Chapter 1243: Adamant Thunder Annihilation Campaign (34)
“Baa……!!!!”
Ethan Bajour.
His figure, faintly standing alone beyond the horizon of the ruined Outer Zone.
A man’s face, emotionless, quietly watching them as if he had existed there since ancient times.
The moment Lennok called his name, the dying superhumans also saw him simultaneously.
As if only after Lennok faced and recognized him, could others perceive his existence.
But no one had the luxury to feel any incongruity about that fact.
The Adamant Thunder Annihilation Campaign.
Immediately after realizing that their entire journey, where they had sacrificed legions to prevent the Ascension Ritual, was merely a stepping stone for Adamant Thunder himself.
Just before being consumed by an endless despair, facing the Level 9 lightning magic he had acquired.
There was only one emotion they could feel upon seeing the Marshal arrive at the battlefield in their final moments.
“The Marshal, has returned…….”
“Finally……!!”
Their efforts to risk their lives against Adamant Thunder, preventing the ritual and eroding the wizard, had not been in vain.
The resolve of soldiers ready to die for the Legion. The determination of superhumans who plunged into mortal danger to subdue Adamant Thunder.
If all their sacrifices were necessary to buy time for the Marshal of the Legion to arrive.
If they could leave meaning in their deaths.
“It wasn’t in vain…… it wasn’t, in vain…….”
Dying, gasping for breath, superhumans filled with emotion or regret.
As they moved towards the same end as the corpses collapsed beside them, they let go of their attachment to life.
Deimus, who had fallen in the shockwave, lifted his unfocused gaze and whispered weakly.
“Ethan…… sir…….”
“…….”
Through Deimus’s blurry eyes, Ethan’s figure was not clearly visible.
He could only tell that a shadow was swaying beyond the ruined horizon.
The moment he closed and opened his eyes, the shadow that had been standing far away was now before Deimus.
Whoosh!!
“…….”
No words were exchanged, but Deimus could feel Ethan’s close proximity.
Only then did Deimus weakly close his eyes.
“I’m sorry…… the Annihilation Campaign, failed……”
“…….”
Ethan said nothing.
Instead, he merely looked down at Deimus, his curly hair swaying slightly.
Deimus instinctively knew this was his last moment.
‘I see.’
There was no pain. This hinted at how much Deimus had pushed his body over time.
Was it a blessing or a curse for a soldier to feel death not as pain, but as peace?
Whichever it was, one thing was clear: Deimus was readily accepting this outcome.
‘I lasted longer…… than I thought.’
An intense battle that had continued without a single moment of rest since the Annihilation Campaign began.
Injuries and deterioration gradually accumulating in Deimus’s body through countless struggles.
Even the moment he used Gemstone Spellcraft at the cost of his lifespan to tie down Evelyn.
He had simply been lucky enough to cling to life. He knew the end was near.
Yet, perhaps Deimus had still been alive because he was waiting for this very moment.
Now, as the commander and person in charge of the Annihilation Campaign, to report the final outcome to the Marshal he served.
“I apologize. I will…… go first…….”
Deimus gasped, muttering.
“The Legion’s unification…… please, achieve it…….”
“Live.”
Deimus’s voice faltered for a moment.
Ethan looked down at Deimus with an expressionless gaze and spoke.
“You are a soldier. If the commander is alive, I can entrust you with controlling the Legion.”
“…….”
“I will reverse your death, here and now.”
“A soldier, you say…….”
A faint smile appeared on Deimus’s lips.
Ironically, at that moment, upon hearing those words, Deimus could make a decision.
Trembling from the rapidly encroaching cold, Deimus managed to voice his thoughts.
“For a soldier, there is no…… second chance…….”
“…….”
Did he know that those were words Peshia used to say constantly?
Leaving the silent Ethan, Deimus whispered.
“A commander…… always, responsible…….”
How many miserable failures had there been during the Annihilation Campaign, leading up to this point? How many times had they despaired?
How much despair had he felt upon realizing that all their desperate efforts, risked with their lives, were merely part of Adamant Thunder’s plan?
Perhaps the wizard had kept him alive all this time just to show Deimus this very moment.
Perhaps not killing Deimus with a mere glance was simply to let him know.
To make him realize what meaning all his failures would return as. To let him fully feel that responsibility.
Ultimately, the answer was unknown. Even if Deimus wanted to know, the wizard wouldn’t answer.
No, it was uncertain if Deimus truly wondered about it anymore.
Just the commander of the Legion, who had planned and led an Annihilation Campaign filled with nothing but failure.
As someone once said, Deimus’s fate was already sealed.
“From the beginning…… it should have been, like this…….”
If he had known that Adamant Thunder had no intention of genuinely fighting the Legion, would anything have changed?
