Chapter 23 : When the Heavens Answer

In the present.

At that moment, Alexander finally understood something he had been unable to understand for most of his life.

It did not matter whether there was someone stronger than him. It did not matter whether the world would remember his name after this battle, nor whether, in someone else's story, he was destined to be nothing more than an insignificant obstacle standing in their way. For most of his life, he had measured himself by the strength he possessed, by the enemies he could defeat, and by the distance that still separated him from those who stood above him. Yet none of those things mattered now.

Because the people standing behind him were part of his story.

Alexander slowly opened his eyes and turned his gaze toward the Crimson Fortress. Through the devastation, through the heat and smoke that still covered the battlefield, he could see Ethan. He could see the soldiers. He could see the members of the Marilz Clan. And beyond them were countless other people who did not even know what was happening here—people who had no idea that their lives were hanging on the outcome of these final seconds, people who would never know how close death had come to their doorstep.

They did not know that one man was standing between them and death.

They did not know how close the end had come.

But Alexander knew.

And perhaps that was enough.

This battle was not about proving that he was the strongest. It was not about forcing the world to remember his name. It was about the people behind him, the people who had placed their lives in his hands without even knowing that they had done so.

This was his story.

Alexander slowly raised his head.

His will had been drained almost completely. What remained was little more than a fading ember buried beneath an ocean of exhaustion and pain. His body had already gone far beyond its natural limits, and the flames that had once burned around him with overwhelming brilliance had been consumed again and again. Every attack had taken something from him. Every exchange had burned away another portion of his will.

By all reasonable measure, there should have been nothing left.

Yet the flame had not gone out.

It still burned.

And then Immortal Blood felt something change.

At first, the creature could not understand what it was. The battlefield had already been transformed into a place of unbearable heat, with flames covering the earth and the remnants of Alexander's attacks still burning across the ruined landscape. Yet the heat surrounding them suddenly began to rise again, rapidly and unnaturally, as though something far greater than the fire itself had begun to awaken.

This was different.

The temperature climbed with frightening speed. Steam began to spread across the battlefield, growing denser with every passing moment until the surroundings became difficult to see. The earth beneath the remaining flames seemed to boil, while the air itself shimmered violently, as though the entire world had been thrown into a furnace.

The steam continued to rise.

It climbed higher and higher, carrying the heat of the battlefield toward the heavens. Then, after reaching a certain height, the countless streams of vapor began to gather together. They twisted and converged above the battlefield, gradually forming an enormous black cloud that swallowed the sky.

At almost the same moment, the colossal wall of flame surrounding Alexander suddenly disappeared.

The path toward the Crimson Fortress was completely exposed.

Immortal Blood could see it clearly now.

The fortress was still there.

The people were still there.

The prey was still within reach.

Yet Alexander did not move.

He simply stood where he was.

Immortal Blood stared at him, and although it could not explain what it was sensing, something deep within its instincts began screaming that there was danger here. Everything about the human standing before it suggested that he should already have fallen. His body had reached its limit. His will was almost exhausted. His flames should have disappeared long ago.

And yet the man remained standing.

Then the sky changed.

Flashes of lightning suddenly appeared within the black clouds, illuminating the enormous mass of vapor from within. But these were not ordinary bolts of lightning. Their light carried the color of flame, burning across the clouds in brilliant streaks. One bolt flashed through the darkness, followed by another, and then another, until the entire sky seemed to be filled with burning veins of light.

Alexander slowly raised his head.

His will extended toward the heavens.

It was no longer confined to his body. Instead, it stretched upward, reaching through the air and into the clouds as though an invisible thread had connected his soul directly to the sky itself.

The black clouds began to churn.

Then they parted.

Something appeared within them.

A colossal phantom slowly emerged high above the battlefield, a figure formed entirely from Alexander's will and blazing light. Its enormous presence seemed to fill the heavens as it looked down upon the world below, and for the first time since the battle had begun, even Immortal Blood was momentarily frozen.

Across the heavens, ancient words seemed to echo once more.

As flames arise, the heavens reply, And thunder illuminates the boundless sky.

Michael Mariles had once been a genius.

A genius who had lost.

But his defeat had never been enough to make him surrender. Instead, he had pursued the man who defeated him, not because he sought revenge, but because he wanted to understand him. He wanted to understand the difference between himself and the person who had stood beyond his reach.

Eventually, he realized something that had changed the course of his life.

He had spent his youth trying to generate enough power to touch the Origin.

But the wall before him had simply been too high.

It was so high that standing beneath it and repeatedly attempting to climb it had eventually driven him toward despair. No matter how hard he trained, no matter how much power he accumulated, his own body remained a limitation he could not overcome.

So he asked himself a different question.

If he could not produce enough power to reach the Origin, then why did the power itself have to come from him?

The answer was almost absurdly simple.

It was like a man standing before a raging river and realizing that he did not need to become stronger than the river. He did not need to stop its current with his own hands or overpower something that was fundamentally beyond him.

He only needed to build a way across it.

A road.

A bridge.

A path through which his strength could reach somewhere his own body could never reach.

