Chương 238: Chapter : 238

Children cried out for their mothers. Mothers clutched their children and sobbed. Warriors who had faced beasts and rivals without flinching curled into balls and shook with fear. The corruption wave was not trying to control them this time. It was trying to break them. Laxmi tried to burn the dark mana with her flames, but fire could not touch something that had no physical form. Zinia raised earth walls, but the corruption passed through stone like wind through a net.

Ira's water whips slashed at the darkness and found nothing to strike. Sayma threw up her golden barriers, and they held, but only around herself and the people directly next to her. She could not protect the entire village at once.

"We cannot fight this!" Laxmi shouted over the screams.

"It is not a creature! It is just... darkness!" She was right. The corruption wave was not an enemy that could be punched or slashed or burned. It was a curse, a living darkness that fed on fear and despair. Every scream from the villagers made it stronger. Every tear and every sob added fuel to its fire. It was a nightmare made real, and it was growing. Princess Iris tried to use her royal mana to push back the darkness.

She had never been the strongest mage, but her bloodline carried a trace of the old imperial power. She raised her hands and channeled everything she had into a shield of pale violet light. The shield flickered into existence around the nearest group of villagers and held for three seconds before the corruption wave overwhelmed it and snuffed it out like a candle in a hurricane. Iris staggered, her face pale. She had used too much mana too quickly. Her vision blurred and her knees buckled.

Zinia caught her before she fell and lowered her gently to the ground.

"Do not push yourself," Zinia said firmly.

"You will hurt yourself."

"The villagers..." Iris whispered.

"We know," Zinia said. Her jaw was tight.

"We are trying." Naomi grabbed Ken and pulled him behind Sayma's barrier. His face was pale, his eyes wide. But unlike the villagers, his expression was not one of fear. It was one of deep, genuine irritation.

"These guys just will not quit," Ken muttered.

"We beat their skeleton. We broke their trees. And now they are throwing a tantrum. Unbelievable."

"This is not a tantrum," Sayma said, her voice strained.

"This is a curse of despair. If it is not stopped, the villagers will be driven permanently insane. Their minds will shatter." Ken looked at the screaming villagers. At the children crying in terror. At the mothers holding their babies and weeping. At the old warriors who had survived a lifetime of hardship only to be broken by invisible darkness. Something shifted in his eyes. The lazy, goofy light flickered. For just a moment, something else looked out from behind those half-closed lids. Something old.

Something vast. Something that did not like it when people hurt the ones he had decided to protect. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. He stood up. It was such a simple movement. Just standing up. But everyone near him felt it. A shift in the air. A change in pressure. Like the moment before a lightning strike, when the whole world holds its breath.

"Ken?" Naomi said. Her hand was on his arm.

"What are you doing?" He did not answer. He stepped out from behind Sayma's barrier and walked into the darkness.

"Ken!" Naomi screamed. She lunged after him, but Sayma caught her arm.

"Wait," Sayma whispered. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses. Not with fear. With awe.

"Look." The corruption wave parted around Ken like water around a stone. The darkness touched his skin and simply... dissolved. It turned to wisps of grey smoke that drifted upward and vanished. Wherever he walked, a path of clear, clean air opened up behind him. He walked slowly, his hands in his pockets, his cheap suit flapping in a wind that nobody else could feel. His expression was blank. Not lazy. Not goofy. Not scared. Just blank. Like a mask that had been wiped clean of all emotion.

When he reached the center of the village, he stopped. He turned to face the altar clearing, where the three cultists were still chanting. And he spoke a single word. Nobody heard the word. It was not spoken aloud. It was sent through the dimensional channels, directly from Ken's mind to the space between worlds, where a certain golden spirit was waiting. Karna appeared. Not gradually. Not with a shimmer of golden light.

He simply existed, standing between Ken and the altar, in the span between one heartbeat and the next. His armor blazed like a second sun. His burning white eyes were fixed on the three cultists with the cold, absolute judgment of a god passing sentence on mortals. Vorath's chanting stopped. His skull mask stared at the golden spirit. Seket stumbled backward. Grath raised his fists, then lowered them again, because what was the point? You did not fight Karna. You only died. Karna raised his right hand.

The Divine Vijaya Bow materialized in his grip, its light pushing back the darkness like a blade cutting through shadow. He drew the bowstring back. Three arrows of pure, radiant light formed between his fingers. He released. The three arrows flew in unison. Each one found its target. Vorath. Seket. Grath. The arrows did not strike their bodies. They struck the dark mana inside them, the Black Magic that had corrupted their souls and stained their hands.

The light arrows pierced through the darkness and shattered it like glass. The three cultists did not vanish like the Black Magicians in the western cell. They did not disintegrate. Instead, they simply... collapsed. The dark mana that had sustained them was gone. The purple glow in their veins faded to nothing. They fell to the ground, unconscious but alive, their robes smoking faintly. And with the cultists down, the corruption wave died.

The darkness that had flooded the village evaporated like morning mist under a sunrise. The screaming stopped. The villagers blinked and looked around in confusion, the nightmares already fading from their minds like half-remembered dreams. Karna turned to face his master. For one second, the golden spirit and the lazy boy stood facing each other across the village clearing. Then Karna bowed his head, dissolved into particles of golden light, and was gone. Ken turned around and walked back to the group.

His face had settled back into its usual sleepy, relaxed expression. He yawned enormously.

"I have no idea what just happened," he announced loudly.

"I closed my eyes and when I opened them the scary darkness was gone. Did someone else do something? Because it definitely was not me. I was hiding." Nobody said anything for a long moment. Then Naomi let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. Sayma adjusted her glasses with shaking fingers. Iris stared at Ken with wide, searching eyes. There were questions. So many questions. But the villagers were safe, the cultists were down, and the darkness was gone. The questions could wait.