Could he have convinced the Legion Commanders through that fact and changed their direction?
He didn’t know. In fact, now he didn’t even want to know.
Because agonizing over hopeless matters had only been torment since the Annihilation Campaign began.
His breathing grew shallow, and his voice became a whisper.
Deimus, slowly breathing, quietly murmured.
“To meet my subordinates……”
Whoosh!!!
When the wind blew and passed, Deimus was no longer there.
Ethan, looking at Deimus’s lifeless corpse, slowly stood up.
“Marshal-nim…….”
“You’ve, regained consciousness…….”
From all directions, dying soldiers slowly called out to him.
But Ethan did not look back at his slowly perishing subordinates or Robert Loveride.
He passed the corpses of Esteban and the Flame Pillar, the cardinal who had died with his lower body severed, and the fallen Mechanized Legion.
He merely slowly walked towards Lennok, who stood before Baragan in the center of the domain where dark blue lightning flickered.
“Ethan…….”
Baragan gritted his teeth and lifted his gaze to see his face.
“Ethan……!!!”
Seeing him not respond, Baragan uttered in a boiling voice.
“Why…… why did you only come now……!!”
“…….”
“Why……!! Song-ha, is already……!!!”
He could no longer see Song-ha’s face, but Baragan still knew.
Too much time had passed to revive Song-ha using sorcery.
It was too late for everything to be irreversible.
The swordsman called Deadrise’s greatest talent. His friend, who had been with Ethan for decades.
A commander who, despite the absence of the leadership, silently and devotedly served the Legion without a single complaint.
Song-ha had died without even seeing Ethan’s face in his final moments.
Bloody tears, mixed with rage, flowed from Baragan’s bloodshot eyes.
“To return to Vulcan……!!! Everyone……!!! For your desire……!!!!”
“…….”
“Why……!!!”
“Baragan.”
Lennok quietly called him.
“Don’t you understand yet?”
Crack……!!!
Lennok, his face shadowed by the dark blue lightning, lifted his head and asked.
“Who this Bajour standing before you now truly is. Or are you merely refusing to acknowledge what you already know?”
“……What?”
“The very fact that he appeared only after everything concluded reveals more clearly than anything who he is.”
The black-blue lightning in his hand rotated gracefully, flashing slowly.
Lennok raised it and slowly pointed at Ethan, saying.
“He came to confirm the moment the outcome was finalized. Because if he ‘returned’ before that, the outcome might change.”
“…….”
“Since he intends to reverse it anyway, death holds no emotion for him. Even pain and failure are just transient trials and errors.”
“…….”
“Isn’t it precisely because you tasted and wore down through all those failures and frustrations without reservation…… that you are still here?”
At this moment, providing the answer to a question that had long remained elusive.
Perhaps Lennok had known the answer from the start.
Who ‘he’ was. Why he had returned and stood before Lennok like this.
He knew, even though there were no scars or severed parts on Ethan’s neck, and he had already sensed it before meeting him.
Yet, confirming it at this final moment was because the project held such special meaning for Lennok as well.
The truth of the project he had pursued for half his life since awakening in this world.
The end of a project he once thought might be his own origin.
It was to deliver that end with his own hands.
“You knew that this moment would come someday.”
Lennok smiled, looking at the man who didn’t respond.
“Long time no see. Kaiser Bajour.”
“…….”
A quiet silence flowed.
Baragan weakly lowered his head, and Ethan lifted his gaze.
Ethan, looking up at Lennok with an emotionless face, did not deny those words.
He merely closed his eyes, as if hearing that name for the very first time.
“Kaiser, Bajour…….”
Ethan murmured with his eyes closed.
“It’s been so long…… since anyone called me that.”
“…….”
“I came all this way to abandon that name, but in the end, nothing has changed.”
Ethan murmured, taking quiet, noiseless steps.
In a horrifyingly cold silence, Lennok and Ethan’s gazes crossed simultaneously.
“You know me.”
Kaiser asked.
“No…… you know that I am a Regressor, don’t you?”
“Know you? That statement is a bit contradictory.”
Lennok smiled.
Lennok slowly turned his steps and said.
“The secret you desperately tried to conceal until the very end using The Prohibition. The alternative you found at the end of the Black Consumer Project’s failure.”
“…….”
“If you understand all of that…… isn’t it natural to arrive at the same conclusion?”
Kaiser didn’t remember Lennok, but Lennok remembered Kaiser.
The lingering afterimage of the past left in the Restricted Zone 25.
The Kaiser of the past, who had strived to save the world before everything changed.
His sacrifice, offered for Lennok in his final moments, still remained within Lennok.
That memory still moved Lennok this way.
