Chapter 377: The Truth of Trial

Chapter 377: Chapter 377: The Truth of Trial

Chapter 377: The Truth of Trial

The entire battlefield immediately halted.

Everyone stared at the kneeling Skarn.

Seeing their invincible chieftain brought to his knees and held at blade-point, the remaining Bone Skull warriors froze.

The morale of the savage horde instantly shattered.

The clattering of weapons hitting the ground echoed through the gorge as they surrendered, dropping to their knees in despair.

The Crystalveil warriors erupted into deafening cheers. They had won!

Skarn knelt on the ground, blood dripping from his temple. He looked up at Fridleif, and then at Rhain.

"I didn’t expect to lose..." Skarn muttered bitterly, a self-deprecating laugh escaping his lips. "After all the preparations... after gathering every last warrior of my tribe, and ascending to the Domain Master Realm....I was still defeated. I never imagined you would hide your breakthrough so perfectly, Fridleif."

Even the Crystalveil warriors stared at their chieftain with dumbfounded eyes. They had trained day and night for a month and had never once sensed that their chieftain had already stepped into the Domain Master Realm.

Fridleif looked at Skarn, then turned his gaze respectfully toward Rhain.

"I hid nothing. I only broke through a few days ago," Fridleif spoke with profound reverence. "It is all thanks to the benefactor’s guidance. Without him, my Crystalveil Tribe would have been slaughtered today."

All the Crystalveil tribesmen, hearing this, stared at Rhain in sheer awe.

It was this youth... who had created a Domain Master in one month?

And it was also this youth... who had single-handedly turned the tide of this war with nothing but his bare hands?

Skarn was stunned for a moment, he stared blankly at Rhain for a long moment.

Then, the kneeling giant threw his head back and burst into a wild, maniacal fit of laughter.

"HAHAHAHA! Of course! Of course!" Skarn laughed, it echoed across the silent battlefield, filled with a strange bitterness that made one’s heart tremble, "I just don’t understand... I truly don’t understand! Why? Why do the gods always favor your Crystalveil Tribe?! Why do the heavens keep sending miracles to save you, while they want my Bone Skull Tribe to rot and perish?!"

"Enough of your nonsense!"

Lyra’s sharp, furious voice rang out. She strode forward, her blazing eyes fixed upon the Skarn with utter contempt.

"You want to know why? Because you are monsters!" Lyra snapped fiercely, pointing her rapier at the kneeling giant. "You are bloodthirsty barbarians who want to slaughter an innocent tribe, steal their homes, and enslave their women and children for no reason! Scum like you deserve to be eradicated by the heavens!"

Skarn’s laughter abruptly ceased.

He slowly turned his head, glaring at Lyra with an expression so filled with agonizing hatred and sorrow that it made her flinch.

"Monsters?" Skarn whispered, his voice started to tremble with a venomous grief. "BARBARIC?"

He spat a mouthful of bloody phlegm at Fridleif’s boots.

"If we are monsters... then what do you call the men who stood behind their high walls and watched our young children die, screaming as the agony of a thousand invisible blades were tearing their flesh apart from the inside out?!"

Skarn’s voice rose into a heart-wrenching roar. "What do you call the ’innocent’ saints who held the only cure in their hands and watched us bury our babies, refusing to give us a single drop?!"

"What...?" Lyra’s furious expression froze. "What are you talking about?""

Beside her, Fridleif’s face turned incredibly ugly. He averted his eyes, entirely unable to meet Skarn’s bloodshot gaze.

Rhain, who had been observing the exchange quietly, saw the guilt flash across the Crystalveil Chieftain’s face.

’This is it,’ Rhain realized instantly, his dark grey eyes narrowing into sharp slits. ’This is the true core of the trial.’

"What is he talking about, chief Fridleif?!" Lyra demanded, turning her shocked eyes toward the Chieftain. "Tell me!"

Skarn let out a hollow, bitter laugh before Fridleif could even open his mouth.

"He didn’t tell you, did he? The great, honorable Crystalveil Chieftain!" Skarn sneered venomously. "Five hundred years ago, a catastrophic disease swept through these canyons. The Marrow-Rot Plague. It infects a pain so excruciating it feels like thousands of blades are tearing their flesh apart until they slowly die a painful death."

Skarn glared at Fridleif.

