One month ago, at that very moment—
A chill permeated the woods, and heavy mist wound through the ancient trees like aggrieved spirits.
Loranster’s boots sank into the damp layer of decaying leaves, making a faint creaking sound. In his conscious mind, the only sound he could hear was his own increasingly heavy breathing.
He hadn’t closed his eyes for three whole days.
“Calamity…” he muttered, stumbling aimlessly through the lifeless, gray forest like a headless fly.
Since leaving the Church, he had been searching frantically within this forest where the Power of Calamity had erupted.
Whenever he looked up and saw the dismal and horrific sights around him, he would recall what he had done to Eurelia that night…
“No, I… I don’t regret it!” Loranster gritted his teeth and swung his sword, cleaving a rat that had just transformed into a Fallen God Creation. Black blood splattered onto the ground, emitting wisps of white smoke.
He stood still, panting heavily. The tip of his sword pointed diagonally toward the ground as drops of thick, black blood trickled down the fuller.
The tiny corpse rapidly began to fester and decompose, white smoke curling up to merge with the gray mist. Those few drops of tainted blood completely triggered Loranster’s memories of that night.
“Captain… was there even a single moment… when you thought I… thought Lia… was actually alright?”
“When you felt that everything I did… wasn’t fake…?”
Then, his own cold and ruthless voice echoed.
“No.”
“Not for a single second.”
He even remembered how he had tilted his chin up slightly, how he had kept his gaze fixed in a cold, scrutinizing stare. He had to.
Doubt was a rift, and rifts bred weakness. When facing the Calamity, the slightest bit of weakness was fatal—not just to himself, but to every living being in this world.
He attributed all her actions to disguise and corruption, denying the value and reality of Eurelia’s existence as an individual.
But why… why did the echo of those cold words feel more painful now than the sight of the blood spraying from her neck that night?
It was as if something had been strangled by his own hands along with those two denials. Not just her hope, but perhaps… something else.
“Hiss… cough, cough!” Loranster coughed violently twice.
[No, don’t think about it. Don’t doubt. She is the Source of Calamity, the root of ruin destined to bring destruction. My judgment is based on ironclad evidence; my duty is to sever all threats to the world. Could it be… that my memories would lie to me?!]
But that voice, that look in her eyes, and that faintly trembling interrogation swirled in his mind like a wicked curse.
Denying her existence, denying everything from that past month, even denying everything from his past life in his heart… was this really the right thing to do?
If… if there were even a one-in-ten-thousand chance that those moments were real… or if Eurelia was actually kind in this life, but because of his testing, she was forced to prematurely…
As soon as the thought emerged, he slapped himself hard, followed by a surge of intense self-loathing and anger.
He was actually questioning himself? At such a critical moment, while hunting such a dangerous entity, he was being distracted by weak emotions?
[Calm down, Loranster, calm down!] he reprimanded himself sharply in his mind.
He needed proof. He needed something irrefutable that could anchor his convictions—not external evidence, but internal proof for his own wavering heart.
His hand slowly moved down from his temple to his heaving chest, feeling the rapid and erratic thumping of his heart beneath. Every beat felt like an interrogation of his faith.
[…Whether it’s fake or not, I only need to… verify my… bloodline!]
An idea so extreme it bordered on madness flashed through Loranster’s mind.
***
In his past life, during a fierce battle with a Fallen God Creation, he had been pierced through the heart by a bone spike soaked in tainted blood to protect the Eurelia of that timeline.
It was a fatal wound. He remembered the icy chill as blood gushed from his chest, the weakness as his life force drained away, and Eurelia’s terrified, despairing face enlarging and blurring before his eyes…
Then, a burning sensation erupted from the depths of his heart as if his very soul were being ignited, surging through every corner of his body.
A brilliant and holy warmth, carrying an aura that cleansed all filth, burst from the wound in his heart, instantly dispelling the Power of Calamity that had invaded his body.
