Chapter 375: The Story After (7) [Side Story, Part 7]

The Tower Master could not speak for a moment. He stared at Ketal, who stood with one hand planted on the white serpent’s skull as if pinning a misbehaving hound.

“How are you already here?” he finally managed to say, the words slipping out half as a groan.

The battle between him and the White Serpent had not yet lasted an hour. As far as he knew, Ketal had been on the far side of the continent. There had not even been enough time for news to travel.

“I felt the waves of the battle,” Ketal answered as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “They did not feel ordinary, so I came immediately.”

The Tower Master repeated the core of that explanation under his breath.

“You felt the waves of the battle from the opposite side of the continent?” he said.

“I was meditating because I had nothing else to do,” Ketal replied.

He said it lightly, but the truth in his words was simple. The more he focused his mind, the sharper his senses became. While he sat in stillness, a strange disturbance had rippled through the world far away. Something enormous had collided with the fabric of reality.

From Ketal’s perspective, there was nothing left on the Mortal Realm that should have been able to create that much force. The moment he realized that, he understood that something was wrong and moved at once. By the time the Tower Master neared the limit of his endurance, Ketal’s arrival had intersected perfectly with fate.

Ketal looked the lich’s broken body over and let out a soft sound.

“Judging by your state, it was rather dangerous,” he said.

The Tower Master answered with a low, dry laugh. “It was.”

The Serpent thrashed under Ketal’s hand and roared. It tried to wrench its head free, muscles and ancient power straining, but Ketal simply released his grip and stepped back of his own accord. The Serpent’s skull rose sharply, its gaze snapping down to meet the barbarian’s eyes.

“It has been a while, Serpent,” Ketal said, his tone light, almost cheerful. “I wondered where you had gone, since I could not see you Inside. It seems you were out here.”

His smile widened, a small, bright curve on his face.

“How have you been?” he asked the monster, the question slipping into his voice rather than needing a mark at the end.

“Barbarian...,” the Serpent said. Its voice held naked wariness, and beneath that a fear it could not conceal.

The monster that had trampled the Tower Master, the being that had shattered mountains and resisted even the exile of a piece of the world, now looked upon a figure smaller than its eye and recoiled inside.

“So you were Outside,” it said, the words heavy.

“It has been quite some time,” Ketal answered.

“If you were here, why is the world still whole?” the Serpent demanded.

Ketal let out a soft huff.

𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

“So that is how you see me,” he said. “Only as a barbarian. I feel rather wronged.”

“You say that with your own mouth,” the Serpent replied, anger and memory mixing in its voice.

Ketal thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I do not deny that the me inside that place was fairly savage.”

His smile changed, shifting from simple brightness into something thinner and more controlled.

“But the me out here is not the same,” he said. “In this world, I am closer to a gentleman.”

The Serpent turned its eyes toward the Tower Master. The lich’s expression, to the extent his bones could show one, was complicated. Still, he did not contradict that description. For him, Ketal had indeed behaved more as a peculiar, self-indulgent gentleman than as a mindless brute.

“In any case,” Ketal continued, “you worked hard, Tower Master. From this point on, leave it to me.”

“Ketal,” the Tower Master began.

Ketal reached out and caught hold of his spine near the neck, lifting him as if he weighed nothing. The motion came so suddenly that the Tower Master froze. Ketal looked almost apologetic.

“Unfortunately, once the fight begins in earnest, I do not believe I can protect you,” he said. “It is a rough method, but I would like you to understand.”

“Wait—” the Tower Master started to say.

Ketal inhaled, braced himself, and threw. The Tower Master became a dark streak that cut through the air, vanishing into the distance until even his robe was no more than a speck. Ketal watched the direction of his flight for a few heartbeats, then turned back.

“Now then,” he said. His voice changed as he spoke. The warmth left it.

The air around him shifted. The light seemed to dim. The Serpent, sensing the turn, lowered its head slightly without fully meaning to, as if something in its instincts urged it to hold itself ready.

“So you show your true nature,” it said.

A chill rolled outward. It was a cold deeper than the White Snowfield’s winds, a peculiar stillness that felt as if it might freeze thought, breath, and time all at once. In the depths of Ketal’s eyes, emotion gathered, but it was not excitement. It was boredom and weariness, a kind of quiet hatred directed at the world as a whole. This was the essence of Ketal, the ashen-haired barbarian of the White Snowfield.

“How long have you been Outside?” he asked the Serpent.

The Serpent had no desire to answer a barbarian’s question. Its pride urged it to remain silent. It wanted to refuse, to sneer and hold itself aloof. However, its mouth opened of its own accord.

