The Saint's Remains

The ground shook, and soldiers patrolling the streets moved busily.

Eventually, they swarmed toward the light brightly illuminating the night.

“Who…”

The silver devoured the soldiers.

The soldiers, instantly covered in silver, melted like liquid.

“Truly fulfilling.”

The priest, who had recovered by reclaiming the infected silver, stared into empty air.

“Why do you refuse this ecstasy? Children of Origin.”

When the Silver priest extended his left arm, Radiance burst forth and swept away all the curtains draped over the night.

Klein, wrapped in Origin, revealed his appearance.

‘He’s starting to wield Radiance like his own limbs.’

Radiance purifies all heterogeneous things completely.

But things designated as allies maintain their original form even when touching the light.

The method of distinguishing friend from foe requires delicate control.

The fact that the silver didn’t vanish despite wrapping and fixing Radiance meant the high priest had already entered that level.

‘Monster bastard.’

Silver that doesn’t even permit contact.

He wore silver armor on his body that infected even magic while defending against even long-range interception, and he incapacitated opponents with Radiance, the spear of purification.

His judgment in wielding it also surpassed ordinary categories.

Klein thought the Silver priest had finally become complete.

Against the former Pope, he could at least aim for gaps in the replication Magus Arts, but he found absolutely no weakness in the priest.

‘But he can do it.’

While Klein held his attention, Pernok captured the priest’s rear position.

When the priest turned his head, Over Impact burst forth at close range.

The priest, who judged he couldn’t dodge, concentrated the silver to block it.

Then, when Klein made Origin into blades and shot them from the opposite side, this time he drove them away with Radiance.

For a moment, Pernok captured the priest’s slight waver with his Observation Eye.

‘The Radiance is weakening.’

The Saint had breathed his final power into his own arm.

He’d purified the evil lands and sealed the remaining power in his arm to bury it underground.

As time passed, Radiance had gradually been consumed.

‘He can’t refill the Radiance.’

Since the original owner had vanished, it couldn’t recover like mana.

The Radiance contained there now was merely the remnants of power left after achieving everything.

Even that was enough to purify even mana and spiritual power, so Radiance’s difficulty was freshly felt in his memories.

[I called Radiance the grace of god. But thinking about it now, isn’t Radiance also a product of change that the world bore? Since Radiance must also hold light to refill, whenever Lord of Despair’s darkness obstructed this, I inevitably wavered. Haha, we were really incompatible friends.]

Radiance inevitably dissipates as it keeps clashing with the opposing power and gets scraped away.

Pernok kept provoking the priest, who was alternating between silver and Radiance, while transmitting his intent to Klein.

[If we keep colliding with Radiance to scrape it away, the Saint’s power will reveal its bottom before long. Radiance can’t be refilled. The opportunity will only come then.]

It was a method of transmitting thoughts like voices in the head by connecting the Origin embedded in the obsidian with Klein’s Origin.

When even momentary judgments were shared with Klein, his eyes changed sharply.

Whooong!

All things of the night began pressing down on the priest.

Though the priest spread Radiance, he couldn’t easily shake it off.

Darkness was Origin’s domain.

The light from one arm couldn’t erase all of the deepest night where even moonlight was blocked.

“Magi are beings who make the impossible possible! Why do you keep refusing this great future!”

When the priest tried extending silver toward Klein, Pernok blocked it by bursting Over Impact in between.

Crack!

An ominous sound came from the priest’s left arm.

[The output limit is approaching!]

Klein ground his teeth while raising the intensity of the pressure.

Then the priest, noticing the Radiance’s abnormal phenomena, extended his left arm upward, attached his right arm to the ground, and simultaneously burst forth the mismatched mana and Radiance.

“Urk!”

Klein leaped from the ground.

Before he knew it, the floor had been completely covered in silver.

When the night’s pressure was released, Radiance raged fiercely again.

“This is the path we must advance!”

The surroundings brightened like midday.

All the mana in the area, excluding the silver, dissipated in the bursting brilliance.

