Chapter 112

Chapter 112
Chapter: 112

Chapter Title: Judgment of Atala (15)

—

The situation was a complete enigma to Duncan. He was utterly baffled by how this chaotic final match was spiraling out of control.

“Ugh! Uwaaaaaah!!!”

“Kyaaaaaaaah!”

The last coherent event he recalled was a mysterious force shattering the isolation barrier and intruding. Following that, a chorus of screams erupted as he was swept away by a panicked mob, feeling as though his spirit might depart his frame. Tossed about like a flimsy toy, Duncan only regained his focus just as he was about to be pushed out of the spectator area.

…M-Master! Is Master safe?

He fought against the tidal wave of fleeing people. After narrowly avoiding being crushed underfoot multiple times, he managed to struggle back to his starting position.

Disastrously, that was the precise moment the seating area began to cave in entirely.

――――― Kwarrrrr rumble – !

“Eek, uwaaaaaah!!”

The instinct to survive triggered a burst of latent physical power. Duncan sprinted forward like a launched projectile—onward, ever onward. He leaped over collapsing steps and tumbling masonry, leaving the falling crowds and gamblers to their fate as he threw himself into the heart of the arena to find safety.

By a stroke of pure luck, the atmospheric distortion vanished at that exact second, offering a glimpse into the landscape of the ruins.

Kiriririring…

As his senses returned, he found himself staring down a dimly lit corridor.

“Huff, huff, huff…”

Where have I ended up? Am I dead?

The familiar weight of his heavy pack and the frantic thumping in his chest confirmed he was still among the living. Far in the distance, at the corridor’s terminus, a soft golden radiance shimmered.

With no other path available, Duncan hesitated briefly before moving toward the glow. Arriving at the threshold where the light spilled out, he witnessed a surreal scene.

“[……‘The Guardian of the Earth’ will crumble you into particles smaller than sand! If you desire for even a shard of your body to remain, give up and destroy yourself now…!]”

The chamber was overgrown with thickets blooming with golden buds. An elderly woman was chanting to herself as if in a trance, while Agon’s Furious Horn lay partially submerged in a shimmering pool.

The sheer weirdness of it made his mind stall. His first instinct was to ask the old woman for an explanation, but he immediately dismissed the thought.

“[Sacrilegious brat! Those who haven’t conquered the trials are forbidden from entering these ruins!]”

Thud – boom!

That woman… she seems completely lost in her own mind…

Duncan pivoted his strategy. He decided to creep toward Agon’s Furious Horn to figure out what was happening. Unaware that the warrior had collapsed in a state of madness, it seemed like the most logical move to Duncan.

…He wouldn’t hold a grudge over our previous scrap and try to end me, would he?

He kept his hand on the handle of his blade just in case. Most people would have been caught instantly, but Duncan possessed a natural talent for erasing his presence. He drew close to the back of the pool without making a sound.

However, by a cruel twist of fate—total coincidence…

“[……The instant you meet your end!! Until that very second, the trials will persist!!!]”

…the shamaness spun her head around while screaming, catching him in her sights.

Her clouded eyes widened. She flinched back in terror as if she were seeing a restless spirit.

“[W-What? W-What manner of creature are you! How dare you trespass into these holy ruins…?]”

Duncan panicked just as hard. On pure reflex, he pulled his blade and pressed it against Goltaran’s throat.

“H-Hiiiik! D-Don’t move, old lady! O-Or something really terrible and tragic is going to happen!”

Whoosh – !

The heat of hellfire singed Goltaran’s facial hair. The trembling hostage-taker looked stunned by his own actions, while the threatened elder contorted her face into a mask of rage and screamed.

“[Arrogant filth!! Step away from him this second!! Refuse, and I will pulverize you into bone dust and grit, interring you forever in this dry desert!!]”

“Eeek, h-hiiiik…”

The tense standoff stretched on. Eventually, the shamaness collected herself. Her breath coming in ragged gasps, she secretly traced a ritual pattern behind her back.

“[Hoo, this ancient frame was dim-witted… There was a method to expel the pest without hurting the Great Warrior…]”

Thud – boom!

“…Yikes!”

The banishment spell jerked Duncan backward. His small frame was blinked out of the ruins in a heartbeat.

Ting, ting, whoosh –

Though its master was gone, the hellfire blade remained behind, dropping into the thickets and setting them ablaze.

“[Hm…? ]”

Whoosh – !

The infernal flames ignited the area instantly.

The arid flowers and shrubs, devoid of any sap, burned with ferocity. The rare medicinal plants she had spent lifetimes nurturing were reduced to cinders in seconds.

“[……N-No!! Nooooooo!!]”

A cry of pure anguish erupted from the shamaness. But the fire was indifferent, consuming the fuel and belching thick, sulfuric smoke until the chamber was stifling. Through her coughing fits, she spotted something far more crucial than her garden.

“[Kuh-hack! Hack, kuh-luk, kek, kek! Gr-Great Warrior! Wake up, Great Warrior!]”

Goltaran was still out cold. The shamaness finally stood up from her perch for the first time in hundreds of years.

Crack, crrrack –

Snapped root fibers hung from her withered legs. With her ‘Roots of the Wilderness’ severed, her incantations ceased and her spiritual power withered—but she couldn’t worry about that now.

She lurched forward, tripped, and crashed down hard. Even so, she dragged herself through the fire toward the pool, grabbed Goltaran’s arm, and carved a symbol into the air with a frantic motion.

Touching the ritual circle, their forms dissolved like shifting sand.

“[Kuh-hack, hack, kuh-luk, kek…]”

Prompted by the accidental visitor, the shamaness made her final departure from her sanctuary.

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The stadium and the ancient site were still eerily merged together.

Atala’s Great Warrior finally stood before her: the desert shamaness who had insulted him and created a counterfeit champion.

Shrrrr…

“[Kuh-luk, hack, kuh-hack, huuu…]”

“…”

In the shadow of the frozen stone colossi, the shamaness was fading away like dust. Even though the ruins were projected here, the environment was fundamentally the outside world. Her end was now an inescapable reality.

Standing between the Great Warrior and the shamaness, the former was the first to speak.

“What brought you out of your hole? Squeaking like a rodent… you stayed buried in that pit for an eternity.”

“[Kuh-hack, luk… The true rodent is that piece of trash hiding behind you… Bold enough to infiltrate the holy site and burn it to the ground…]”

The shamaness cast a lethal stare at Duncan. He winced, shook, and ducked behind Kadim. Kadim decided the story could wait and signaled with a glance.

“Well done, Duncan. Now get as far away from here as possible.”

“P-Pardon? B-But Master, wouldn’t it be safer if I stayed with you?”

“No. At this moment, I am the greatest threat in this place.”

His vacant stare locked onto Duncan. His crimson eyes were vibrating with a violence that threatened to break. Duncan turned white, shook uncontrollably, and then screamed as he sprinted away in terror.

“T-Take care of yourself, Master! You have to survive this without a single scratch!”

“…”

Kadim rubbed his left hand; every finger was smashed.

His hold on the madness was failing. In his blood-tinted vision, the fading shamaness looked like a silhouette made of red vapor. Gritting his teeth—gnash gnash gnash—he fought down the savage urge and forced words through his dry throat.

“Both of us… we’re running out of time. Before I lose my mind… answer one thing.”

“[……]”

“For some reason… I couldn’t call upon the divine relic. Why? That pretender used it easily… Did you put a seal on ‘Judgment of Atala’?”

The shamaness shook her head with a slow, bitter motion, her lips parched.

“[No. The reason… is that you turned your back on the path of struggle and ran.]”

“…!”

“[……Why, why did you desert us and vanish?]”

“[Where did you go, only to come back now? What whim made you abandon this world? Was it to finish off the archdemon…? Was the life of constant war too much to bear…? But even if it was, weren’t we still here… the sightless shamaness of the wastes who put all her faith in you…?]”

“…”

“[We stayed… waiting for your return. Rejecting the joys of life, we swallowed the bitter solitude that felt worse than death… for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of days… In our isolation, we shouted your name, wailed, wept, bled, and struck our heads against the stone until we were broken! But you never came back… If you hadn’t left! No, if you had just died! We wouldn’t have known such torture… I wouldn’t have been forced to craft a fake Great Warrior with my own hands…]”

It was a confession heavy with the weight of centuries of broken trust.

But as soon as she finished, the shamaness cast aside her sorrow. Her eyes sparked with malice as she began tracing a ritual circle.

“[You… are no longer ‘Atala’s Great Warrior.’ No, you cannot be… That honor is forbidden to a coward who betrayed the fight. Now, I will pull you down into a pit of loss and servitude, and I will raise a new Great Warrior to take up the cause…]”

The stone giants, previously toppled by magic, began to haul their massive frames upright again.

Kugugugugu, kugugugugu –

Kadim’s mental thread snapped.

A washed-out, demonic landscape filled his sight.

He was surrounded by piles of corpses, a spade clutched in his hands. His body moved against his will. He slammed the blade into the corrupted soil, kicked it down, and threw aside heavy clumps of earth, carving out a hole.

He might have been digging a grave. He couldn’t understand why this memory was surfacing now. But one fact became blindingly clear.

The reason he was unable to invoke ‘Atala’s divine relic.’

It was because he refused to see himself as Atala’s Great Warrior.

Because he refused to be Kadim.

He had partitioned his modern identity away from his identity as a warrior. He told himself the actions were Kadim’s, not his. It was a weak mental shield to keep his mind from shattering and to survive a reality soaked in gore.

But that shield became a wall that blocked his own identity.

