Chapter 231

The 5 Cordis legions retreated back up the narrow, single path.

With nearly 40,000 people, the procession was long, and not even half had passed the gate.

The head of the procession became the tail, and the tail became the head.

Nana and Bukenos slowly rode their horses toward the center of the procession.

“Is there still no reply from General Zeronimus?”

“No…. We have already sent eight urgent reports, but….”

“…….”

Nana opened her mouth.

“……He must be dead.”

“……!”

Bukenos turned his head, startled.

He wondered if Nana was perhaps joking, but her face was the very picture of seriousness.

Eight-Impact General Zeronimus, dead?

He was an exceptionally resilient man, even among the Ten Great Generals of the Empire.

The obvious question rose in his throat.

“…Who?”

“I am thinking of two.”

She said, still holding the reins.

“One is Amethus Aretion.”

“Amethus….”

Bukenos nodded.

Nana and Bukenos had spent their school days with Amethus.

They knew better than anyone what terrifying sword skills that man with the jade-colored eyes possessed.

“And the other one…?”

“The White Lord.”

“……!!!”

Shock. Bukenos’s eyes widened as he looked at Nana.

Nana glanced at him sideways.

“If General Zeronimus died without being able to send a single urgent reply, who in the West other than the White Lord could do such a thing?”

“…Didn’t he become a ruin of a man? By His Majesty the Great Emperor’s plan….”

“Didn’t the Widow Queen, who was driven mad by His Majesty the Great Emperor’s plan, appear before us and block our path?”

“……”

Bukenos’s expression darkened.

He unconsciously fiddled with the hand-axe at his waist.

He always caressed the hand-axe like this when he was anxious.

But today, the anxiety just wouldn’t subside.

The White Lord, Obro Denoebang.

A name that even the Empire, which didn’t just look down on but despised the West, had to acknowledge.

The fact that the Second Calamity was prepared solely to break the White Lord proved just how dangerous the Empire viewed him to be.

“…I hope it was Amethus’s doing.”

“I agree.”

If met as an enemy, a man as dangerous as Amethus Aretion was extremely rare.

But he was better than the White Lord.

Bukenos shuddered, and Nana deeply sympathized with his feelings.

“In a day, all troops should be back outside the gate, following the path they came.”

“Mm.”

“What will you do after the retreat?”

“We must wait for the main army.”

Nana had the complete demeanor of a general.

Bukenos found it quite bizarre that the small junior who used to tag along after them in their school days and the Nana before him were the same person.

Where had Nana from back then gone?

She must still be in there somewhere, but right now, she was nowhere to be seen.

“No matter how much discord there was, the supreme commander of the expedition must have been decided by now.

The provisions are sufficient.

If we wait just over ten days, we should be able to rendezvous with the main army.”

“Elder Kerenneus is truly admirable.

Where did such a large amount of provisions pop out from ….”

“If Sen Sorti is the First Mage, Elder Kerenneus is worthy of being called the First Supply Officer.”

Nana, who had been chatting, glanced behind them.

“Are the Earth Soldiers not giving chase?”

“Yes, Legion Commander. They seemed to be pursuing at first, but from a certain point, they all disappeared.”

“…Suspicious.”

“Wasn’t it one person controlling thousands of Earth Soldiers? Just one Ancient Weapon consumes an enormous amount, so handling two must have exhausted them.”

“That also makes sense.”

Nana, who had once wielded the ‘Sinew of the Great Sea’, nodded at Bukenos’s words.

She felt a renewed pang that the ‘Sinew of the Great Sea’ had been taken by Shion.

“Hm?”

Nana tilted her head.

Her ears, several times more sensitive than others’, detected a commotion.

The commotion grew louder and drew closer.

Paying close attention, she realized the troops far ahead had stopped walking.

“Why did they stop?”

“…I will check.”

Bukenos raised a hand to his ear.

He was Nana’s adjutant and the Chief of Staff for the 11th Legion.

Collecting reports from signalers throughout the army was one of his main duties.

Bukenos’s face hardened as he received the report through the communication device inserted in his ear.

“…Legion Commander, it seems you must advance quickly.”

“What is it?”

“…There is an ambush. They say the waist of our forces has been cut.”

“An ambush? How many?”

“…….”

Bukenos said, as if reciting.

“……It is one man.”

***

Nana dismounted her horse.

The narrow, single path was so densely packed with soldiers that running herself was faster than trying to ride her horse.

Nana Nereyades was as quick as her small frame suggested.

Bukenos blew a small whistle, signaling that Nana would be passing over their heads.

Nana leaped and bounded over the heads of the soldiers she led.

The fiercely loyal Cordis legionnaires saluted their commander as she leaped over them.

Leaping high and far, something came into view.

An empty space had been created in the middle of the army.

In the center was a single man, and the soldiers, terrified of him, did not dare to charge.

Nana Nereyades landed, her lips twisting.

“I knew it would be you.”

Nana’s eyes blazed.

There was only one madman in the West who would jump alone into the midst of thirty-eight thousand elite soldiers.

That golden hair, those blue eyes, those detestable features.

“Shion of Merion!”

“…….”

Shion Pollinglight maintained his silence.

Nana Nereyades was actually glad to see Shion.

She bared her teeth and growled.

“Well met, Shion of Merion.”

Who was Shion?

Wasn’t he the man who had taken the life of her grandfather, Niko Nereyades?

In truth, she held no hatred.

This was because she was deeply grateful to him for sending Niko’s corpse so they could hold a funeral.

Still, Nana was a commander of the Cordis Empire, so she could not just let Shion go.

“This was all your doing. You ruined all of His Majesty’s plans!”

