༺ The Man with the Crimson Spear (2) ༻
At the edge of Oznia’s line of sight, a man in black armor was walking toward her, looking even more demonic than the devil himself.
In the dark night, golden pupils gleamed like a bird of prey that had its prey in sight. Every time a cold wind blew, ominous black flames flickered gently around his body.
The air around them felt heavy, and even the lifeless existence of the Death Knight seemed tense as it crouched down and gripped the handle of its sword upon his arrival.
The man in the robe let out a sarcastic laugh with a fed-up expression.
“So, you’ve managed to follow me all the way here, half-baked warrior.”
However, the man in black armor simply raised his right hand without a response. At that moment, the crimson spear, which had been lying on the ground, appeared in his hand as if responding to his call.
“No, the humans call you Malevolent Star, right? Even your own kind calls you by that ominous name; it suits you well-“
Bam!
Suddenly, the robed man’s head shattered. The crimson spear had flown in an instant and pierced through the man’s forehead.
However, even with his head blown apart, the man still did not die. Instead, he moved the remaining lower jaw of his mouth and shouted desperately.
“Don’t you know how to have a conversation? Please stop killing me!”
The man’s state was truly gruesome.
The upper part of his head had been completely shattered, exposing his skull and brain, but not a single drop of blood flowed, making the cross-section even more clearly visible and creating an even more alien and horrifying sight.
“Ugh…!”
Unable to withstand the rising nausea at the sight of the man still moving despite his state, Oznia retched.
However, the man called Malevolent Star seemed all too familiar with this scene.
“Is this another clone?”
“Yes. So, no matter how many times you kill me, it’s useless, Malevolent Star. I’ll appear again in a new body somewhere else.”
The man’s shattered head was already regenerating. However, it looked more like an awkward attempt to stick the broken pieces back together rather than actual regeneration.
It was difficult to even guess his original appearance from the grotesquely distorted face, but Oznia could at least recognize that he had pointy ears like an elf.
The man called Malevolent Star replied indifferently.
“If I keep killing everyone I see, eventually only the main body will remain.”
With those words, Malevolent Star walked straight towards the man in the robe. The robed man, in desperation, raised his staff, and at his command, the horde of Death Knights charged at Malevolent Star.
Despite the intimidating sight of the mounted knights charging with their weapons swinging, Malevolent Star showed no emotional change. He simply moved forward, gripping the spear that resembled a red thorn heavily.
The ghost horse let out a rough neigh, and the Death Knight on its back swung its sword with great force. It was a downward slash that even a decent knight would have difficulty blocking. In response, Malevolent Star held his spear firmly and swept it upwards to deflect the blow.
The knight, while riding the horse, had accelerated from above and swung down the sword, and Malevolent Star had swung his spear upward to block it while standing still. Logically, there should have been a clear difference in power.
Crash!
Despite this, the Death Knight’s sword, which struck Malevolent Star’s spear, was pushed back like a child unable to withstand an adult’s strength.
Not only that, but the ghost horse couldn’t handle the tremendous force of the heavy blow from the spear and collapsed with a rough tumble. In the end, both the horse and the knight crumpled to the ground together.
Oznia had no idea how much of a difference in strength there had to be to overpower a mounted knight with sheer force.
Malevolent Star pierced, struck, and slashed through the charging knights one by one. The corpses torn by his spear finally became real corpses, no longer moving. Only murky waves of blood spread around him.
Watching the Death Knight squad capable of capturing an entire fortress being brutally shattered by a single man, the man in the robe let out a sarcastic laugh.
“You madman…”
Regardless, the robed man didn’t want the Death Knight squad he had painstakingly created to be annihilated so easily.
He raised his staff and prepared his magic while simultaneously sending newly created corpses of the villagers towards Malevolent Star.
However, all of it was futile. As the robed man summoned dark power to cast curses and dark magic upon Malevolent Star, everything vanished in the trajectory of the crimson spear.
Whenever Malevolent Star unleashed black flames from his body and swung his spear, he sent more than one zombie or Death Knight back to being corpses without discrimination.
He continued to advance relentlessly, trampling over the enemy’s corpses and never stopping the swing of his spear. There was no hesitation or indecision in him. This was a one-sided massacre, with a single person slaughtering his enemies with overwhelming power.
