“They’ve been hit hard, Calibur’s finish this swiftly,” Man said, her voice calm but carrying the weight of finality.
Tristan and Yvolt exged a quick, uneasy ghey weren’t sure what felt worse—the fact that they’d gotten their asses hao them by this grotesque monstrosity or the fact that Burn was here to witness it.
Burn—Emperor Caliburn, the epitome of perfe ed in striess and an endless supply of terrifyingly high expectations. The man could turn a minor critique into a life lesson you’d regret for years.
And now they had to face him after struggling to deal with some random monster? It stung. It burned.
Yvolt muttered under her breath, “He’s gonna roast us alive, isn’t he?”
Tristan winced, already imagining the lecture. “Do you remember how he scolded Gahad? Gahad, Yve. I still have sedhand trauma from that.”
Ah, yes. The time Burn gave the walking nightmare himself a verbal thrashing for failing to meet his impossibly high standards. If Gahad couldn’t avoid Burn’s wrath, what ce did the Love Potion Duo have?
“I mean, we could’ve done worse,” Yvolt added halfheartedly.
Tristan snorted. “Yeah? Like what? Actally helping this monster grow a sed head?”
Man’s sharp gaze cut through their whispered exge, and the two knights straightened instinctively, swallowing their fear. They’d survived worse than Burn’s scolding. Probably.
Well, of course, they knew Gahad was strong. The man wasn’t called a nightmare inate for nothing. And that strength? That’s precisely why Burn’s expectations for him were sky-high.
It was only natural, really. When you were a six-star Force Master practically teetering on the edge of enlighte, people expected you to work miracles—or, in Burn’s case, act like the Absolute Tyrant himself.
Achieving the seven-star only needed one decisive choice after all—to abandohing he knew and mold his body to follow his iion.
Which made it all the more terrifying that Burn still mao find fault with Gahad. But Tristan and Yvolt? They were nothing pared to Gahad. They weren’t nightmares; they were… well, nuisa best. Surely Burn couldn’t hold them to the same impossibly high standards. Right?
Then again, knowing Burn, he probably could—and would.
After all, like how they had each other to protect, Gahad had Landevale to—
A pair of eyes suddenly materialized on the swirling bck portal, and the air grew heavier, as if reality itself recoiled at their presehey were grotesque things—vast, lidless orbs that seemed to pulse with a sickly, uneven rhythm. The sclera wasn’t white but a murky gray, veined with bck like cracks in deg stone.
The irises burned with an unnatural glow, a moltehat ed and flickered like embers in a dying fire. They didn’t simply look—they pierced, their gaze carrying the weight of a thousand unspoken horrors.
Around the edges, dark, fleshy tendrils writhed and slithered, eg the eyes to the portal’s swirling surface as if they had grown directly from it.
The pupils, narrow and inhuman, shifted erratically, never settling, as though sing for something unseen. And then, they blinked—a slow, wet motion that sent a ripple through the portal, the sound akin to flesh tearing and ref.
“Greetings.”
The voice slithered from the portal, unpleasant and cloying, like oil dripping down Burn’s spine. His eyes narrowed at the sound, sharp as a bde poised to strike.
“What a pleasant surprise to finally meet you,” the voice tinued, its mockery barely veiled beh a tone of feigned civility.
Burn she er of his mouth curling into somethiween disdain and amusement. “Luck seems to favor me these days,” he said coolly.
“First, one of your disposable pawns had the audacity to g to my leg in the middle of the road. Then there was your sloppy scheme for the first elven princess. A’s not fet the unmistakable stink of your interferen my father’s regalia.”
His gaze hardened, his voice l into something colder. “Frankly, it’s a surprise I hadn’t noticed your presence sooner.”
But as Burhe pieces settle in his mind, the memories started to click together. The whispers and rumors that had shadowed him since his teenage years—the kind that painted him as something monstrous before he’d even earhe title. Could those have been this man’s handiwork?
His jaw tightened. sidering no o himself, his father, and God knew he had killed the old man personally—and even fewer knew about his hunting the uni or the merfolk king—this man had a knack fging up secrets best left buried.
Not just digging them up—spinning them, spreading them like poison through the veins of society, twisting truth into snder.
“Quite the talent for intel you’ve got,” Burn murmured, his voice calm, yet ced with venom. “Pity you waste it on such petty schemes.”
“If you’d been more ied in scheming than ransag the realm, we might’ve met just a moment sooner,” the voice mused, its tone equal parts mockery and menace. “But sooner or ter, our paths were bound to cross.”
Burn’s lips twitched, but his gaze remaieady. He khe real reason they were meeting now—Man’s little “curse” oimeline. But still, it didn’t matter. If they had met ter, he’d still find a way to destroy him.
Unless... Man died.
She was the only oh the power to stop the creeping corruption, to purify this rotting world. Without Man, the corruption would devour the realm, and Burn’s petence would amount to nothing but ashes in the end.
He could fight, he could scheme, he could bring down gods—but without her? This world would fall to ruin, and there would be nothi but a deg husk of people and nd.
As these thoughts twisted in his mind, the gurgling portal grew louder, sug in the remains of Ahlgrath’s broken form.
The gurgling portal ed violently as Ahlgrath’s ruined body began to dissolve into its swirlihs. His grotesque, shifting form was dragged inch by into the bck, a siing sound filling the air—half a wet squelch, half the agonized screams of something irely alive.
Tendrils of bck sludge snaked out from the portal, tg onto the remnants of Ahlgrath like parasitic veins. Yet, amid the grotesque spectacle, the monster ughed—a sound that crawled uhe skin like nails on gss.
His broken form twisted unnaturally as he turned his gaze to the four humans before him. His mouth stretched wide—horrifically wide—splitting his face horizontally in a grotesque grin. Fangs, jagged and shifting, writhed atop bed gums lined with thorn-like protrusions. The sight was enough to unnerve even the bravest.
“When we meet again, humans… when we meet again—”
The portal began t him in fully, his form dist and twisting into the ing darkness. But just as the abyss was about to e the st of him, Burn moved.
He strode forward without hesitation, his expression cold and unfling.
“Caliburn!” Man’s voice rang out, her eyes wide with arm as she reached to grab him. But it was too te.
Burn thrust his right hand into the portal, the bck sludge eagerly swallowing his arm as if dev prey.
GRAB—
A moment of stillness hung in the air, sharp and taut as a bde. Then, from the swirlihs, Burn’s arm emerged. His hand cmped tightly around something.
The man oher side—the one behind this ewisted spectacle—stiffened, his eyes widening in astonishment as he felt the iron grip on his colr.
“You—”
Burn burst out ughing—a deep, resonant sound that carried a chilling edge. “So there is someone behind this portal,” he said, his voice sharp and triumphant, his grin a wolf’s snarl. “Well, aren’t you a pleasant surprise?”
The man’s hand instinctively shot to Burn’s wrist, his grip testing the strength that held him. For the first time, the portal rippled with something other than malice—it wavered, as though startled by Burn’s audacity.
The tension crackled in the air, a moment suspended between triumph and terror.
“How does it feel to have your asshole fisted?” Burn asked. “Bme your slow outro.”
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