Chapter "383"

Humans are creatures of adaptation. Even when facing something unfamiliar for the first time, after encountering it repeatedly, at some point they begin to feel familiar with it.

Even foul odors that others find disgusting become nothing after smelling them, and cruel sights that make one frown no longer disturb the heart later on.

Julius was the same.

Though he didn't take lightly the battlefield he had come to of his own accord, the actual battlefield he faced was far more terrible than he had imagined.

Even though he had already encountered it through the media, seeing it in writing or photos was on a completely different level from seeing it in reality.

The smell of blood and gunpowder. Bullets and shells, screaming sounds. The taste of humid and fishy muddy water. No man's land heavily settled with mixed gray, red, and brown colors. Even the chill of death flowing in on the wind.

Beyond simple sight, the world expands to all five senses including smell, touch, and hearing. No matter how cold and rational a mage he was, Julius was ultimately just a young man in his late teens.

Therefore, at first he felt disgusted looking at the battlefield. At the same time, he also felt fear that someday he too might die there without anyone knowing.

But because he had come here to protect Phyllis, he endured his fear by using that firm purpose as a support. After several months passed like this, he became indifferent to seeing enemies killing and being killed, and his heart no longer wavered even when seeing corpses overflowing around him.

Perhaps humans became the rulers of this continent because of this adaptability. Julius, returning to the barracks, had even thought such comforting thoughts. Whether his humanity was being worn away in the midst of the battlefield's horrors, whether if he returned he might have changed so greatly as a human that it would be irreversible.

But now, Julius realized that was wrong.

Corpses scattered around? The smell of blood and death? The stress of a battlefield where one cannot let down their guard?

The reason such things now felt like nothing wasn't because he had adapted particularly well. It was because those horrific trench warfare battles were nothing at all.

The trench warfare that might remain as a lifelong trauma for someone was hell itself. But at least, compared to what he was seeing now, trench warfare could be dismissed as 'merely that.'

'What is that thing?'

His mouth froze and no words came out. That wasn't all. Just from receiving its gaze, his entire body seemed to freeze cold.

Like the eye of a typhoon, the pressure exerted by the pupil that rose in the center of the red whirlpool was beyond imagination. Something incomprehensible that human senses couldn't even understand. So enormous and of such high caliber that one's mind was scraped away just by daring to look at it directly.

What was even more frightening was that this pupil with its enormous presence was merely an extremely small part of some unknown entity.

He didn't know why he knew that. He simply had no choice but to understand it the moment he saw it.

His vision gradually turned black. From the moment he saw that thing, Julius's life force was rapidly diminishing throughout his entire body.

"Aah! O Eternal One!"

The surviving red robes shouted something and raised their hands high. As if responding to this, the whirlpool became stronger. The corpses that had become the source of the whirlpool decomposed like powder and disappeared without leaving a trace.

'The offerings needed for the ritual are disappearing.'

The next target was Julius. His body was slowly decomposing starting from his fingertips, becoming part of the red whirlpool swirling around him.

'I'm dying.'

The moment he saw that thing, Julius understood.

His excellent senses as a mage were telling him that the thing wasn't particularly trying to devour him intentionally. It was merely like passing by an ant on the roadside. It had no interest in Julius as an individual. Yet his body was slowly decomposing and becoming part of the whirlpool because that was natural.

They say that extremely massive objects possess tremendous gravitational force just by existing. From the moment that thing revealed its existence, whether it intended to or not, everything around it had no choice but to be swept up in it. That was a kind of law and destiny.

Even himself, a mage called a genius in the world. The moment he faced this thing called Eternal, he was nothing more than a handful of fertilizer that would naturally be absorbed in a single breath.

-Shaaa-ra-ra-rak.

The skin of his palm peeled away and muscle flew off. Flesh and blood vessels disappeared and white bone could be seen. Even that bone crumbled slowly from the end. The sight was so unrealistic it felt like a dream. It felt even more so because there was no pain.

But death was surely and steadily eating away at Julius' body.

'I'm going to die here.'

He had thought he would never feel frustration in his lifetime. He was a genius and a pioneer, always in a position to receive others' admiration.