“More than two years,” it said.

“You did not move all that time,” Ketal said. “For you, that is an unusual measure of patience. Seeing the world intact, you decided that I must be gone and finally chose to act.”

He nodded to himself. The Serpent felt indignation rise, but the summary was accurate enough that no denial formed.

“I understand well enough,” Ketal continued. “In that case, return to the White Snowfield.”

The atmosphere shifted sharply, like a blade sliding free of its sheath. The Serpent flinched back before it realized the motion. A fierce emotion poured toward it, intent and absolute. Ketal bared his teeth in something that was not exactly a smile.

“This world belongs to me,” he said.

The White Snowfield’s creatures had no right to covet it. This was the world Ketal had chosen, the world whose stories he enjoyed, the world he wanted to keep. The possessiveness and stubborn selfishness in his heart slammed into the Serpent like a physical force. For an instant, the Serpent’s mind filled with old memory, with a parade of past defeats.

Yet, it did not retreat.

“I am the Serpent!” it roared. “I am the one who has existed since the beginning, the one promised invariance. A barbarian barely beyond infancy has no right to command me!”

“Hearing that again is almost nostalgic. It is not pleasant, but it is familiar,” Ketal said as he clenched his fist. “In that case, as always, you will be educated with a beating.”

His fist shot forward toward the Serpent’s head.

***

The Tower Master flew. He traced a long, shrinking arc across the sky. At the speed Ketal had thrown him, he would shatter into bone fragments the instant he struck the ground if he did nothing. He dragged up the remaining motes of mana that clung to his being.

A translucent barrier bloomed around him, thin and fragile yet still better than nothing, and he slammed into the earth as the land shuddered from the impact. He rolled for hundreds of meters, carving a long furrow through the already-broken terrain until he finally came to a halt in a billowing cloud of dust and powdered stone. Slowly, he lifted his head.

“A little more care with the force would be appreciated,” he muttered.

If he had misjudged the timing of the spell by even an instant, he would have found himself back inside his life vessel. He had been only a breath away from that fate. Then he lifted his gaze and saw what played out far away, beyond the dust and shattered ridges. Understanding reached him, and his complaint cooled.

If he had not been sent this far, the aftershocks alone might have turned his body into splinters.

The air trembled. A low vibration rolled through the sky and earth. The land itself rippled like water, cracked lines spidering outward as the nascent storm began to build again.

A thunderous boom echoed. Even from this distance, he saw the massive Serpent hurtle through the air. A smile with no humor tugged at the corner of his mouth.

The Serpent was strong. Its power lay beyond his own by a margin that permitted no comparison. Even after he brushed the Eleventh-Class and wielded that impossible spell, he could still not truly defeat it. It was a monster that had existed since creation, a being that made myth feel small.

Even so, that same monster now flew like a toy. It smashed into the ground, skidding and rolling, gouging trenches as it went. That discrepancy did not come from the Serpent being weak.

Ketal was simply overwhelming. The Tower Master watched a while longer, then spoke softly to himself.

“I can feel the insurmountable wall between them...,” he said.

The distance was too great to measure. His mutter disappeared beneath the next explosion.

***

The Serpent’s tail whipped through the air. It rose like a pillar into the sky, white scales glinting in the thin light, then crashed down in a sweeping arc. The sheer mass of it tore the wind aside and drew a roaring sound from the heavens, as if an entire mountain range had come to life and was cutting through the clouds.

Ketal watched it come as a smile played across his lips. He lifted his fist. Muscles bunched under his skin, his frame tightening as if the world itself coiled around his bones. The air trembled around his arm.

He released a slow breath as his fist met the Serpent’s tail head-on. The world roared as the impact shook heaven and earth together, and shockwaves rippled outward to flatten what little remained of the Alphra Range. The Serpent’s massive tail was knocked violently aside, forced off its path before crashing back down into the vast pit where the mountain range had already been reduced to dust.

The Serpent screamed, its voice thick with rage as it hurled itself forward in a desperate search for any opening. It slammed itself across the ground, its colossal jaws spreading wide before snapping shut around Ketal in a single motion, intent on crushing him through sheer force and authority.

Ketal’s feet struck its tongue as his hands braced against the roof of its mouth. His muscles drew tight, and with nothing but raw physical strength, he forced the Serpent’s massive jaws back open.

A sharp cracking sound echoed as bone protested. The Serpent’s jaw creaked as if something were being pried apart that had never been meant to move that way. It writhed, thrashing in pain, its head swinging from side to side.

Ketal slipped out from between its teeth and came to a stop in midair. He did not bear a single scratch.

