Chapter 639: Voices Over the Battlefield (2)

Frey still remembered that day with blinding clarity.

His feelings might have cooled, but he truly wanted to kill Simon ..to settle that debt.

Yet no matter how deep he cut, no matter how many puppets he felled, he found no trace of him.

Then, when he’d begun to think there would be no clue at all ..

Frey heard a voice he never expected to hear.

It rolled over the battlefield ..the buzz of loudspeakers.

Amid the fire and wreckage, scattered puppets appeared, each carrying a speaker ..the very kind Frey had seen in the puppet city long ago.

And through them, that cursed voice returned.

“Ah… is this thing on? Check, check.”

War and ruin. Fire and blood. While countless fought for their lives ..

that man’s grating voice came from everywhere.

“I see you’re all fighting quite fiercely to stay alive, so I won’t take too much of your time—kikikiki.” Simon chuckled, light and mocking.

Frey’s expression tightened at the sound of him.

“To be honest, I hadn’t planned to address you at all… but Frey Starlight’s sudden appearance made me change my mind. I didn’t expect him to show.”

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Lord Starlight? I wonder if you’re still holding a grudge after our last meeting… You’re angry, aren’t you? Even though I only killed one of your friends, while you destroyed all my puppets. That’s hardly fair.”

Simon prattled on as if he were hosting a broadcast, not a war.

Frey, slicing down puppets, visibly bristled.

“Cut the nonsense, Simon, and face me!”

“Haha ..and why would I do that, Frey Starlight? If I fought you now, the match wouldn’t be fair.”

Slash!!

Frey destroyed a cluster of speaker-puppets, but Simon’s voice kept piping in from elsewhere.

“You’re not the same young man anymore, Lord Starlight. In a short time you’ve become a true monster ..and monsters like you can only be handled by other monsters of your kind.”

Far from the battlefield, seated calmly before a strange machine,

Simon Manus spoke with a smile.

Clad in his elegant black coat and tall hat, he looked exactly as he had the last time.

Before him, a reactor whirred violently, blue Aura coalescing around it ..

a savage pressure thrumming through the chamber as Simon relished the moment.

“The ignorant Empire, the foolish Ultras, even the demons who fancy themselves the apex of creation ..

all of you are blind to the truth. You don’t grasp the real mission of the evolution I’m pursuing.”

“True evolution ..the kind that will make me a perfect being your small minds cannot comprehend.”

He was undeniably strange .. grandstanding about his ideals in the middle of a war.

Every word only confirmed how far gone he was.

“With my own hands I’ll carve a path to a world utterly different ..free of the ceaseless nonsense of humans and demons alike. Mark my words: the decisive moment is very close!”

“Because I, Simon Manus, will show you what the true pinnacle of evolution looks like ..an evolution that will let me surpass the gods!”

Simon Manus’s proclamation swelled in fervor with every word .

There was no stopping him.

“This bastard’s gone insane…”

Frey sighed, irritated by what he was hearing. Simon sounded just like Blattier after he’d swallowed the souls of millions—the madness that comes when power floods in all at once.

“It’s laughable to claim you’ll surpass the gods while you won’t even show your face,” Frey shot back. “You’re no god—you’re a coward who won’t shut up.”

Simon chuckled.

“Patience, Lord Starlight… patience. It won’t be long before you and I meet face-to-face. And when we do, you will bow—before the god soon to be born! Ahahaha!”

While Simon Manus’s laughter echoed everywhere, the battle itself reached its final phase. The puppet army could no longer hold.

In the end, the Empire won the clash that would be called the Graveyard of Puppets.

They had slain the Hollow Pontiff Sulyvahn, and that alone was a crushing advantage.

But they couldn’t find Simon Manus anywhere ..meaning he’d never come to the field in person.

His words, though ..his deranged broadcast ..stayed in many minds. It wasn’t something they heard every day. To many he sounded unhinged; to others, terrifying. One thing was certain: the fight with him was very close now.

…

That night, they buried the dead while the survivors reformed their lines.

Frey and his companions had helped secure the victory, but the Empire’s side had already suffered heavily before they arrived. They had lost half their force; barely a little over two thousand remained—the only troops they could spare for the Blue Front.

One major enemy.. the Pontiff had fallen.

But Simon Manus and his puppets remained, and the Hollow Ludwig had yet to appear, his intervention a constant possibility.

The situation was far from ideal, and they couldn’t call for reinforcements ..the other fronts had their hands full.

Even so, with Frey and Snow present, fresh support hardly seemed necessary.

After the battle, Frey and Snow were summoned to a lengthy meeting led by the man in charge of the front: Gal Varion Sunlight.

He clearly understood the current political winds ..proof he stood with Aegon Valerion. But with Frey holding many allies on this front, Gal had no practical way to move against him and so tried to harness Frey’s strength instead.

Frey left the meeting early, indifferent to Gal’s attempts to keep him on a leash.

Soon he was moving through the camp, past soldiers who either greeted him respectfully or stepped hurriedly out of his path.

Whether he liked it or not, he had become famous among Imperial ranks.

“Fame that’s good for nothing,” Frey muttered, slipping away from the bustle.

Alone, he kindled a small campfire and sat before it, letting his thoughts wander. He wanted to finish with the Hollow front quickly and rejoin the others—but now he was being forced into a hunt with Simon Manus, whose true plan no one knew. Annoying, to say the least. He needed quiet to sort his head out.

He didn’t get it.

Within minutes, a small crowd drifted over.

“Ah ..alone again, as usual,” Snow said, arriving with the former Temple students.

They all came up behind him, and Frey sighed, making space.

“I was alone… not anymore.”

He found himself surrounded by many companions sharing the quiet and the firelight ..

peers of his generation like Dawn, Seris, and the rest…

and the older ones ..Uriel, Eleen, even Frost.

For a moment, it felt like they’d all returned to the Temple, and a gentle nostalgia settled over them ..

memories of better days, long gone.