Ch.218Night’s God (9)

I considered the Transcendents allies.

Even if not completely allies in the potential sense, I believed they would never become enemies. That was the perception of the man who was both Llewellyn and Yoon Sejin.

Despite not knowing what Transcendents truly were, despite their varying purposes and unreadable intentions.

I was convinced that Transcendents would never become enemies.

Even though I had fought with a Transcendent not too long ago, I still believed this.

Perhaps I desperately wanted it to be so.

Llewellyn struggled to his feet from his kneeling position.

‘Llewellyn, are you alright?’

Lorian’s voice lacked strength. It was the result of drawing power to protect Llewellyn.

The new attack unleashed by the “God of Night” had been that powerful. Even with the anti-magic power reflexively deployed by Llewellyn’s black armor and Lorian’s blood magic reducing its force, his arms still trembled.

It was an attack that could neither be blocked nor avoided.

The sword strike using the “God of Night” as its hilt was the entire sky beneath the thick darkness, appearing and disappearing faster than a blink.

The feeling of it already being there before you could react. A strike so swift that defense wasn’t even conceivable.

And even that wasn’t its full power. Llewellyn now clearly saw the enormous arm.

He could faintly sense it. That this arm was merely a tiny fraction of the whole.

A transcendence capable of manipulating the laws of the world, turning night into day, and weaponizing the cycle of day and night.

An overwhelming difference in class that lived up to the name of Transcendent.

Despite the gap in power so vast that he couldn’t tell if victory was even possible, Llewellyn exhaled slowly and placed his hand on his chest.

‘Llewellyn?’

Llewellyn didn’t answer Lorian’s question.

He simply listened to his own heartbeat.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

His heart was still beating. Divine power enveloped his entire body.

Llewellyn felt the divine power flowing through his body and reflected.

What he realized was truly absurd.

His goal and aspiration had simply been to become happy. With vague methods and objectives, he had blindly desired only happiness.

Even Llewellyn himself hadn’t known what to do. Because Netel was in the way, his father was in the way, and the Empire was in the way.

He had thought that perhaps if he removed them all, he could be happy. While somehow thinking that might not be the case.

Clearly, now he saw that wasn’t it.

He understood why he had felt that way. Because the greatest obstacle to his happiness and future was embedded in the sky above.

Countless gazes like stars scattered across the Milky Way. Among what could be called millions of gazes, Llewellyn lowered the hand he had placed on his chest.

The Great Ascension had failed. In fact, the Great Ascension had been a trap.

Why and how he had fallen into it, he didn’t know, but one thing became clear.

The Great Ascension was destined to fail from the beginning, and all gods who ascended to the heavens through it were devoured to become the flesh and blood of the transcendent monsters floating above.

He couldn’t let the same happen to others. Even if he knew that the “God” before him had dug this trap hoping to devour him and the God of Dreams as well.

Llewellyn quietly gathered his fighting spirit and checked his body.

A body flowing with divine power. His regenerative ability was sufficient. The regeneration would be complete soon. His body was intact, and thanks to Lorian reducing the attack’s power, he could endure.

What about his mind? As he reattached his nearly broken will, it became even stronger, like a bone that grows back stronger after being broken.

And his swordsmanship?

The finest teacher in this world was right beside him.

All that remained was action. Llewellyn walked forward, making a final check of his body.

His sword wasn’t broken. His arms and legs still moved. All that was left was to fight.

The night sky was moving. The Sword Saint glanced at Llewellyn who had approached his side.

“Can you still fight?”

“Yes.”

“Will you continue fighting?”

Llewellyn thought.

Must I fight?

There was no need to contemplate.

There was no room for doubt.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The Sword Saint simply smiled.

He didn’t ask how Llewellyn would win or if he had a plan.

He simply trusted the man with whom he had crossed swords. As if all that mattered was doing what he could.

It was the intuition of a sword master who had lived for over 200 years. He sensed that Llewellyn had figured something out and believed he could draw it out now.

Llewellyn returned the Sword Saint’s smile.

“Let’s go.”

At those words, the two men charged. One rose into the air, using anti-magic power as footholds to run, while the other ran swiftly on the ground with his sword resting on his shoulder.

Arrows quickly cut through the air, targeting the rapidly moving night sky.

They missed repeatedly, but that couldn’t be helped. Rather, Llewellyn traced the trajectory of the arrows with his eyes, predicting where the blade would fall.

Just then, a beautiful melodic voice rang out. The power within his body seemed to condense for a moment before explosively accelerating.

Llewellyn approached at high speed, skipping several anti-magic footholds he had created, and seeing the tilted night sky turning toward him, he gripped his sword and reflexively shouted.

“Sword Saint—!”

The Sword Saint leaped up at his call. For an instant, the sky brightened, but Llewellyn didn’t stop.

He ran forward. Though he couldn’t see even an inch ahead, and his intuition burned hot with the attack about to pour down on him.

