Chapter 365

C365. About the Sin (3)

The destroyed capital of Ashtalon, so gruesome it seemed to have been ripped straight out of the Inhuman Demon Sutra.

“My Lord, everything is ready, so I will go down now.”

“I leave it to you.”

“Yes.”

Alon, who—just like when he faced the Sin of Sloth—was already in the sky aboard that gigantic ship, unhesitatingly verified Radan jumping down and looked toward the ground.

‘Is everything ready?’

The first thing he saw was:

The earth stained a bloody red and the capital of Ashtalon blown to pieces, a mountain of corpses.

The next:

The armies of every nation, forming a gigantic circle around the razed Ashtalon.

“Penia.”

“Yes.”

“Is the calculation perfect?”

“Yes. If they move just thirty steps inward, as the Marquis said, they will enter the area.”

“The probability that they hear us—”

“None. As soon as we came up here, I recalculated just in case.”

“There won’t be a problem,” Penia said firmly.

Alon nodded slightly and let out a deep sigh.

Then, he directed his gaze toward the Sin down there.

Just like before.

The Sin remained standing, as if waiting for something.

Even at this precise instant…

Alon couldn’t understand why the Sin wasn’t making any movement.

But he immediately discarded that doubt.

In the end, there were only two things that really mattered to him:

One: that the Sin was halted in that manner.

And the other:

That due to that behavior of the Sin, Alon’s plan could be carried out successfully.

“Let’s start.”

“Yes.”

When Alon murmured, Penia placed mana into the crystal as if she had been waiting for the order.

The soldiers began to advance, step by step.

Tension and fear were visible in their eyes.

An indescribable tension.

Those emotions, tangled together, directed their gazes toward the Sin.

Fear of the unknown.

Their steps began to falter.

The hands holding their weapons trembled.

Their heartbeats accelerated.

The landscape before them.

The Sin before their eyes.

The imagination they themselves created.

All of it was slowly pushing them into a state of terror.

But when they surpassed twenty steps…

The soldiers’ eyes, previously full of fear, began to change.

The dread faded little by little.

The darkness born of fear also dissipated,

and their steps, which had been advancing dragged by the force of the army, returned to normal while their hands lightly loosened their grip on their weapons.

Their hearts began to calm down.

And finally…

When they reached thirty steps—

Wuuuuum!

An enormous barrier began to form in front of the soldiers.

A gigantic semi-spherical shield.

It was a wall interposing itself between them and the Sin—

“W-what is this?”

Bewilderment appeared on their faces. But only for an instant.

“Let us go—!”

“We can’t fulfill orders like this!”

“Open this! We won’t be able to kill the monster!”

“Let us out!”

“Damn shitty mages!!”

Shouts full of fury began to erupt from the soldiers’ mouths.

Unlike the initial fear, they now seemed crazed to kill the Sin, something evidently unnatural to anyone observing them.

“…It went as we expected.”

“Yes.”

Meanwhile, Alon watched calmly from above. After all, he had devised this plan himself.

‘Psychedelia’s Sin of Wrath has two main abilities.’

[Mountain of Corpses]

[Wrath]

Mountain of Corpses was literally that: the more corpses the Sin accumulated, the wider the zone became where he could inflict an unavoidable status effect on anyone.

The second, Wrath, caused the Sin to strengthen proportionally to the number of people affected by that status effect.

A simple, yet incredibly powerful ability.

In summary: due to all the gathered soldiers of the Allied United Kingdom, the Sin of Wrath had become monstrously strong.

Even so, Alon did not avoid bringing the soldiers and provoking this.

Because the Sin of Wrath had another property:

Although he strengthened with every affected person…

His defense decreased in the same proportion.

That meant his defense was now extremely reduced.

That was why Alon had designed this plan.

“Blackie, I leave it to you.”

[Kyu~!]

Entrusting Blackie with the attack that only required devouring huge amounts of mana,

Alon moved toward the magic circle Penia had prepared previously, taking advantage of the excess magical power available.

At that moment—

Wuuuuuuum!

The magic circle emitted a huge hum,

and a white light descended upon the barrier created by the mages on the ground.

Then—

Kwagagagagak!

A new set of circles began to form on top of the previous one.

Like a matryoshka doll, layers and layers overlapped.

And then…

The Sin, who until a moment ago hadn’t made any movement, simply watching as Alon executed his plan—

Clank.

He raised his sword. An old sword, with broken teeth.

And—

[The wait ends here.]

He spoke words that Alon could not understand.

Chut—

The Sin, who had kept silent until now, disappeared. At a speed impossible for a human to follow.