“Behold! This brilliant world where even magic becomes trivial!”

Heaven and earth were all the priest’s domain.

Neither stepping foot nor even floating in the sky was permitted.

“Drunk on Radiance and rampaging as you please.”

Within that, only Pernok’s spiritual power uniquely cried out densely.

Crackle!

The priest’s head rose upward.

‘Again that incomprehensible thing…’

Something pure white that didn’t easily vanish even before Radiance.

‘…However, that was already blocked by Radiance once.’

The unknown could be slowly explored after surviving.

He thought that whatever burst from Pernok, it absolutely couldn’t break Radiance’s space.

As if mocking him, Pernok absorbed his spiritual power into the glove.

“An idiot who doesn’t even know what that exists for.”

What results would unfold by combining spiritual power and Circulation Link?

The synthesis of Spiritual Law and The First that he’d long contemplated.

This ‘amplification’ concept, derived on the premise of needing a weapon that could withstand spiritual power, had been completed thanks to the artifact that grew with its master.

Spiritual Law – Divine Punishment.

Pure white lightning seeped into the glove.

Circulation Link.

The artifact held even Pernok’s mana together, and the three opposing powers clashed and harmonized within to amplify.

Over Impact.

Spewing roars that would split heaven and earth, it began charging through the world of silver and Radiance.

Though Radiance peeled away one layer, the momentum didn’t fade.

At this, the priest concentrated the recovered silver forward.

‘If I flow it away again…!’

But suddenly, the Radiance shattered away.

The priest widened his eyes and looked at his left arm.

As Radiance slightly dimmed and darkness descended, shadows formed at his feet, and pitch-black darkness surged from there to cling like sticky mucus to his left arm.

He tried blocking with silver, but all his power was pulled toward Pernok in front.

He couldn’t shake off the desperate Origin.

“If you do this, you’ll die!”

When the priest spat out words filled with desperation while crying bloody tears—

Klein grinned while wiping the blood flowing from his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I know, you idiot. It’s my body—would I not know?”

The more Origin penetrated, the more violently Radiance shook.

“However great someone is, after hundreds of years, even their traces fade. Moreover, it’s power left after saving the world once—how could you think it would continue for millennia? Is your head just decoration? You dull bastard!”

“Kleiiin!”

Seeing the remaining Radiance trying to protect the high priest, Klein gathered the darkness and injected it into his arm.

As if resisting that, Radiance tried to reversely penetrate Klein’s body by riding the Origin, but thanks to Pernok’s driving assault, its momentum broke.

‘Let’s rest together with my Origin now, Saint.’

When something cracking sounded from inside his heart, Klein’s Origin surged, riding the night to suppress the arm’s Radiance.

At that moment, Pernok’s Over Impact pressed down on the silver.

Whoooosh-!

While feeling pain as if his flesh was burning in fire, the priest thought—

‘If only I could mix my body with mana like Origin does…’

He wouldn’t need to suffer from such attacks.

The enlightenment that emerged in an instant awakened the high priest.

The results of numerous research connecting from Origin to Radiance to magic stimulated his Magus Arts.

‘Both of them have exhausted their full power.’

Thanks to struggling to survive, he’d surpassed the S1 wall.

The priest smiled in the surging ecstasy.

‘The path silver must advance is regeneration and creation. I will revive once more. And I’ll reclaim my rightful place from that monster!’

The priest dissolved into the silver spread on the ground.

Pernok’s Over Impact pounded the empty spot, and the priest reformed his body at a place fairly distant from there.

Ten seconds? No, five seconds would be enough.

The recovered him would be different from before.

Showing off S2’s power to its fullest, even without Radiance, he could kill Klein and Pernok.

The moment when the newly awakened Magus Arts enlightenment accelerated his growth—

“How dare you.”

Pernok dug right before his eyes.

“Think of running from me.”

With his Observation Eye, he’d watched the process of the Silver priest’s soul transforming anew.

