Chapter 332: Chapter 332 – “Where am I?”

Darkness did not lift all at once.

It peeled away.

Slowly—reluctantly—like something that did not want him to wake.

At first, there was only sensation. Not pain. Pain was too small a word. What flooded him was pressure—vast, crushing, all-consuming—so immense it made the agony of the Thousand Hammer Crucible feel distant by comparison. Every nerve screamed at once, then went silent, then screamed again in waves so dense they blurred into one another.

Luca opened his eyes.

Or tried to.

His vision fractured immediately—shards of light and shadow overlapping, sliding out of alignment like broken glass that refused to settle. The world lurched violently, and a migraine tore through his skull so fierce it made thought itself feel dangerous.

W–where… am I…?

The question barely formed.

His mouth wouldn’t move. His jaw wouldn’t respond. He couldn’t even swallow. His body lay sprawled against something cold and uneven, his limbs twisted at angles that felt wrong—not painful, just wrong, as though his bones had forgotten the shapes they were meant to hold.

Another thought struggled to surface.

Is this… another past…? another one of my visions?

The idea terrified him.

Memories were already unstable things—cracks he’d learned to navigate carefully. But this—this felt different. He could feel himself. Every fracture. Every rupture. Every hollow place inside his chest where something vital no longer sat correctly.

No.

The realization hit him with grim certainty.

This is my body.

Not memory.

Not an illusion.

Not the echo of someone else’s suffering.

It can’t be the past…

A pulse of nausea rolled through him.

I–it’s real.

He tried to turn his head.

The attempt sent a spike of agony through his skull so sharp that his vision blackened entirely for a moment. When it returned, it came blurred and doubled, but enough remained for him to see—

Blood.

Everywhere.

A sea of it stretched beside him, dark and clotted, soaking into ruined earth that had once been stone. The ground was carpeted with corpses—dozens, maybe hundreds—bodies twisted into grotesque shapes, armor crushed, limbs severed, faces frozen in terror or rage or pleading.

The stench hit him then.

Iron. Smoke. Rot.

His breath caught.

What…what.. happened…?

The numbness in his body was complete now—not mercy, but saturation. Whatever pain receptors remained had simply given up. His chest no longer rose reflexively; he had to force breath into his lungs, and even that felt delayed, as though his body needed time to remember how.

A sound broke the silence.

Wet.

Dragging.

Luca’s breath stuttered.

Slowly—so slowly—he turned his head toward it, his vision swimming as bone scraped against bone somewhere inside him. He expected pain.

None came.

Only pressure.

Only wrongness.

And then he saw them.

Three—no, four—figures shambled across the blood-soaked ground, their bodies warped and uneven, flesh corrupted into something that only resembled humanity. Limbs bent unnaturally. Skin mottled and torn, pulsing faintly as if something beneath it was still moving.

They were dragging someone.

A woman.

Red hair—once vibrant, now matted dark with blood and dust—trailed across the ground behind her. Her complexion was tanned, skin marred by grime and shallow wounds, her body limp except for the faint, involuntary tremor that proved she was still alive.

Barely.

She groaned weakly, the sound thin and broken, like breath forced through shattered glass.

Luca’s heart slammed violently against his ribs.

The cultists laughed.

A low, ugly sound.

“Tch… tch… tch,” one of them muttered, dragging her by the arm without care. “Such a beauty.”

Another leaned closer, his voice slick with amusement. “No wonder the Third General specifically told us to bring her back.”

A third let out a distorted chuckle. “Think we’ll get a taste before that?”

The first snorted. “Who knows. Do you think she’ll even survive long enough under the Third General?”

They laughed together—grating, inhuman sounds that scraped against Luca’s mind like knives.

His vision blurred violently.

No.

No no no—

His breathing turned ragged, shallow gasps tearing at lungs that barely functioned. His chest burned—not from injury, but from something far worse than pain.

Recognition.

Memory slammed into him with sickening clarity.

Her hair.

Her voice.

Her presence.

His body screamed at him to stay still.

His mind refused.

With everything he had left—every shattered fragment of will clinging desperately to consciousness—Luca forced his lips to move.

The effort felt like lifting a mountain with broken hands.

“A–Aurelia…”

The name barely escaped him.

A breath of sound.

A whisper soaked in blood and terror.

But it was enough.

And the battlefield, soaked in death and silence, seemed to listen.

The cultists stopped dragging her.

One of them let out an exaggerated sigh, rolling his twisted neck as if disappointed by a spoiled meal. Then his eyes brightened—not with hunger alone, but with a cruel, idle curiosity.

“Shame,” he said lazily. “If we can’t taste it… we can at least see it.”

The others paused.

For a heartbeat, the battlefield was silent again—then grins split across their deformed faces, wide and ugly, skin stretching too far over bone.

“Good idea,” another chuckled. “We’re just lightening the Third General’s workload.”

They dropped her.

Her body hit the ground with a dull, helpless sound.

Aurelia groaned—weak, fractured—her fingers twitching once against the blood-soaked earth, but there was no strength left in her to resist. The cultists closed in, their shadows falling over her like a second layer of night.

Hands moved.

Not hurried.

Not frantic.

Casual.

They began tearing at her armor, prying at straps and fastenings with rough impatience, metal clattering uselessly aside. The protective layers that had once marked her as a warrior were stripped away piece by piece, discarded like trash.

Her breath hitched.

Another groan escaped her throat—hoarse, barely audible.

Luca’s vision tunneled.

The world narrowed until there was nothing left but that moment.

The sound of fabric ripping followed—slow, deliberate, obscene in its ease. One of the cultists laughed softly.

“She really—”

“—has a body worthy of—”

The words blurred together, lost beneath the roar that exploded inside Luca’s head.

