The flames roared as they burned, and the stinging smell of charring and the scorching heat made it hard even to breathe.

Muen lifted his eyes, trying to determine just how far this sea of fire—or rather, this apocalyptic scene—actually stretched. But the dense buildings and tangled terrain blocked his view here as well.

This ancient royal capital was not laid out with the neat planning and flat topography of Belrand. The overlapping slopes gave the city a strong sense of depth and layering, but for the same reason, it was impossible to see through the entire city at a glance.

Even so, the atmosphere of despair, the cries of agony, and the scenes of destruction still came crashing over him like a tidal wave, constantly stabbing at Muen’s nerves and making him acutely feel the calamity this city was suffering at that very moment.

“Has the Salvation Society really already destroyed Saint Blancfazesiya? Or... is Saint Blancfazesiya already in the middle of being destroyed, and the quiet city I saw before was only a false appearance they built over the ruins?”

Muen felt dazed.

What he saw before him pointed toward that answer, but reasoning it through logically made it feel utterly unbelievable.

Yes, from one angle, if Saint Blancfazesiya really was already on the brink of destruction, then the fact that the Witch of Repentance could attack so brazenly would make sense.

But what about everything else?

Just as Muen had reasoned before—what about the timing? What about the powerhouses here? And how exactly had the Salvation Society managed it?

This was no small city. This was Saint Blancfazesiya—a mighty capital with hundreds, perhaps over a thousand years of history! The most important capital of the Kingdom!

This place had millions of people. It had branch offices and even headquarters of all kinds of organizations and factions. It had the Kingdom’s royal guard. It had powerful people serving the nation. It even had one of the Nine Great Cathedrals, one of the Church’s foundations in the mortal world.

When Muen had first seen that calm, peaceful city, he had indeed thought something abnormal was happening here.

But he had never imagined that the city’s abnormality could possibly have anything to do with the word destruction.

The Salvation Society was formidable. They might truly be capable of destroying this city. But there was no way they could destroy it in such a short time, without alerting anyone outside, without any sign at all beforehand...

To satisfy all of those conditions at once, forget the Salvation Society—even the Church probably could not manage it.

It was like killing someone. Killing a person casually, and killing a person without leaving a single trace behind, were difficulties separated by an enormous gulf.

And in Muen’s eyes, what the Salvation Society would need to do here was far more difficult than killing one person without a trace.

Because if the scene in front of him was the so-called “truth,” then what they were doing was killing an entire city full of people without leaving a trace.

“No. I still can’t jump to conclusions that easily.”

Muen smacked his forehead hard, forcing his overdrawn mind to calm down.

Before he had grasped the full shape of the situation, this was the worst possible moment for speculation. It was far too easy to reason yourself straight into a pit.

Right now, the most important thing was information.

At the very least... he needed to know how deeply destruction had already “eroded” the Saint Blancfazesiya he was standing in.

“This area’s been badly damaged...”

Muen swept his gaze around. The buildings here were already so badly burned and unstable that it was hard to extract any useful information from them. So he decisively chose to move farther toward the city center.

He still did not dare expose himself in the open. He could only move quickly through the crowded, cramped spaces between the buildings in this district.

Muen moved cautiously. It seemed he still had not attracted the Witch of Repentance’s attention. But before he had gone very far, he was forced to stop again.

“This is...”

Muen’s brows drew together, his expression darkening.

Because in front of him, he saw many charred corpses.

Under ordinary circumstances, these corpses would not have made him stop while a Crowned’s attack might come after him again at any moment. After all, charred bodies were everywhere among the flames and ruins.

But these were clearly different.

Because these corpses...

were all children.

In what looked like a broad room that resembled a classroom, dozens of tiny bodies were huddled tightly together, as if even in their final moments they had been trying desperately to hide from something terrifying.

But clearly, they had failed. The tongues of flame had licked mercilessly over those young bodies, leaving behind only blackened desolation.

“So those bastards really didn’t even spare children... Hm?”

As Muen’s eyes passed over the horrifying scene, suppressing the anger rising in his chest, his gaze suddenly fell on one figure that looked vaguely familiar.

It was another child. Burned by the fire, it looked no different from the other pitiful children at first glance.

But the way this one’s body was curled up was strangely different.