In an instant, he appeared in front of the barrier, raised his sword to destroy it—

But at that moment.

Crack!

The golden crown shot out as if it had been waiting for that instant.

“Eya-di-ya.”

The Sin leaned back to dodge it.

That was the signal.

Kwagagagagak!

The golden crowns buried underground began to move dizzyingly inside the barrier, attacking the Sin.

The Sin twisted his body and charged toward Rine, who was controlling the crowns inside the barrier.

But—

Kigigik!

His left hand was severed far too easily.

“…What a pity. If you had come in a little further, I would have killed you in a single blow.”

Then they appeared:

The purple threads engraved on the golden crown.

And Deus, advancing alongside Rine.

They weren’t the only ones.

Seolrang and Radan threw themselves from behind, chasing the Sin while he dodged the crowns and the threads.

“Ah—!”

By a hair’s breadth, Seolrang’s strike and Radan’s spear failed to reach the Sin’s back.

Seeing the four facing him, Alon sighed.

‘This is also going according to plan.’

The Sin of Wrath’s attack was so powerful that not even magical reinforcements could stop it more than once.

That was why Alon discarded reinforcing the barrier and, instead, asked Rine, Seolrang, Deus, and Radan to buy time inside it.

It was a dangerous request, but not impossible.

The Sin had to pay enormous attention even to the smallest attacks, because he couldn’t ignore neither the crowns nor the threads.

He could destroy them with attacks, yes, but even so…

Inside the barrier were four enemies, not two.

As long as the four continued attacking without pause, from the Sin’s perspective—for whom any hit could be critical—he couldn’t continue a sustained offensive.

The plan was working even better than Alon expected.

While blood ran from under his nose, Alon looked at the sky.

There, Blackie was ceaselessly expanding the magic fueled by Alon’s mana.

The projectile of Despair.

The same technique that had defeated the Sin of Sloth.

And now it was complete, suspended imposingly in the sky.

“Ugh!”

Alon took control of Blackie’s spell and…

Dropped it.

Kwagagagagagak—!

The physical and magical projectile tore through the air, descending toward the Sin.

Slow.

But inevitable.

“Marquis!”

Penia’s shout.

But Alon did not respond.

Not yet.

Still…

Still…

Still…

Still—

“Penia!”

“Yes!”

Penia reactivated the magic core at the exact moment,

while Seolrang, Rine, Radan, and Deus, who were marking the Sin, escaped using the prepared artifacts.

And then.

Upon the red world, a white light fell.

When the radiance that seemed capable of devouring everything finally quieted down, the thought that crossed Alon’s mind was:

‘…That easy?’

Although in reality, there was nothing easy about it.

Alon had dedicated almost a whole month just to this plan.

All the armies of the Allied United Kingdom were summoned only to execute this operation.

But even so…

He felt a strange unease while looking down.

The cloud of dust began to dissipate.

And Alon could see what happened on the ground.

The first thing:

The soldiers, frowning in confusion, as if they didn’t understand what they had been doing until a moment ago.

Then, Radan, Seolrang, Rine, and Deus, who had escaped in time.

And finally—

In the center of the black pit…

The Sin of Wrath was still there. His state was not normal.

The armor, already deteriorated, was turning ash gray, as if it were about to fade away.

His left hand had been completely severed.

But what surprised everyone was:

‘…He still retains his form?’

The Sin of Sloth had also retained his form after receiving Alon’s spell. But that had been possible because his defense as a Sin remained intact.

In contrast, the Sin of Wrath, weakened to the point of receiving grave wounds from Deus’s threads, shouldn’t retain his form.

Something was wrong.

That thought crossed Alon’s mind the instant that…

He descended to the ground.

He, who moments before was in the sky next to Penia, was now right in front of the Sin.

And as soon as he realized it—

Toduk.

The Sin’s discolored armor began to flake off.

Like an insect shedding its skin.

Slowly.

Slowly.

The deteriorated armor fell away.

The dull helmet.

The broken sword.

Everything.

Falling, bit by bit.

And what finally emerged was—

A figure shaped like a knight… but completely different.

The armor wrapping his body seemed made of obsidian taken from the night abyss and a molten galaxy, black as the void, with a faint red glow.

On the surface, symbols that were not veins but unknown runes were visible, and patterns that resembled crimson constellations.

In the center of the chest, an open hole revealed—

A star.

But that shining star…

Was as deep as the abyss.

And thus, appearing with a calm that erased all sound, the Sin—

Or rather, that which had been the Sin—

[Can you bear the karma of the Sin?]

He asked a question suddenly.