During the first life, it wasn’t an issue. When he first claimed ‘Judgment of Atala,’ he didn’t have time for self-reflection. The crisis began the moment the archdemon fell.

[……You must face what is real. You can never go back to them.]

The life of a warrior versus the life of a modern man. At that critical junction, he threw everything away for the latter. Upon starting his second life, he tried to bury his modern self again, but the hole he had dug was already too deep to hide.

The divine relic—a gift from a deity to the faithful. A deserter who turned his back on everything could never hold it…

Just for a reason that pathetic… I lost the relic…?

On one side, a searing anger boiled up.

The madness made it impossible to stay in this world anyway. After nearly dying to kill the archdemon, he was forced into a second life against his will and then stripped of his blessing? A rage hot enough to grind the culprit into dust with his axe, leaving nothing behind, washed over him.

Yet on the other side, a heavy, somber regret pulled at him.

It wasn’t just his friends and the shamans he had left behind. He had abandoned the world itself—the perpetual war that defined it. To slink back after turning his back and still call himself the Great Warrior—it felt like a lie even to his own soul.

Clunk – !

Suddenly, the spade hit a solid object.

Fear gripped him. He expected another one of those unidentified red shadows.

Fortunately, it wasn’t. It was the edge of another spade. Looking into the depths of the pit, he saw a man from the other side of the world digging back toward him.

That man worked with purpose, as if he had something to prove. After a long time, the hole was wide enough to reveal the man’s entire world.

There were no mountains of dead bodies there, but living souls.

Every person on the continent saved by the death of the archdemon. A number far greater than the corpses he had personally made—people who would never have seen the sun if not for his war, as many as the stars in the sky…

He understood the message. Both the man and Kadim laughed at the same time.

Yes. They were two halves of the same whole, impossible to divide from the start. Where the man stood, Kadim stood; there was the sin, and then the achievement; the one judged, and the one who saved.

And so, the man finally accepted Kadim.

No more running. No more hiding. He decided to take the full weight of Kadim’s crimes, his victories, and his purpose. He admitted with gravity that these were his own acts, his own choices.

With his two selves unified, there was only one direction to go. The path he knew would save both himself and everyone else. He did not doubt that his path was the will of the War God, the path of the struggle.

Kadim dropped to his knees and spoke the prayer with conviction.

“[God of Struggle and Wilderness, Atala…]” “[Witness your Great Warrior, light the flame to lead me to the fray…]” “[Provide the might to face the corrupt, the spirit that will not break in the storm…]” “[Even if my soul and body are drenched in red, returning to the dust of the wastes…]”
⟨ Pledge of Eternal Struggle ⟩

I will not turn away again.

I will never leave anything behind again.

I will never deny the path I have walked.

If my purpose is to be covered in blood and wander the endless desert, I accept that fate.

“[……I swear to struggle forever, and never yield.]”

I am the stranger cast out from reality.

Kadim.

And the Great Warrior of Atala.

Kiriririring…

The hellish hallucination dissolved like a curtain being pulled back. Beyond his blood-red sight, massive shapes loomed. It seemed that while he was gone, his berserk body had been battling the stone colossi.

―――― Kwagagak, kwagagagagang – !!

“Grraa, kuh-haaaaaah!!!”

“[……Finally, you reveal what you are! Just as I thought, you are the source of the plague that will end this world…]”

But the rampage stopped.

Kadim brought his thrashing body to a halt. He wrapped his hand tightly around the handle of his axe. From the black metal, a yellow light began to leak, growing into a titanic wind that eventually swallowed the broken stadium like a sandstorm.

Whooooosh – !!

The shamaness, with half her form already gone, stared in disbelief.

“[N-No, how can you command ‘Atala’s divine relic’…?]”

Glowing yellow trails calmed his madness-stricken skin. Kadim let out a sharp breath, clearing the poison from his system.

“……Hoo.”

Atala’s divine relic. Its power increased every combat attribute and provided total protection against all negative conditions.

Even the darkest condition, ‘frenzy,’ was no match for it.

Kuhooooo – !!!

No simple insanity could obstruct the Great Warrior’s resolve now. The desert whirlwind crushed the power of the solar eye. The sky turned to gold, radiating a brilliant light.

“[Th-That’s impossible! It makes no sense! You betrayed the war… you left us… Why, why…?]”

The energy of the relic grew stronger. The broken shamaness began to fall apart in the wind. As the world screamed like a giant animal, even the massive stone giants began to wobble.

* Kugugu…
* Kugugugu…

Only Kadim.

Only Atala’s Great Warrior.

Only the man who had sworn to walk the path of the struggle forever.

“In this place of filth that insults the struggle here and now…”

“……In front of the pretender who claims to be a savior, and the shamaness who insulted the Great Warrior…”

“……The true ‘Judgment of Atala’ has come.”

He stood his ground, absolute and unmoving.