Unlike the others, who had huddled together in fear in the final moments before death, this child had curled tightly inward, protecting something in his arms.

“Don’t tell me...”

Muen crouched down and carefully pried apart the child’s stiff, charred arms. To avoid damaging the body any further, even with Muen’s control over his strength, it still took him two or three minutes to remove the thing the child had clutched tightly in both hands and guarded against his chest.

It was a banknote.

A banknote that had somehow remained about half intact even in such a blaze—enough that Muen could clearly identify its denomination.

One hundred Aimier.

To Muen, it was a trivial amount.

But to this child, it had been unimaginably precious.

Precious enough that even in the final moment before death, he had still protected it against his chest.

“So it really was him.”

Muen drew in a slow breath, and in his mind appeared the young face he had only met once.

When he had first entered this city, he had bought a newspaper from a newsboy for one hundred Aimier in order to gather information, even though the paper itself had only cost two Aimier.

At the time, he had thought it was a meaningless little encounter, that he would never see that brat again.

And yet...

“So this counts as... some ridiculous twist of fate?”

Muen gave a soundless laugh and took out a fresh large-denomination bill, placing it into the child’s hand.

After offering a prayer to the Goddess and hoping these pitiful people could finally rest in peace, Muen quickly stood and moved to the other side of the room.

He could roughly tell now that this had been an orphanage, one that had taken in many helpless children with nowhere else to go. That miserable background, and the independence forced on them too early, was probably why that child had been out in the rain selling newspapers in the city.

And in the Kingdom, most orphanages were funded by the Church.

Which meant...

Muen looked out through a crack in the wall. The terrain in this district was clearly less tangled than before, and visibility was much better. So at a glance, he spotted the building with the rounded dome and the beautifully carved statue of the Goddess.

The cathedral.

“So this is near that cathedral.”

Even through the thick smoke, the Goddess’s face remained sorrowful and holy, as if grieving the slaughter of humans by their own kind.

But the focus of Muen’s attention was not the statue.

It was— 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

“The cathedral is completely untouched?”

When several surrounding districts had already fallen into a sea of fire, when countless innocents—even children—had died in this disaster, the Saint Blancfazesiya Cathedral, one of the nine great holy seats of the Church of Life, stood there completely unharmed.

Under normal circumstances, shouldn’t that have been the Salvation Society’s first target?

Frowning, Muen narrowed his eyes and observed more carefully, but he did not spot a single member of the clergy inside.

Where were they?

Had they already died?

Or...

No, no. It was too early to conclude anything. He was still too far away. There was no way to confirm the situation inside in detail just by looking from here.

If he wanted to know the cathedral’s current condition, he had to get closer.

“The cathedral may be the breakthrough point in this whole tangled situation.”

Muen made up his mind quickly and estimated the distance between the cathedral and his current position.

There was an open, exposed stretch between them, which made it extremely dangerous.

But...

it was worth gambling on.

“Please let that crazy woman stop being so obsessed with a tiny ant like me. I’m begging you, go do something more important. You’re the Third Seat of the Salvation Society, trying to usher in a whole new world. How can someone like you keep getting hung up on a pretty boy like me who has nothing to offer except this face?”

Muen drew another deep breath.

Battle aura.

Magic power.

Mental power.

He pushed all of them rapidly to their optimal state.

Then, without the slightest hesitation—

Muen lowered his body, and in an instant, he shot forward like a cannonball!

Time Delay.

Hundredfold.

Shadow Step!

Every speed-enhancing technique Muen possessed was activated at once, pushing the already terrifying speed that surpassed others of his level higher and higher, even beyond his own limit.

Within slowed time, the cathedral drew closer and closer. Muen kept calculating the distance in his head.

Five hundred meters...

Two hundred...

One hundred...

Fifty...

And finally...

ten meters.

The Goddess’s mournful face was clear before his eyes. Muen seemed to have become nothing more than a silent, invisible shadow. In less than an instant, he would slip into the cathedral ahead without alerting anyone at all.

He was about to make it.

Just about.

But unfortunately—

fate never seemed willing to let the yellow-haired villain it hated have such an easy time.

“Heh.”

At the final moment, Muen finally heard that mocking laugh.

Then—

Crack.

Fractures suddenly appeared all around him, and across the last few short meters of the path ahead.

