Ronandt

"This can’t be!"

"How is this even... possible?"

Good question.

"How is this possible?"

A massive bolt of light and lightning was fired in our direction, engulfing everything in its path, which prompted me to even clench my teeth at the sight of it, but as it approached a distance of about a dozen meters from engulfing the three of us, it simply didn't pass through.

As things calmed down, we soon came to notice the untouched circular plot of land surrounding us. Everything except the circular plot of land we stood on had been spared by the shaft of light's trajectory.

Done with the discomforting feeling of being restrained and strangled, I freed myself from the Archbishop and the Holy Paladin and announced to the one I knew I was responsible for this, "Hey, Nia. It might not have looked like it, but I could’ve handled it myself just fine, you know."

Though she was nowhere to be seen, I knew she was there somewhere.

"I don’t doubt that."

I looked around and saw the miserable state the archbishop and the holy paladin were in, and I realized that I might have gotten carried away with the way I handled things.

"However, allowing such a blow to hit you upfront awakened... old and unpleasant souvenirs," Nia explained, emerging from an invisible orb hovering in the middair in which Aryan was also standing.

"That’s understandable; I guess it was my fault for letting that happen in the first place." As I finally remembered the objects of my presence, Nia’s and Aryan's, I announced to the latter, "Aryan, come with me. I’ll clear the way for you. Gentlemen, this is our farewell. It has been a pleasure to meet the three of you again."

With these words spoken, I immediately left the spot and dashed toward the fortress. On my way there, I got to witness the destructive prowess of the thing they used to unleash that shaft of light. Though it wasn’t yet as powerful as Amira’s breath, it was certainly stronger than any average dragon’s breath.

As I got closer and closer to the fortress, countless elemental attacks rained upon me, but in comparison to what had earlier been unleashed upon us, it was nothing.

Soon the artifact—or whatever the right way to call the gigantic barrel-like thing from which the shaft has been fired—came within sight. While I was half-expecting it to unleash a second salve upon me, it didn’t.

I suppose this was one of those single-use artifacts.

With nothing to stand against me, it took me little effort to destroy the thing that occupied an entire aisle of the fortress. An entrance was made, I entered the building, and I proceeded deeper within.

Amidst the screams, chaos, and spreading fire, there was a group of paladins that still stood in my way, among which was a woman whose outfit suggested that she was quite a highly ranked paladin within the fortress, just as was Damian in the North Fortress. However, unlike him, the woman who'd been pointing a sword at me was shaking dreadfully. Yet despite that, she resolutely stood at the head of a large group of paladins at the entrance of a large closed door, inside of which I was certain to find what I was looking for.

"Faceless One, this place is under the protection of the Holy Paladin Nikolai Landon; you have no right to walk past this door, nor even this place; leave at once," she warned, or at least she tried.

Though her efforts were worth acknowledging, her words were not going to stop me. I continued to stride forward, expecting one of them to enforce their rule upon me, yet none dared.

With no one to stand in my way, I blasted the large door I didn't have the key for and found myself walking into a room that resembled the Aubrecht familial sanctuary, a place where members of the nobility eternally rested. Yet it was all that this place had in common with Aubrecht’s sanctuary. In this case, the magical presence exuded by the room made it clear that, rather than being a simple noble sanctuary, this was the location the mana used to fire that thing earlier was drawn from.

Hundreds of nobles' remnants littered the room, resting inside their crystal coffins, linked through strange cables that could be clearly traced back to a single, massive crystal coffin in the center of the room.

"Is this her?" asked Aryan, teleporting beside me.

Still in her crystal coffin, the remnant was that of a woman. She possessed orange and yellow, almost sun-like hair, and a proud expression on her face, even though the defiling cables that were ruining the peaceful rest that death was supposed to be were connected to her all across her body.

"Yes," I conformed, recognizing her face—not that I had seen her in bones and flesh before, but rather thanks to that one painting in the royal palace. "This is indeed her. One of the seven apostles and also one of the very first nobles: Kine, the Flamboyant."