He didn’t stop.

The trajectory of the arrows that Isla had etched was still in his memory.

Using the entire night sky as a blade was powerful and innovative, but due to its vast range, there were inevitable weaknesses.

For instance, rather than needing to deflect incoming arrows one by one, they were all pushed away at once, meaning that if one listened carefully and concentrated their senses, they could predict the trajectory.

The target was Llewellyn. However.

—!

With a sudden storm, the world flashed bright before darkening again.

The Sword Saint deflected the night sky that came flying as a blade, just in time.

Blood spurting from his arms and legs, he fell along the same trajectory he had leaped.

It was a strike invisible to Llewellyn’s eyes. An attack he couldn’t even perceive, let alone block.

That’s why Llewellyn approached the semi-transparent form only visible to his eyes.

‘Llewellyn, what are you planning? How can you possibly…’

Though Lorian asked, Llewellyn gripped his sword firmly instead of answering.

Only after closing in did several things become clear.

The way that being, a Transcendent who had devoured gods, structured its power, and how it molded and utilized divine power.

Even the fact that while its authority was intense, it manipulated the world in a different way.

For Llewellyn, this could be applied as a miracle.

Something had bothered him from the first moment. Why would a being like a Transcendent, capable of devouring even gods, target Llewellyn and the God of Dreams, and carefully set a trap to lure them in?

Why it pretended to be the God of Night until they met, going to such lengths to devour them.

The reason was simple. Even for them, divine power was an unfamiliar and difficult force to handle.

Llewellyn gripped the sword hilt with both hands and twisted his waist.

Using his ankle as a pivot, he drew up power. The force that surged from his ankle enveloped his entire body, reaching to his fingertips.

From ankle, to knee, to waist.

Through the thoracic spine and chest, even using the trapezius muscles to reach the shoulders and finally the fingertips.

Using every muscle in his body without exception. The form resembled an upward diagonal slash.

Tree Splitter. A killing technique that the Sword Saint himself might name as his ultimate move.

It wouldn’t reach if used normally. The Sword Saint knew this well, which is why he sent Llewellyn forward.

His swordsmanship had reached its limit and could block even gods, but it couldn’t reach a Transcendent who had surpassed gods.

Even Llewellyn couldn’t cut it with divine power alone.

The result was clear. A sword strike imbued with divine power, the ultimate in swordsmanship using every muscle in the body.

All fell one step short. What was needed was the courage and creativity to step forward more boldly.

Llewellyn happened to know something appropriate.

Just as the “God of Night” wielded its transcendent power intertwined with divine power to change the world.

Llewellyn could draw inspiration from that and apply it.

His heart beat strongly with his drawn breath.

Miracle Manifestation.

Using Llewellyn’s heartbeat as an axis to spread divine power widely, reading and understanding the memories and lives of beings touched by that beat, and wrapping and handling them with divine power.

Miracle Transformation, on the other hand, goes inward. It sinks the heartbeat inside to spread within, reading his own life to read the objects of mourning and recreate them.

This is not limited to magic, divine power, or physical abilities. Anything can be recreated, anything can be targeted.

As long as it has been sufficiently mourned.

What Llewellyn needed now was beyond that.

What he was invoking now was Miracle Realization.

A high-level technique that draws out change by giving Transformation to the axis of Manifestation.

Llewellyn rolled his eyes following the sense opened by the God of Dreams. His rapidly rolling eyes stared at the semi-transparent arm, the tattered body of the God of Night connected to that arm, the hair hanging from its head, and the night sky.

While looking at the traces created by divine power and transcendence, he focused on his heartbeat.

Thump.

At that moment, Llewellyn recalled when he first obtained divine power.

When he rejected both his “mother” and “father” and decided to walk his own path.

The sensation of the divine power he obtained enveloping all of Netel.

He recreated that now.

Thump—!

His heart beat frantically. Divine power burst out from Llewellyn in concentric circles, surpassing the God of Night, passing over the Sword Saint who had fallen to the ground covered in blood, illuminating Melody and Isla who were preparing other spells on the ground.

It didn’t stop there but spread further.

Arba, now in ruins, and Servan, where nothing remained.

Beyond even that. Further and higher.

What was needed to overcome this situation was “firepower” not originally permitted in this world.

And Llewellyn knew someone with such an image.

A woman who had been worriedly resting her chin in her hand at the Pantheon raised her head. He felt as if their eyes met, her gray eyes and his.

“Sejin…?”

Along with his sister’s lovely voice, her image wandered through his mind.

His sister’s determination to meet her brother again even if it meant killing this star.

“Miracle Realization.”

His sister, shaped by knowledge not originating from this world, by passion and determination.

Annihilation, Lucilla.

“Death of a Star.”

As his sister’s image passed through Llewellyn’s body and formed among the stars.

KWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

The night cleared, and the sun rose from Llewellyn’s hand.