The Holy King Rodrick was a hero who lived more than three hundred years ago. He was the very man who carved countless legends into history and cemented his place as the strongest human to ever live.

Rodrick’s feats recorded in ancient texts were so transcendent that some even doubted he had truly existed. However, the traces he left behind were too numerous and clear for that doubt to matter.

Even so, many sought to diminish his reputation. Some claimed the Holy Church had deified him for political power. Others insisted his legends were actually the combined deeds of several heroes, all falsely attributed to the name “Rodrick.”

Most offered no evidence, just empty noise, but there was one fact none of them ever questioned: Rodrick died.

“Hold on...” Leon blinked hard and finally managed to speak. “So you’re saying... you didn’t die?”

—I didn’t.

El-Cid grinned with satisfaction at Leon’s stunned reaction. —Think about it, my disciple. As you said, a transcendent being is beyond mortality. And in that world, there was no one—nothing—that could kill me. Not as an individual, not as a group. Even if the entire continent fought me at once, I’d be the one still standing at the end.

It was an outrageous declaration. Not even the dragons of old age could confidently win against a nation on their own. There was no demi-human race physically weaker than humans: not elves, not dwarves, not beastkin. Their average strength far surpassed humanity’s.

Humans weren’t strong as individuals, so they overwhelmed numbers with numbers. Yet humanity became the rulers of the continent because the more they multiplied, the more exponentially their collective strength grew.

—But when facing beings like the Death King, who are beings on a completely different tier, numbers don’t matter. When I defeated the Demon King, I’d already passed the demi-god level. I was one step away from complete divinity.

A realm far past the Grandmaster. That was the realm where mere will could interfere with the laws governing reality.

Psychokinesis, which once merely overlaid the world temporarily, would become semipermanent within his domain. If he entered true divinity, even demi-god-class beings wouldn’t be able to breathe freely in his presence.

There was a reason El-Cid dared say he could defeat the entire continent alone. Realizing this, Leon’s confusion only deepened.

“If you never died... then why did you disappear? Or... could you no longer be active in this world?”

—Exactly.

El-Cid confirmed Leon’s guess.

—Not even the goddess foresaw it. Until that moment, I honestly thought I had a good hundred years of life in the lower world left. Even if I became a full god, I figured I’d be stuck like that fool—staring at the earth from above, too scared to descend.

“Because of that ‘cause and effect,’ or whatever it was?”

—Yup. When a higher-dimensional being interferes with a lower dimension, the backlash is enormous. Best-case scenario: a natural disaster. Worst case? Dozens of dimensional rifts.

Failing to kill the Archbishop of the Evil Order was one reason Rodrick refused ascension. Compared to that, every other concern felt trivial. Yet Rodrick ascended before he could finish his work.

—You remember the concept of karma, right?

“Yeah.”

—Well, the problem is... I built up too much of it. I slaughtered so many exodimensional creatures that the number reached the tens of thousands. I soloed the Demon King, and the weight of that karmic deed shot me up into the upper dimension.

“Is that even possible...?”

—According to divine records, I was the first. One day, I took a nap, woke up in the heavens, and that stupid goddess was slapping my face pale with panic. You have no idea how absurd it was.

Against his will, Rodrick ascended and could no longer return. Just like that, he became one of the guardians of humanity alongside the goddess. His sudden disappearance nearly caused massive turmoil, but the goddess issued an oracle to calm the world.

—The real problem came after. The border between dimensions grew increasingly strict—so strict that even the goddess struggled to interfere with the mortal realm. That’s why I wanted to wipe out the Demon Realms and kill the Archbishop before ascending...

But his involuntary ascension ruined everything. Realizing this, he and the goddess pooled their power, strengthening the Holy Sword and isolating a fragment of Rodrick’s soul to dwell within it. That was the true birth of the Holy Sword El-Cid.

“Suddenly I feel like I’ve been carrying something way too heavy,” Leon murmured, finally understanding the full weight of the responsibility he bore.

El-Cid only laughed. —Hah! You accepted that burden the day you pulled me out, didn’t you?

“Well, true...”

—You’re doing well. A long way to go before you reach me, but as your master, I’m satisfied so far.

Leon flushed at the praise and scratched his cheek. At that moment, with the superhuman vision of an Aura Master, he spotted someone directing soldiers a few hundred meters away. It was a familiar figure, so familiar it tugged at something deep inside him.

Chloe. You made it... he thought.

The battle in Calelum had been hell on earth. No Master could guarantee survival there. Chloe, who had only just reached the sixth tier as a mage, must have narrowly brushed death more than once. Indeed, she was wrapped in white bandages, still bearing wounds that magic hadn’t fully healed.

—If she’s on your mind, why not go talk to her? Seems you’ve let go of your romantic feelings.

“No. She’s busy. I shouldn’t bother her.” Leon turned away and flew toward the presence he sensed from Elahan.

El-Cid was right. Any affection had long since faded. He only cared enough to make sure his childhood friend was safe—or so he thought.

As he reconsidered his feelings, he realized why he had quietly placed distance between himself and Chloe. Their paths had diverged too sharply. Childhood friends, first love—those small threads were no longer enough to bridge the gap.

Whatever Chloe thought of him now, she was simply a person from his past. Not even someone he could call family, simply just an acquaintance.

I hope she’s happy.

