Chapter 220

Chapter 220
## Chapter 220: The Grand Crusade Was No Defeat

Raiga scanned his surroundings.

Total, suffocating blackness.

A realm where time and motion felt paralyzed, devoid of even the faintest draft.

“Spatial Displacement Territory.”

The nature of an abyss shifts to mirror its ruler.

This particular zone utilized a Spatial Displacement Territory, designed to fracture and scatter those who entered its depths.

Typically, the entities governing such realms were…

‘A Rank 5 abyss. Truly pathetic for one harboring a Fragment.’

Raiga, a veteran who had dismantled countless abysses and slaughtered their sovereigns, utilized his own internal ranking system.

Rank 5 represented the absolute nadir.

The tactic of dispersing intruders was a hallmark of a weak master.

It was highly irregular for a beast possessing a ‘Fragment of Ruin’ to be relegated to Rank 5.

‘Ownership of a Fragment does not equate to inherent strength…’

This suggested the acquisition was recent.

The creature had likely manifested this specific trait to safely process the Fragment’s volatile energy.

The realization was a letdown.

There was no blood-pumping excitement in stalking prey this meager.

‘I anticipated at least a Rank 3.’

At Rank 3, the threat became substantial.

Entities that transcended the physical constraints of humanity usually occupied the third rank.

Consider Baal from the Mountain of Cultivation.

That being had conscripted hundreds of thousands into its service immediately upon the abyss’s inception.

Even in its hollow, nascent state, it attempted a massive harvest of life force.

Baal’s mere husk was worth a Rank 3 designation.

*Gruk.*

*Groooar.*

Suddenly, a gutteral, wet moan vibrated through the air nearby.

Turning, Raiga beheld a titanic, solitary ‘eye’ perched upon a pair of legs.

“A Hybrid?”

He hadn’t felt its approach.

It left no scent.

In the heart of an abyss, such sensory voids were standard.

However, the presence of a ‘hybrid’ within these walls was an anomaly.

“A rogue creature somehow claiming dominion over an abyss.”

Monsters that roamed the interior of these realms were varied.

Hybrids were a specific mutation.

They were former denizens of the outside who had wandered in, only to be twisted and reshaped by the abyss’s toxic miasma.

That singular, bulging eye was a byproduct of its forced evolution to this environment.

Possessing stunted intellect and negligible combat prowess, they were the dregs of the monster world, doomed to aimless wandering.

The abundance of hybrids suggested that the master of this abyss was likely one of their kind as well.

He had wondered if this would be a hunt worth his time; now, it seemed he was just clearing out strays.

*Tsk.*

Raiga clicked his tongue in disdain and addressed the shadows.

“Do you wretched things honestly believe you can bypass my ‘Aegis’?”

The Aegis.

It functioned as a divine sentinel, a celestial barrier enveloping Raiga.

It was the sole reason the corrosive influence of the Fragment remained unable to mar his flesh.

Low-level hybrids had no hope of fracturing that diamond-hard defense.

‘I refrained from invoking it within the royal courts, but here, there is no such restriction.’

*Rumble.*

In a heartbeat, Raiga’s internal energy ignited.

His frame vibrated with a soft, azure radiance.

This was the latent power he had withheld against the ‘goat’ within the palace’s sparring grounds.

To have unleashed it there would have risked the structural integrity of the entire castle.

Furthermore, he had sworn to reserve this specific force for the ‘Fragments of Ruin,’ making this the only appropriate stage.

Had he utilized this against the goat, the fight would have ended very differently.

Now, Raiga shattered the locks on that sequestered power.

The seals of the five celestial gateways, passed down through five ancestral lines.

The East Gate, West Gate, South Gate, North Gate, and the Central Gate—he triggered the first: the East Gate!

“…I shall make this brief.”

—

*Swoosh!*

*Crack!*

The rhythmic whistle of projectiles filled the air.

