Chapter 86: The Hypocrite’s Blade

The miniature sun continued its agonizing descent upon the Golden Sun Realm, searing the sky as Saint Barnabas pushed his body past its limits, desperately trying to intercept the solar payload before it could slam into the main island hovering above the abyssal ocean.

Meanwhile, trapped deep within the dark ocean layer, Sen was surrounded.

Vile, one-eyed monsters bristling with glowing golden vines and thrashing wings of pure light-fire rained down upon him in a relentless tide. He had managed to force his Starless Edge to construct a small, fortified spatial cube around his body, sealing himself off from the immediate onslaught.

But it was a fleeting reprieve. Larger, heavier aberrants surged forward, slamming their massive limbs against the translucent barrier, cracking the edges of his sanctuary.

Sen looked down at the blade in his hands one last time.

He had no other choice left. Holding back meant certain death. Even if drawing upon the weapon’s true power meant losing what little remained of his memories, he had to face the swarm head-on.

He stood up straight, his gaze locking onto the frantic beasts hammering at the barrier. He channeled his intent into the sword, forcing the spatial framework to fracture around him.

The surrounding air rippled violently. Space itself cracked like brittle glass, shattering into dozens of razor-sharp, shimmering shards. The floating fragments of distorted reality swept inward, adhering to the length of Sen’s weapon until the Starless Edge was fully clad in jagged, hovering pieces of fractured space.

Sen closed his eyes for a single heartbeat. When he opened them, every trace of doubt was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp resolve: Kill or be killed.

Exhaling a quiet breath, he stepped through the spatial rift and emerged outside the cube, throwing himself directly into the waiting swarm.

---

Back to the present.

After the closure of the breach in District 12, silence fell over the scorched landscape. Inside the massive Graves flagship, the medical bay hummed with the high-pitched telemetry of life-support monitors.

Sen and Orson lay side-by-side on emergency stasis pods, both completely unconscious as a team of military doctors worked around the clock to stabilize their vital signs.

A young girl stood by the viewport, staring down at a small, worn photograph of her brother. Her thumb traced the edge of the glass before she let out a quiet, heavy sigh.

"Doctor... how is Sen?" she asked, her eyes never leaving the photograph.

The head physician didn’t dare look up from his diagnostic slate, his fingers flying across the glowing interface. "We aren’t sure yet, my lady. The brain scans show severe neural degradation from spatial trauma. We still don’t know just how many of his memories he has lost."

"I see..." The girl paused, her voice trembling slightly. "So what about my cousin, Orson?"

The doctor finally stopped typing, looking down at the floor as his expression darkened. "It is just as critical, my lady. To be completely blunt, I am shocked the man is still alive. Orson’s body is filled with severe burns, internal fractures, and violent external energy reflux. Sen has stabilized for the moment despite his bad injuries, but both of them urgently need a high-tier medical facility."

The girl slowed her pacing, another long sigh escaping her lips. "I am trying... but war frigates from District 5 are strictly prohibited from entering District 1 airspace. You’ll have to transport them down through a civilian medical route."

"We are already working on the transfer permits," the doctor replied softly.

The girl turned back to the pod, looking down at Sen’s quiet, pale face. Her hand pressed lightly against the reinforced glass.

"Sen... I hope you won’t forget me and Mom," she whispered.

High above the ruined zone, the Graves flagship turned its heavy thrusters, hovering away toward the main settlement and leaving the smoking hell of District 12 behind. Far below in the wasteland, massive astral creatures from beyond the settlement began to crawl across the barren earth, moving slowly toward the abandoned district boundaries.

---

Rain was still inside the Holo 1 government ship. Her left hand was missing, and raw burn marks stretched across her face. While her overall condition was no longer life-threatening, her severed hand was a completely different story.

She was locked in a deep, forced sleep state, oblivious to the buzzing medical equipment around her body in the physical world. Instead, Rain’s consciousness drifted inside her own astral soul.

She stood within a vast expanse of light and darkness. Millions of brilliant stars shone across the sky, while jagged streaks of purple lightning cracked through the void once in a while. But Rain’s eyes weren’t fixed on the stars or the lightning.

She was staring straight at her core and its massive tether.

The core was enormous—a burning sun resting at the absolute center of her soul world. Thick, vein-like structures writhed outward from its surface, coiling upward until they attached themselves to a colossal shadow visage that loomed over the realm.

