SLASH—
With a decisive stroke, Kurian drew the blade across his own throat.
Jiyan and Rover's eyes widened in horror.
Yet that was only the beginning. From the gushing geyser of blood came a sickening, wet squelch.
SPLATTER.
An arm emerged.
"Pitiable incarnation..." A calm, almost weary voice echoed from within the torrent of blood. "It seems our existence was always destined for war, after all."
Crack—Tear—
The wound across Kurian's neck split wider, flesh tearing as a second body forced its way out, splitting the shell of the boy like a cicada emerging from its discarded husk.
A man stepped free.
He looked exactly like Kurian, yet almost every inch of his body was covered in jagged, brutal scars—as though countless wars had carved their memories directly into his flesh.
"To walk this world once more after being cast into the Great Beyond..." the man murmured, letting out a sardonic chuckle. "Alas... it seems I owe you a debt, Overthrax."
Jiyan immediately leveled his weapon. "Who are you?!"
"Freddie," the man answered without hesitation. He reached toward Kurian's Terminal.
Because the two were biologically identical, the biometric scanner chimed in green acceptance. Reaching into the digitized storage, his fingers wrapped around the hilt of Kurian's blade: Shi(死).
"Hmm. A magnifique blade. Alas, a bit too light for my taste," he remarked.
It truly was. The blade weighed only a few kilograms, whereas Ferdinand had once wielded a slab of iron heavier than an armored warship.
Kneeling beside Kurian's discarded husk, Freddie gently brushed a hand across the boy's eyes, closing them before addressing the blade once more. "You served him well, and he cared for you in return. But for the rest of this journey... You shall accompany me."
The sword trembled. Not literally. Rather, the moment Freddie attempted to wield it in the manner most natural to him, the blade faltered ever so slightly, as though the synergy between swordsman and sword had yet to align.
"What? You're not ready to abandon your last master?" Freddie let out an amused chuckle.
As Jiyan's jadeite spear shot toward him, Freddie casually raised a hand.
Crack.
The spearhead fractured.
Jiyan immediately retreated, his eyes widening as the exchange replayed itself in his mind. Freddie hadn't met the spear head-on; his hand had slipped effortlessly past the tip, striking the side of the shaft with a flick of his fingers to shatter it in an instant. A chill crawled down Jiyan's spine.
Ignoring the General, Freddie lowered his gaze back to Kurian's body. "Very well, then. He shall come with us." A faint smile crossed his scarred face. "I am sorry... Kurian. It seems your body became the doorway for a weapon after all."
"Oh, Death..." His grip tightened around the hilt. "... become our blade once more."
With that, Freddie plunged the blade straight into Kurian's vessel. The moment the sword pierced the flesh, Kurian's Tacet Mark flared one final time.
A deep crimson radiance coursed through his body before it began to collapse inward as though every atom of the boy's existence were being vacuumed into the steel.
The sword drank it all. When the light finally receded, the riverbank was empty, and a newly formed Tacet Mark bled into the surface of the blade.
Freddie swung the sword in a clean arc, testing its new weight, before turning toward the two before him. "Now then... are you two gonna come at me? Or whistle Dixie?"
Swish.
Rover had already closed the distance, her scythe sweeping sideways toward Freddie's waist. He merely leapt over the arc, driving a brutal kick into her midsection to throw her off balance.
His sword followed immediately, only for Jiyan to intercept it with his fractured spear.
"Hmm..." Freddie mused, locking eyes with them. "Seven minutes."
"What?" Jiyan grunted under the pressure.
"Seven minutes," Freddie repeated calmly. "That is all I shall spare to play with the two of you."
With a slight exertion of strength, he forced both Rover and Jiyan backward as though they weighed nothing.
Jiyan thrust his spear again. This time, Freddie effortlessly stomped downward, pinning the shaft to the dirt. The spear halted instantly. In the next heartbeat, Freddie vanished.
His sword materialized at Jiyan's neck.
Rover intercepted the strike just in time, while the small white creature leapt forward, attempting to disrupt the blade's Tacet Mark.
Freddie gave them no such opportunity. Without hesitation, he shifted his weight toward Rover. She raised her scythe to block the incoming blow.
Clang.
Her knees buckled. A chill ran down her spine. Before she could even recover from the recoil, Freddie had already slipped past her guard.
Time itself seemed to slow. Still suspended by the force of the previous impact, Rover could only turn her head, watching helplessly as the blade descended toward her neck.
Clang!
Jiyan intercepted the strike. Even so, his own knees immediately gave out. Under nothing but Freddie's raw, oppressive strength, the General of Jinzhou was forced onto one knee. The edge of the blade bit into his neck, drawing a thin line of crimson.
No matter how fiercely Jiyan roared or how desperately he pushed back, Freddie remained immovable.
His strength was simply inhuman. That was the terrifying part—Freddie wielded no Resonance. He lacked a Forte, a Tacet Mark, or an elemental frequency. Yet his raw physical mass and kinetic efficiency eclipsed them both.
At that moment, it became painfully clear: when it came to sheer physical power, Freddie stood unrivaled in this world.
However, that wasn't all. Had it been raw strength alone, perhaps they might have found a way to overcome him. But what made Freddie truly terrifying was something else entirely. He possessed the very same mastery Kurian had displayed—only perfected.
Jiyan's eyes narrowed as realization dawned upon him. "His techniques..." he muttered beneath his breath. "They're identical to Kurian's."
No. They weren't merely identical. Every movement was cleaner, every transition flawlessly efficient. Every strike carried an economy of motion so refined that not a single breath was wasted.
It was as though Kurian's martial mastery had been honed over an entire second lifetime. And that realization chilled Jiyan far more than Freddie's monstrous strength ever could.
Exercising caution, Freddie engaged the two for five straight minutes. Every single exchange ended the same way: he was the undeniable victor.
Even the threat posed by the small, white Tacet anomaly accompanying Rover became entirely meaningless.
Freddie, however, refused to let the creature come anywhere near his blade, and even when it unleashed its volatile Resonance abilities, his reflexes were fundamentally faster.
Then came the decisive moment. Rover abruptly switched back to Spectro, attempting to halt the flow of time itself.
Freddie merely sneered.
"Your Resonance manipulates photons by collapsing them inward," he remarked with terrifying calm. "But the process still takes you roughly seven-hundredths of a second. Unless you can perform all of that at the speed of light itself, your Resonance Liberation will never catch me."
Before she could even react to his words, he stepped clean through her guard.
"So, your abilities are undeniably fast. They are impressive." His sword flashed. "Alas, you yourself are not."
Five sharp, metallic clangs rang out in the span of a single heartbeat.
He had not aimed to wound Rover. Instead, every precise strike landed squarely upon her own blade.
The repeated, heavy impacts rippled violently through the weapon and traveled straight into her arms, forcing them to buckle beneath the accumulated, crushing force.
It was not an attempt to draw blood. It was a flawless demonstration—a quiet, undeniable reminder of just how completely he ruled over the very weapon she held.
Gasping for breath, Rover rasped, "What about you, then? Aren't you the same?"
Freddie's grin widened.
"Why waste time entertaining such trivialities?" he asked, tilting his head ever so slightly. "If you have a problem with what I am... that is your burden to carry. Not mine."
With those words left hanging in the heavy air, Freddie effortlessly continued to dominate the engagement for the remaining two minutes.
When the seventh minute of the clash finally concluded, both Jiyan and Rover were left utterly exhausted, their breath coming in ragged, painful gasps.
Freddie calmly sheathed his sword. Raising a single hand in a gesture of dismissive finality, he offered, "You are free to go."
"We're not done!" Jiyan shouted, his voice strained as he forced his grip tighter around his weapon.
Freddie merely looked down at him, his gaze completely devoid of malice or excitement. "Wake up to reality, Jiyan."
"Until now, I have held the two of you at bay with a single hand. Three, if I count that little furball over there," he murmured, gesturing casually toward the small white creature. "For seven minutes, not a single one of your coordinated attacks has so much as grazed me."
"And yet... You still blindly believe you have a chance." A faint, mocking scoff escaped him. "Delusional."
"This war..."
"...is over."
The absolute instant those final words left his lips, Overthrax's volatile, lingering voice echoed violently throughout the entire space.
"NO... FINISH THEM!"
"You merely instigated this war," Freddie countered, his expression remaining entirely unchanged as he threw the Threnodian's command right back at it. "But I am the one who finished it."
"And it is the victor who decides what becomes of the defeated." His eyes narrowed as a low chortle escaped him.
The dark sound forced Overthrax to realize a bitter truth: it had never been the master of this domain, but merely a catalyst for the violence to begin.
"You desired a weapon. You found one. You desired victory through that weapon, and now you have it." A sharp, sardonic smile crept across Freddie's scarred face. "But it was the weapon that fought. Not you."
As the declaration echoed across the battlefield, the invisible, constricting threads binding Overthrax to Freddie's body gradually unraveled and snapped as the sword in Freddie's hand glowed slightly.
"You possess the authority to declare war," Freddie stated, gripping the hilt of his blade. "But you do not possess the authority to claim its aftermath."
"As the personification of conflict, your dominion ends the exact moment victory is decided." Freddie slowly unsheathed his sword once more, though this time, his focus was entirely removed from his opponents.
The blade's Tacet Mark flared up, as it hummed with resonance, and with a single, explosive, sweeping arc... he cleanly sliced through the fabric of space itself.
CRACK.
Reality itself fractured like brittle glass, opening a jagged void before them.
"As the victor..." Freddie declared, his voice carrying an unquestionable, terrifying weight of finality. "I choose to bestow mercy."
Before their eyes, his physical form began to fracture, dissolving into countless swirling motes of brilliant crimson light. His voice gradually faded into the wind along with them.
When the blinding crimson light vanished entirely, Rover and Jiyan suddenly found themselves standing on solid ground once more, right within the shadow of the colossal Crownless statue.
Around them, the physical space was violently fracturing and collapsing into nothingness. Without a second thought, the two gathered their remaining strength and escaped the crumbling rift.
And from that fateful day onward... Kurain, the man now known as Freddie, vanished from the face of Sol-III without leaving a single trace behind.
End of Volume 2: Veteran of War
To be continued...