Chapter 162

The Icarus Wing.

Golden wings burst from Leon’s back, their speed and endurance terrifying to behold. Even the airships of Jugend that had once left him in awe couldn’t hope to match his shadow, which also meant that no vessel of current civilization could ever keep up with him.

He moved just below the speed of sound only because of the overwhelming air resistance. If he pushed, he could go even faster.

His maneuverability rivaled lightning bolt itself, beyond even the reach of most Aura Masters. Al Razzaz wouldn’t dare claim he could seize Leon outside the range of his blade. Perhaps only Varg, who had ascended with the extreme martial art, Sirius, might stand a chance.

However...

“Dammit, why can’t I get away from him?!” Leon shouted in frustration.

That suffocating presence clung to his back. Darkness blotted out the twilight sky, a warped mass whose only shape was hatred and rage.

The Black Pharaoh, a traitor who buried his own kingdom and an exiled king damned to wander forever, was coming.

“He wasn’t this fast before...!”

Leon’s choice to break away from Amarh as quickly as possible and head for the barren wastes had been correct. Had Leon left just a single minute later, Nephren-Ka would have plowed straight into the city.

Al Razzaz may have been able to slow him down, but there was no chance he could stop him by himself, and Amarh would have suffered tens of thousands of deaths. Leon’s swift action had saved both a Swordmaster and countless lives.

Yet the speed of the pursuit was far beyond anything expected.

El-Cid chimed in.

—You guessed right. He

is

getting faster. An hour ago, you were ahead. Now you’re even. In another hour, he’ll overtake you.

“How?”

The answer was sharp and clear.

—The sun.

Nephren-Ka, the Black Pharaoh, had once been worshipped as the incarnation of the sun itself. Had he not fallen to exolaw, he would have been revered as a god, clutching all the wealth and glory of the world.

However, he had betrayed that power, and all blessings turned to curses.

—The sun that once loved him will not allow his feet to touch its light. The earth that once bore him will not allow his steps.

Love reversed to hatred, and every gift became poison. The very mummified body that should have remained intact had been twisted into a grotesque form by that curse.

—But, if he veils himself in exolaw’s darkness, lifting himself from the ground, he can stave it off. Once the sun sets, he won’t have anything to fear.

“You’re saying he gets stronger at night?!”

El-Cid’s voice was deadly serious as he replied, —Yup. Stay sharp. Nightfall is when the true battle begins. If his power catches you even for a moment, all the distance you’ve bought will vanish.

Leon swallowed hard. The Icarus Wing could last, but he still couldn’t fly nonstop for days. He’d need daylight to catch his breath. Which meant he had to escape as far as possible under the cover of night.

Just like that, twilight sank. An hour later—

“

Ugh

!”

Leon twisted instinctively, clutching his side. There was no wound, but cold spread through his body, and his instincts screamed danger. Out of the corner of his eye, something slithered past.

It was a serpent. He didn’t know why, but his mind called it that. The form was unclear, but the thought was certain.

For once, El-Cid sounded startled.

—Apophis’s avatar? He’s pulling out something dangerous right from the start. It’s a monster of shadow that can move faster than light in the dead of night. If this is only an avatar, it won’t be that extreme, but if it bites, the venom spreads. Wrap yourself in light!

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

“Got it!”

Light burst around Leon’s body, blazing like the sun. The bracer on his arm amplified the effect. Leon had brought out Jugend Steel number 100, the Sun Shield.

The serpent recoiled, shrieking as the Sun Aura seared it. Apophis, creature of night and death, loathed the sun—Ra’s true face—and instinctively shrank back.

It, however, had more up its sleeve. Apophis whipped its body like a flail, slamming into the solar shield.

Light and darkness. The scales of balance. If light drove away darkness, darkness devoured light. At night, the serpent did not fear the sun.

“

Whoa

? Damn snake bastard!”

Leon’s flight line wavered for a few seconds, narrowing the gap between him and the Black Pharaoh by hundreds of meters. Only then did he fully grasp the situation, cold sweat running down his face.

Unlike the day, when nothing could interfere with his flight, the night was filled with monsters like this beast, hurling obstacles in his path. One mistake, and his breath would be cut off. This was a death race in the literal sense.

I can’t stop even for a moment!

Following that instinct, Leon threw his body forward. Golden flames erupted from his back, propelling him faster, his stalled momentum surging severalfold as he ripped across the night sky.

With a

boom

, he broke the sound barrier. The wall of resistance shredded before him, and Leon became a comet. Within seconds, he reclaimed the distance he had lost and shot toward empty wastelands, where no life-signs could be felt.

“Dammit! This fight’s too stacked against me!”

Avoiding every nomad settlement made his course inefficient, and maintaining a shield to counter Apophis’s attacks drained his strength even faster. Without the Stigma of the Guardian, he’d have been caught in less than half a day.

The pressure of supersonic flight ground down on him, bones creaking inside his body. Only the constant recovery from the powers of the sun and moon made this insane chase possible.

Even after all this, I can’t shake him?

The monster, Apophis, conjured by Nephren-Ka, matched his speed effortlessly and gaped its maw. Before Leon’s eyes, the serpent spewed a vortex of darkness.

Leon saw the power of the breath of death at a glance and drew his blade.

“I have to cut it down!”

Dodging was meaningless. At this speed and at rate, the serpent would overtake him anyway. Against a monster that moved through darkness, supersonic flight meant nothing.

He had to strike here. Starlight blazed along Leon’s sword as he drew on Grand Chariot.

Even if this was only an avatar, Apophis was a monster from the myths. One blow would not suffice. He poured everything into two strikes, enough to cut without disrupting the Icarus Wing’s flight.

