Chapter 1525: What happened?

Chapter 1525: What happened?

"...You are under my protection now."

"...?!" Morgana’s eyes flung open with a violent snap, so forceful it seemed she intended to tear her very eyelids apart in the process. The sudden rush of light seared into her vision, and for a moment she felt as if the entire world had shifted beneath her.

And then she saw him.

A young man, handsome in a royal way, stood before her. A faint golden beard traced the edge of his jaw, catching the dim light like threads of sunlight woven into his skin. His golden eyes were calm, his lips curved into a reassuring smile that seemed to cut through the despair weighing on her chest. "Everything is fine now..." he said, his tone steady, absolute, as though the heavens themselves would obey the decree.

POOF

"Y-You?!" Morgana’s voice cracked as her body gave way beneath her. She collapsed onto her backside, limbs trembling, and scrambled back in a desperate crawl until her spine struck the rough, cold wall of what appeared to be a cavern. "Where—where am I? What happened? Was this a dream—arghhh!!"

Her words shattered into a scream. The agony of the five blades was still there, alive inside her flesh, like burning brands forged in hell.

Wait... the pain of the blades was still there... but where were the blades themselves?!

Her hands flew to her stomach and chest, trembling fingers racing across torn flesh. Her palms pressed against the wounds, sliding over rents in her skin, her nails scratching desperately for the steel she knew should be lodged there. Her body was still pierced, her insides still shredded—yet the blades themselves were gone. No cold steel. No foreign weight. Just the wounds. Just the pain.

Her breaths came ragged, almost manic, as she searched her ruined body with the intensity of someone trapped between madness and disbelief.

Robin, watching her frantic movements, let out a small chuckle. "Ah~ about that," he said, voice almost playful, "I’m not quite skilled enough to create five planetary-grade weapons at once. Not yet, anyway. So I simply left them in place."

He shifted away with a slow, deliberate ease and lowered himself onto the far side of the cave, sitting casually, as if the chaos outside had never happened.

...By the stars, that had been difficult. That had been nerve-racking to the very edge of reason.

He exhaled slowly, recalling what he had done. After commanding the Planet’s Spirit to unleash violent disturbances—thunderous cries, false chaos, anything that would draw their focus—Robin had turned his entire being to the impossible task before him: tearing prey from the jaws of lions.

Or, in this case... pulling one fragile girl from the gnashing jaws of fifty lions at once.

The simplest approach would have been to use the third-stage of the Master Law of Spacetime. After all, it wasn’t as though he was trying to block a cataclysmic attack intended to crack a planet in half; he was merely shifting the frail form of a wounded girl.

It shouldn’t have cost him much energy. And with the noise and chaos swirling around them, they would not notice what had happened. They would only turn and find that she had vanished.

A simple gamble. One he was willing to take—even in the middle of six Nexus States.

But he knew the consequence.

That alone would drive them to madness. They would not rest, not sleep, not breathe without searching. They would scour the skies, scour the soil, even overturn the very mantle of the planet if they had to. And sooner or later, even if he buried her in the core itself, they would find her.

So he needed more. He needed misdirection.

The solution? Give them something else. Something to chase. Something to lose themselves in.

Give them... give them...

Robin thought hard—for three entire seconds, which in that desperate moment felt like an eternity. His mind, sharpened by survival and battle, reached a final conclusion. The Sovereign Law of Creation. He would craft a body—a perfect duplicate of Morgana’s body.

It was not the first time he had wielded Creation, but until then, his practice had been light: pens of flawless precision, small trinkets, tools to aid him in carving patterns. Never before had he dared attempt something as intricate, as daring, as reckless as shaping flesh and bone, spirit and likeness, into the form of a living being.

Especially not the form of someone he had barely glimpsed a handful of times, and never once studied up close. It was doomed, inevitably, to be riddled with flaws, imperfections, subtle mismatches.

But that was the beauty of his gamble.

The members of the Syndicate of the Hidden Hand who had cornered her weren’t watching for details. They didn’t care about her identity, about the precision of her features. Most of them had stared at her with boredom, or worse, with lustful distraction, treating the battle as little more than spectacle to pass the time. Not a single one of them had memorized the shape of her scars or the subtleties of her face.

And so his second gamble was placed: that not a single one among them would look closely enough to tell the difference.

In an instant, faster than the blink of an eye, Robin conjured it: a replica of flesh and blood. He clothed it in garments identical to hers, tore the same wounds into its body, mirrored the flow of blood with precise cruelty. Then he injected it with a surge of life force and soul force, just enough to make it writhe, just enough to make it believable.

