Chapter 115: This Blade Is Called Final Edict!

The words carved into the steel were still hot.

[Take Back the Wastes, Reclaim Our Land]

They had set the entire camp ablaze.

Cheers rolled up from below like a tidal wave, loud enough to shake the ruined television tower beneath Joren’s feet.

He stood at the edge of the summit while the wind tore through his hair and snapped his black coat behind him.

Three thousand soldiers were shouting until their voices broke. Some laughed. Some cried. Faces twisted with an intensity they no longer bothered to hide.

Joren watched them in silence.

Strangely calm.

Almost cold.

His eyes drifted to the blade in his hand, then beyond it to the land stretching beneath the tower.

Earlier, while crossing the sky with [Supersonic Cruise], he had been moving so fast that the world below became little more than stretched lines.

But [Worldheart Awareness] had still caught certain things.

Images that refused to leave.

A collapsed kindergarten.

Small schoolbags buried beneath the ruins, faded and brittle after a century of wind and rain.

White beast bones scattered beside them.

Filth everywhere.

A commercial street that must once have been crowded with lights and people had become a nursery for mutated rats. Expensive display windows were packed with rotting flesh.

Skyscrapers that once stood as monuments to human civilization had been strangled by enormous vines until their frames buckled, reduced to things beasts rubbed their teeth against.

This had once been home.

Human home.

A place with air conditioning, WiFi, ice cold cola.

Classrooms filled with children reading aloud.

Fountains.

Music.

When Joren first entered the Fallen Zone, he had come for Bloodstars.

Nothing more.

Yet after everything he had seen, something in him had shifted without his noticing.

Now, standing above this reclaimed land, a feeling rose from somewhere deep in his bones.

Disgust.

Pure, absolute disgust.

"Fucking revolting."

The words left him quietly.

That was what these creatures had become in his eyes.

Like coming home, opening the door, and finding cockroaches crawling across every wall while rat droppings covered the dinner table.

The first impulse was not fear.

It was not justice.

You simply wanted every filthy thing crushed under your boot and washed down the drain.

All life was precious?

Ecological balance?

Fuck that.

Joren’s fingers tightened around the hilt one by one.

This planet did not need countless voices competing for the right to exist.

One was enough.

One upright species was enough.

Humanity needed room to survive.

To grow.

To spread.

Then anything that bared its teeth at humans, anything that fed on humans, anything that stood in the way...

Could die.

There was nothing noble about it.

No grand doctrine of racial destiny.

Just the oldest law there was.

Survive.

Why tolerate something beside your bed when it spent every moment waiting for a chance to tear into your flesh and drink your blood?

Coexistence?

What a joke.

Buzz!

[Heaven’s Sin] suddenly rang in his hand.

Not the familiar hum Joren had heard in battle.

Something deeper.

The S Class heavy blade had always been steady as a mountain.

Now it trembled.

Not from fear.

From exhilaration.

It had felt the change in the will of the person holding it.

Deep within Joren’s eyes, the darkness began to turn.

Slowly at first.

Then faster.

Until his pupils seemed like two black holes swallowing the light around them.

He stood there with one hand on [Heaven’s Sin], motionless enough to resemble a statue.

His breathing slowed.

Each breath longer than the last.

Then something broke inside him.

Not painfully.

It felt more like a wall giving way.

Like someone who had spent years running through a dark maze suddenly punching through the stone and seeing an endless plain outside.

Until now, killing had always been a means to become stronger.

Joren had never pretended otherwise.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had always seen himself as a player fighting to survive, taking every advantage the world offered.

Then he carved [Take Back the Wastes, Reclaim Our Land] into that steel plate.

And something changed.

Those words were no longer just a slogan.

They gave him a clarity he had never possessed before.

"So that is what it is."

Joren closed his eyes.

His breathing became deep and steady.

Before this moment, he had been like an unsheathed weapon.

Sharp.

Violent.

Made only to drink blood.

Now that weapon had found its sheath.

And someone had finally taken hold of the hilt.

A blade was not only meant to kill.

It could decide what rules remained standing in a broken age.

Inside Joren’s sea of consciousness, Blade Intent rose like a storm tide.

Under the terrifying comprehension granted by [Peerless Blade Saint], everything he had ever learned began to break apart.

Bladecraft.

Combat Arts.

Battle experience.

Every kill.

Every lesson.

All of it was dismantled.

What was useless fell away.

What remained converged.

Countless paths narrowing into one.

His awareness seemed to leave the present behind and drift into a place before heaven and earth had taken form.

Nothing existed there.

Only darkness.

Joren floated within it.

There was no blade in his hand.

There did not need to be.

He himself had become the blade.

His right hand slowly rose and closed around empty space.

Nothing appeared between his fingers.

Yet within his mind, something immense was taking shape.

A blade vast enough to pierce heaven and earth.

Not forged from protective force.

Not shaped from Mental Force.

Forged from will.

"I have one blade."

Joren’s voice rolled through his sea of consciousness.

The surrounding darkness cracked.

"It can bring order to a chaotic world."

Boom!

Back in reality, the clear sky above the television tower darkened without warning.

No clouds had appeared.

There was only Intent.

Something vast enough to press down on the entire camp.

It was not aimed at anyone below, yet the celebration stopped almost instantly.

Three thousand soldiers fell quiet and looked up.

Alar raised his head.

At the summit of the tower, Joren had not moved.

The space around him had.

It twisted violently.

Collapsed.

Thin black fractures appeared and vanished beside him, winding through the air like living serpents.

Even from hundreds of meters away, everyone below felt the same impossible sensation.

If Joren moved the hand gripping his blade by even an inch, the world around him might shatter like glass.

Then [Heaven’s Sin] began to cry.

The S Class heavy blade trembled so hard that its surface blurred.

Hairline fractures appeared across the black metal.

The weapon itself seemed unable to bear the force building inside its master.

Joren opened his eyes.

His pupils were gone.

Only bottomless emptiness remained.

Within his left eye unfolded an Asura hell.

Mountains of corpses.

Seas of blood.

Within his right were mountains, rivers, cities, lights shining from ordinary homes.

Slaughter and protection.

Destruction and rebirth.

Two forces that should have opposed each other.

Now they rested on the same edge.

Perfectly balanced.

"I was given another life."

"I was given a blade."

Joren tightened his grip around [Heaven’s Sin].

Crack.

Finger marks sank into the S Class alloy hilt.

"So I will not become a butcher who knows nothing except killing."

"Nor will I become some saint who mourns for everything under heaven."

His voice stayed low.

"I will rule this world."

"I will be the tyrant this age needs."

Buzz!

The last obstruction inside his mind vanished.

Blade Intent erupted from Joren.

No thunderous blast.

No dazzling light.

Only a silent ripple spreading outward from him.

Across ten miles in an instant.

One thought arose.

Everything fell still.

"This Bladecraft bows to no god."

"It fears no demon."

"It follows only my own will."

"And it cuts down whatever stands in its way."

Joren lowered his gaze to the blade in his hand.

Inside his mind, a completely new Bladecraft was taking shape at terrifying speed.

Not inherited.

Not learned.

His alone.

"This blade is called..."

"Final Edict."