"I see… but what did they do to her?" he asked innocently, visibly having not guessed yet. "What are these cables? And these many remnants?"

"What they unleashed on me earlier wasn't regular magic, nor was it an attack unleashed by a mere artifact; should I have to guess, the magic that was unleashed was Kine's magic, but unleashed with the mana support provided by all these remnants."

"Why would they do that?!" Aryan seemed to be revolting internally.

Though the overall premise doesn’t seem to be much different from the one under which the barrier operates, it nonetheless remains, for a fragile heart, an appealing sight to witness, especially coming from people who are supposed to consider the ones these remnants belonged to as their apostles, the objects of their worship.

"Why would they do that, huh? Who knows? Maybe the apostles weren’t so sacred in their eyes as they made it seem, or maybe that’s just how desperate they got. Who knows, and I doubt it matters because it all ends here and now. Aryan, open a portal to the fortress, we’ll move the apostle and the other remnants there, and you, once that's done, should also take your leave before Nia and I begin."

"Begin what?"

"What we came here to do. I, to send a message, and Nia, to honor a promise she made: "We’re going to raze this place off the map"."

Nia

As Ronandt left, followed by Aryan, I was left alone with the Archbishop and the holy Paladin, whom he didn’t even bother to take care of.

"How? How?" I heard one of two repeating maniacally. I didn’t remember what his name was, but I knew he was the one in charge of the eastern fortress.

"Oi, Nikolai, what is it?" asked his concerned friend, the man that I remember having spared from Ronandt in the Iharana Great Forest.

Pointing at me, his finger trembling, his face pale and miserable, he reproachfully asked, "Why is it that you have the same smell as that thing?"

"That thing?"

"That repulsive smell. Dragon's odor."

"You can smell that? On me?" I asked, though I was thoroughly certain I certainly didn’t have the smell of a dragon. After all, I did take a bath every single day.

"The smell... I would never forget it and would recognize it anywhere. the smell of destruction, ashes, and death. It reeks of you."

Beside the fact that the man was one of the fourteen and was one of those who hunted Ronandt years ago, I didn’t know anything else about him. He was a total stranger to me, just as I was a total stranger to him, yet he looked at me with an expression no one had ever looked at me with before, and yet I recognized it as one of hatred and resentment.

"I see," I simply concluded, then turning my attention to the calmer yet still confused other man, I asked, "The man who could teleport who was with you what became of him?"

"He... died."

As I already knew that, I further asked, "How did he die?"

Seemingly confused by my interest, he took a pause then explained, "when he teleported us, he failed to do it properly, we were lost within the failed process, it took us an entire month to leave the place, injuries all the miseries that came along, only I and Armand were able to it out alive out of the empty void."

"I see... so that's how it went down."

"Why is it that you ask? Could it be that you’re feeling regret for having impaled him?" The man, Ainsley, if I remember right, asked.

I wasn’t very sure from the tone he used if he was mocking me or seriously asking me that question, but I genuinely answered him, "No, I was just curious. I don’t think I’ve ever felt regret, at least not for that. Things were what they were. That da–"

Teleporting beside me, Aryan announced, "Ronandt and I have finished moving all the remnants; I will now return to Shania; she might need my help."

"Understood; thanks again for your help. I will inform you once Ronandt and I are done with what we are up to. Even though I was certain that with how extremely caring of Shania he is, he would never leave her side, I still made it abundantly clear: "Until then, please don’t teleport, under any circumstance, anywhere close to this place."

"I... see you then, Princess Nia." With these words, he teleported away.

Left once again alone with the duo, I continued where I left off: "That day you were unlucky. You were at the wrong place at the wrong moment. Ironically, today you are in the worst place at the worst possible moment."

My focus no longer on them, I summoned the seven dragons' souls in my possession: ice, water, air, earth, lightning, light, and dark, missing only a single one of the original eight primordial dragons: fire.

