【“You are remarkably sentimental. Do your eyes still linger on the star you left behind thousands of years ago?”】

【“You all left. We had no choice but to leave.”】

【“So the choice you made back then still shakes the heart of a star?”】

【“Have you forgotten who made it possible for you to leave? Who made you want to abandon our homeland in the first place?”】

【“...My deepest apologies.”】

One of the Holy Seats seated among the countless stars lowered their head beneath the cold, merciless gaze of the dreaming thunderous star, '■■■■■.'

A very long time had passed since they had cast away their flesh and departed, yet even among them, the dreaming thunderous star remained exceptional.

For together with the twin stars of fate and infinity, it had carried out the Ascension Project to escape an unavoidable fate, saving both humanity and themselves.

【“You cannot even imagine what I saw. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”】

【“...But aside from Flammerios, who shares the same star, a duplicate contract has never existed. Even that was closer to an anomaly caused by the legacy left behind by the former Imperator and their shared affinity with flame.”】

Even now, with more than six of the original nine stars asleep, those blue-and-gold eyes—which could see both the past and the future—continued to gaze upon the three thousand worlds into which humanity had spread.

【“I never told that child to bring down fire.”】

【“If you regret it this much, then why not simply speak with the twin stars of fate and infinity even now?”】

【“...”】

The dreaming thunderous star had never been eloquent, neither in the past nor in the present. Only after a long silence did it answer the question posed by the Holy Seat among the stars.

【“I can't.”】

【“Why not?”】

【“Those children would burn down an entire house just to kill a single insect. They've been through something similar before, which only makes it worse.”】

【“...I truly can't argue with that.”】

Yet a lack of eloquence did not mean a lack of reason.

【“So this is the only way. If we're to stop those who are actually willing to choose destruction after being given the freedom to choose... then watch. Watch what that child decides.”】

【“Yes.”】

The Holy Seat among the stars understood that all too well and lowered their gaze toward Kyrie.

The Lightning Blade drew a short breath and stepped forward.

Tap.

“That's right. I've only ever wanted one thing. And now I've come closer to it than ever before... while somehow ending up farther away than ever.”

Electric sparks burst from the crown of his head, raced down his neck and torso, and poured into the earth beneath his feet.

Like ripples spreading across a pond after a single droplet fell, the current raced over the ground, gathering vast quantities of Sacheol before flowing back against the current of time itself.

Tzzzzzz!

The countless interlocking plates of Sacheol Armor wrapped around the Lightning Blade's body without leaving so much as a crack.

Every joint had been designed so that the lower plates folded beneath the upper ones, allowing his limbs to bend and extend violently without thinning the armor or exposing a single gap.

Shhk!

A single long horn rose from the forehead of the armor, which now completely concealed even his face.

“If I walk out of here alive... I'll tell them. I'll tell them about what you call the elixir of sacred radiance... and what is truly our elixir of eternity.”

The Department Dean of the Hall of Purity lowered both crimson-bone blades to either side and slowly curled his lips into a grin.

Crack. Crack-crack.

The crimson-bone blades lengthened still further.

The dark crimson sword aura surrounding them surged even more violently.

They now possessed enough power to pierce straight through Kyrie's Sacheol Armor.

“Truth remains truth because it affects me whether I reject it or not. In the end... you will accept it as well!”

The Department Dean planted his reverse-jointed legs firmly into the earth, coiling himself like a spring.

The clawed toes protruding from his carapace dug deep between stone and soil.

“That isn't something to accept. It's something you prepare for and fight against. And if you're going to argue that even those countermeasures are ultimately influenced by truth... then you're wrong.”

“Hm?”

“Because interaction happens no matter what nonsense you spew. That's exactly why lies are harder to refute than truth.”

Tzzzzzz!

The Lightning Blade summoned another great wave of Sacheol before raising the crystalline holy sword over his shoulder.

Whoooooosh!

A tidal wave of black iron filings rushed forward.

The two leaped toward one another.

BOOOOM!

The Lightning Blade brought the crystalline holy sword crashing down with truly lightning-like force.

The translucent white-blue blade resembled a bolt of lightning that had descended upon the earth itself.

Clang!

Even with every ounce of his strength poured into reinforcing his sword aura, the Department Dean was overpowered.