“Chained Secret Technique: North Star Cross.”

Moving at supersonic speed, Leon slashed down, then again crosswise. Even unleashed from stillness, the sword tore at his joints; now, with the resistance of supersonic flight, two fingers bent backwards, blood pressure spiked, and his eyes reddened with burst vessels. The backlash was beyond imagining, but Leon wasn’t one to stop.

“

Raaaaghhh

!”

Roaring instead of screaming, Leon forced the cross to completion with trembling hands. A cleave of both horizontal and vertical lines split the night sky into four.

The blazing cross carved through the vortex Apophis had spat and hacked apart the serpent’s writhing body. Even an ordinary sword would have left it maimed, but when forged through the Holy Sword, nemesis of exolaw, it annihilated the creature utterly.

The avatar of Apophis dissolved without so much as a death cry.

“I—I did it!”

Leon burst through its broken form, flew past, and reset his mangled fingers with cracking snaps. The pain was sharp, but the triumph of driving off Apophis outweighed it.

Had the serpent attacked from the side or rear to disrupt his flight, things would have been far worse.

Then, El-Cid poured a bucket of cold reality on him.

—My disciple.

“

Hm

?”

—Don’t celebrate too early.

“What? Why—”

Before Leon could finish, the night sky twisted into grotesque shapes. Straight lines, curves, zigzags—darkness itself writhed.

Leon’s eyes widened in shock as he shouted, “Apophis?! Again?! But I

just

cut it down!”

—I told you—it was only an avatar.

Unlike ordinary creatures, the avatars of beasts were little more than husks, shards, or drops of blood given life in the image of the original. This Apophis was no different. Compared to the true beast, it was a firefly before the moon, but it demanded almost no sacrifice to summon. Destroy one, and Nephren-Ka could simply call forth another.

—It looks like he can only keep one at a time, but for brief moments, he might be able to control several. Stay alert.

“Dammit!”

Leon batted away another set of fangs lunging at him, slipping through the coils that tried to engulf him. Even using the North Star Cross hadn’t been enough! Just as he had feared, facing Nephren-Ka alone was suicide.

And that wasn’t all. As if to mock him, the horizon seethed with darkness, rising like a tidal wave.

El-Cid had an idea of what it was.

—A corrupted scarab? The sacred creature meant to bring fertility to this land, reduced to a cheap pawn of death...

Once, those beetles should have shone with golden radiance. Twisted by Nephren-Ka’s darkness, they had lost all wisdom and divine power, transformed into nothing more than instruments of consumption.

Apophis and the scarabs. Monsters capable of annihilating an entire province in minutes were now only focused on chasing Leon.

I don’t know how many days I can keep this up...!

El-Cid urged him on.

—Still, it seems he can’t yet wield beings like Anubis or the Sphinx. A small silver lining. But his recovery speed is way too fast. Did we miss something?

“Why don’t

you

figure it out! I don’t have the time!”

—

Hah

, pushing chores onto your venerable master. Some disciple you are.

Dodging Apophis’s ambush, Leon’s blazing wings incinerated the scarabs erupting from below as he climbed higher. Above, below, in every direction—the Icarus Wing strained against his limits.

While Leon kept his focus on the aerial battle, El-Cid pieced it together with ease. With no clues, it might have remained hidden, but this tied back to a doubt he had left unresolved earlier.

—

Ah

! It drew on the earth’s energy.

“What!?”

—Remember when we were ambushed by bandits, and I said the sudden desertification there seemed odd?

“Yes! Wait—are you saying...?”

—Yep. That ruin of unknown origin. They’ve been siphoning the earth’s vitality from it to fuel Nephren-Ka’s revival. Otherwise, even devouring whole tribes wouldn’t have restored him this much.

Leon’s eyes widened at the revelation. If true, then the Evil Order had plotted Nephren-Ka’s return not for decades but for centuries—perhaps more.

Grand designs were measured in decades, but a scheme that spans centuries? That was not a plan. It was madness. One stray variable should have unraveled it long ago.

“What the hell are those bastards so desperate for!?”

Grinding his teeth, Leon shuddered at the sheer malice. A hundred years was enough time for even the deepest grudges to erode into dust. Yet, Evil had carried their plan without wavering, and now they had dragged down this calamity.

El-Cid’s voice was solemn.

—I told you this already. Don’t bother trying to understand them. Would it change anything? If you listened to their reasons, would you forgive them? Would centuries of spite suddenly soften? Would monsters who’ve cursed the world for a thousand years truly repent?

Unknowable. Unforgivable. That was why they were called “exo.” Exceptions to every rule, beyond compassion or pardon, even in the eyes of the Holy Church.

—Survive and destroy him. That is your duty, my disciple.

“Yeah.”

With a savage grin, Leon drove the Holy Sword into Apophis’s skull as his Icarus Wing blazed behind him. If this were the trial, he would endure it.

Beast King Varg. Saintess Elahan. Tyrant Al-Razzaz.

He would survive this deadly game of hide-and-seek until all they had built together bore fruit.

“Come on then!”

Waves of scarabs surged from below. Apophis’s fangs plunged from the night sky.

Leon met it all with a radiance like the sun, and once more accelerated, piercing through the darkness.

***

At that same moment, Elahan gazed up at the heavens.

She had remained in Nuas to lead the Guild alongside the expedition sent by the Holy Church. Seven Holy Iron Inquisitors stood at her command.

It was unfortunate they had not mustered a cardinal, but in the time given, this was the strongest force that could be assembled.

Then, the chain hanging at her waist began to glow.

“My Goddess...?”

A Revelation.