Chương 397: Chapter 386 - Who I Am

Thorns cracked under his boots. Black briars had swallowed the hall, crawling over pillars, choking the broken banners, wrapping the ruined throne at the far end where the giant corpse-knight had fallen. Rusted plate split open. Roots threaded through bone and steel alike, holding the body upright even in death, a crown hammered deep into the skull, half-buried in bark. Alonso didn't look at it long. The air still smelled of sap and old blood. At the centre of the chamber, the floor sigil waited.

A wide circle carved into stone, lines branching like veins, leading outward to a ring of raised platforms where coffins stood. Stone lids were carved with noble faces, eyes closed, hands folded over chests that rose and fell ever so slightly, like breath trapped between life and death. Alonso stepped into the circle and knelt. From his pouch, he drew the first crystal, one pulsing with soft gold light, and pressed it into the eastern groove. The sigil hummed. A distant thud echoed as one coffin lid trembled.

Second crystal. Violet-blue. He set it into the western slot. The lines along the floor darkened, shadows stretching outward like lengthening dusk. A second coffin shifted. Stone scraped. The last crystal released no light, a deep, starless dark. He placed it at the northern point. The circle flared, like night swallowing the sky. Silence fell. Then— Stone cracked. All around him, coffin lids slid aside in unison. Pale hands gripped their edges.

Figures in rotted silks and rusted crowns rose slowly, heads bowed, movements stiff, unnatural. They stepped from their tombs, drifting rather than walking, grief clinging to them like mist. One by one they turned toward the centre… toward him. Alonso read the three names, their Power Index at 7000 each. His swords were ready as the silhouette of his Will formed steadily behind him, almost naturally. His eyes were cold, his pulse slow, as he faced the three tall revenants. The first phase of the Forgotten Monarch…

The Sleeping Court.

Ayu stood on top of a hill in a vast plain, east of Riviera. There was a single tree at the summit, its shade long and wide. It reminded her of where she had spent so many days training with her master, Makoh, in the last stage. Good memories. She smiled as she stood there in silence, feeling the breeze, feeling the subtle movement of each blade of grass around her.

She let her body feel it, her senses take it, as she remained at peace with it all, tapping into that breath of the wild, that way of the world he had taught her. Time lost meaning as she stood there for a long while, until eventually she opened her eyes, looked at the sky with a smile… and bowed deeply, from the bottom of her heart. Thank you… master. A long moment later, she straightened and… walked away. Left where she had stood, a pair of bone daggers rested in the shade of the tree. Thank you… but now…

it's time I walk my own path. Yet as she walked away, she felt an unusual gust of wind sweep across the hill, a sensation and a feeling she knew too well. Her heart pulsed as she looked back… But there was no one there. Yet the pair of bone daggers she had left… were gone. Ayu stood there, mesmerized, when she noticed something brush against her hand. She looked at her palm and saw a mark that resembled the head of a white wolf. She raised her eyes and looked around… But didn't find him, and yet still…

She could feel it. He was here. And he was smiling at her. She looked at the mark on her hand and smiled softly herself. Was this the last test… master? She bowed once more and left, the resolve in her heart deepening, for she knew the step she had taken… was the right one. It was… who she was.

Blood. Shouting. Explosions. Arrows that moved faster than bullets tore through the air around her, bodies already piling across the churned ground. Leonie moved through it without slowing, her blade opening throats, splitting armour gaps, cutting down any foe that stepped into her path. They rushed her in waves. Steel rang. Sparks burst. Her swords flashed once, twice, three times in the space of a breath. Bodies dropped before they understood they were dead.

Lightning trailed in her wake as she slipped between a pincer strike, twisted, drove a blade back into a kidney, then pivoted and kicked the second attacker in the chest hard enough to fold his ribs inward. Her head tilted at the last instant, an arrow grazing her cheek and leaving a thin line of blood down her face. More came from the flank. More always came. She had lost count of how many had fallen on both sides.

The mud beneath her boots was thick with blood, sucking at her steps, the metallic stink heavy in the rainless air. An enemy file leader charged from her blind side, roaring. Before he reached her, a long blade punched through his chest from behind, the tip bursting out in red. He collapsed without a sound. She gave Wang a brief nod, no words passing between them before they moved again. Steel rang, breath burned, bodies collided, and death followed close behind.

When it ended, the field was carpeted with the fallen, hundreds of warriors sprawled in broken heaps, and Leonie stood at the centre of it all, blades dripping, shoulders rising and falling in a steady rhythm, her gaze lifted toward the darkening sky. The rain began. Cold drops fell through smoke and dust, streaking through blood, washing red from steel and skin alike. Leonie's eyes moved across the field, over the bodies, ally and foe alike. There was no rage in her. No hatred. No thrill.