“You are still young.”

But the Department Dean possessed two swords.

Craaaack!

Crossing the crimson-bone blades diagonally into an X, he caught the Lightning Blade's strike.

Dark crimson sword aura and pale blue lightning-filled sword aura collided, erupting in violent static.

Grrrrk!

Twisting the crossed blades into a true cross, the Department Dean forced the crystalline holy sword upward.

He intended to crush it between the two crimson-bone blades.

Crack... Craaack!

The crystalline holy sword was a divine relic embedded with fragments of a star, blessed with the authority to amplify voltage.

But the physical strength of the blade itself was inferior even to the Wall-Breaking Longsword.

There was simply no comparison between modern steel forged by master craftsmen using the Empire's latest techniques... and a crystalline weapon fashioned from an era when even proper metallurgy scarcely existed.

Pzzzzzt!

Violent lightning erupted from the fragments of the thunderous star embedded within the crystalline blade.

It sounded almost like a scream.

Or perhaps like joyful laughter from something that longed to escape its prison.

Crack!

At last—

The blade snapped clean in half.

The crystal blade, now robbed of its light, fell to the ground.

“Hah!”

The Department Dean thrust both crimson-bone blades forward with all his strength.

Thud!

The crimson-bone blades, reinforced by sword aura, possessed terrifying hardness.

Even engraved magic-tool armor could be pierced after only two or three thrusts or slashes.

Piercing Sacheol Armor, composed of countless metal grains, was hardly difficult.

Especially now that Kyrie's breastplate had already been stripped away.

The crimson-bone blades pierced the Sacheol Armor.

The Department Dean's wrists disappeared deep into it.

“Huh?!”

At that moment, Piaget reacted not as a scholar—

—but as a warrior.

There's nothing there?

No matter how sharp one's sword aura, even if it could cut steel as easily as pudding, striking through a knight's flesh and bone always carried resistance.

But inside this Sacheol Armor...

He felt absolutely nothing.

No...

Piaget hurriedly turned around.

Shhhhh...

The towering wave of Sacheol subsided, restoring his vision.

“Caught me?”

“Kyrie!”

The Lightning Blade stood behind Piaget.

Hidden completely by a dummy made of Sacheol Armor and the great wave of iron sand that had blinded him.

“If truth is something that affects me whether I reject it or not!”

“A Blue Knight of Astreos resorts to tricks?!”

“Then today's truth is simple—”

“Anyone trying to turn the world into a land of monsters deserves to die!”

“And you still dare call yourself the Lightning Blade?!”

The Department Dean roared.

The Lightning Blade answered without hesitation.

“You mock our truth... yet still expect to be judged according to it?”

“...!”

That brief exchange struck the Department Dean more deeply than any sword blow.

Kyrie gathered the Sacheol around him and forged a Sacheol Blade.

Tzzzzzz!

A massive greatsword—every bit as enormous as Frey's—rose as Kyrie lifted his hand, assembling itself before resting upon his shoulder.

Piaget hurriedly tried to pull free his crimson-bone blades.

I can still do this.

At least he had noticed before the strike landed.

After all, it was still only a single sword coming toward him.

If he kept his composure—

Craaaack!

That confidence vanished the instant the Sacheol Armor collapsed into a dense sphere and latched onto his crimson-bone blades.

Even if two objects each weighed only five kilograms, a dumbbell and a long iron bar felt completely different depending on where their center of mass lay.

The Sacheol that had formed the armor already weighed dozens of kilograms.

Now it continued gathering by the second, swelling from hundreds of kilograms...

...to entire tons.

THUD!

Piaget's arms slammed toward the ground.

“Ghk!”

“Hah!”

Kyrie laughed—a savage laugh, yet one filled with confidence.

Craaaack!

The Sacheol Blades wrapped around the crimson-bone blades and vibrated violently, grinding them away.

“AAAAAAAGH!”

Even as Piaget lashed out with sword aura to destroy the Sacheol Blades and free his weapon...

They simply clung to it even tighter.

Fwoosh... Fwoosh!

Then ionized gas ignited once again inside the mass.

Blue-green flames licked through the gaps in the Sacheol.

By now Piaget's right arm had sunk almost to the elbow into the iron sphere.

