Chapter 326: Necrobix (3)

The last ripples of power faded, and the ground slowly came back into focus. Necrobix lay buried in the shattered earth. Ketal’s axe was sunk to the haft in its chest. Ketal seized the axe and pulled it free. A dark flood burst from the split breastplate, raw demonic energy surging as the Demon Lord gathered what little strength remained. The corrupted energy tried to rise.

However, that was all Necrobix could do. It flickered like a candle in a storm and went out. Necrobix gave a thin, contemptuous laugh.

“I cannot move my power at all, can I. This is the first time since the Divine-Demonic War,” it said, voice flat with observation rather than fear.

“You were magnificent,” Ketal answered. “It has been a long time since I looked this bad.”

He was not unscathed. Half his skin hung in ribbons, burned and peeled back. One arm had been chewed to the bone in places. Even so, Ketal stood, and Necrobix did not.

“I lost,” it said.

Necrobix had been defeated by Ketal.

“I believed I could win,” it went on. “You still cannot wield the Abomination’s power freely. Without that, you are only strong. I judged you not truly dangerous.”

If one blocked the power of the Abomination, Ketal was just a warrior of absurd might with no special authority. With Necrobix’s absolute defense, it assumed the victory was on its side.

However, that judgement had been wrong.

“You did not borrow the Abomination’s power at all,” it said.

Ketal had once scarred Materia’s true body with the help of the Abomination’s authority. He had not drawn upon that even once here. He had imposed perfect control, shaping the power of the beast within him only as Aura, and had won through with that alone.

Necrobix understood that even without the Abomination, Ketal had enough strength to kill it.

“You were not at your peak either, were you?” Ketal said mildly as he shouldered the axe.

Necrobix had spent power on the puppets. It had also tethered the Tower Master in place so he could not flee, forcing Ketal to fight at close range.

For a dark mage, being unable to open distance and being forced to brawl with a front-line warrior was a severe handicap. This meant that Necrobix had not been fighting at full efficiency.

“Even so, the result would not have changed,” it said softly.

The demonic energy leaked away in trickles. The being called Necrobix began to die.

“So this is death...,” Necrobix murmured.

That was the Abomination’s authority. It was the power to kill all things, even concepts. Not even the famed Demon Lord Necrobix, first among dark mages, could stand apart from it.

Necrobix was a demon from the beginning—a being born of pure demonic origin. It had survived the first war against the Oldest Ones and endured through the Divine-Demonic War that followed. And now, its long existence came to an end here.

“So this is death,” Necrobix said, and a trace of wry amusement colored the voice that had once terrified worlds. “I have slain countless beings, yet only now do I taste it for myself. I see. So this is how it feels.”

It closed its eyes for a heartbeat, as if to learn the shape of the end, and opened them once more. It fixed Ketal with a clear gaze and spoke its last words.

“You are our calamity.”

With that, its body came apart into a scatter of ash that lifted toward the sky, spread thin in the high air, and vanished.

A low tone rolled through the world. Everyone felt it. Every mortal champion who had earned the name Hero heard the same bell inside the bones, and the heavens, straining to open paths downward, heard it as well. Even Hell, which had thrown everything into barring those paths, felt the same tremor run through its halls. All things that moved beneath the great order understood it at once.

A terrible evil had been extinguished.

“You won,” the Abomination said inside Ketal’s chest, its voice low and almost unwilling to concede.

“That sounds like a complaint stacked on top of another,” Ketal said, amused.

“You refused my help to the very end.”

“I did,” he answered. “I wanted to finish it with my own strength.”

“

Tch

.”

The click of irritation was loud enough to make Ketal smile. “What is this? Sulking because I did not lean on you?”

“Silence. I do not sulk,” it said at once. After a heartbeat, its tone cooled further. “It is simply a matter of pride. That thing is not something even the former me could kill easily, and you slew it without me.”

A small scratch had marked the Abomination’s pride.

“Still, it is done,” it concluded. “The noisy brat is dead.”

“That much is true.”

Ketal’s laugh came easy again as he turned away from the shattered valley. He followed the broken lines of the Tower Master’s warding to a spot where the weave sagged and brightened in a slow pulse.

The mage was half-collapsed there, one knee in the dirt and one hand braced against a cracked conduit. He coughed wetly, wiped blood from his lips, and tried to smile through the pallor.

It was no surprise he had nearly broken himself. To keep the fight’s devastation from spilling into the world, he had held the barrier at a knife’s edge while powers he could barely endure hammered it again and again. He had overreached, and then overreached again, because there had been no other choice.

“Can you stand?” Ketal asked him, steadying him by the elbow.

“No. Not really,” the Tower Master said with a thin, crooked humor. “I overclocked the array until my Life Vessel cracked.”

Even so, he had achieved what mattered. A battle at Ketal and Necrobix’s level should have shaken the entire continent. At least one of the four great continents should have suffered a wound that would be remembered for a century. Thanks to the Tower Master’s control, the damage had stayed within a limited radius.

The mage gulped, gathered himself through the pain, and forced his spine straight. “Did you win?”

“I did.”

“You killed Necrobix?”

“It is dead.”

The Tower Master let out a breath that sounded like disbelief turning into relief. “You killed it...”

Necrobix—the beginning of dark magic, the ancient demon said to have been born with the Demon King—was gone.

“It does not feel real,” the Tower Master said, shaking his head as if to wake. “Like a dream I will climb out of.”

It was the kind of event that was good and still hard to accept. He rubbed his eyes, steadied himself, and made himself speak clearly.

“It is very good,” he said at last. “Thank you. Because of you, the Mortal Realm did not end today.”