Only a weight she did not resist, and the understanding that someone had to stand when others fell. Her shoulders straightened as the air around her seemed to settle. The rain bent as it fell, sliding past her form, and the mud no longer clung to her boots as she stepped forward, as she understood. This was not something she chose. It was simply who she was.

Imani's hammer fell heavy on the anvil. Sparks burst with each strike, and the sound rolled through the stone walls like distant thunder. Over and over he worked. Sweat ran down his arms, soaking the leather at his palms, heat wrapping around him as weapons took shape and armor plates flattened beneath patient, relentless blows. Hours slipped past until the motion stopped being effort and became breath. It became pulse, became the rhythm his body understood better than thought.

Alonso's words echoed somewhere behind the ringing steel. Who was he really? That was a question he had asked himself his whole life. Since he took his first life, since he escaped that path, since he met her, since his first child was born, since he entered The Tower… that question had never left him. He had been many things. A child mercenary. A man who walked away from it. A father. A pair of hands that repaired, built, and steadied what was breaking. The hammer slowed.

He looked at the blade beneath it, at the countless marks layered into the metal, every strike a correction, every flaw drawn out through heat and patience, until something reliable was left behind. Steel did not become strong by chance. It endured because it had been tempered, because someone had stayed through the fire and the blows instead of casting it aside. People were not so different. He had learned that the hard way. Strength was not loud. Protection was not glory. Creation was not softness.

All of it asked for endurance, for standing in the heat long enough that others did not have to. He exhaled slowly. He did not need to be something grand. He did not need to chase a different shape. He only had to accept the truth he had circled for years. He was someone who endured the heat so others could hold something that would not fail. He was meant to remain. To stand where the blows would fall. To be the weight that kept others from being moved. And that… was enough.

Pablo sat with his back against the rough trunk of a wide tree at the edge of the Gura Forest, the town now a distant blur while wind moved through tall grass in slow waves. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. A thick book, one of the few hardback ones he had been lucky to find, rested open in his hands, its worn pages filled with diagrams of organs, vessels, and internal pathways where biology and energy blurred into the same language.

He read slowly for once, following a passage about how certain species healed by accelerating cellular growth through EM stimulus, how the same process that restored tissue could spiral into uncontrolled mutation, and his fingers stilled on the page as the idea settled deeper than the text itself. Life did not simply exist. It adjusted, failed, reworked itself, tried again, patterns repeating across scale and form, from cells to beasts to people.

His focus drifted inward as the wind brushed past him, thoughts moving away from ranks, summons, and fights, toward something far simpler and deeper inside him. Understanding. That had always been the pull. Strength, power, skills… those were necessary. But were they what he truly wanted? He had gained his mutation, his Awakening, through study, away from the bloodshed, even if his hands were not clean.

After that, he had built himself around it, made knowledge his foundation, because it was needed, because he wanted to stand with the others, to be seen, to matter. But was that desire truly his, or just the shape he had taken to survive beside stronger people? Was it who he was, or who he had convinced himself to become? His gaze lifted to the plains ahead, where one of his recent summons, a small creature shaped like a cross between a hedgehog and a rabbit, waited quietly.

Many beings he had encountered in Dungeons made little sense through any strict biological or evolutionary logic, and part of him had resisted that, forcing explanations, forcing structure, trying to make this sort of 'fantasy' behave like science. But what if that need to explain was the very wall in front of him? What if life was wider than the frameworks he had clung to, and knowledge did not end where his understanding stopped?

He looked down at the book again, then closed it slowly, a soft exhale leaving him with something close to relief rather than loss. He rose, glanced once more at his summon, and began walking back toward town, the book held loosely at his side. At the library door he returned it to the shelf.

"Would you like to borrow another, sir?" the clerk asked. Pablo shook his head, a quiet clarity in his eyes.

"No… what I'm looking for… is not in books."

Space stretched forever in every direction. Earth floated before her, near perfect. The Moon. The planets. The whole damn solar system turning like a quiet machine. Chiara had built this place inside her head, a mental sandbox she used when her brain started overheating, where she could mute inputs and shut the noise off. She had been underperforming. Dungeon runs were fine, but her so-called Will training had flatlined harder than anything she'd touched in weeks. Every model collapsed.

Every line she built snapped. Every simulation she ran, using every framework she trusted, crashed and burned. Physics. Math. Field dynamics. Identity constructs. Abstract anchors. Even the stupid symbolic crap like gods and shit. Didn't matter. All of it failed. And that… pissed her off. If she didn't unlock this, she'd fall behind. She'd hit a ceiling. Everything she'd built so far would become… irrelevant. And the worst part? She couldn't quantify the damn thing. No variables. No constants. No boundaries.

