* * *
* * *
My vision was blurry. I was out of my mind.
I couldn’t tell whether I was standing with my foot on the ground or lying flat on the floor. My sense of direction was messed up. My body was hot. No, it was cold.
Patter.
Lark looked down at the floor blankly.
The blood that had flowed was pooling. blood. Whose blood is it? Is it the blood I shed? Suddenly? When I looked at my body, it was full of signs of being mangled. Blood was leaking like crazy from the open wound.
Flash.
For a moment, my vision flickered, and when I came to my senses, the blood pooled on the floor was a little closer. The blood wasn’t even close. She was close to blood.
“······.”
Lark realized that he had finally fallen to his knees. He tried to stand up, but his legs had no strength. Breathing, feeling, not a single thing in my body was moving according to its own will.
Clap.
Lark collapsed in a pool of blood.
Lark gazed down with half of his face submerged in his own blood. My gaze was focused on my arm, where all the skin had been peeled off. Lark looked at his ugly, twisted fingers.
There is a sword held there.
That was a pride that Lark did not let go of until the very end.
Ancestor, Grace’s teacher. The beloved sword of the great swordsman Ganicalt van Galatric. The first holy sword and a holy relic that crossed over difficult times with the first warrior. The pride of Ganicalt that Lark eventually inherited, thanks to the recognition of the great swordsman.
“···iced coffee.”
Lark groaned. he sighed.
Lark looked at the sword he was holding with empty eyes. The first holy sword, the pride it had inherited, was broken. The shattered pieces of the sword were being submerged in blood. Lark’s expression distorted.
Why, why did it become like this?
A blow from which Barta ripped off his arm. The moment he received that blow, his holy sword shattered. The sword road that Lark had envisioned was also shattered. The intermediate process was omitted, and Vartha swung his sword, and the only result was that he suffered a crushing defeat.
‘why······.’
Lark didn’t understand why it happened like that.
Lark could not understand the sword that Barta swung. Understanding and misunderstanding. Cause and effect. The gap between those words was the distance between Rak and Varta.
An area that cannot be reached. A level that cannot be reached.
Barta’s voice, standing one step ahead of him, echoed in Lark’s ears.
“It’s your defeat.”
The sword is the pride of a swordsman.
It is your defeat that has broken your pride.
It’s your loss.
Barta’s voice declaring that rang in multiple layers in Lark’s ears. A voice that resonates loudly in your eardrums. But the noise didn’t last long.
Everything becomes blurry.
All my senses became blurred and then cut off.
Lark felt his body becoming incredibly heavy. Even though I poured out a lot of the blood inside my body, my body became even heavier. A heavy body. A heavier consciousness.
Both eyes slowly closed.
The moment these eyelids closed, Lark instinctively realized that he would never be able to open them again. Death was approaching. He was calm about his approaching death. I silently grabbed the back of Lark’s neck as he could no longer move.
Move, please.
Lark felt fear in the face of approaching death.
I am not afraid of death itself. Warriors are people who always live with death by their side. However, I was afraid of dying without accomplishing anything.
‘Not yet, I haven’t done anything yet.’
The brothers were unable to avenge Oyakal’s grudge.
I was unable to take revenge on Barta, the king of demonic beasts. He has not been able to prove his life, and he has not yet reached the position where that beast stands.
And above all, didn’t I promise?
I promised her that I would come back alive. There was still a mountain of things to be accomplished and things to be kept. There was no way I could die like this. Lark’s soul screams and resists the approaching death… but Lark’s body cannot.
This is a body that has already reached its limit.
Even though the soul cries, the body does not move.
Lark’s eyelids, which he was barely holding on to, slowly closed. My blurry vision was completely closed. Lark’s world turned black. Lark’s consciousness settled beneath the blackened world, towards the bottom of the black sea.
Please, move, please…
The soul’s cry also became faint.
The black sea swallowed up even the screams of the soul. Death then swallowed up everything in Lark and dragged him to the bottom of the sea.
crash Down, down.
The further down he fell, the closer he got to the bottom, the more he realized that the tower he had built was collapsing. Death is ultimately the ultimate denial of life. Death was dismantling Lark’s life piece by piece, as if everything he had built up was empty.
The tower collapsed. Lark’s life was ruined.
The dismantled and dismantled tower is bare and unsightly.
At the end of life, or the beginning of death, Lark faced his life in ruins. Death toppled the dilapidated tower as if it would leave no trace of it.
The bricks, the framework, the things that make up the tower.
The things Lark had built up with his life were scattered in all directions. Lark looked in vain at the scattered fragments of his life. Is it the end? Does it end here?
“Humans are helpless in the face of death. It’s true. Death will destroy everything you have built.”
Fragmented life. Life fluttering in all directions.
“But then.”
Lark’s life, a brick that was part of the tower that Lark built. A broken brick passed by Lark. Lark listened to the voices flowing from the fragments of his life.
“Whether you agree or not is your choice.”
Raniel van Trias smiled.
A teacher who always gave me advice.
The words he said lingered in Lark’s ears.
“Stretch out your hand.”
The sinking Lark stretched out his hand.
——————
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“Hold on to things that fall apart.”
I stretched out and grabbed the fragments of my life.