"Brothers and sisters, dragons, I, Nia, have come to honor my promise. Today, in fire, the primordial thunder will fly together as one. Today, in fire, a true dragon will be born. "

When Holy Paladin Altair arrived in the neighboring territories of the eastern fortress, which had previously been known as the eastern city before the disaster, he was expecting to find a battlefield. Instead, he stumbled upon the very embodiment of destruction.

He was not greeted by the usual dry and desert-like landscape that this place had become after the lightning calamity, but rather by a sight worthy of his worst nightmares.

"What is this?"

Fire. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was fire—no smoke, no ashes, just fire. It burned in every corner of the distant horizon, from the ground up to the sky. Even from where he stood, he could already feel the distinct smell of his own skin and hair slowly being roasted by the heat.

"What the hell is this?!"

It was then, seemingly out of nowhere, that things took an even more nightmarish turn for the Holy Paladin.

On the faraway horizon, a blinding flare occurred, spreading further and wider the boundaries of the fiery occurrence. Though the bound didn’t spread as far as to reach the Paladin, the echoes of destruction it triggered certainly would. Before it even reached him, the Holy Paladin could already envision his body being reduced to ashes by the shockwaves amid a deafening resonance.

Feeling helpless and aware of the futility of any action he could take, the only reaction the Paladin could bring himself to muster in an effort to protect himself from the ominously approaching shockwave was to shield his head.

When the shockwave reached the Paladin's location, it washed over and unrooted everything in its path, including rocks, the earth itself, and even mountains. Among everything surrounding him, only the Paladin and the patch of land he stood on remained unaffected.

Gathering the courage to open his eyes, the Paladin saw a young man standing in front of him with an amused smile on his face and the same red eyes as him and those of his family. However, although these eyes were something shared among his family, what the Holy Paladin saw in them, with the fiery hell unfolding behind him in the background, was not the royal presence they were supposed to instill but rather death.

"Oya oya. If it isn't a surprise. Good day, your grace. I must say, I wasn’t expecting your presence here today. Had I known, I would have prepared better... a better welcome for you.

"What have… you done?"

"Me? Nothing."

"Ainsley? Amon? Where are they?!"

The young man didn’t answer the Paladin question; instead, he gazed behind him,

"Where ar–"

"Dead, without a doubt. And I doubt there will be even an ounce of remnants to scrape out of them. But If I do find some ashes, I’ll make sure to send them over to you once I'm done with this, but as of now, Holy Paladin Altair. I would highly recommend that you leave this place.

"What?"

"This can no longer be stopped, she can no longer be stopped. It will expand and will continuously do so. Until the process as a whole has come to terms."

It was at that exact moment that an earth-shattering, otherworldly roar echoed through the land, causing the earth to crack open and the sky to swirl with lightning of a fire-like hue.

Though it was only for a split second, the Paladin noticed a titanic silhouette within the sea of fire, dwarfing even the creatures he had seen wreaking havoc across the continent a few years before.

At that precise moment, Paladin Ymir Altair began to question everything that had led him to this point: him and his fellow fourteen being tasked with caring for the faceless one, the fourteen of them fighting the faceless one despite the fact that he was revealed to be just a child.

Surely it was there that this madness began.

"Was it all to avoid something like this from happening that we were tasked to take care of the faceless one in the first place?" Ymir silently wondered.

Thinking about the most recent thing he could’ve changed, he asked, "Why did you do this? Was it simply because we refused to hand over what you wanted?"

The faceless one looked at Ymir, pondered the question, then said, "It is not that simple, yet it is. We did this because it had to be done. All you did was merely give me the excuse to do it under the pretense of passing over a clear message, which is that I am not one of yours and never will be. Your brother and your granddaughter may think so, but truth be told, that is not the case. We are not the same. You and I. I do hope this message will be sent across, for if it is not, I fear I’ll have to resort to different methods that will no longer be a simple message to make it so.