And then came the moment of truth.

SNAP!

The monochrome world unfolded—the world of stillness, where all motion froze. Time itself bent to his will.

With the blade-like precision of a surgeon, Robin cut the reality around Morgana, isolating her battered body. In a heartbeat he pulled her through the void, transporting her into the cavern where his guardians awaited. And in that same frozen breath, he placed the duplicate back into her exact position. The exchange was flawless—down to the millimeter.

Even the blades, those five planetary weapons, returned to their places as if nothing had changed, embedding once more into flesh, drawing no extra scratches, leaving no clue of the deception.

The perfect illusion, executed in the heartbeat of a still world.

Then, with a final flick of will, he used the monochrome world to shift himself into the cavern as well

...Robin leaned back heavily against the rough stone wall of the cave, the tension in his shoulders easing just slightly. His breath misted faintly in the cool air as he tilted his head toward the jagged entrance.

For a long moment, he simply stood still, letting silence stretch. Then his golden eyes slid shut and he listened intently, as though the entire universe was speaking to him through the air currents. "...I hear no more screams," he murmured at last. "No more devastating strikes of rage. The storm outside has stilled... perhaps, just perhaps, we truly survived this."

"Su... survived? How? How did I survive that situation? What even h-happened? And who... who are you—who are you supposed to be?!" Morgana’s voice cracked as the weight of reality came crashing down on her. Her world felt like it was collapsing inward, crushing her between despair and confusion.

The agony still carved into her body by the five planetary weapons gnawed mercilessly at her flesh, not fading but growing

She froze suddenly. Her breath hitched, her eyes widening with sudden realization. "...You... I know you... You are that man... the one with the golden eye!!"

Robin’s lips quirked into a lopsided grin, a soft chuckle slipping out despite the tension. "Hah~ Perhaps remembering me as the dashing, legendary specter-slayer would have been kinder for my pride," he teased lightly, trying to steady the unstable atmosphere between them. "But yes, you’re not wrong—I’m also the man with the big golden eye."

He knew well how broken she was, how deep her injuries had cut. But he refrained from healing her immediately. If he touched her now, in this state, her shock and fear might twist into something violent. She had to calm first, to anchor herself to what was real before he could act.

"No... no, this... this is impossible!" Morgana’s voice rose, her chest heaving. "I saw you—I saw that aura. That cursed, devouring aura... You must be dead!!"

Her arms wrapped around herself tightly, almost clawing at her own body, the way a wounded animal presses into its wounds to shield them. She shivered like a cat cornered, yet her eyes—dark, bloodshot, unyielding—never left Robin. They traced him, drank in his presence, as though she could not believe he stood there.

Her curiosity sharpened into a blade, mixed now with disbelief so raw it nearly broke her voice.

Robin’s smile deepened faintly, but there was steel behind it. "That level of corruption was never going to take my life," he said evenly. His words were simple, but his tone carried the weight of mountains. "I still have things far greater than death left to do here."

Morgana shook her head, her lips trembling. "N-No... this isn’t about willpower. Don’t insult me with that. You were dead! Your soul domain—it was collapsing, crumbling apart before my eyes. I saw it disintegrating, irreversibly, piece by piece... I saw it happening! What—what happened? How could you possibly have survived?!" Her breath came in gasps, her desperation sharpening. "Was it... was it the Behemoth of Purity? Did she descend here herself to save you?!"

"..." Her insistence even made Robin pause. His brows lifted slightly, the faintest sign of surprise showing in his calm face.

He had pulled her from the jaws of tens of World Cataclysms and Nexus States, torn her free from the grip of death itself... and yet what shook her most was not that.

What consumed her was the question of how he had survived the corruption?!

Robin let silence stretch for a heartbeat, his golden eyes thoughtful. Then, slowly, he raised his chin, a flicker of pride cutting through his calm. "I have my own ways," he said, voice steady as bedrock.

"...." Her bloodshot eyes did not waver. She dragged her gaze slowly across him, tracing from the crown of his hair, down his shoulders, his chest, his arms, all the way to his feet. Each breath she took shuddered, as if she was engraving every detail into memory. At last, she lifted her head, her eyes locking with his.

"Those ways of yours..." she whispered, voice trembling but firm. "...Are they the same ways that dragged you down from level thirty-one... all the way to level eleven?"