*Boom!*

Toxic bladders detonated in clouds of smog, and she lunged forward, attempting to bisect her opponent with a strike faster than the eye could track.

‘…It isn’t landing?’

Every technique failed.

Shala.

For the first time in her memory, she felt the cold prickle of panic.

Since her youth, she had haunted battlefields, reaping a grim harvest of human lives.

No target she marked for death had ever drawn another breath; by the time she reached maturity, she was whispered of as the ‘Death Wolf’ of the war-torn plains.

“Ah…”

Yet, looking at Serengeti, who remained untouched after the full brunt of her assault, Shala finally found her voice.

As their gazes locked, Shala felt a subconscious urge to avert her eyes.

…Power.

It wasn’t just the physical weight of her presence.

It was her resolve.

Those eyes were impossibly steady.

A woman of pure, radiant light who had lived a life diametrically opposed to Shala’s own.

Shala had dismissed her as a pampered aristocrat, a hothouse flower—but she was wrong.

This woman was a warrior who had waded through just as much gore—perhaps more.

‘Even so!’

Knights.

They were idealistic simpletons.

In a life-or-death struggle, they shackled themselves to notions of honor.

Like Abdul, the premier knight of Ballan, who died because he couldn’t conceive of a poisoned blade—utter, arrogant fools.

She had slaughtered countless knights, and they all shared that same flaw.

Many had perished because they saw a woman and saw a weakness.

But… the woman standing here was a different breed.

‘There is no opening.’

It wasn’t that she was being crushed by superior strength.

Serengeti simply offered no vulnerability to exploit.

She seemed to anticipate and nullify every intention before it manifested.

But weren’t knights supposed to be the types who trained predictably in halls, performing sword forms like ascetic monks?

“Your every strike is shallow.”

“…What did you say?”

“The drive behind your blade. It is nothing more than thin, petty malice. Do you imagine you are the only one who has crawled out of a furnace?”

“What are you rambling about?”

“I am telling you that the hell you experienced was a mere shadow of the real thing.”

Serengeti declared.

The reason she was forged differently from her peers.

The reason she had to be.

“…So you claim to have walked through a true hell?”

Shala spat a derisive laugh.

She had been forged in fire.

A young girl surviving the meat grinder of war was the definition of hell.

King Frederick had been her lone light.

He had granted her a purpose, a weapon, and an identity.

What right did this woman have to preach such arrogance?

Disregarding Shala’s murderous aura, Serengeti went on.

“Indeed. Serving at the side of the Knight King demanded nothing less. We, the ‘Seven Knights of the Round Table,’ walked through the abyss alongside him.”

…The Seven Knights of the Round Table.

It wasn’t a formal rank recognized by the state.

It was an internal designation.

The Knight King’s most trusted confidants, seven warriors who swore fealty to him alone.

Serengeti was one of them.

She wasn’t necessarily the most gifted in combat, but her loyalty and conviction were unmatched.

She had remained by the side of Knight King Wilhelm until the final curtain.

“The Knight King achieved countless miracles. Not one was easy. But the ‘Great Expedition’ was the one that truly defined the word hell.”

“What is your point?”

The conversation felt disjointed.

Shala scowled.

Why was she talking about the Great Expedition? What was the relevance?

Serengeti didn’t care for her reaction.

She wasn’t really speaking to Shala anymore.

“Pay attention. Our enemies were not merely mortal. Treachery was our daily bread, and monsters struck from the shadows in a chaotic, ever-shifting landscape. Even a moment’s rest was a lethal gamble.”

Foes on every side.

The constant paranoia of betrayal, creatures mimicking the fallen to lure the living.

Sleep was a gateway for nightmares; waking often revealed a comrade’s throat slit beside you.

Time and logic lost their meaning.

The demonic realm.

Its eight circles of torment were well-earned titles.

“Do you honestly hold the belief that the Great Expedition was a failure?”

Serengeti looked out at the audience.

She looked at the rank-and-file, the knights, the high nobility, Duke Sai’en, and the monarch himself.