Even so, his expression fell into a thin frown. Inside the White Snowfield, he would have had no reason to consider anything beyond efficiency. He could fight any way he wished, shatter anything he pleased, and feel nothing at all about the result. That place held no value for him. If the land broke and monsters died, he barely registered the change.

However, this world was different. This was the outer world, a realm shaped by fantasy, magic, and gods. This was the fantasy he had chosen for himself, the world that belonged to him. He looked at the Serpent and spoke in a low voice, almost as if thinking aloud.

“You truly are the toughest one,” he said.

The Serpent was gigantic, its very existence a natural disaster. The primordial authority of invariance wrapped that enormous frame and hardened it beyond reason. If he fought without restraint, if he decided to grind the Serpent down no matter the cost, an entire continent might vanish in the struggle.

He had no desire for that outcome.

“So it would be best if you simply left,” he said.

“Do not mock me!” the Serpent roared.

It rose once more, its body coiling as the sky quaked above it. Clouds split under the pressure of its fury, and in its eyes burned a light that blended hatred with something very close to terror.

“I am the Serpent of Creation!” it said. “I am the one promised invariance. You intend to monopolize this world for yourself? How dare you?!”

Ketal bared his teeth without wasting a single breath on an answer. He kicked off the ground, and in an instant, he stood before the Serpent’s head. The Serpent reacted on instinct, whipping its tail toward him with all the force it could muster, but Ketal caught the massive limb in both hands.

“Then let’s take a trip down memory lane!” Ketal shouted.

“Wait—” the Serpent began.

Ketal tightened his grip and swung, sending the Serpent into a spinning arc. For a moment, its entire length became a white blur, a colossal line carving through the air as he whirled it around and around. The world shook with every revolution.

Winds rose and built into a vast spiral. A storm of a scale that could have affected the whole continent swirled outward from that single point. Far away, the Tower Master saw the sky twist and, with a strangled sound, pushed himself even farther back.

After a time that felt both brief and endless, Ketal let go. The Serpent flew. It crashed into the earth with enough force to collapse a section of crust. The ground buckled and fell, creating cliffs that would have required thousands of years of natural tectonic movement to form.

“You are not my match, Serpent,” Ketal said.

The difference lay partly in raw strength. It also lay in the nature of their powers. The Ugly Rat, embodiment of filth, had once been able to wound him. Its authority spread pollution through all things, and that concept could latch onto his existence.

However, the Serpent’s authority was different. It carried invariance, an unchanging persistence. As an offensive power, it was dull. Its nature leaned toward defense and endurance. For that very reason, it was almost impossible for the serpent to harm him in any lasting way.

“That applies to you as well!” the Serpent said, staggering upright, voice shaking yet still proud. “You cannot wound me!”

The Serpent showed no change. No matter how many blows struck it, its flesh refused to scar. That was its promise and its rightful place in the world, and Ketal did not deny that this had once been true.

“It used to be that way,” he said.

He summoned his axe into his hand as aura surged along its edge in a rippling, invisible current. He stepped forward, his foot digging into the ground before he charged the Serpet, weaving between its snapping movements and lashing tail, and then he brought the axe down.

The blow struck true, and the Serpent screamed, unleashing a sound it had never produced before. Its cry of pain tore across the continent, and in distant villages and sprawling cities, people froze without knowing why, instinctively clapping their hands over their ears as a cold dread ran down their spines.

The Serpent rolled, its massive body smashing ridges flat as it went. The pain was unlike anything it had ever known. It felt as if its flesh were being burned away, as if something had bitten into the very concept of its being. The Serpent of Creation writhed like a wounded animal, then slowly raised its head.

Its pupils were blown wide. Its flesh, which had always remained unchanged, bore a mark. Along its body, a deep line had been carved. White blood flowed from the wound and spilled across the ground, staining the shattered land. The Serpent made a broken sound, somewhere between a gasp and a snarl.

How...?

it tried to say, its mind reeling.

How did that barbarian cut me?

“I could have killed you from the beginning,” he said in a level tone.

Stepping outside and gaining Aura had simply made the method easier. Even back in the White Snowfield, he could have done it. His authority had always been the power to erase. However, he had never used that power on the Serpent because there had been no need.

“That is no longer the case,” he said.

This was his world now. He had gained the strength of fantasy, the power of gods and stories. If he wished, he could kill the Serpent at any moment.

“Even so,” he added, “we have some history between us, and I find the thought of cleaning up your corpse troublesome.”

A faint smile touched his lips.

“So I will give you one chance,” he said. “Either you end your long life here, or you return quietly to the place you came from and spend your remaining years in silence. Choose.”