“Pile it up again. From the beginning.”
Lark twisted his body.
I stared straight at my life collapsing. Something was shining among the collapsed and collapsed things. It was what supported Lark’s life until the end as it was swallowed up by death. It became the framework of Lark’s life.
It is a fragment of the Holy Grail.
A fragment of the Holy Grail that was once planted in Lark.
A piece of starlight that blossomed and took root in Lark’s life. The vines extending from the piece were holding the tower that Lark had built to prevent it from collapsing.
···is it.
Lark laughed.
‘I guess I wasn’t independent until the end.’
At the very end, Lark realized that fact. What supported his collapsing life was ultimately a seed planted by someone. It was the life of heroes who lived in the past.
‘If you think about it, yes.’
I thought I understood that there was no confidence in my life. But no. The tower that was thought to have been built after being torn down was, in the end, only made up of borrowed foundations.
Borrowed technology. A borrowed weapon. Borrowed power.
Nothing that made up my life was Lark’s own. Those things form the foundation, so in the end, you will forever be just a child without independence. You will be nothing more than a puppet, just following someone else’s path.
A young child who cannot stand alone.
A kid who just moved forward with someone’s help.
I can’t believe I came this far to realize that fact.
Laughing bitterly, Lark stretched out his hand toward the fragments of the Holy Grail that supported the collapsing tower. He grabbed the starlight that had been implanted in his body. Tore it from his own tower.
Now we had to become independent.
I had to move forward under my own power.
Coogugung.
The moment the starlight was torn off, the entire tower collapsed.
In the collapsing tower, Lark threw the fragment of the tower he was holding in his hand. With his own strength, he laid the foundation stone for the pagoda. On top of the cornerstone, Lark piled up the fragments of his life. More solidly. More elaborate.
From the beginning.
From the beginning, again.
Now, with only my own strength, without anyone’s help.
After seeing that Lark, who was submerged in a pool of blood, was no longer moving, Barta turned his head. He staggered his steps. In this life, I have achieved all the goals I needed to achieve in my second life.
Now I knew.
Why didn’t the girl who used to be Fortuna…Bartha have the last laugh? Why did she blame herself? How could Ganikalt van Galatric remain so noble?
Why did they shine so brightly?
‘Now, finally…’
I finally understood.
Only by putting down everything and becoming a mere Varta was he able to understand humans. A mere human being, not the king of demonic beasts. Barta, who had come to understand humans after a long life, burst into laughter.
Now I was able to guess the answer. I wanted to share her story with her for her madness to bring back to life. Because now, I can understand her.
This is the moment when Barta takes a stumbling step. A cooing sound rang through the air. Barta’s steps stopped. He slowly looked back.
thud.
A person who would have died submerged in a pool of blood.
Thump, thump, thump.
The human heart, which had stopped, was beating again.
It’s not just the heart that’s beating. The human body moved slowly. He slowly gets up, holding on to a puddle of blood with his broken finger.
A person who is already dead.
People who should not be able to move move again.
It’s a strange scenery. It is an incomprehensible scenery. I confirmed that the heart stopped? Death must have swallowed that man, but how? As if laughing at Barta’s question, Lark stood up and let out a long breath.
“———.”
After taking a deep breath, he squeezed my heart.
He grabbed it and ripped something off. What was torn from Lark’s heart along with the patter of blood… was the brilliantly shining starlight.
The starlight left behind by heroes of the past.
Lark pulled out the fragment of the Holy Grail that had already taken root in his heart with his own hands. Like I don’t need your help anymore. Lark shouted, holding the extracted starlight in his hand.
Heating.
All the starlight burned out.
The burning starlight does not have any special effect like Raniel’s mana, or like that of those heroes like Kyle, Galahal, Destel, Chloe, etc. It just brings heat.
Intense heat.
A heat that will not be extinguished by anything.
Lark opened his mouth, holding the heat in his hand.
“···Is.”
A human being, not a hero.
“I am a hot fire.”
Lark shouted.
“It is iron that does not cool down and can be tempered forever.”
While saying that, Lark struck my heart with a fist that was holding heat. At that moment, blood poured out from Lark’s body. The wound opened and blood poured out like crazy.
thud.
The sound of a heart beating.
Thump, thump, thump.
Heat rose from Lark’s body along with the sound of a strong beating. The wound began to heal as the heat burned with a chirping sound.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
White hair, stained red with blood, was flying.
Lark’s eyes, revealed through the flowing white hair, looked straight at Barta. The moment he met that gaze, Barta was overwhelmed for a moment.
···Even though the situation was clearly in his favor, Barta’s intuition sounded an alarm.
Something is different from before. The person standing in front of me now is a completely different being from just a moment ago. Leaving behind the loudly ringing alarm bell, Barta slowly raised his sword.
To deal the final blow once again to his rival who says the fight is not over yet.
and.
Lark also held up the broken sword.
The first holy sword, with only the hilt remaining, no longer shined. As if it had fulfilled its value as a holy sword, the broken blade no longer glowed platinum.
A sword that has lost its sanctity, sharp blade, and starlight.
Something that has lost both its form and its value.
Something that is nothing anymore.
That’s why Lark grabbed it. This will be the weapon that suits you.
fantasy,
