Chapter 917: 109. The Crowned

The moment Edeline spoke the words “I repent,” Muen realized something was wrong. But even he had not expected the attack to come that fast.

The distance between them was unimaginably vast, yet it felt as though it were right in front of him.

The killing intent was bone-deep.

Even the death warning he had honed over countless trials had not had time to fully sound before Muen’s body felt that horrifying power first.

And, of course, recognized where it came from.

“The Witch of Repentance!”

That top-tier Crowned-level powerhouse of the Salvation Society—the one who had once made a move against him in Belrand—had bared her fangs at him once again in the Kingdom’s royal capital!

In the far distance, the rain mist thinned.

The witch named for repentance lifted her eyes, calmly cast her gaze this way, then raised a hand and lightly pointed.

Just one finger.

Muen felt the entire world fall silent. He could no longer hear a single sound.

Everything around him seemed to have been imprinted into a photograph. Even the puddles on the ground no longer rippled.

It was as if Muen had been instantly locked inside an invisible cage. There was no change at all in the scenery before his eyes, and yet that pressure—heavy as the deep sea—was undeniably real, crushing him mercilessly from body...

to mind.

Pain. Excruciating pain.

Just that one motion made Muen feel as though his whole body was about to be ground to pieces.

“Damn it...”

Clenching his teeth, Muen poured every last ounce of mental strength into turning the Black Sun in his spiritual space. He did not dare hold back in the slightest.

Because at a moment like this, holding anything in reserve meant death.

And so black flames blazed fiercely, spreading around Muen with a kind of boldness they rarely showed, rapidly tearing open a gap in that invisible prison. At last, Muen won himself a chance to breathe and stumbled out through that narrow opening.

Crack...

But almost at the same instant, a sound like porcelain shattering rang in Muen’s ears. He looked over in shock and saw that everything, with the place he had just stood at as the center, was beginning to split apart.

The ground...

The gravestones...

The trees...

Even the invisible space itself.

Everything was cracking. Everything was breaking, as if under that single pointing finger, all things were nothing more than sandcastles piled together—pitiful things that could collapse into useless grains the moment they were lightly pushed.

And that collapsing force, which crushed everything in its path, was chasing after him at an almost inconceivable speed.

His sense of impending death shrieked like a swarm of bees!

“Damn it!”

Muen had only just steadied himself, and his body no longer had the room to dodge again. The black flames were also useless against something this intangible and wide-reaching. So without a moment’s hesitation, Muen drew Elizabeth and slashed.

Ring—

Blade light tore through the night.

That light was incomparably brilliant, like moonlight itself. Quiet, yet it carried Muen’s full-strength strike.

Time Delay.

Hundredfold.

He had even fused in the technique of Heavenly Fire Unsheathing that he had learned from Ariel, raising the power by yet another level.

It could be said that aside from the fact that the attack had been launched too hastily for the move to be brought out perfectly, this was already the strongest strike Muen could produce at this point.

In Muen’s imagination, even if that slash could not meaningfully obstruct the Witch of Repentance, it should at least have delayed the rhythm of her attack for a moment and bought him enough time to escape.

But...

At this moment, all imagination was meaningless.

The dazzling blade light was stunningly beautiful, but now that slash—something that should have been intangible—was unbelievably endowed with substance.

Like the moon in the sky falling to earth.

The bright moon was lofty and unreachable.

But once it fell to the ground, it was only a useless rock.

That crescent of moonlike blade light froze in midair just like that, unable to advance another inch.

Crack.

Then a fracture appeared across it.

“...”

Muen’s cheek twitched.

But before he could curse again, a sharp and unmistakable pain struck him.

He looked down and saw that half the arm with which he had swung the blade had also entered a shattered state. Like an insect struck by a boulder, the body he had tempered for so long now seemed unbelievably fragile. Even the bones had been crushed to powder, and the arm was only barely still shaped like a hand because a little flesh and skin were keeping it together.

His counterattack had done nothing.

Instead, he had been heavily injured in an instant.

The gap was so vast...

it was suffocating.

“So this is... a Crowned?”

Muen’s expression darkened, and he forced out a smile uglier than a grimace.

The Crowned...

The Crowned, called those of the Heaven-Bestowed Crown—one of the most special levels in all cultivation, and the realm where the suppressive relationship between martial warriors and mages was completely reversed.

Just a casual strike from that far away had left Muen struggling to withstand it.

He did not even have room to fight back.

Because the other party was completely outside his range, and what was pressing down on him now was nothing more than the light pressure of a single finger.

No...

At a time like this, should the distance be considered fortunate instead?

“Damn it... damn it... damn it... I just wanted to reel in a fish, not hook a sea monster too! This isn’t when a boss like you is supposed to show up! Could you go back to lurking underwater, you bastard?!”

The protagonist hadn’t even finished leveling yet—how could villains like this just ignore the usual progression?

Oh right. I’m not the protagonist. Never mind then.

Muen grabbed the arm that was nearly torn off completely, flooded it with black flames, and rapidly repaired the flesh. At the same time, taking advantage of the fact that the slash had, in the end, delayed the spread of the fractures ever so slightly, he fled again at a speed that did not dare slacken for even an instant.