The common consensus was that the Great Expedition had collapsed.

The world accepted this as fact.

However.

“Do you truly believe that the Knight King achieved nothing of value?”

It was a lie.

The narrative was poisoned.

It was time for the truth to be unveiled.

“The Knight King!”

Serengeti’s voice boomed, reaching every corner of the room.

“Vanquished the sovereign of the pit—the Demon King!”

“…!!!”

The crowd collectively recoiled.

Knight King Wilhelm had slain the Demon King!

This flew in the face of everything recorded in history.

The Great Expedition had been officially branded a catastrophe.

Yet, here was Serengeti, a knight who had survived the horrors of the demonic realm’s Great Expedition herself.

The Knight King’s personal guard would not speak such a falsehood.

Still, the room remained paralyzed.

Her sheer presence stifled any retort.

“Despite the betrayals of the sages from the ‘Tower of Magic Arts’ and those formerly hailed as the ‘Eight Heroes,’ and while mercenaries and troops fled in cowardice, the Knight King marched through the eight hells and drove his steel through the Demon King’s heart.”

The sages of the Tower of Magic Arts.

The Eight Heroes.

They had participated in the Expedition and used its aftermath to solidify their own power.

They were the ones who propagated the myth of failure.

Were those stories mere fabrications?

Were those legends actually traitors?

Doubt and confusion flickered in every pair of eyes.

Serengeti then locked eyes with the youthful Duke Sai’en.

“A failure? A waste of life? And you claim the Ballan Kingdom fell into decline because of it?”

“…”

*Twitch!*

Duke Sai’en reflexively looked away.

It felt like being stared down by a predatory beast.

He had been the most vocal proponent of the failure narrative before the throne.

No one had challenged him then.

Silence had been taken for agreement.

Serengeti’s voice rose to a crescendo.

“False! Absolutely false. The noble knights of Ballan stood by the Knight King until their last breaths. Their deaths were not in vain. Their courage is the very thing that still protects Ballan today. Therefore!”

She shifted her gaze to the demon of pride, King Frederick.

“Therefore, witness it now. Witness how the Knight King and his followers conquered hell and brought down the Demon King.”

She leveled her blade at him.

—

‘Fascinating.’

For the first time since his arrival in Ballan, King Frederick felt a spark of genuine ‘intrigue.’

Was it because Serengeti had dismantled Shala?

No, that wasn’t it.

It was the quality of her spirit that thrilled him.

‘Does her soul not radiate like that of a deity?’

He coveted it.

That specific essence.

He understood now why she bore the title of the ‘White Knight.’

Rarely did he encounter a soul so unyielding and pure.

But that only heightened his curiosity regarding…

‘…The Knight King, Wilhelm.’

The leader such a paragon would follow.

Knight King Wilhelm.

What sort of person was he?

How blinding must his soul have been?

It was a pity.

He had dismissed him previously, viewing him as a man driven by simple avarice.

Had he known the truth, he would have hunted that soul himself.

“Gahk!”

…The sound of another knight’s life being extinguished echoed through the hall.

She was an unstoppable force.

His own guards were powerless to check Serengeti’s advance.

“It is time for you to intervene.”

“As you command, Your Majesty.”

King Frederick spoke to the figure at his side.

Only one warrior possessed the capability to halt her.

The monstrosity he had personally refined and perfected.

A creature that was formidable at its inception, then gorged on the remains of slaughtered gods to reach its current zenith!

Kingslayer Yajam.

Even a warrior of Serengeti’s caliber would be forced to her knees before him.

‘…Wait.’

King Frederick tilted his head in confusion.

A nagging sensation tugged at the edge of his awareness.

‘There is a foreign element here.’

What was it?

Something that was neither human nor beast—an unsettling presence hidden within the throng.

Something that defied the natural order.

Even as an ancient demon of pride, he had never encountered its like.

The crowd was oblivious, and he himself had nearly overlooked it.

‘What are those children?’