“Damn it!”

Muen nearly ground his teeth to pieces. He wanted to spend every curse word he would ever have in this lifetime on that old woman’s entire family line.

If you’re so obsessed with a handsome, charming, sunny young man like me, then go hire yourself a gigolo! I’m a respectable married-man type, damn it—not interested!

Muen reacted instantly, twisting his body.

Before taking this first step, he had already considered this possibility. So of course he had prepared for the Witch of Repentance making her move.

Muen’s pupils suddenly turned pitch black.

His mental power was overdrawn once more, and in exchange, black flames burst forth with a fierceness greater than ever before.

But this time, the flames did not spread outward.

They wrapped around the twin blades in Muen’s hands.

Muen tightened his grip. As his body turned, the twin blades swept out as well.

Recalling the technique he had trained over and over, the blade light linked together, deepened, and at last formed a black sun before him.

“Flame Flash: Eclipse!”

The black sun ground forward, swallowing everything before Muen—

including those invisible fractures.

Everything seemed to dissolve into nothingness. All things ended within the deathly silence of that black sun. Even the light of heaven seemed to be devoured by it.

Under this strike, wrung out from the very last of Muen’s strength, even the blockade of a Crowned was cut open completely.

The path forward was clear again!

“To hell with [N O V E L I G H T] your Crowned. It’s not like I’m scared of you.”

Muen spat to the side and bared his teeth in a grin. Then he strode forward and finally stepped into the cathedral’s grounds.

So what if you’re a Crowned? It’s not like I haven’t beaten a Crowned before!

Sure, it had only been in certain specific places before, but now he, Muen Campbell, could finally hold his head high and proudly declare that he was someone even a Crowned could do nothing to—

“Heh.”

That mocking laugh sounded again.

As if ridiculing his useless struggle and laughable delusions.

The smile Muen had just raised froze in place. His pupils contracted, and his heart nearly stopped.

“What?”

he muttered blankly, the whole of him plunging from the heavens straight into an abyss.

Because right in front of him, not far away at all, beneath that statue of the Goddess—

stood a graceful woman holding an umbrella.

The Witch of Repentance.

She was not far away.

She was right here.

Damn damn damn damn damn!

Chasing after some tiny bug this relentlessly as a dignified Crowned was one thing, but to come kill him in person too?

What are you, some deranged stalker?

Muen felt every hair on his body stand on end. His blood froze. His death warning shrieked like the wails of the dead.

It was over.

Muen let out a silent sigh in his heart.

At this distance, with a Crowned this close, he had no time to react at all.

He could not even—

call for help from the Black Book in time.

“Die.”

There was no extra small talk. No unnecessary movement.

Muen watched as the Witch of Repentance raised her hand again and pointed at him.

In an instant, heaven and earth collapsed.

...

...

“Big brother, hey, big brother...”

Rain pattered softly.

Water fell onto Muen’s face. Even through the mask of his disguise, he could still feel the chill of late autumn.

Dong—

Some bell tower rang out from somewhere unknown, adding another layer of mystery to both the rain and the city.

Muen opened his eyes and stared at the dim daylight struggling through the heavy cloud cover.

A breeze brushed his face.

Light entered his eyes.

It all felt so real.

“I’m... still alive?”

Muen struggled to lift a hand and touched himself all over, making sure he had not lost any body parts.

Only then did he finally let out a breath.

Apparently, he really was still alive.

And not only that.

Muen turned his head and looked beside him.

A familiar little brat was crouching at his side, a stack of newspapers in hand, waving them enthusiastically.

“Big brother, big brother, why are you sleeping here?”

“I...”

Muen’s lips moved, but he could find no answer, nor any explanation.

He had no idea himself why he had been sleeping here.

“I get it—you’re one of those poor homeless people too, right?”

The little brat clapped his hands once and announced his conclusion with complete certainty.

“...”

Muen glanced at his own ragged clothes and found that he could not argue.

“It’s so cold out. You’ll catch a chill.”

The little brat came closer with a face full of concern. Just as Muen thought he was about to show some kindness—

“Want to buy a few newspapers?”

The little brat shoved the papers almost right into Muen’s face and said expectantly,

“My newspapers are really warm if you use them as a blanket!”