At least that part was sincere. Leaving behind the oblivious Chloe, Leon crossed the skies over Calelum, thinking of Elahan, who would surely greet him with a bright smile the moment she saw him.

***

Those who knew even a fragment of the truth behind the Evil Order would call them traitors. They were blasphemers who rejected the radiance of the divine and conspired with outer dimensions to overturn the world.

And those who dug deeper would call them madmen. Creatures who tossed aside their own lives like a single coin and dedicated themselves to meaningless slaughter and destruction.

But there was only one who knew everything there was to know about them. And that being spoke.

“So. You were defeated, Chaos.”

The root and the head of the Evil Order. The being who spread exolaw and appointed the Nine Hell Bishops to expand its influence.

In the suffocating darkness where even a step ahead could not be seen, the Archbishop felt the scattered fragments of power returning. It was the power he had granted to Morse.

More than half had been lost to the Holy Sword, but better remnants than nothing. Through those fragments, through their memories, the Archbishop accepted everything that had happened, and his eyes glowed a deep, bloody red.

“Pathetic,” he muttered.

The Archbishop had never left his hidden sanctuary, not even once, always preparing for the worst. It was all because he remembered that day. The moment the heavens and earth split in two under Rodrick’s sword, the moment an entire mountain range became a canyon.

His uncharacteristically cautious nature for a being born a proud dragon was what saved him. If he hadn’t sacrificed his followers to witness that power, it wouldn’t have been the mountains that split, but the Archbishop himself.

“So pathetic.”

And so he hid. For over three hundred years, he remained in the shadows, manipulating the Evil Order from behind the curtain. Because if Holy King Rodrick still lived—if he appeared even once—the Archbishop knew he would be split cleanly in half in the next instant.

That fear had suffocated him for centuries. He only began to breathe freely again after learning that a new Hero had appeared. With Morse’s memories, he saw the new Hero, Leon, and laughed like a lunatic.

“Ha... haha... hahahahaha!”

This was a Hero? This was the successor to Holy King Rodrick?

The one whom even gods revered—who made the Demon King tremble like a rat—this so-called successor was nothing but a child compared to him.

“Rodrick is dead.”

The Holy Sword El-Cid, an artifact that could belong only to one Hero, was in another’s hand. That alone proved Rodrick was gone.

If so, there was no more reason to remain buried in this darkness. Even sacrificing several Bishops and tens of thousands of cultists was worth it for this one confirmation.

After all, the Evil Order was nothing but puppets toyed with by the Archbishop. He had corrupted their minds and drowned them in madness because no one with normal desires would willingly become an enemy of the entire world.

He shattered their reason, twisted their beliefs into fanatic delusion, and addicted them to exolaw. Even the Nine Hell Bishops were merely those who had higher compatibility with exolaw, nothing more.

“The Evil Order is a farce. Its doctrine, its purpose—all lies. A hollow chant made to gather the world’s forsaken as my limbs.”

It was a truth so horrifying that even the Holy Church would freeze. A religious order was supposed to be a religious group. Yet the Archbishop himself muttered that the Evil Order wasn’t even a religion, that it had been deception from its inception. And the darkness around him writhed, as if pleased by the lie, shifting with unknowable motions.

“You think I would hand this world to gods not of this world? Even the Holy Church, even Rodrick, were fooled. No one, not a single soul, has grasped my true purpose.”

Just as El-Cid had said, transcendent races like dragons were born with elevated natures, making it hard for them to stray from their innate disposition. But if a being did stray from that nature, then nothing was easier than corruption.

Every race was born with a nature aligned to its origin: Elves, born of the great forest, loved nature and beasts. Dwarves, born of stone and ore, loved minerals to an obsession. Dragons, born of order itself, could not help but love this world.

“This time, I will have it.”

With a declaration like a vow to himself, the Archbishop stepped out of the darkness. Blackness flowed behind him like a cloak, and his eyes, clearly inhuman, slitted vertically like a beast’s.

They were golden, but they were not like Leon’s or Elahan’s.

A harsher, deeper gold—one unapproachable by lesser beings—belonged to a transcendent being.

“I remained in this world for one reason alone. With the dragons ascended to the heavens, and with Rodrick gone, nothing remains that can stop me.”

His hair, dark as the abyss, billowed despite the still air, each strand twisting like serpents’ heads. He raised his gaze to the dim sky. Surely the goddess still watched the world from beyond the stars.

Savoring that unseen gaze, he smiled. Purely, serenely. It was a face no one would imagine belonged to a monster responsible for immeasurable evil.

“Are you watching, Goddess?”

There was only one difference between him and his kin. Dragons, born with “Attunement,” were meant to love the world, protect it from outer threats, and uphold natural law.

However, the Archbishop loved only one being. The goddess who remained to watch over this world even as all other gods departed. He loved her, and he knew that love could never be fulfilled.

To the goddess, a dragon was merely part of the world—one among countless fragments of the whole she cherished. Any love given to him would first be divided a thousandfold.

“If the only thing you can love is this world itself...”

As he muttered, his golden eyes twisted with impure madness. He thought himself rational, but the Evil Order was simply the outward form of the madness that lurked within him. Dragon or not, even transcendent beings could fall to insanity. His “love” had bloomed into obsession.

“...then I will become this world. I will leave nothing for you to love except me. All of creation will be mine alone.”

The Archbishop, no, the Evil Dragon Britra, bit down into a rotten, malevolent smile.