The Black Consumer Project, which became incomprehensible the deeper he delved, and hollow the more he examined it.
It was none other than Kaiser Bajour himself who helped him confirm its conclusion.
Therefore, Lennok—
“I was waiting to resolve the delusion I had pursued for so long.”
Lennok slowly walked forward.
Passing Baragan, Lennok walked down the ruins, holding the lightning, and said.
“The secret of the project I had always wondered about since I awoke in this world…… your end as its designer…… even the failures left in this city.”
“…….”
“I’ve pursued that truth for a very long time.”
Lennok closed his eyes.
“Hoping that you would reach the next stage, even a little…… hoping that I could bring closure to that entire journey, I—”
Lennok, who had slowly opened his eyes, abruptly cut off his softly spoken words.
In suffocating silence, Lennok and Kaiser faced each other.
The deepest part of the Demonic Realm where the Annihilation Campaign had ended. A void filled only with ruins and corpses.
But what swelled within Lennok was neither emotion, fear, nor caution.
As if pushing away the pure curiosity welling within him, Lennok quietly asked.
“How does it feel, Kaiser?”
“…….”
“How does it feel…… to revive in this world by taking your son’s body?”
He said, looking at the emotionless face of Ethan standing before him.
“To snatch away the Revived’s Power he possessed, consuming even his fate and being reborn. How broken does one have to be to do such a thing?”
“…….”
He didn’t need to ask why Kaiser had committed such an act; he already knew.
The Talent for Reversing Heaven that Ethan Bajour possessed. The ability of a Revived who returned from death.
Therefore, what Lennok was curious about was not the reason Kaiser occupied Ethan’s body.
He only wanted to hear Kaiser’s feelings on this betrayal—a betrayal that Kaiser, the designer of the Black Consumer Project, hadn’t even initially considered.
His feelings after changing so much that he even took his son’s body.
“How does it feel…… to abandon everything you first resolved and become someone else?”
“Nothing.”
Kaiser lifted his gaze.
“No emotion at all. This, too, is a result reached after countless experiments long ago.”
“…….”
“While this is the first time I’ve succeeded in acquiring Ethan’s body in a complete state…… I have been attempting it for a long time.”
Slowly wiggling his fingers, Kaiser walked towards Lennok and looked at him.
In his eyes, only an endless, dark void was reflected.
“Did it matter what emotions I felt back then? Were they that important?”
“…….”
“The feelings and emotions of that time…… even this very moment, are merely fleeting.”
The Black Consumer Project was a plan centered around Kaiser Bajour’s Regression.
It was a process of thoroughly examining all failures in this world and finding the answer to move to the next.
But how utterly devastating and immense were the failures Kaiser encountered in that process?
Failing, and failing again and again, until finally failing.
If he ultimately became incapable of feeling any emotion even for all those failures.
If he came to believe that even this very moment was just another fleeting failure.
That was the conclusion of Kaiser Bajour, who stood before Lennok.
“I see…….”
Kaiser did not grieve the death of his comrades. Because he could just regress and revive them.
He didn’t care about the Legion’s ruin and collapse. Because he could just regress and revert it.
His subordinates who trusted and followed him, the soldiers who died for him. His friends and comrades who stood by him.
All were merely meaningless trials and errors to be reversed in a failed Regression.
But Lennok wasn’t surprised even after hearing this from him directly.
Because ever since he learned that Kaiser was a Regressor, he had continuously pondered the reason for his change.
He had thought about what differentiated the Kaiser of the past, who sacrificed his own possibilities for Lennok in the Restricted Zone, from the current Kaiser, who revived by taking Ethan’s body.
Only a bitter confirmation of what he had suspected remained there.
“You are the greatest variable that emerged while I paused my Regression to obtain Ethan’s body.”
Kaiser shifted his gaze with an emotionless face.
“Though born into this world, you are not of this world’s destiny…… a variable existing in a different dimension from Alkaid.”
“…….”
“Therefore, I will ask you one last time.”
Kaiser lifted his gaze and said.
“Can you hand over Jenny?”
“No.”
Lennok, who had been silent, replied.
“I refuse. Under no circumstances will I betray Jenny’s choice.”
“That child is the only lingering attachment holding Ethan in this world.”
Kaiser closed his eyes.
“With her by my side…… I can maintain this body in a complete state. I have no choice.”
“It’s not about how you intend to use Jenny, Kaiser.”
Lennok smiled.
“Kaiser. You said ‘just once’ because you knew that, didn’t you?”
“…….”
Kaiser never double-checked any problem he faced.
Once an answer was decided, he could just regress and change it.
Lennok realized that the Regressor’s nature was profoundly ingrained in every word and action of Kaiser.
“Let me be clear, right here.”