Elizabeth clashed automatically at his side. His alchemical domain covered his whole body, concealing his aura. Then his improved light spell twisted the surrounding light, letting Muen vanish completely into the shadows.

Shadow Step!

Muen’s figure flashed as he rapidly left the open expanse of the graveyard and plunged into the narrow streets beside it.

But even fleeing at top speed, even using every concealment method he had, Muen still felt that gaze fixed on him.

He could not shake it.

Not even the speed increase from Time Delay was enough.

No—perhaps in the eyes ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) of a Crowned, the speed he had gained only amounted to the difference between a snail and a turtle!

Crack...

The fractures spread out from the darkness again. The area of destruction they covered was not even that large—too small to fill even this narrow alley—but those cracks followed Muen with terrifying precision.

Like a line of ink drawn from somewhere far away, and the moment it touched Muen, it would erase him completely from this world.

“Motherf—”

He narrowly brushed past those cracks again, only for his entire shoulder blade to shatter completely. Muen stumbled, nearly crashing to the ground in a disgraceful heap.

He rolled into another street, driving black flames through his body as he repaired himself. Feeling the death warning and pounding heartbeat still showing absolutely no sign of weakening, he finally could not hold back the profanity anymore.

“How the hell can a Crowned just attack inside the city? With this much commotion, where are the Kingdom’s powerhouses? Are they all dead? If any of them still have breath left, get out here and do something already!”

Even if the Salvation Society had already taken control of the Kingdom’s upper ranks, they could not possibly have taken over all of Saint Blancfazesiya.

This was a city of millions!

From the moment the upheaval at Notasia Fortress confirmed that the Salvation Society had infiltrated the Kingdom’s upper levels until now, only a few days had passed.

So where were the strong people here?

Where were the various organizations and factions?

Even...

the Church’s cathedral?

Muen could not understand it. Unless the royal capital had already been completely destroyed—which obviously was not the case—how could a Crowned of the Salvation Society so brazenly play a game of crushing ants with her fingertip right in front of several million people in the Kingdom’s capital?

What the hell, had they hung a Tsukuyomi over the moon and hypnotized the whole city?

One question after another rose in his mind, but Muen had no time left to think about them now.

The cracks that seemed capable of destroying all things came after him again, clinging like a curse he could not shake.

Muen curled his body and barely dodged the attack by shrinking his bones, then dove straight into a nearby house, hoping the complicated terrain would help him escape the Witch of Repentance’s pursuit.

At a moment like this, Muen’s ability to think had already been squeezed to the limit. The agony wracking his body and the pain of his mind being drained past its limit were tearing at his nerves every second. Sometimes he was no longer dodging through conscious thought at all, but purely through bodily instinct.

So it was only when he came back to himself that he realized ducking into a house had not actually been a very good choice.

“Hopefully no one’s here. Hopefully I’m not dragging innocent people into this.”

He spread out his perception. Only after confirming that there were no signs of life nearby did Muen finally let out a breath.

And just as he was about to keep running for his life, he realized that his sense of impending death had weakened considerably. Looking back with caution, he saw no trace of those cracks anymore.

It seemed either that the buildings really had blocked the Witch of Repentance’s line of sight, or that Muen had now entered the bustling district of the royal capital, and the Witch of Repentance’s actions had finally drawn the attention of other powerhouses on her level, making her cautious enough to stop pressing forward with those cracks.

“Am I safe for the moment?”

Muen muttered.

He still could not relax his guard.

Next...

“Hm?”

Just as Muen was about to think through how he could completely shake off the Witch of Repentance’s pursuit, a thick scorched stench suddenly stabbed into his nose.

No, it was probably not that the smell had only reached him just now. It was just that earlier he had been too focused on escaping, every sense and every strand of attention centered on one word only: run. It was only now, with the Witch of Repentance’s attack pausing, that he had the spare attention to notice his surroundings.

“What is that smell? Is the house on fire?”

With no time to rest, Muen followed the smell and quickly found its source.

He pushed open the front door of the house.

And then he saw—

Fire.

Towering flames.

Those flames were blindingly bright, bright enough to nearly illuminate the whole night sky. Because it was not, as Muen had first thought, merely this one house that was burning.

It was many houses.

An enormous number of houses.

Reflected in Muen’s constricting pupils, the entire district seemed to have fallen into a sea of fire. Parts of it had already been burned away completely, leaving behind nothing but broken walls and blackened charcoal.

And farther away, one terrible explosion after another thundered out, deafening, making the very ground tremble.

Wailing.

Crying.

Burning.

Destruction.

As far as Muen could see, that was the scene before him—

a scene like the end of the world.

“How... did this happen?”

The image before him clashed so violently with the quiet, ancient royal capital in Muen’s memory that for a moment he felt as though he had fallen into a dream.

No.

But Muen quickly snapped awake and reacted.

This was not a dream.

Because the wounds the Witch of Repentance had left on him had not yet fully healed. They were far too clear.

So...

Could this be the “truth” he had been desperately trying to uncover all along?