“…….”

“To come alone so fearlessly, no matter how many troops we lose, you will be… here….”

“…not….”

Shion began to mutter.

Nana felt a sense of wrongness.

She had clashed with Shion several times already.

The Shion in her memory always smiled, so much it seemed fake.

But now, he was not smiling at all.

His smile-less face was like a single blade, painfully beautiful.

“…No more, I can’t endure it….”

Shion Pollinglight looked to the sky and lamented.

He seemed to be forcefully suppressing something deep in his throat.

That anguish was transmitted even to the tens of thousands of Cordis soldiers who were his enemy.

“…I have endured for far too long….”

He was alone.

Surrounded by nearly forty thousand Imperial legionnaires, 130 giant-form magi-soldiers, and Nana Nereyades, who had been one of the Ten Great Generals, he was instead the one who was threatening.

“…Today, this moment, how long I have waited….I thought if I waited, it would be forgotten, but that’s not true either. How can it be so vivid, no, rather, it has thoroughly rotted as much as it was suppressed ….”

Shion’s every word seeped into the soldiers’ hearts.

His words seemed to carry a stench.

A stench that had seeped into his very soul from spending too long in a terrible place, a stench so bad it felt suffocating even if you blocked your nose, wafted from his tongue.

“…This heart, my pain… is clearly….”

Nana only then realized Shion was wrapped in bandages.

And beneath the unraveling bandages, she saw blackened, dead skin.

And she also saw black scales.

“……Hatred.”

Shion shed blue tears.

No, those were flames.

No, no, they were hearts that had melted down and turned to smoke.

No, no, no, those tears were the real Shion.

The corroded tears became flames and smoke.

Shion’s pupils, scattering blue from the corners of his eyes, began to slit vertically.

“…I hate you!”

He becomes enormous.

He bends.

He becomes black and gaunt, laboriously spewing a hot, exhausted energy.

A black scream crawled up his throat, but he swallowed it back down.

Among the 38,000 soldiers, not one, not even Nana Nereyades, could say a single word, completely intimidated.

“I hate you!”

‘Soul Fire’ burns.

He transforms into the ‘Hunchback’.

The ‘Heated Iron Bloodline’ coils and the ‘Unclosable Twenty Steps’ pushes away.

Hundreds of thousands of ‘Fantasy Fingers’ finally became wings to fly toward a vain dream.

“I, hate you, I said, Cordis-!!!”

Fangs and claws and scales.

Shion is filled with a sharpness not permitted to humans.

It is because he has now become inhuman.

[Return it-!!!]

A dragon cried.

It roared thunderously, shedding deep blue tears.

Poesia, Poesia, my beautiful Chyallo flower.

He had ruminated on it hundreds of times, so it should be tiresome by now, but how could it be so newly painful and piercing.

The piercing sorrow resonated clearly in every heart.

At the dragon’s cry, the weak-hearted screamed and fell to their knees.

[My child, my joy, my peace! My Poesia, my Serena, my Merion!! Return everything I loved that you snatched away! My life, my, my, my….]

The child named Poesia was never born.

Serena de Verchello is safe in the Hanchamus Islands.

Merion is the same.

The West has not yet experienced war.

So Nana Nereyades could only be dumbfounded.

[…The world you stole, the world that only I remember….]

But there is a time engraved in Shion’s heart.

The Poesia who died, the Serena crying from empty eye sockets, the Merion that became hell, the dead, and on top of that, the people who were forgotten.

That place before the Regression, which only Shion remembers.

[……Return it to me, Cordis.]

Shion wanted to live there.

The paradise he remembers exists before the Regression.

But where did it go?

He never ran away, so why has paradise become so distant?

The Merion, the Serena, the Poesia that Shion remembers—where in the world did they disappear to?

Why in the world does he hate this much?

He was in anguish because he couldn’t find the answer, and the more anguish he felt, the more his anger surged.

[If you cannot return it, fine.]

With peerless fury, the Dragon of Six Horns simply cried, blue.

[I, too, will destroy you.]

As he wailed, streaming blue flames, screams erupted from all over.

It was ‘Soul Fire’.

Shion was merely sobbing, but the azure fire swallowed the soldiers.

The dragon, just by living and breathing, trampled the world.

Watching Shion, who had become a dragon, Nana Nereyades spat out a single phrase.

“Madman.”

She had already gripped her super-sized oar and leaped.

“I thought you were a more impressive man than this.”

Nana flew above the dragon’s head in an instant and, with the super-sized oar inherited from her grandfather, she smashed it against that head.

“But this is just venting, Shion of Merion! You might as well have stayed in a closet and masturbated!”

The roaring sound was fierce.

The super-sized oar, swung by Nana with all her might, generated a shockwave so strong it made her whole body tingle.

It was a blow so powerful it caused the ground the dragon stood on to sink, yet Shion merely rolled his vertically slit pupils.

“……Damn.”

As Nana said, Shion was just venting.

He was finally trying to pour out the inferno he had kept deep in his throat, having found no place to release it.

However, to call it simple venting, it was too piercing, too hot… and too powerful.

[Nana Nereyades.]

Unlike the Hunchback, who couldn’t even speak properly, the ‘Dragon of Six Horns’ spoke with a very clear voice.

His hatred was also clear, so there was no wavering in its direction.

[That’s right, you too are Cordis.]

Shion’s maw was packed with fangs.

Nana had always wondered.

She had wondered what lay behind the fake smile of the man called Shion of Merion, and it turned out to be all tears and teeth.

Nana could swim freely anywhere, but she had no confidence she could swim inside that maw.

[I must destroy you.]

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