The light repaired his heart in an instant, strengthened his body, and even briefly illuminated the battlefield shrouded in darkness.
He survived and unexpectedly activated the Hero’s Bloodline that had been dormant within him—a power that previously existed only in legends. It helped him break through the bottleneck he had been stuck at for so long, propelling him from the middle of the Bronze rank straight to the peak of the Silver rank.
Now, on the tip of his sword, a drop of tainted blood from the recently slain Fallen God Creation hung precariously, emitting a faint aura of Calamity.
The aura was thin, far weaker than the bone spike from his past life, but it shared the same source.
He could have used normal means to try and activate the Hero’s Bloodline. But Loranster was currently trapped in a state of extreme paranoia and madness.
If piercing his heart with this tainted blood could stimulate the hidden Hero’s Bloodline, it would prove that his current conviction—defining Eurelia as a Calamity threat that must be purged—was absolutely correct.
This was an act of protection required for the world, consistent with the resonance of his bloodline. He all his decisiveness, denials, and even his cold-bloodedness that night would become indispensable links in the chain of justice.
If his memories were true, his bloodline would respond to him, granting him the unparalleled confidence that the path he chose was correct and the power to hunt the Source of Calamity for all eternity!
If he failed, then the memories he believed in were wrong, and all his coldness and decisiveness toward that gentle figure had been an act of incomprehensible stupidity…
“Then what I have done is absolute evil, and I…”
He whispered, as if finding the answer and accepting this final possibility would allow all the interrogation, pain, and sleepless self-torment to reach a final conclusion.
The cold blade pierced his undershirt and pressed against his warm skin, triggering a slight shiver. He could feel his heart thumping wildly under his skin, as if protesting, pleading.
But he ignored it.
He inhaled and closed his eyes. Then, his golden eyes, bright as sacred fire, snapped open once more.
In the end, only the madness and paranoia remained in his eyes, a desire to incinerate all evil.
“Death is not enough—!!!”
The final words tore through his throat along with a roar that had been suppressed to the limit before suddenly exploding.
At the same time, the muscles in his arms bulged. Using all his strength, he thrust the sword stained with corrupted blood hard into his exposed chest!
The blade tore through the linen, sliced his skin, forced its way between his ribs, and wedged itself deep into his beating heart in a cold, brutal manner.
Unimaginable agony exploded in an instant!
It wasn’t a simple cut; it was the horrific experience of a foreign object violently invading the core of his life.
Loranster’s body jerked upward as if struck by an invisible sledgehammer before slamming back onto the ground, splashing decaying leaves and mud.
He forced his mouth open, but no sound came out. Huge amounts of blood surged from deep within his throat, overflowing from the corners of his mouth and quickly staining his jaw and chest red.
His vision darkened rapidly in the agony. The cold sword hilt remained outside his body, vibrating slightly with his convulsions.
He could clearly feel the strange sensation of metal churning in his heart, the warm blood gushing frantically down the fuller, soaking his shirt and the ground beneath him.
Life force drained away with the blood, taking his body heat and consciousness with it.
Am I dying? Is it ending… like this?
That’s fine… if the bloodline doesn’t respond, if all of this really was a mistake…
But before that thought could settle, a brilliant golden light burst from his chest as if two forces were battling inside him.
One was a domineering and searing force of rejection and repair originating from his bloodline instincts; the other was his self-inflicted chaotic will, a mix of paranoia, doubt, destruction, and an extreme desire for atonement.
They weren’t harmonious; there was no smooth resonance brought by the warmth and protection of his past and present lives. There was only violent conflict and tearing.
Loranster felt his body being constantly torn and stretched by this bloodline power, only to be healed at extreme speeds. Over and over, incessantly.
When that familiar power surged into his heart, the intense stinging and tearing sensations receded like a tide. A flash of despair and helplessness crossed Loranster’s golden eyes.