Just some damn vibes. She'd even tried coming up with a fifth fundamental force, stretching unification theory until it screamed, trying to jam consciousness or whatever Will was into an equation. Total fantasy.

"Fuck it." Her eyes snapped open in the real world. She pushed herself off the chair in the small room she'd claimed in Alonso's place. Door open. Street. Plaza. She knew her own recovery protocol. Overload the system. She shoved open the tavern door.

"Two pints," she said, dropping coins on the counter without looking.

"Actually screw it, make it jugs. Strongest shit you have," she added, sliding more coins across. The barman blinked, then scooped the money and moved. Chiara leaned forward onto the bar, face in her hands, staring at the wood like it personally owed her answers. Nearby, a conversation rose far louder than it had any right to, two very drunk blokes slumped at a crooked table by the window, ale soaking their tunics, and one of them missing a boot for reasons known only to tragedy.

"Bruv… hic… you ever think the world's just makin' it up as it goes…"

"Like Dave?"

"Yeah, like Dave! Says he's a knight, bloke ain't even got a horse." Chiara's brow twitched, fingers pausing against her temple as she half-listened despite herself.

"…that's the dumbest—""Nah nah listen, listen— hic —if the world had proper rules, cows wouldn't float in stories and witches wouldn't turn blokes into frogs."

"That was my cousin." A short snort escaped her, then a quiet laugh, shoulders loosening as she shook her head.

"…so wot you sayin'?"

"I'm sayin'… mayhaps rules ain't rules…"

"…then wot are they?"

"Stuff some dead bloke said once and— hic —everyone else was too tired to argue." The laugh cut off. Chiara's eyes lifted slowly from the bar, sharp now, focused, something clicking into place as her spine straightened. Rules… Yeah. Since when did rules lead discovery? Rules are what people write after someone breaks them. Will isn't some mystical gift. It's just a force no one has quantified yet. Fine. Then she'd be the one who does.

And if the world didn't allow it— She'd say screw the world and rewrite the entire framework herself if she had to. She shot to her feet and left the bar in a flash. The barman came back a moment later with the jugs and just stood there, blinking at the empty spot.

"We— hic —we nick them then, Scott?" one of the drunks slurred, squintin' at the mugs.

"Lady's not comin' back, mate."

Lukas stepped down from the trader's cart, boots landing on packed dirt with a soft thud. He turned to the driver, an old man with wind-cracked skin and a beard that had seen more roads than most maps.

"Much obliged, friend," Lukas said with a smooth half-bow, tipping the flat wool cap he'd picked up at a market two towns back.

"Aye, take care o' yerself, young man," the driver called back in a thick coastal brogue, flicking the reins. The cart rolled on. Lukas adjusted the cap and headed down the sloping road toward Dantlow's harbour, the smell of salt and fish thick in the air, gulls circling overhead like bored nobles waiting for scraps. Boats creaked against their ropes, hulls knocking wood against wood while fishermen hauled in nets heavy with silver flashes, shouting across the docks in rough, familiar rhythms.

Lukas leaned on a post for a while, just watching, a faint smile on his lips, eyes soft, taking in the quiet choreography of labour and survival. Then colour caught his gaze. Beyond the square, just off the main street, wagons stood in a loose ring, painted boards, cloth banners, bright scarves strung between poles. Laughter spilled out, music off-beat and cheerful, a hand drum, a pipe. A fair? He drifted that way without deciding to.

He watched a juggler send a dozen knives into the air, steel weaving in rising spirals that closed around him, edges skimming past sleeves and throat before flaring outward in a sudden ring that hissed over the crowd close enough to stir hair and pull sharp gasps, then snapping back into his waiting hands. A dancer with bells at her ankles leapt and did not come down, her body turning mid-air, skirts flaring as she flowed through her steps upside down, then sideways, then upright again without breaking rhythm.

A broad-shouldered man strode past with a boulder cradled to his chest, laughing as children clambered on top, their weight nothing as he spun once just to make them squeal louder. Lukas moved through it all like he belonged, smiling at strangers, clapping once for the juggler, and ducking as a hoop flew past his shoulder.

"Would you be interested in a reading, handsome?" He blinked. An old woman sat beneath a faded canopy, cards spread in a worn fan across a small table. Her eyes were sharp, her smile inviting. Lukas looked at the cards, then back at her.

