The Captain swung his weapon downwards. Liam rotated his body, parrying the blow. The sound of the blade hitting and then sliding against the spear shaft was loud. Liam stepped on the parried blade, using it as a foothold to jump even higher. Above him, he could see a few Drakkhan descending to help him.

Gradually, the focus of the Elite Captains’ battle was shifting to him. As he flew with Aerial Movement, green-armored Captains chased him, while black-armored Drakkhan protected him. The number of casualties slowly rose. Before the forcefield’s destruction, it would have been unthinkable to waste so much military power trying to save him, but Liam knew the situation had changed the moment he shattered the barrier alone. He was now more valuable than anyone else on the battlefield.

Desperately, Liam tried to absorb as much energy as he could with Chaos, all the while approaching the hole in the wall. Forced to take a step back every two steps forward due to the enemies’ pressure, progress was slow. Damage was mounting. His armor had long been pierced and cut through, creating deep injuries, but his body regenerated in real-time. In their efforts to either kill or capture him, the Kingdom’s soldiers were effectively tiring him out.

Liam’s hand wrapped around the head of an Elite soldier. In an instant, the enemy’s figure was covered in darkness. They died without a sound. With his helmet and mask destroyed, Liam took a deep breath, throwing the corpse in his hand at the incoming Captain. Mercilessly, the Captain cut their comrade’s dead body in two, not even blinking, making Liam frown. He had expected the Captain to at least catch the body carefully, but the plan had failed. Without a choice, Liam faced the incoming blow head-on. With his back facing the hole in the wall, he blocked the attack with his spear shaft, jumping at the same time. The force propelled him towards his goal.

His pupils dilated. He hurriedly turned around, but he wasn’t fast enough. A sword’s blade dug into his side, almost splitting him in half, while another flew through the air, in the direction of the middle of his face. Liam moved his head to the side, but the blade still hit him.

Everything to his right went dark. Without missing a beat, Liam pushed Aura Sight to its limits, trying to make up for the loss of vision as fast as possible. His right eye had been destroyed, alongside his right ear. Aura Sight accurately grasped the figures of his attackers. The two of them were Elite Squad Captains.

“Fuck off!”

Liam thrust his spear, making them take a step back. Then, he gathered part of the small amount of energy he still had and fired a Crescent Moon Wave at point-blank range. Of course, he didn’t expect such an attack to kill his enemies. He only hoped to momentarily blind them. Shooting forward like an arrow, he entered his own attack as it hit the two Captains, who were in the middle of swinging their swords to disperse the Wave.

With his left hand, Liam grabbed the head of the nearest one and slammed it to the ground. Then, he coughed up blood. While being slammed, the Captain had accurately pierced his heart. Liam felt like he could feel their gaze beneath his palm, wishing for his death. Unfortunately for them, a ruined heart was nowhere near enough to stop Liam, even weakened as he was.

Danger Sense flared up. Aura Sight grasped the figure of the second Captain with their sword raised up high, above Liam’s neck. In a fourth of a second, it would behead him. Underneath him, the first Captain put their right foot on Liam’s shoulder, ready to push him into the incoming sword. Because of this, the time he had remaining was reduced.

‘A tenth of a second.’

It was as if the world was moving in slow motion. Liam’s thoughts reached the corners of his mind faster than ever. If he were beheaded, he wouldn’t die, but it would take far too long for his head to regenerate. By the time the regeneration was done, he would have already been captured or worse. He couldn’t suffer such a crippling injury on a battlefield where he was completely surrounded by two billion troops.

Steeling his mind, Liam raised his arm towards the sword coming from above, while still holding onto the head of the first Captain. Chaos emerged from his fingertips, draining their energy. Immediately, they pushed Liam with their foot, as they had already prepared to do. Nevertheless, Liam had taken this into account. Letting go and spinning his body, Liam’s knee accurately landed on the side of the second Captain’s head, while his arm went flying through the air.

What he had thought of was simple, but incredibly hard to execute. By putting his arm in the way of the sword, the weapon would inevitably slow down as it cut through the limb. Taking advantage of this bit of time he’d bought and the hurried push of the first Captain, he rotated his body, sacrificing his arm to land a blow.

The impact of his knee strike was such that it made him fly forwards while pushing the Captain back. The Captain whose head was slammed on the ground stood up, chasing after him, but Liam used Aerial Movement to weave through the air and get away.