It was the act of a human moving the heavens.

And now, thousands of years later, Alexander had finally understood the meaning of that inheritance.

His eyes burned as he looked toward the colossal phantom above the clouds. The enormous figure seemed to slowly raise its head, its presence spreading across the sky as the lightning continued to gather around it.

Immortal Blood reacted immediately.

Whatever hesitation had remained within the creature was finally crushed beneath its instincts. It raised both hands, and an enormous quantity of blood surged from its body. The blood poured outward and hardened almost instantly, erupting from the earth in massive crimson walls.

One barrier rose.

Then another.

Then another.

Layer upon layer of solidified blood emerged from the ruined battlefield, forming a gigantic fortress around Immortal Blood and placing countless barriers between the creature and the heavens above.

But Alexander merely looked at them.

There was no fear in his eyes.

Only determination.

"It is too late, monster."

His voice was hoarse from exhaustion, yet it carried across the battlefield with surprising clarity.

"I am Alexander Mariles."

The flames around him surged once more, as though answering the final declaration of their master.

"I am the Flame King."

His gaze locked onto Immortal Blood.

"And I will not fall alone."

Immortal Blood's eye widened.

Alexander smiled.

"Die."

For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to become completely silent.

Then the heavens moved.

How could anything be faster than light?

The lightning descended.

It did not merely strike the ground. It illuminated the world.

BOOOOOOOOM!

The crimson walls surrounding Immortal Blood collapsed almost instantly. They shattered under the overwhelming force, breaking apart into countless fragments of hardened blood that were thrown into the air before being completely erased by the descending lightning.

For Immortal Blood, everything suddenly turned white.

There was no battlefield.

No earth.

No sky.

There was only an endless brilliance.

Then the tremendous force of the heavens descended upon it with the weight of a mountain.

The earth beneath Immortal Blood had already been devastated by the countless attacks that had preceded this final strike. Now, it could no longer endure. The ground collapsed beneath the impact, opening into a gigantic crater that swallowed the surrounding earth.

Lightning spread through the broken ground in countless branching flashes, racing across the surface like living veins. For a brief moment, the entire battlefield became a world of thunder and light, with nothing remaining visible beneath the overwhelming radiance.

Atop the Crimson Fortress, Ethan Mariles stood motionless.

He had witnessed everything.

The final attack had shaken the fortress itself. The stone beneath his feet trembled violently beneath the tremendous force before finally settling, yet Ethan remained where he was, his posture straight and his expression firm.

Somehow, the aura surrounding him seemed several times more imposing than before.

An aide standing beside him swallowed nervously as he looked toward the battlefield.

"Sir, has everyone withdrawn?"

Ethan did not look away.

"No."

The aide hesitated before lowering his voice. "We still need more time."

Ethan's expression hardened.

"Then we wait until everyone has withdrawn."

"But, Commander..." The aide paused, clearly struggling with whether he should continue. "As a member of the main family, the elders are demanding that you return immediately. They want you to leave the fortress before—"

"I will not return before everyone is out."

Ethan finally turned toward him.

His voice remained calm, but there was no room for argument in it.

"I am the acting commander of the Crimson Fortress."

He turned his gaze back toward the battlefield, where the enormous cloud still obscured much of the sky.

"And I will not leave until everyone has escaped."

"But—"

"No 'but.'"

His eyes remained fixed on the distant crater.

"Continue the evacuation."

The aide hesitated for another moment before finally nodding.

"Understood."

He turned and hurried away.

Ethan remained alone atop the fortress wall.

For a long moment, he said nothing. His gaze stayed on the battlefield as the enormous cloud continued to cover the sky, while flashes of lightning still flickered across the ruined earth far in the distance.

He had spent the last thirty seconds watching his grandfather fight something that should never have appeared on this continent.

He had watched Alexander burn himself beyond his limits. He had watched him fall, only to rise again when there should have been nothing left for him to draw upon. And now he had witnessed the final attack, an attack so powerful that even from the fortress, Ethan could still feel the weight of the heavens shaking the land beneath his feet.

His hands slowly clenched into fists.

"Grandfather..."

His voice was barely audible.

"Please be safe."

At the bottom of the enormous crater, Immortal Blood lay motionless.

It had survived.

But once again, it had been injured.

Its body immediately began attempting to reconstruct itself. Flesh and blood twisted together as the creature tried to restore everything that had been destroyed by the lightning. Yet the process could not proceed normally. Lightning continued to surge through its body, traveling through its wounds and ruptured flesh. Every time the damage began to close, another wave of thunder erupted from within, tearing through the regeneration and preventing it from completing.

Immortal Blood's expression twisted with pain and rage.

"Damn it..."

Even an ant had dared to injure it.

How dare it?

How could such a tiny creature possibly dare to hurt it?

Immortal Blood slowly pushed itself upright. Its body trembled beneath the accumulated damage, and for a brief moment it nearly lost its balance. It steadied itself with one hand against the broken ground, breathing heavily as the lightning continued to crawl through its wounds.

It could not remain here.