But now he realized that until now he had been a frog flexing its shoulders in a well. No, calling him a frog was being generous. Compared to that thing, he was less than a bug in a bottle, more like a microorganism.

Before this irresistible enormous terror, he as a human could do nothing. After all, no matter how much others praised him, he could only be human in the end.

His uniform turned to powder, his body also turned to powder and slowly scattered. The decomposing body spread like red haze and mixed with the surrounding whirlpool.

A miserable and lonely death, unable to leave behind even a corpse or dog tags. Julius, watching that scene with blurred vision, saw some scene like a mirage.

Plimene was there. She was crying because her younger sibling had died, because she couldn't protect him. Because her one and only world had collapsed, she had collapsed, unable to bear it.

Those without money cannot even hold funerals. Among the countless who had died, Phillis would be buried by name only without leaving behind any remains.

The only person who would remember that would be Plimene, his only family.

"……!"

Don't be ridiculous.

Julius gritted his teeth hard. His blurred vision became clearly bright. As he recognized reality, he felt pain. That pain poured cold water on his nerves. His body frozen in fear began to move.

"Don't be ridiculous!"

Julius glared at the pupil with bulging eyes. And at the same time, he began to resist the enormous flow while operating the mana throughout his body.

"You're going to devour me? No! I'll devour you!"

His decomposing body stopped. At the same time, part of the surrounding red whirlpool began to flow toward Julius in reverse.

"Huh, huhhh?"

One of the red robes let out a moan full of bewilderment. He recognized that Julius was doing something, but it was already too late.

-Boom!

One of the cult priests caught in the suddenly colliding flow burst like a balloon. His body scattered like powder in all directions, with some parts being absorbed into the whirlpool and other parts toward Julius.

"Impossible! How did he maintain his sanity in the ritual?"

"Stop that guy!"

The robed men who belatedly recognized the seriousness of the situation tried to stop Julius, but no matter how capable they were, they couldn't move freely within the already started ritual.

They concentrated their minds to make the crack in the flow that Julius had created flow as originally as possible. Julius was alone, and there were still several of them. Moreover, they were experts in rituals, so they naturally had to have the advantage.

However, the flow of the red whirlpool became even more unstable, with cancellations and collisions occurring everywhere, and massive spiritual shockwaves began to burst in succession.

Julius' decomposed body regenerated and returned to its original state. He housed the newly accepted power in his body and immediately discharged it outward.

By absorbing and simultaneously sending it out, he intervened with even more power in the whirlpool.

This was possible because he was a mage of the Life School. How the human body was structured, from its structure to the principles of its operation. All the knowledge and skills he had learned and mastered until now were surprisingly similar to those of the Eternal, the original owner of this red whirlpool.

Because he was a mage who explored the source of life. Even though it was something unwholesome from outside the world, because it bore the name of life, he could use it in reverse with his own power.

-Pop!

The bodies of the red robes burst one by one. Fedilac, the last remaining person in charge of the ritual, gritted his teeth.

This couldn't happen. How could such an important ritual that had been cultivated become such a mess because one unexpected guy interfered? Thinking of the time and effort built up to get here, this was an important game that absolutely must not fail.

If only this succeeded, he could catch the Eternal's eye and rise to a higher level.

"O Eternal One!"

So Fedilac shouted until his throat was torn toward the giant pupil floating on the ceiling of the cavity but no matter how much an ant cried out, that voice would never reach the Eternal.

The Red Eternal was now busy peering and contemplating this world through the peculiar ritual hole that had somehow formed. The beings struggling to survive in that gap were not even in its consideration.

Meanwhile, the power struggle between Fedilac and Julius was gradually shifting toward Julius' side.

"Grrr! No!"

Fedilac realized that he had no choice but to be completely defeated in this power game. Therefore, all he could do was deny this unbelievable reality.

Julius, who had completely grasped the advantage, didn't stop there. He absorbed even more of the red energy swirling around and accumulated it in his heart.

Life was filling up. The power of a density he had never felt before was as pure and powerful as mana. After stabilizing the accumulated power so it wouldn't overflow, he compressed it smaller, until it couldn't be reduced any further.

