massive “golem” that was moving with a fierce roar.

The dog was watching cautiously among them. It lowered its tail, wagging it gently while glancing sideways at the golems.

It couldn’t bark. The atmosphere didn’t allow it. Dogs are perceptive creatures, so it paced around without even whimpering.

Then it approached the “herbalist golem” who most often took it for walks. It stretched its front paws to scratch the leg, and all the golems simultaneously looked at the dog.

A situation that would frighten even non-humans, yet the dog wagged its tail slightly at those gazes.

The golem met the dog’s gaze and knelt on one knee.

“Don’t worry. All situations are under control, and we will resolve this matter.”

The outstretched steel hand stroked the dog. A tender touch despite not being able to feel it.

Only then did the dog whimper. Even a mere animal knows. That those were potentially farewell words.

Crash!

Just then, someone was expelled from the body of the “mountain giant.”

That someone stopped after breaking several trees, as calculated by the golems, and was lying face down on the ground, vomiting blood.

“Verification procedure, are you conscious?”

“…Must, stop. That thing…”

“Acknowledged as affirmation. I have a request.”

A rare non-mechanical tone. Only then did the man who had collapsed and was vomiting blood, Llewellyn, raise his head. The defensive barrier that had been enveloping his body had already become Lorian.

Unlike the unconscious woman, Llewellyn seemed unlikely to lose consciousness yet. The golem looked at the man, then picked up the dog and approached.

“This is Huey.”

“…What?”

“This entity’s name is Huey.”

The golem put down the dog in front of Llewellyn. The dog, not wanting to be separated from its owner, the golem, tried to get up and cling to the golem as soon as it was put down, but.

“Huey.”

When the golem carefully pushed it away with its hand, the dog sat down, whimpering.

The golem spoke softly to the dog, which was sitting and staring blankly.

“Live long.”

The golem stood up, leaving behind the dog that was still whimpering pitifully. All the golems simultaneously headed somewhere.

Watching these golems, Llewellyn realized that he felt something similar to what he had felt in his violently beating heart and when fighting the golem inside that mountain giant.

It was divine power. And it was different from Llewellyn’s own, a divine power that had originally belonged to one being.

Divine powers originating from the same root as the mountain giant that wanted to destroy the world for revenge, all gathered and walking together.

Their destination was inside the mountain giant where a god slept.

It was the place where everything began, and where everything would end.

Llewellyn, following an inexplicable intuition, set out after the golems.