The Department Dean of the Hall of Purity writhed as bone and flesh were ground apart and burned away moment by moment.

The Lightning Blade—whose name echoed throughout the Empire of Stars—raised that enormous blade high...

Like an executioner.

Draped in a cloak of countless shining stars.

Preparing to carry out judgment as the proxy of the Myriad Stars.

No...

Piaget turned his head toward Kyrie.

He tried to unleash his ultimate mental wave.

Crack!

Instead of answering with Blue Radiance Lion's Roar, Kyrie simply drove his steel-plated military boot forward.

It struck Piaget squarely in the throat.

“Ghk!”

Piaget collapsed to the ground, coughing violently.

Tears welled instinctively in his eyes as his face hit the dirt.

Even then...

He searched for a solution.

That was the proper attitude of one devoted to scholarship.

Crunch.

Piaget withdrew the sword aura from the crimson-bone blade in his right hand.

Without sword aura protecting it from the heat of the ionized gas and the grinding force of the Sacheol Blades, the weapon—hard though it was—was still only bone.

It was ground away in an instant.

But during those brief moments...

A tiny gap opened between the crimson-bone blade and the Sacheol Blades.

Shhk!

“AAAAAAAGH!”

At the cost of stripping every shred of flesh and muscle from his right forearm between elbow and wrist...

Piaget ripped the half-ground crimson-bone blade free.

I can still cut him.

He's lowered his guard.

He sprang upward.

The blade aimed directly for Kyrie's neck.

Slash!

The crimson-bone blade carved a dark crimson arc through the night.

“Well now.”

The Lightning Blade merely leaned his head back.

The blade missed by the width of a single sheet of paper.

“Urgh!”

Piaget crashed back onto the ground.

Kyrie looked down at him with an easy smile.

“You made it way too obvious when you kept tensing and relaxing your right arm.”

Flap. Flap.

But Piaget's final counterattack had not been completely meaningless.

“Y-you...”

“Hm? Ah.”

The black eyepatch slipped from Kyrie's face.

Its strap had been cut clean through.

The night wind sweeping over the mountain carried it away...

Revealing Kyrie's right eye.

A golden star-shaped emblem.

The seal personally bestowed upon one beloved by a Holy Seat.

“A... stigma?”

The Department Dean of the Hall of Purity felt a chill race down the back of his neck.

His heart pounded violently.

The Lightning Blade stood with the cliff at his back.

Most of the thunderclouds gathered by the Blue Knights had dispersed, leaving the night sky brilliantly clear.

Wrapped in that star-filled sky like a cloak, Kyrie looked down upon Piaget.

His golden and blue heterochromatic eyes glowed softly.

He seemed like the apostle of every star—

The dreaming thunderous star.

The free Storm Star.

The immovable Brass Star.

The blazing supergiant.

The frozen Polar Star.

The surging Divine Sea Star.

The twin stars of fate and infinity.

Even the nameless Myriad Star.

Fwoooooosh!

Behind him, both the meteor shower summoned by Saint Sirius and the battle priests...

...and the true meteor shower destined to fall this very night...

Illuminated the heavens.

Beneath his feet, the imperial palace of the Ancient Empire burned.

“I was contracted. At first, I thought it was unfair.”

“But not anymore.”

“No... I suppose it still feels a little unfair.”

“But I don't want that contract undone.”

Kyrie smiled.

A smile both impossibly distant and vividly clear—

As though he stood as the representative of every star in the night sky.

His hair tie had snapped, letting his long hair stream magnificently in the wind.

He wore only a thin leather outfit beneath a harness hung with explosive balsam grenades, while magic-tool armor protected his arms and legs.

“Did you really think I'd let the likes of you destroy everything I've sacrificed my life to build?!”

For a fleeting instant...

Piaget thought.

If truth was that which remained unchanged no matter how fiercely one denied it...

Then Kyrie himself was the truth sent by all those stars.

But...

The Holy Seats had not abandoned humanity.

B-but...!

When the ancient evil god once again sought to reveal itself to this world...

Had they not sent forth an apostle bearing a stigma...

To burn away that ancient thing...

And sever its head?

Kyrie raised the Sacheol Blade.

Slash.

Chapter 248

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