Something inside him snapped.

Not cracked.

Snapped.

His body refused him.

His limbs would not move.

His mouth would not open.

And yet—

Rage detonated.

A pressure greater than the Crucible—greater than the hammers, greater than magma—tore through his chest, raw and absolute. His heart slammed violently, blood surging through veins that moments ago had been ruptured and empty.

He screamed.

Not a sound of pain.

A sound of denial.

“Aaaaahhhhh—!!”

Blood gushed from his mouth as the scream tore free, splattering the ground beneath him, his throat shredding under the force of it.

“No—!!”

The word came out broken, distorted, layered with something else—something ancient and furious.

The battlefield responded.

His body convulsed.

Bones shifted.

Cracks reversed.

A sound erupted from within him—wet, grinding, violent—as fractures pulled themselves back together, splinters snapping into alignment as if yanked by invisible hands. Blood that had pooled beneath him surged backward, racing up his skin, reentering torn flesh as wounds sealed in jagged, imperfect bursts.

Pain returned.

Not dulled.

Not distant.

Sharpened.

Every nerve reignited at once as muscle reknit, organs snapped back into place, and shattered pathways forced themselves open again. Luca screamed through it all, his body arching violently as reality itself seemed to rewind around him.

The cultists froze.

“Huh?” one of them muttered, turning slowly. “Wasn’t… wasn’t everyone dead?”

They stared.

Behind them, Aurelia—clothes torn, armor gone—lifted her head weakly. Her eyes followed their gaze, unfocused, empty, not yet understanding what had changed.

Luca stood.

Not gracefully.

Not steadily.

He rose.

Steam rolled off his skin. Blood evaporated where it clung. His body was whole—almost—no bone out of place, no limb unresponsive. But the pain remained, screaming through him like a reminder of what he had just crawled back from.

His eyes were locked forward.

There was nothing human in them now.

No fear.

No hesitation.

No thought.

Only intent.

He didn’t shout.

He didn’t warn them.

Luca pushed off the ground—

And vanished.

The distance between him and the cultists collapsed in an instant as he hurled himself forward, the battlefield screaming beneath his feet as he charged straight at them, rage dragging him faster than reason ever could.

And the darkness recoiled.

Luca moved.

There was no thought behind it.

No technique.

No restraint.

Only motion.

The first cultist turned just in time to see Luca’s face—eyes wide, empty, burning with something that wasn’t human anymore. The sword came down without flourish, without hesitation, cutting through corrupted flesh as if the world itself wanted the blade there.

The body collapsed.

The second cultist screamed.

Too late.

Luca was already on him.

He drove forward like a force of nature—taking blows without flinching, ignoring claws raking across his side, ignoring the way his own blood spilled anew. Pain had lost meaning. His body was no longer something he protected.

It was something he spent.

Luca’s hand was cut down by the cultists but he laid no attention.

Steel rose and fell.

Again.

Again.

The third cultist tried to flee.

Luca caught him.

There was a brief struggle—desperate, ugly—but it ended the same way everything else did. The sound of the body hitting the ground was dull, final, swallowed immediately by the silence that followed.

As time itself reversed his injuries began to heal again, the broken hand attached to him again as if it was never broken.

Seeing that…the fourth cultist dropped to his knees.

Begging.

Words spilled out in a broken rush—pleas, bargains, prayers to a god that had never listened.

Luca didn’t hear them.

He stepped forward and ended it.

When it was over, the battlefield was still.

No movement.

No voices.

Only bodies strewn across the blood-soaked ground beneath a sky that felt dead.

Luca stood alone.

His sword hung loosely in his hand, crimson dripping steadily from the blade, each drop vanishing into the earth below. His chest rose and fell in ragged, uneven breaths, steam curling from his body as if he were burning from the inside out.

This world didn’t feel real.

It felt like punishment.

He turned.

Aurelia lay where they had dropped her—curled inward, barely conscious, her breathing shallow. Luca staggered toward her, the rage bleeding out of him all at once, replaced by something far worse.

Fear.

He tore off what remained of his armor and wrapped it around her without thinking, shielding her as best he could, his hands shaking as he tried to be gentle.

“Aurelia…?” His voice cracked. “Where are we? What happened? What is this place?”

Her eyes opened slowly.

They didn’t focus.

They passed over his face like it wasn’t there.

She looked at him the way one looks at a stranger glimpsed through fog.

“W-who… are you…?” she whispered.

The words hit him harder than any hammer ever had.

His breath caught painfully.

“No—no, it’s me,” he said quickly, desperately. “It’s Luca. I’m here. You’re safe now.”

Her lips trembled.

She swallowed with effort.

“T-thank you…” she murmured, her voice barely holding together. “You should… go now.”

But it hit Luca more than the hammers in the crucible, as he saw Aurelia looking at him like a stranger.

She coughed weakly.

“You’re… still alive. Run.”

His mind went blank.

She looked past him—past the battlefield, past the corpses, past reality itself.

“C-can you… do me a favor…?” she asked faintly.

Luca nodded instantly. Frantically.

“Anything.”

Her eyes closed.

Her voice was barely a breath.

“…Just… kill me.”

The world collapsed.

Darkness swallowed everything at once—the battlefield, the blood, her body vanishing from his arms as if it had never been there.

“No—!” he shouted into the void. “Aurelia! Aurelia—where are you?! Aurelia!”

His voice echoed back to him, empty, broken.

Then—

Another voice.

Sharp.

Familiar.

Desperate.

“Lucaaaaaa!”

He gasped, clutching at his chest as relief slammed into him so hard it almost hurt.

I knew it—

I knew she wouldn’t forget me—

“Lucaaaa!”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep