Chapter 68: Chapter 68: Turning Point (Part 3)
*THUD! THUD! THUD!*
Nero’s legs moved like pistons across the battlefield, each step burning through the last dregs of his mana reserves.
His body screamed in protest as he pushed beyond the exhaustion and pain.
Every time his depleted mana pool managed to regenerate even a single point, he immediately burned it to add to his speed.
For strength.
... For the desperate hope that he wouldn’t be too late.
’Will you lose another one?’
No. He couldn’t. He couldn’t bear to lose another one, more than he wanted to admit.
’Is it the same thing again?’
"..."
A faint image flickered through his consciousness like a haunting nightmare he wanted to forget.
... A younger version of himself, maybe 8 years old, standing alone in front of a fresh grave.
Tears streamed down his face as he clutched a single white flower.
The departing figures of relatives who’d promised to stay, to care for him, to never leave him alone.
All walking away without looking back.
Just like everyone else had.
Just like everyone always did.
"..."
Nero’s figure shattered through the air as he gritted his teeth and forced more speed from his failing body.
Not again this time.
Not her.
Not because he couldn’t be there again...
*BOOOOM!*
With whatever remaining mana left on his body, it exploded through his legs like liquid fire, launching him forward in one final, desperate burst of velocity.
The landscape blurred past him as he closed the distance to where his angel was fighting.
Where she was in danger and would need him the most.
... Where he might lose the only person who could finally stay.
"..."
As a figure finally appeared within his sight, a brief moment of relief when he spotted Aurelia’s silver hair nearly made his heart stop.
Thank god.
She was alive.
She was...
"!!!"
But the relief transformed instantly into pure horror as he took in the scene before him.
Aurelia, bound by writhing snakes that bit down on her limbs and restrained her, were dripped with malevolent energy.
Blood was seeping from countless wounds across her divine form.
Her magnificent wings were hanging... broken and lifeless.
And above her, a figure wreathed in darkness raising some kind of spectral weapon aimed directly at his angel’s heart.
The attack radiated such malice, such concentrated death, that even from a distance Nero felt suffocated by its overwhelming pressure.
The situation immediately made him understand the truth.
... This wasn’t a fight he could win.
This wasn’t an enemy he could defeat.
If his angel, who’s already overpowered, lost, what could a powered-up mob like him do to such a terrifying enemy?
That attack charging-up would straight up kill him instantly... probably even obliterate him so thoroughly that not even ashes would remain.
But instead of fear, instead of the rational terror that should have frozen him in place...
*BOOOOMMMM!!!*
His body moved even faster.
Time seemed to slow as Nero stretched out his hand, metallic scales briefly flickering on his back as this brief transformation made one last desperate attempt to protect him.
And before he even fully understood what he was doing...
"..."
His body was positioned directly between the dark blade and Aurelia’s heart.
And then,
*SPLURCH!*
The [Malice Severance] punched straight through his chest with the sound of the flesh tearing through.
His heart... or rather, 1/4 of his chest disappeared in an explosion of dark energy, the cursed blade dissolving after obliterating the organ completely.
The attack was too fast to register pain.
Too overwhelming to process.
"..."
His briefly manifested metallic scales shattered like glass, his reptilian eyes immediately returning to their normal brown as his transformation collapsed entirely.
A moment of relief washed over his body as he saw the safe figure of Aurelia, who’s looking at him with such a stunned look.
Though, Nero couldn’t help but think that it’s a bit too shameful that he had to splatter his own blood on his waifu’s perfect body...
’But hey... at least, it did its job...’
Nero’s protective gesture slowly faltered as a copious amount of blood erupted from his mouth.
"I finally... protected you, angel."
He faintly smiled through the blood and pain, and then...
*Thud...*
His body wetly collapsed into his own pool of blood.
The hole in his chest revealed the empty cavity where his heart is supposed to be.
Nero... was instantly dead.
***
"..."
Aurelia’s golden eyes violently trembled as she followed her Lord’s falling form.
The reality of what had just happened refused to register in her mind.
A moment passed, and then her gaze unconsciously drifted to the blood splattered across her hands and armor...
"..."
Before returning to the motionless figure lying in an ever-widening crimson pool.
She’s... unable to process what she was seeing.
Unable to accept the horrifying reality before her.
She hoped it was just a bad nightmare, but...