That was the only conclusion that mattered now.

The successive battles it had endured since escaping its seal had already left it in terrible condition. It had barely recovered from the injuries inflicted during its previous encounters, and before it could properly restore its strength, another powerful attack had torn through its body. Its current state was far from what it needed to face the powerful human who had been approaching.

It needed to heal.

And healing required blood.

A great deal of blood.

Only then could it recover enough strength to survive what came next.

And it needed to recover before that powerful human arrived.

That human...

The thought alone caused Immortal Blood's expression to darken.

It had no intention of remaining here and waiting for him.

It turned and began moving as quickly as its damaged body allowed.

It had to leave this place. It had to find blood, recover its strength, and become stronger. There was no reason for it to continue fighting when its body was already in such a state. Whatever pride it possessed, whatever anger still burned within it, survival came first.

Yet it had taken only a few steps when Immortal Blood suddenly stopped.

Something was holding its foot.

The creature slowly lowered its gaze.

An arm had emerged from the ruined earth.

It was not an ordinary arm. Its entire form was composed of thunder, brilliant strands of lightning twisting together into something resembling a human limb. It had emerged from beneath the shattered ground and wrapped itself tightly around Immortal Blood's ankle.

For a moment, Immortal Blood simply stared.

The sight was almost absurd.

After everything that had happened, after the overwhelming attack that had descended from the heavens and nearly torn its body apart, this insignificant remnant of thunder was still trying to restrain it. The arm was clearly at the end of its strength. Its radiance had already begun to weaken, and every flicker of light revealed how little power remained within it.

It should have disappeared already.

Yet it was still holding on.

Immortal Blood's gaze narrowed as an unpleasant realization slowly settled over it. Even after its creator was gone, even after that human had exhausted himself to the point of death, his final attack was still refusing to let go. It was as though the dead man had deliberately left behind this final restraint, sacrificing even the last trace of his power to prevent Immortal Blood from escaping before the next human arrived.

The thought infuriated it.

How could such an insignificant creature continue to interfere with it even after death?

Then its anger erupted.

Immortal Blood raised its other foot and violently kicked downward.

The thunderous arm shook under the impact, its light flickering violently, but it did not disappear.

"This annoying bastard!"

The thoughts of the “Immortal Blood” echoed angrily in his head

"This ant..."

It kicked again.

"Just die!"

The lightning surrounding the arm began to fade.

The thunderous arm trembled.

The lightning surrounding it began to weaken, its once-brilliant radiance gradually fading as the remaining power within it was consumed.

Immortal Blood saw the change and believed that it was finally about to break free.

"Die!"

Another kick crashed down.

The arm weakened further.

"Die!"

Another blow.

The light grew dimmer. The lightning surrounding it no longer possessed the dazzling radiance that had distinguished it at first; its power was gradually fading as the last remnants of its energy were depleted, and it seemed as though its ability to resist had finally reached its utmost limits.

Immortal Blood continued striking it again and again, each kick carrying more frustration than the last. The creature could no longer understand why this insignificant remnant refused to disappear. Its body was already wounded, its regeneration was being disrupted, and every moment spent here was another moment wasted while the powerful human drew closer.

Yet even as the thunderous arm began to dissolve, it refused to release its grip.

It remained wrapped around Immortal Blood's foot.

The creature breathed heavily, its fury mixing with the exhaustion that had begun to weigh upon its damaged body.

And then Immortal Blood heard a voice from behind.

"Young Marilz."

The creature froze.

The voice was calm.

Almost gentle.

There was no anger in it, no urgency, and no trace of the murderous fury that had filled the battlefield moments before. That calmness was precisely what made the voice so terrifying. It carried the quiet certainty of someone who had already arrived at the end of a journey and had no reason to hurry.

"Do not worry."

A pause followed, and then the voice came again, drawing closer.

"Rest in peace."

Another step.

Immortal Blood's entire body trembled.

Its expression changed instantly.

Slowly, almost unwillingly, Immortal Blood turned its head. The moment its gaze fell upon the figure standing behind it, its entire body froze. There, amid the fading remnants of thunder and the silence that had settled over the battlefield, stood Maxwell Voltera.

Then he spoke, his voice carrying the same quiet certainty as before. “I'll take it from here.”

Thirty seconds had passed.

Maxwell Voltera had arrived.

At that exact moment, the thunderous arm finally completed the purpose for which it had remained behind. The fading light surrounding it weakened even further, and the entire limb began to dissolve into countless sparks. The fragments of lightning scattered into the air, breaking apart one after another before the wind carried them away.

Its task was finished.

It had never been meant to kill Immortal Blood.

It had only needed to hold the creature in place.

And now there was nothing left of it.

Only a few fading traces of lightning remained suspended in the air, slowly disappearing into the darkness of the crater.

The Flame King had fulfilled his promise.

He had protected the people standing behind him.

And those thirty seconds had been enough.

Now, the man who had stood alone against an Origin-level creature, burning through everything he possessed in order to keep the people behind him alive, was gone.

Alexander Marilz.

The Great Flame King.

Was dead.