It wasn't something done consciously. It was a judgment close to instinct. The more this happened, the more precise the operation became, and the total amount of power he handled increased.

If things continued like this, he could make that thing's power completely his own.

It was the moment he thought that.

-Flash!

The pupil that had shown no interest in this side directly looked at Julius. It was different from just floating and looking down. The smaller contracted pupil was clearly looking at Julius as an individual.

From the Eternal's perspective, this guy who was absorbing and handling its power despite being human must have felt like an ant biting its skin.

"Ah."

Julius, with that one word.

-Boom!

Burst into a spray of red blood, torn to pieces and exploding on the spot.

Only pitch-black darkness filled everything. It was so cold and lonely that he wanted to cry out in anguish, but even his voice wouldn't come out.

It felt like his very existence had become blurred and was drifting in the world. How much time passed like that?

Warmth gathered. Life filled up. With a thudding sound, Julius opened his eyes.

He slowly pressed his hand against the ground and raised his body. Then he lifted his head and looked up at the sky.

'Where is this? I definitely.'

Should have died. Julius clearly remembered what he experienced just before dying. The moment that pupil gazed at him and showed its will, he couldn't withstand the power's rampage and his entire body burst. He had vividly felt himself scattering into thousands of pieces of flesh as he died.

Yet he was alive. And now, rain was drizzling down from the sky.

'Rain?'

This was definitely an underground cavity, but he could see the sky. Looking around, the ritual site that had been disguised as trenches had been blown away by some impact and turned into a desolate open field.

Julius moved with stumbling steps.

Perhaps because of the rain, mud and muddy water were everywhere around.

No artillery sounds could be heard. He didn't know how much time had passed since his death.

"What am I, exactly?"

Julius, who had been muttering like that, stopped walking when he saw something reflected in the muddy water. Above the surface of the stagnant water rippling from raindrops, red eyes that were not human could be seen.

Julius brought his head even closer to it. Something non-human was gazing at him from beyond. That was his own appearance.

"……!"

Julius felt around the area where his face should be with both hands. He felt only a strangely hard texture that was not human.

Julius realized what state he was in. Having overcome death and been resurrected, he was no longer human.

Julius headed toward Tirna with staggering steps. He wore a mask on his face to hide his appearance.

Whenever he passed by, the surrounding vagrants automatically made way for him. There was no one with enough guts to mess with a man in a muddy, blood-stained black uniform with a mask on his face.

'Is the war over?'

Julius realized several facts after coming to the city. Five years had passed since that hellish trench warfare ended.

In other words, it had taken five whole years from his death to his resurrection.

Julius immediately went to find the house where Plimene had lived. But Plimene wasn't there. When he asked the landlord what had happened, he only said that the young lady who lived here had left more than four years ago.

Julius made inquiries to find Plimene, and before long he was able to find her.

"Thank you for your hard work."

Plimene could be seen saying goodbye to employees at city hall. She wore clothing and a name tag proving she was a civil servant of Tirna.

'She passed.'

Right. She had made truly blood-sweating efforts for the civil service exam. It was natural that she would pass.

Moreover, Plimene had grown even more over the five years and was showing her charm as a proper adult. She was already someone he had fallen for, but it wouldn't be wrong to say he had fallen for her once more.

Plimene didn't go straight home after work. Instead, the place she went to was the national cemetery. There, Plimene placed flowers in front of Phillis' tombstone and offered a small prayer.

Julius wanted to approach her immediately and tell her that he was alive. But he couldn't rashly take a step forward.

'I couldn't keep my promise.'

He was supposed to save Phillis and bring him back. He had promised that he absolutely wouldn't die so don't worry, that he would definitely return. He had definitely said that.

I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry, Plimene. For not keeping my promise. For not protecting your sibling. For becoming such a terrible monster. I don't know what to say to you. I have so much I want to say, but I shouldn't.

"……."

Julius gazed at Plimene then slowly turned his steps away.

"Hm?"

Plimene felt a gaze and turned her head to look around. But except for herself, no one else had come to visit the desolate tombstones.

'Something feels nostalgic.'

Plimene felt for a moment that the gaze she had sensed was somehow nostalgic, but soon dismissed it as her imagination.