It was a truly horrifying sight. Oznia couldn’t help but instinctively shudder.
“Gasp…!”
She scraped the dirt floor with her hand and backed away. Caught between the demon who had slaughtered her village and the man who was mercilessly defeating those demons, she didn’t know which to fear more.
It seemed that nothing would be an exception to the man who was killing everything in front of her. Just like he had torn her charging parents’ corpses in half moments ago. His merciless strength and demonic appearance filled Oznia’s heart with extreme terror.
However, at the same time, his battle against the enemies left a deep impression on Oznia.
The sight of him defeating his enemies transcended the realm of human capability, reminiscent of a hero’s battle from mythology. The crimson spear that he wielded in his hand moved like lightning, piercing his enemies, and each movement left a heavy, rock-like impact.
In the end, all the undead that had filled the village were brought down by Malevolent Star’s hand, returning to the ground as rotting corpses.
The man in the robe, who was now left alone, looked at him with eyes as if he were seeing a monster.
“Even though there were limits to the power I could exert with this avatar, it wasn’t a power that a mere human could face alone…”
The robed man muttered in disbelief, but Malevolent Star simply aimed accurately for his vital point and swung his spear.
The man quietly opened his mouth as he watched the spearhead descending towards his head.
“Ha… To think that a half-baked follower who isn’t even a saint or a great warrior of a goddess would be my opponent… Where on earth did this monster-like man come from-“
Crash!!
With a tremendous roar that seemed to split the heavens and the earth, Malevolent Star’s spear cleaved the man’s body in half.
With that blow, the man no longer moved.
There was a limit to how much one could move with a shattered body.
As Malevolent Star’s golden gaze turned towards her, leaving the burning village and the stench of blood behind, Oznia screamed in fear without realizing it.
“Eek…!”
As Malevolent Star approached her with the crimson spear in hand, Oznia couldn’t even think of running away and simply collapsed to the ground. In a trembling voice, she faintly pleaded.
“Pl-please… spare me…”
The Malevolent Star stood in front of Oznia for a long time, looking at her as if thinking about something. The longer his silence, the more pitifully Oznia’s breathing trembled.
Oznia could no longer beg for her life or run away. Nothing seemed to work in front of Malevolent Star whose identity she couldn’t know. To him, Oznia was less than an ant.
Oznia was shaking in front of the Malevolent Star, like a prisoner waiting for judgment.
Suddenly, the Malevolent Star raised his crimson spear and thrust it towards Oznia. Her face turned deathly pale.
In Oznia’s purple eyes, all she could see was the blade of that crimson spear.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die just like this. Her heart was pounding like crazy. At that moment, Oznia’s mind was filled with nothing but death.
But the spearhead stopped in front of Oznia’s eyes.
Thunk!
At the same time, Oznia felt some sort of constraint that was binding her suddenly break.
With Oznia, who couldn’t even think to catch her breath, in front of her, the Malevolent Star pulled back his spear as if he had finished all his work.
And then the man turned his back.
Oznia couldn’t take her eyes off his retreating figure until he completely disappeared.
He appeared out of nowhere, saved her, and then left without saying a word.
***
“…And so, after he left, the imperial army appeared.”
Oznia briefly mentioned a few more things that happened afterward.
Her current master had discovered her unique constitution and took her in as a disciple. She learned how to control her abilities from him.
And she had always wanted to meet Malevolent Star, but after the war ended, she couldn’t even find out where he had gone.
But when she recently found out through the newspaper that he was alive, she was so surprised that her mind seemed to go blank for a moment.
Throughout Oznia’s story, Eon did not show any reaction.
He just listened to her story silently with a focused expression from beginning to end. After a long silence, he finally spoke heavily.
“Oznia.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever resented him?”
“…Pardon?”
At his words, Oznia looked up at Eon in surprise.
Eon was staring at Oznia quietly with a very serious expression in his eyes.
“If that man had arrived just a little earlier, your family and the people in your village might still be alive. Have you ever thought about that?”
Eon’s expression didn’t change, but there was a hint of complex emotion in his silence.
As she looked at him, Oznia’s eyes also seemed to deepen.