“I live here too,” Ketal said with an easy smile. “I only did what I should.”

The Tower Master did not doubt him. “Then let us go home.”

He opened a doorway, and Serena stood on the other side, pacing with her hands knotted into anxious fists. When she saw Ketal step through, her eyes went wide and she ran to him.

“K-Ketal! Your wounds are terrible!”

“They are not enough to stop me,” he said, gentling his voice. “Give it two days. I will be whole.”

“I... I felt the wave,” Serena blurted, words running ahead of breath. “That sound. It rushed through everything.”

“We won,” Ketal told her, and nodded once for certainty. “Necrobix is dead.”

Serena swallowed hard. “Truly.”

“You fought alone and held one of its puppets,” he said. “Rest well.”

“N-no. Compared to you, I did nothing,” she replied, still flustered. “You worked a miracle. Thank you for coming back.”

Her eyes were bright with shock and relief, and her thoughts were still scattered. Ketal urged her again to rest and left her to the tower’s care.

He went next to the infirmary. The barbarians lay in ordered rows, bandaged from neck to ankle, each bed crowded by the size of the bodies within it. When Ketal stepped inside, they stirred as if dawn had pressed through the shutters.

“Oh—oh!”

“Our king!”

They tried to rise. Even with wounds that would have killed ordinary men, they fought to get to their feet and come to him.

“Stay where you are,” Ketal said, clicking his tongue.

“Yes,” Greta answered at once.

“Y-yes,” Anna added, chastened.

Greta, the scowling barbarian, and Anna, the woman who had fought with them, sank back into their bedding and tried not to fidget. Ketal let his gaze move over their faces, then asked the question he had not yet asked.

“Where is Thomas?”

Only the two were present. Thomas was nowhere to be seen.

Greta answered with the blunt honesty he took to battle. “His wounds were too severe. He died.”

“I see,” Ketal said, and for a moment he looked at the ceiling as if he could see the White Snowfield through the stone.

Necrobix had been strong. Even the ashen-haired barbarians could die when strength met something that stood beyond it. He had always known that.

Of course, the barbarians would not grieve as others did. Not even Thomas would have flinched at his own death. He had died obeying the king’s command, and by their measure that was cause for pride.

Ketal knew that too well, but it did not make his chest any lighter.

Greta’s eyes shone. “To die following the king’s order is glory. I want to die like that!”

“Do not die,” Ketal said, and Greta blinked, startled by the simple refusal.

In a barbarian heart, one life held little more weight than a handful of snow on the White Snowfield. Even so, that was not how it was for Ketal. He had watched Thomas grow from a boy. The news sat in him like a stone that would not move.

Anna studied his face and chose her words with care. “Our king...”

“What is it?”

“Did we disappoint you? I am sorry.”

“What?”

The question made no sense for a breath, and then it made all the sense in the world. They were not reading his silence as grief. They thought he was displeased because they had failed the order he had given them. He had ordered them to hold Necrobix, and they had failed to do so. Believing they had disobeyed their king, they thought they had earned his wrath.

Ketal breathed out through his nose, a hint of laughter caught in the sound. “You stubborn fools.”

“I am sorry!” Greta said quickly.

“It’s not that,” Ketal said. “Enough. I am not angry.”

Even with that, they kept fidgeting. Greta mustered his courage and asked the question that had been burning inside him.

“Then... should we return? Is that your judgement?”

Ketal had set a condition: if they helped defeat Necrobix, he would bring all of them out of the White Snowfield and let them follow him. They had failed that condition. He nodded once.

“Yes. When your wounds heal, go back.”

The two of them sagged like men who had been told the sun would not rise again.

Ketal watched their faces a while longer, then spoke in the tone he used for promises he meant to keep. “Go back and rest. I will come to you.”

“What?” Anna said, eyes widening.

“Really?” Greta breathed, as if afraid the words might crack if he spoke too loudly.

Ketal fixed the pledge with another sentence, firm as a nail struck home. “When matters here are settled, I will come and enter that place again. I will come for all of you.”

Greta’s vision blurred, and he laughed once to keep from crying. “R-really?”

“Yes.”

Their joy filled the infirmary, great bodies grinning like children who had been told a secret. Ketal left them to it and stepped into the corridor, where the air was cooler and the echoes were kind.

“You plan to go back there,” the Abomination said, surprised despite itself. “You must hate that place.”

“I do,” Ketal said. “But I do not have a choice.”

The barbarians had risked everything to help him. Without them, he might still be chasing Necrobix through broken worlds, bleeding time and strength onto cold stone. They had done something for him, and it is only fair that he would do something for them.

He let out a long breath and rolled his shoulder, feeling new skin pull tight over muscle. “Looks like I am going home after all. A quick visit. In and out.”

Whether it ended quickly or not, it would be unpleasant. He accepted that without complaint.

The next day, Ketal met the Tower Master again. The mage looked him over and spoke as if the words had to be coaxed past fatigue. “You are almost healed.”

The wounds had not been the kind a man could call good. Half his body had burned, one arm had been shredded to ribbons, and the kindest healer would have called it a disability that lasted a lifetime. Yet a single day had passed, and already fresh skin knit over the raw places. The ruined arm was finding its old shape again, and Ketal’s fingers opened and closed as easily as if they had never been torn.

“If you mean to keep living in that wretched place,” he said, flexing his hand, “you learn to heal fast.”

“It is more than healing,” the Tower Master said, then waved the thought aside. “No matter. That is not the point.”

They had larger things to discuss, and both men felt the weight of that truth.

“I killed Necrobix,” Ketal said. A Pillar of Hell had walked the Mortal Realm, and now it had died a final death. “What happens next?”