Though the priest thought he’d deceived Pernok, the Observation Eye had captured where all the paths led.

And in the most vulnerable moment when the priest tried to struggle one last time—

He penetrated his hand blade into that heart where both silver and Radiance had vanished.

“How clumsy.”

In his drawn hand was a twitching heart.

“Everything about you.”

When Pernok burst the heart, the Silver priest vomited blood and collapsed before him.

Klein, with his pale complexion, approached before the Silver priest, who was stiffening coldly.

“He’s really dead, right?”

Pernok saw the spiritual power and mana surging from the high priest.

“He can never revive again.”

“I was worried since he was so tenacious, but that’s fortunate.”

Perhaps because the tension had been released, Pernok staggered.

He’d consecutively used Divine Punishment and Circulation Link at maximum output.

Though he felt his body’s overload after a long time, he didn’t want to collect the high priest’s spiritual power.

Because accepting the spiritual power and mana from one who had arbitrarily defiled his subordinate’s remains would feel like disgracing the Saint, regardless of the reason.

It was the first stubbornness Pernok had displayed in the mortal realm.

But he was angry enough at the Saint’s remains being defiled that he didn’t even want to collect that silver Magus Arts.

‘Your soul will dwell nowhere.’

Pernok placed his hand on the priest’s soul and grasped it as it was.

The priest’s soul couldn’t go to the Netherworld and dissipated as it was.

Simultaneously, the spiritual power and mana vanished together, and the Saint’s bone dropped from the corpse.

“The brilliance is fading.”

He thought it fortunate that the remains were intact rather than the Radiance disappearing.

Pernok tore his hem and beautifully wrapped the remains.

Then, when looking back at Klein…

“…?”

A strange change caught his eye.

The Origin seed embedded in his heart had swollen.

It was in a state where it wouldn’t be strange for it to explode at any time.

“You…”

“Wait, let me borrow this.”

Klein, who’d removed the obsidian from Pernok’s finger, absorbed the Origin left there. Then he put his own Origin back into the obsidian.

Within the circulation, Klein’s darkness was still thick, but the characteristic deep sensation wasn’t felt.

It looked like he was wearing only a shell.

“Origin’s core is the abyss. Right now I’m only wearing the impurities, and the abyss is contained in that ring. Along with my memories.”

When Klein smiled bitterly while floating the ring in the air, even the Saint’s remains bound together with it.

“I’ll send it to Marco.”

When Klein breathed Origin into it, the ring wrapped around the remains and moved rapidly, seeking similar Origin.

“What are you doing?”

“Sending it to a safe place.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. Why didn’t you say anything from the beginning?”

Only after the Origin had swollen could he see Klein’s true appearance, which had been hidden tightly inside.

“Why didn’t you say from the start that your Origin was split!”

The Origin that had looked fine even to his Observation Eye was actually cracked inside.

He’d merely disguised it as Origin by overlaying another membrane to forcibly prevent the power from leaking.

“Honestly, could you have fixed my body?”

There was only one method to fix a breaking Origin.

Receiving a new Origin implanted from the one who’d given that Origin.

But Lord of Despair wasn’t here.

Pernok also didn’t possess Origin.

Marco’s fake Origin couldn’t substitute for that.

“I’ll find a method. First, let’s escape from here. The Magi are gathering.”

The mana that had left the Grand Temple had narrowed the distance to one kilometer from here.

Thanks to disposing of the Silver priest faster than expected, they’d gained the leisure to escape.

“To substitute the Origin…!”

“Darkness.”

That was a situation beyond Pernok’s expectations.

Only after the voice was heard did he realize it.

The fact that someone completely undetectable had arrived here before the Magi.

“I see.”

A woman wearing pure white high priest robes with her face covered below her nose with a veil.

Only after seeing with his Observation Eye could he feel the gigantic soul’s depth.

The Holy Kingdom’s High Priest and S3 Magus who possessed multiple Magus Arts.

“Was it you all?”

Arisha was quietly watching Pernok and Klein.