"The only cure... the only thing that suppresses the Plague and saves our people... was the Spring of Life. And that spring was located right here in the Crystalveil Valley."

The surviving Bone Skull warriors standing in the gorge began to weep, dropping to their knees.

"My son died screaming in my arms last year!" a hulking, blood-soaked warrior sobbed.

"My little sister. Two of my cousins." Another warrior slammed his bone club into the ground. "We just want to save our children. How does it make us barbaric?"

Skarn heard the cries of his tribesmen, and his own eyes turned red. He pointed a trembling finger at the Crystalveil tribesmen, who were collectively lowering their heads in silence.

"Crystalveil Tribesmen used the Spring of Life to save their own people. They drank and bathed in it, and survived. But when our Bone Skull ancestors crawled to the gates of this valley on their hands and knees, and begged the Crystalveil Tribe for the Spring of Life, to save our dying children, they refused! THEY REFUSED!"

"Back then, the Crystalveil Tribe was far stronger than us. When our ancestors tried to fight for the water to save our dying children, they were crushed like insects!"

Skarn bared his teeth, looking like a desperate, cornered beast.

"Even today, our children still die from the Plague! SO TELL ME!" Skarn roared at Lyra. "IF YOUR CHILDREN WERE DYING IN AGONY, AND THE CURE WAS HOARDED BY THESE MEN... WOULD YOU NOT BECOME A MONSTER TO SAVE THEM?!"

Lyra stood completely paralyzed.

She turned her horrified, disbelieving gaze toward Fridleif. Karsten and the mercenaries were equally dumbfounded.

"Chief Fridleif..." Karsten asked, his voice shaking. "Is... is what he says true?"

Crystalveil Chieftain visibly trembled. The heavy saber at Skarn’s throat wavered.

Slowly, Fridleif bowed his head.

"It’s true," Fridleif admitted in a low voice.

"You lied to us!" Lyra shrieked, feeling a sense of betrayal.

"I didn’t lie about what they are now!" Fridleif suddenly roared back, his own eyes filling with defensive desperation. He looked at Rhain and Lyra with pleading eyes.

"Benefactors, please! That was five hundred years ago! It was the fault of our ancestors! Is it justice to punish my generation for the sins of men who died centuries ago?!"

Fridleif pointed a trembling finger at Skarn.

"For the last ten years, because their strength finally matched ours, they have been butchering us! They ambush our hunting parties! They slaughter our men, they kidnap our women, and they don’t even spare our children! How is it our fault what our ancestors did in the past?!"

"Because you still hoard the water, you hypocrite!" Skarn mocked viciously from his knees. "If you had just opened the gates and shared the Spring of Life, this war wouldn’t have happened in the first place!"

"WE CANNOT SHARE IT!" Fridleif bellowed, his peak aura erupting wildly with fury. "You know exactly why, Skarn! The Spring of Life is drying up! It has been diminishing for last century! What little remains barely sustains our own bloodline against the remnants of the plague that still lingers in our people too!"

Fridleif’s chest heaved as he stared down at his enemy.

"If I give the water to the Bone Skull Tribe... Should I let my own daughters and sons die so that yours can live?!"

Fridleif looked wildly between Rhain and Lyra.

"As the Chieftain, it is my sacred duty to protect my own people first! I cannot sacrifice my tribe for theirs!"

The gorge fell into an eerie silence.

Lyra, Karsten, and the mercenaries looked at each other, their faces plastered with same helpless look, and then instinctively, they all turned to look at one person.

Rhain.

Rhain stood between the two kneeling leaders, his dark grey eyes solemn, his expression unreadable.

Who was at fault here?

The Crystalveil Tribe, who had refused the Spring of Life to the Bone Skull Tribe five hundred years ago and caused their children to die in agony — and who even now refused to share the last of the dwindling spring, choosing their own survival?

Or the Bone Skull Tribe, who had oppressed, killed, and butchered the innocent men, women, and children of the Crystalveil Tribe for the last decade — children who bore no fault for what their ancestors did centuries ago?

In his mind, the remnant soul’s words echoed once more.

"For this trial, there is no strict ultimatum or quota. You are entirely free to do whatever you deem right."

The trial was to do what he deemed right.

So what... was the right here?

But the sinners were once innocent.

The innocent had once sinned.

Who should he choose?

Even Rhain did not know.