It worked.
The Hero’s Bloodline had truly awakened.
***
It responded to his extreme method of activation in a way that was more domineering and unquestionable than his memories from his past life.
This proved… the memories were real.
The protection in his past life, the warm light, the blessing in disguise… they were all real. And so, correspondingly, everything Eurelia showed in this life—even with slight changes—was also real…
She had never truly changed. Everything was nothing more than a disguise to destroy the world, a falsehood, a play specifically staged to deceive a ridiculous and foolish Hero like him.
“Haha… Hahahahahaha—!!!”
Slumped in the blood and decaying leaves, Loranster suddenly burst into hysterical laughter.
It began as low chuckles, then grew louder, finally turning into an uncontrollable, nearly mad, raspy laughter.
He laughed until his whole body shook, aggravating the hideous wound on his chest. Blood seeped out again, staining the newly healed flesh red.
But he seemed unable to feel the pain, merely staring up at the sky, which was sliced into countless small fragments by the ancient tree branches, and laughing wildly.
There was no joy in that laughter, only endless absurdity, cold despair, and a suffocating sense of relief now that the dust had settled.
Tears fell from the corners of his eyes without warning, mixing with the blood and mud on his face to leave two warm, wet trails.
He laughed as he let his tears flow. All his struggle, doubt, and pain seemed so ridiculous at this moment.
He had tried to find contradictions between memory and reality, tried to find a “maybe I’m wrong” excuse for his coldness that night, but the bloodline’s response—this resonance from the depths of his soul—once again crushed the weak fantasies that had just begun to surface.
“I was right… I was right…” Loranster muttered, his golden eyes staring vacantly at the sky as if thinking, or perhaps giving up on thought, wanting to simply fade away.
“I was right. I was right all along…”
He repeated the words mechanically, his eyes unfocused as tears continued to stream down his cheeks.
What a perfect closed loop.
In his past life, his bloodline awakened because he protected her; in this life, it awakened again because he purged her. Destiny used the most ironic chains to lock him firmly onto this path.
“Eurelia… Source of Calamity…”
He spoke the name once more. This time, there was no painful struggle or hysterical madness—only an emotion deeper than insanity.
He accepted his fate.
He resigned himself to the fact that his memories were correct, that his judgment was the only truth, and that he was destined in this life to fight the phantom known as Eurelia and the Source of Calamity hidden beneath her until death.
He clenched his right fist, which was still covered in his own heart’s blood—a vivid red that even carried a hint of… the eerie.
The newborn power burned continuously in his veins. An inescapable sense of strangeness surged from the depths of his soul, overtaxing his current state.
Just as he composed himself and tried to clear his mind, a wave of intense exhaustion made it impossible to keep his eyes open.
Three days of sleepless, frantic searching, extreme emotional swings, a self-inflicted fatal wound, and the soul-rending conflict and pain of the bloodline’s awakening…
Everything now culminated in an irresistible backlash.
Before his vision went completely dark, a boundless darkness seemed to rush in from all directions to swallow him whole. Yet, the instant before his consciousness sank into that dark abyss—
“Guard Captain! Loranster…!”
A familiar female voice, now distorted by extreme horror, pierced his fading sense of hearing.
Using the last of his strength, Loranster tilted his head slightly. Through his unfocused golden pupils, he saw Vera’s face, drained of all color and filled with disbelief and terror.
Her gaze locked onto the sword hilt protruding from his chest and the blood-soaked fabric before snapping up to meet his hollow eyes.
He wanted to tell her not to panic, that he had succeeded. He wanted to show this person, who might understand him, the blood-drenched answer he had obtained.
But he couldn’t respond now; he could only whisper faintly, “Vera… I… proved it…”
Before he could finish, Loranster’s world succumbed entirely to darkness and silence.
Only Vera’s distorted cry, sounding as if it came from a great distance, was the last shred of reality he captured before falling unconscious.
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