‘Just a bit more!’

His one eye zeroed in on the hole, now much closer than before. Then, it shook. He looked down, gazing at the halberd that had just impaled him. His one remaining arm grabbed the blade and pulled it downwards, while the enemy tried to force it upwards in order to cut his head in half. The young man’s right leg was pulled back, finding the halberd’s shaft and pushing against it, freeing him. Without looking back, Liam fired a Drought directly at the ground behind him. With a sonic boom, he flew, using Aerial Movement. The only thing in his mind was getting to the hole.

In this desperate fashion, he was attacked several more times on his way, being forced to step back and retreat more than once. The number of enemies was simply too high. While the ordinary soldiers were of no threat to him, once grouped up, they could fuse their attacks and coordinate themselves, becoming much more troubling. Were it not for the hundreds of millions of Drakkhan also fighting, Liam would have died long ago.

Even so, he reached it. He felt as if he were a Christian man before the pearly gates of Heaven as he stepped through the hole, stumbling through the many Aura blades and waves that came his way. One-armed, one-legged, and one-eyed, his frame was deplorable. Still, his eye burned brighter than a star.

It was then.

A loud rumbling sound dominated the battlefield, as if a thunderclap had been amplified a thousand times. Danger Sense screamed. Liam belatedly looked to the skies. His eye shook. What he witnessed made him tremble to his very core. Right above him, descending much faster than he could move, a gigantic, dark-green sword made of Aura fell. It was an unavoidable attack that would result in complete annihilation. Further above, the purple color immediately gained ground, pushing back the dark green.

‘It seems that the enemy Commander chose to kill me, even though it would mean enduring Arimiar’s full strength.’

Liam’s eye grew calm. Then, it closed. Right. There was no reason to despair. If this was his end, so be it. It was what it was.

With blinding speed, the giant sword crashed upon him. Liam felt himself being pressed to the ground, which turned to nothingness. He could feel his skin melting away, his muscles being mercilessly destroyed by the sword’s Aura, his bones being charred and burnt black by its temperature. His remaining leg disappeared, as did his remaining arm. Liam’s one eye had long melted. In a fraction of a millisecond, his body disintegrated. Every single cell was destroyed, melted away by the burning sword.

Time passed by slowly. Everything had gone dark.

‘The sword should be disappearing right about now.’

Yet, he could still think. His consciousness was intact.

Inside his Inner World, Liam’s soul smiled. Then, it opened its mouth.

“It would seem my body is no longer a limiting factor to my survival.”

It was the moment he discovered that even if his body was completely destroyed and turned into nothingness, his soul would remain.

“If you wanted to kill me, you should have tried to destroy my soul, Mr. King of Cinzolia. Though, I guess it would be kind of hard, because of Enduring Soul.”

Liam’s soul’s smile grew wider.

“Then, shall we get back to it?”

The soul circulated all of his remaining Aura, even though all of his Pathways had been destroyed. It was the power of being independent of one’s body. It coursed through his Inner World, making everything grow darker. In the darkness, Liam reigned along amidst the flashes of golden light.

Aura Sight radiated from his soul. Even though he no longer had a brain or even a single cell, he could still clearly see the world around his body’s destruction site. Everything within his Sight’s range had been annihilated.

‘A few tens of millions Drakkhan should have died.’

To think that a single blow from a Commander-class being could kill millions of beings so easily. Liam’s soul sighed. He dearly wished to reach that level of power. Then, it focused. Out of thin air, a single cell was formed. This cell became two, which became four, then eight. One microsecond. It was the amount of time that it took for Liam’s single cell to become hundreds. Hundreds became millions in instants.

A foot stepped strongly on the air as if it were solid. A naked man floated in the air, looking at the sky. Trembling, he lifted a single arm towards the dark green section of the heavens. Then, he raised his hand’s middle finger with a smile. The green clouds rumbled, but the purple ones didn’t budge an inch and kept pressuring them.

Liam’s eyes slowly started to close. He had spent all of his energy regenerating his body from nothingness. It had been much more taxing than he expected. He couldn’t even think, not to mention run away. It was at that moment that a figure wrapped its powerful arm around his waist, leaving an orange hue in its wake.

“…Leave the rest to us.”

One’s voice resounded. Liam let himself drift into sleep.