Rain couldn’t even see the being’s entire body; only its upper half rose into the starry sky, while its lower half remained submerged beneath the floor of her inner world. The glowing veins connected directly into the shadowy giant’s chest and arms.

Before, that shadow had always been just that—a featureless, hollow visage. But now, faint strands of lightning were cracking continuously around the giant’s frame. It was subtle, but Rain could feel the aura pulsing all around her soul space.

Is this it? she thought. The next step to becoming a Lightning Saint?

Rain had been in this new world for a full year now, far longer than Orson, and she understood its rules and power structures much better than he did. She knew the signs required to breach the threshold into Sainthood.

But besides ascending her realm, there was one specific answer she desperately needed from this entity—an answer that would decide whether she could survive the Fourth Trial of Sainthood.

Rain took a breath and tried to sever her consciousness, attempting to pull herself out of her inner realm and wake up in the real world.

Nothing worked.

I guess I have no choice, she thought, locking her eyes on the towering entity ahead. I have to confront it now, or I’ll be stuck in here forever.

Rain stepped forward, walking slowly across the starlit void toward the colossal shadow visage.

Her steps were slow and heavy, the agonizing memories of the battle flashing violently across her mind. The fight against the Titan had been ugly, brutal, and surviving it had felt like anything but a victory.

She had lost an entire arm in the process—a small sacrifice for the greater good, or so she desperately tried to tell herself as she pushed forward through her inner world toward the colossal visage.

She kept walking, her feet moving across the starlit void, until she suddenly stopped. Her eyes widened slightly as she surveyed the shadow giant ahead. Despite walking for what felt like an eternity, why did it feel like she was still standing in the exact same place she had started?

Rain shook her head, gritting her teeth as she forced herself forward again.

Without warning, her knee buckled, and she slammed hard against the ground for no apparent reason. Gasping for air, she looked down. Resting right before her was the Saintess blade—the very weapon Orson had given her.

The blade began to bleed a pale, ghostly light, slowly shifting and expanding until it materialized into the figure of a woman. She was tall, clad in pristine white robes, with cold, piercing lightning glowing within her eyes.

Rain stared up in horror. She was looking directly at her past life—her former self when she was an Immortal—and the Immortal Rain stared right back down at Eclipser Rain.

"For the greater good," the Immortal murmured, her voice dripping with quiet disdain as she looked down at the fallen girl. "Really? For the greater good?"

The Immortal smiled a bitter, mocking smile. "I understand that your hand helped them... but what about the Silver Rain Guild? Were their deaths for the greater good as well? What about the countless people who died in the crossfire—were they for the greater good, too?"

The Immortal began to slowly circle around Rain, her white robes rustling like dry leaves. "Wow. The greater good. But whose ’good’ are you even thinking about? You failed to protect anyone because you and your so-called guild were simply too weak. And worst of all? That bastard Titan actually got out."

She paused, looking down at Rain with sheer contempt. "You are as much of a hypocrite as you are stubborn."

Rain gritted her teeth, pushing herself up slightly from the cold floor of her soul space. "Who are you? What do you want from me?"

"I guess what Orson said was true," the Immortal chuckled, her smile growing wider. "You risk the lives of innocent people for a fight you are entirely too weak to win. The people who chose to follow you died, and all you have to say to justify their rotting corpses is ’for the greater good.’ What good? Really? The only thing I see is you using people, and when they are of no further use, you try to paint their deaths like some tragic heaven’s choice.

I guess even in a brand new world like this, your mindset as an Immortal never changes. I mean... just like Grandma, right? Her death was for the greater good, too, wasn’t it?"

Crack!

Rain’s eyes snapped shut as raw, uncontrollable rage surged through her spirit. Dense, purple lightning exploded around her body as she launched herself off the ground, accelerating toward the ghost of her past with terrifying speed.

"Take that back!" Rain screamed, driving a lightning-coated fist straight toward the Immortal’s face.

The Immortal merely smiled. In a flash of movement, a sword forged from liquid starlight materialized directly in her hand. She whipped the blade around to parry.

BOOM—!

The weapons clashed with a deafening shockwave of light and lightning.

A split second later, Rain crashed violently back onto the starlit floor, coughing up a mouthful of blood as her knees slammed into the hard ground. Before she could recover, the cold, razor-sharp edge of the starlight sword pressed directly against the flesh of her throat.