"…why not?" He sat. The old woman smiled faintly as the silver-coated cards rose untouched under her waves. They circled her in slow orbits, then faster, edges flashing as they wove through one another in shifting patterns, fanning, folding, reshuffling hundreds of times in complex designs in the span of a breath before the deck floated neatly arranged before her. She did not look at Lukas as she spoke.

"Three truths. What do you desire to know, young man?" Lukas thought for a moment, then answered simply, going for the standard.

"Past, Future, and—" he stopped himself, then changed the last.

"—Self." The woman nodded, and the cards shifted once more before one split free, gliding forward and flipping to face him as it floated mid-air. It showed a spilled vessel. Cloaked figures turned away, two still standing behind." The Five of Cups," she said, voice low and heavy.

"Loss carved ye. Grief that didn't drown ye, only set ye walking. Ye learned the road before ye learned to rest." Lukas shifted slightly at the words. It was clear to him what it referred to. Yet it did not surprise him that the reading was rather accurate. The deck shifted once more, and another card split from it. A narrow path between dark towers, something unseen beneath the water." The Moon," she murmured.

"Shadows, half-truths, roads that vanish if taken wrong. Every choice counts. Every misstep speaks." Lukas grinned. Nothing beyond the obvious. Not that he expected something of value to come from this random— random? fate? The wind stirred the canopy. As the woman began to draw the final card, Lukas' own waves rose and gently halted it, leaving the last card face down, unseen by both of them. He placed twenty Coppershards on the table and smiled at the confused woman.

"Thank you for the reading."

"You do not wish to know yourself, stranger?" the woman asked. Lukas chuckled as he stood up.

"Some roads are better walked without a map." He left the woman confused as he stepped out of the tent and walked slowly along the harbor, a soft smile on his face as he looked up at the sky. For it finally dawned on him. His question had never been meant to have an answer. He was who he wanted to be. But who he wanted to be… was who he was. Inside the tent, the old woman couldn't resist her curiosity and turned the final card in her hands. Her eyes widened for a moment… then she laughed.

The throne room shattered as the false sky above tore open, stone bursting outward while hundreds of ghosts flooded the air. An army of pale revenants swallowed the ceiling, their forms twisting, stretching, shrieking without sound as they drowned the chamber in pressure that bent the air itself. Hunger. Desire. Fury. Will. All of it crashed down as the towering Monarch forced it upon him, a decree made manifest, a weight meant to break flesh and spirit alike. And yet, amidst the swarm, the sky changed.

Darkness spilled outward, swallowing the spectral glow as stars ignited one by one, constellations etching lines of light through the black, whole galaxies wheeling into being as a void replaced the world for a single, breathless heartbeat. Will Manifest— The souls plunged to consume him, a spiral of hunger and fury collapsing inward… and yet— Path of Shards And every star in that endless dark… became a blade.

Every strike that could ever be, every cut across every future where his arm might swing, all of them manifested at once as the void screamed and space fractured. Light split into edges. Possibility turned into reality. The air detonated in a storm of invisible slashes and thrusts as revenants were carved apart mid-lunge, their forms shredded by lines that did not travel but simply were, appearing through them, across them, beyond them. Will carved through Will.

The immaterial tore like flesh, pressure waves collapsing into silence as crowns of light burst apart and the Monarch's own diadem sheared clean in two, metal shrieking as it struck the broken floor. And then— There was silence. Dust drifted between ruined pillars, stone smoking where void-light had burned through it, and for a moment the world forgot how to breathe. Only one man remained standing.

Alonso breathed hard, blood trailing from his nose, patches of his skin warped into sickly green tissue that oozed and writhed like a corpse refusing burial. Pain crawled through him. He did not flinch. He did not scream. His swords lowered as his body drifted calmly toward the spoils scattered across the wrecked hall.

With a flick of his blade, a red orb spun through the air into his grasp, bursting into him in a surge that burned away corruption, flesh knitting, strength flooding back as numbers carved themselves into his mind. Stage 1 – 33. 643% ➤ 36. 643% His gaze settled on a small ring, similar to the one the Monarch had worn, bearing the shape of the three spectral crystals he had used to start the event set into it. Its surface was old and carried a faint, ghostly feel.

Grade 04 - Ring of the Withered King Tempering State: 0 Physical aptitude +4% Pillar aptitude +4% EM wave output +8% He knew such an item was meant mostly for those on the Pillar path, but its effect suited him far better than almost all Fusion-path pieces, except for the Internal Conduction one. He swapped his chestguard for it, already appreciating the difference in benefits.

He then gave the chamber one last look, gathered the tempering materials and the other six orbs, and walked away, leaving behind a broken throne, a split crown, and a sky where no souls remained.