"Ahh... looks like your knight in shining armor died," Vex’ahlia’s voice cut through the stunned silence with casual amusement and disbelief.
"He was supposed to be a good pawn too. What a waste... Kinda surprised me that he appeared without me knowing."
"..."
But Aurelia didn’t hear her.... Or rather, she couldn’t.
*THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!*
Her words were completely drowned out by the sound of Aurelia’s rapidly accelerating heartbeat.
The heavy pressure in her chest threatened to burst as she tried reaching out towards Nero’s still form with a trembling voice.
"L-Lord... Lord N-Nero...?"
Her normally stoic voice was replaced with a tone of fear as she tried to wake him.
"P-Please... respond..."
"..."
But there was no answer.
No movement.
No sign of life.
"..."
And when her eyes focused on his faint smile of relief on his face... the devastating realization finally hit her full on.
His extremely normal-looking eyes had gone dull and lifeless.
... Blood leaked steadily from the massive wound in his chest and the remnant injuries of whatever battle he had before he came here.
And more crimson fluid seeped from the corner of his mouth.
There was indeed no heartbeat or response.
... Her Lord Nero was gone.
"N-No... no, no, no..."
The word barely escaped her lips as she felt her eyes blue while starring at the corpse of the man who had just died protecting her.
It was supposed to be her job to protect him.
As a knight who swore to her Lord to protect him, it was her duty to die first if ever they were put in danger.
And yet...
"..."
Multiple faint images began flashing through her mind without permission.
Comrades falling in battles she couldn’t fully remember.
Precious allies she’d failed to save.
Friends whose names escaped her but whose deaths she’d carried like wounds in her soul.
... All of them overlapped with Nero’s lifeless form until she couldn’t tell the past from the present.
Until she couldn’t separate old grief from this fresh, devastating loss.
The person who had summoned her.
Who had taught her the ways in the odd world they were in.
Who had never asked her to be anything other than herself.
Who had stayed and comforted her when everything else was just one scary blur.
And yet, now, all those fragment memories... seems to come back and piece themselves together.
And just like before...
Something precious to her was gone.
... Because she’d been too weak to protect him.
"A-Ah...!"
It was something akin to a silent cry.
She didn’t know, nor could she care anymore...
But it felt like all of the emotions she would often keep within her came out like a broken dam.
And then she finally remembered what her Lord Nero said to her before,
’You know what humans do when we can’t figure something out and it’s pissing us off?’
*CRACK....*
’We scream at the sky like lunatics.’
"AH–AAAHHH!!!"
Something fundamental snapped inside Aurelia’s mind as the full weight of her failure crashed down on her.
*CRACK... CRACK... CRACK...*
The cursed chains binding her limbs began to fracture as power beyond comprehension started building within her divine form.
And then,
*BOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!*
A world-rending explosion of starlight erupted from Aurelia’s body with the force of a dying sun.
The radiance was so pure... so overwhelmingly divine, that it instantly evaporated every trace of dark magic around her.
Vex’ahlia’s cursed chains disintegrated.
Her summoned creatures were obliterated.
The ritual circle carved in blood was burned away completely.
"Wha–?!"
The sorceress herself was hurled backward by the sheer force of the divine detonation, her body slamming into the ground meters away.
*CRASH!*
Vex’ahlia rolled to a stop, her elegant robes singed and torn, her perfect composure finally cracked.
But when she looked up toward the source of that impossible power...
"!!!"
Her playful and confident smirk had finally vanished entirely.
Because standing in the center of a crater of purified earth was a figure bathed in a mysterious stellar radiance.
Aurelia’s broken armor had been replaced by faintly multicolored plates that seemed forged from captured starlight.
Her wounded wings now blazed with divine white fire that made the air itself sing with power.
Her silver hair floated weightlessly around her like a halo, and her golden eyes burned with the intensity of newborn stars.
This wasn’t just a normal Valkyrie who had been weakened and captured.
... T-This was something else entirely.
Something legendary.
Something that shouldn’t exist.
"I-It can’t be..." Vex’ahlia’s voice trembled with genuine disbelief for the first time.
Once upon a time, there was once a newborn star.
"..."
A star who swore allegiance to protect her Lord until the end of time.
The first star to ever gain a will and become a divine knight that promises to tear through every enemy.
It’s...
"The F-First Star Valkyrie...?"