Lennok slowly lowered his hand and said.
“No matter how many times you regress, my answer will not change. No matter how many times you reverse it, my decision will not waver.”
“…….”
“Because unlike you, I am here to remain unchanged, as I was from the beginning.”
“No. That’s not quite right.”
Kaiser closed his eyes.
Slowly raising both hands, he brought them together as if in prayer and replied.
“Because I have abandoned and changed everything…… I am trying to achieve the one thing I first resolved.”
“…….”
“Though I no longer know if it was right or wrong—”
Because he couldn’t let everything he had sacrificed for it be in vain.
The failures Kaiser faced. The time he rewound. The memories and connections he lost as a result.
He was here to give meaning to everything that only Kaiser himself remembered, and was forgetting.
So—
“Even if I have to change everything else…… I must not hesitate.”
Whoosh!!!!
The Mana of Reversing Heaven, emanating from Kaiser, began to rotate, forming a massive circle.
Lennok, too, gripping the dark blue lightning, walked forward and bent the lightning to its limits.
The Adamant Thunder Annihilation Campaign.
The climax of a war that had massacred tens of thousands of superhumans and erased Vulcan’s Outer Zone.
The final clash as the leaders of both sides finally faced each other at its end.
Baragan, bleeding and staring blankly at the scene, muttered.
“Kaiser…….”
“Baragan. I regret the failure of the Annihilation Campaign.”
From within the overflowing radiance, Kaiser spoke without turning to Baragan.
“I will ensure this does not happen in the next timeline.”
“……That.”
The next timeline.
Baragan was not given enough time to properly chew on the meaning of those words.
The moment he realized Kaiser intended to use his ability right here.
Lennok and Kaiser simultaneously walked forward towards each other from the ends of the battlefield.
From within the storm of overflowing mana, Lennok chuckled, looking at Kaiser.
“So, you intended to solve it by force from the start.”
“Now that I’ve obtained Ethan’s body, that method is also available.”
Kaiser said.
“But that is not my way. Fighting was the role of my comrades.”
“No, to my eyes, it looks the same.”
Lennok scoffed.
“If you merely postpone the answer of this moment and ‘reverse’ it…… how is that different from overpowering it?”
“…….”
“Well, whatever. Kaiser. I wasn’t waiting for you to debate right and wrong.”
From within the overflowing radiance, Lennok plunged the black-blue lightning into the ground.
Lennok raised his hand, his dark blue eyes flashing, and faced Kaiser.
“Let’s bring closure. To this war—”
And, to Kaiser Bajour’s story.
Boom!!!!
The black-blue lightning exploded, spreading behind Lennok like wings dozens of meters wide.
The Mana of Reversing Heaven flickered like static, reversing counter-clockwise at Kaiser’s feet.
Transcending decades of time, transcending the success and failure of the Black Consumer Project.
The moment Lennok and Kaiser simultaneously reached out to each other.
Incantations of the same meaning but different forms flowed from both their mouths.
“Ideational Domain Manifestation.”
“Domain Deployment.”
Flash!!!!!!
Colorless ripples flowed like a tidal wave, covering spacetime.
The Root Mindscapes of the two Transcendants projected and altered reality, rewriting its laws.
The origin of the Responder, who changes the world, transforms the world, and ultimately constructs the world.
As consciousness accelerated to its limit, time seemed to slow to a standstill.
A deafening roar, like clock hands violently colliding and turning, enveloped the world.
Clatter!!!!!!
A branching point of regression, climbing back through time in infinite regret.
The apex of reversing heaven, defying the natural order of the sky, overturning the flow of time, and altering causality.
At this moment, as Kaiser Bajour’s Root Mindscape altered the world, rewriting and reversing its laws.
Just as the origin that allowed him to exist as a Regressor fiercely began to consume reality and unfold.
Rumble!!!!
However, immediately after beginning his incantation, Kaiser felt an intense sense of incongruity from Lennok.
After the two of them each deployed their Ideational Domain and Domain towards each other.
But Lennok’s Root Mindscape, which should have been present in this spacetime, was nowhere to be felt.
Lennok, who had even momentarily set aside the lightning of transcendence he obtained through the Annihilation Campaign, was forming hand signs with both hands to deploy his Domain.
From within the wizard who extended his hand towards him, what was felt instead was—
“Ideational Hierarchy Mental Image Actualization.”
Two voices called the incantation. But only one mind responded.
The will passed down by someone from the past, left in the Restricted Zone, transcended spacetime to reach this moment.
The moment Kaiser, realizing that fact from the other side of his intensely slowed consciousness, sharply lifted his gaze.
Lennok and Kaiser, transcending decades of time, simultaneously uttered the same words.
“Eternal Tribulation Severing Leaf.”