Chapter 1317: The Grand General’s Mausoleum (15)
The central city of Ars Nova was destroyed, and the Emperor became an Outer God, leaving this world.
It was clear that the Empire’s self-inflicted demise, triggered by the failure of the project, was far more twisted than known.
The dazzling golden Empire. The central city that sought unending glory was no more.
All that remained was a faded vestige of its past glory, corrupted by drawing on the power of the Outer Sea, then abandoned.
Therefore, the Grand General, who remained loyal to the Emperor even in death, would certainly not be a benevolent entity.
Lennok had assumed that even if the Grand General knew of his existence, he would be more inclined to be hostile—
—but the Grand General’s reaction was far beyond Lennok’s expectations.
“Speak, my lord.”
The Grand General, standing still before Lennok, spoke in a low voice.
“This General is prepared to answer your questions.”
“…”
What could be the reason for an Ascendant, loyal only to the Emperor, to show Lennok such deference?
The reason he recognized Lennok immediately upon awakening, called him an old acquaintance, and helped him massacre the cult.
But Lennok, even vaguely sensing the reason, couldn’t easily pose the question.
Did the Grand General know who Lennok was?
Or did he know ‘what’ Lennok had been?
The Demise of Fate. The Fate of Demise.
If the Grand General of Brilliance knew the secret that Lennok had only managed to obtain after going all the way to Kundara.
If the Ascendant of the Imperial Palace remembered that name, which still felt like a mere wordplay.
“You knew about me from the beginning.”
Lennok raised his gaze.
“Which version of me… do you remember?”
“There were countless Seekers who either cooperated with or opposed the Imperial Palace during the flow of the Third World.”
The Grand General replied silently.
“This General, along with all the other Grand Generals, watched many Prescient ones by His Majesty’s side… but none of us could ever forget you, my lord.”
“…”
“You have changed greatly. As you always have.”
Beyond his unbound black hair, a handsome face, filled with a hollow sentiment, looked down at Lennok.
“And so, do you still wish to rewind fate to reach an answer?”
“…”
The Grand General, still loyal to the Emperor who had become an Outer God.
He was clearly an Ascendant whose intentions did not align with Lennok’s, indeed, a being who fundamentally could not stand on the same side.
Nevertheless, the Grand General naturally showed deference to Lennok, speaking to him as if he were an old acquaintance.
As if he had known Lennok from a long time ago, as if standing on opposing sides meant absolutely nothing.
That incomprehensible attitude and reaction made Lennok hesitate to ask hasty questions.
If he didn’t want to waste this moment, now that the Grand General of Brilliance, forgetting even his own madness, was speaking to Lennok—
“W-what are you all talking about? Right now…”
Aileen stammered, her face pale.
Her frozen gaze couldn’t leave Lennok for even a moment.
“You… were involved with the Imperial Palace?”
“…”
“No, that can’t be… a powerful Ascendant, strong enough for the Grand General to remember, couldn’t possibly have survived that destruction—”
Lennok couldn’t answer Aileen’s words, which immediately refuted her own question.
The moment she saw his expression, Aileen’s words also cut off abruptly.
Whoosh…!!!
An emptiness and silence so profound it hurt the ears.
Unbelievable that a desperate chaotic battle had raged just moments ago, centered around this tomb chamber.
Only the echoes of the Outer Sea’s landscape remained, reverberating across the Demonic Realm’s sky, letting out strange whistling winds in this place.
Aileen called Lennok in a voice so faint it seemed about to break.
“Martinez…?”
“Let’s move.”
Lennok turned his head.
“It hasn’t even been ten minutes since the Sacrificial Ritual stopped. If we stay here, its aftereffects will spread through the tomb chamber and start affecting all of us again.”
“…”
“If you were truly the master of this Mausoleum, you would know a suitable place.”
Lennok raised his gaze.
“Lead the way. I want an explanation.”
“As my lord wishes, it shall be done.”
The Grand General said calmly, standing still.
“However, it is surprising that you do not remember. In this General’s eyes, my lord, you have not changed at all.”
“…”
“Even that lingering attachment, which makes you seem indifferent to all things, yet unable to abandon even the smallest meaning, remains the same.”
The Grand General calmly asked the silent Lennok.
“Did not my lord, at some point, personally teach this General that meaning?”
Lennok did not reply.
Instead, he merely looked at the Grand General with a hazy expression, lost in thought.
The Grand General, watching him, slowly turned and walked across the collapsing tomb chamber.
“As one who serves His Majesty the Emperor, I should not speak with the Demise of a world that defies fate… but—”
“…”
“—now that the Empire has fallen and His Majesty has departed, many things seem to have lost their meaning.”
Clank!!
The Grand General, picking up the Satellite Shredder that was slanted into the ground, turned his gaze.
“Follow me, my lord. I shall guide you to the very end of this Demonic Realm.”
The Grand General’s Mausoleum, located in the deepest part of the Four Archangel Demonic Mirrors.
A vast canyon, stained and polluted by the corrupted jungle.
Lennok sat by the overgrown lakeside, quietly lost in thought.
Splash, splash…
A putrid lake, stagnant and festering, polluted by the Demonic Realm’s environment.
The Grand General of Brilliance, walking without hesitation towards its center.
He immersed himself in the corrosive lake, still clad in his tarnished golden armor.
Moving his armored body through the water as if performing a purification ritual before a ceremony.
After the Sacrificial Ritual had stopped and the cult’s forces were annihilated. Now, having escaped the collapsing Mausoleum and returned to the surface.
Lennok watched the Grand General of Brilliance’s corpse floating in the water at the center of the lake.
Thump!
Aileen sat down next to Lennok, who was lost in thought, placing her gunblade beside her.
“I looked around the vicinity, and all the flora and fauna in the Demonic Realm are dead. Most of the Dead Flowers that grew around the Mausoleum have withered, with almost none surviving.”
Aileen spoke without waiting for Lennok’s reply.
“As the Grand General of Brilliance himself awakened, the supply of True Blood was cut off, and the Demonic Realm is dying. At this rate, the entire Four Archangel Demonic Mirrors might soon perish.”
“…”
The conspiracies of the Order Alliance and the Guido Cult, revolving around the Grand General’s corpse.
The plan of the Yaksha, who sought to descend the Outer God’s True Body and unleash hell upon the mortal realm, and the Priestess, who aimed to make the Grand General’s corpse into an Apostle.
To that end, they even formed an unprecedented agreement, leading the plan to the brink of success.
This was likely possible because the existence of the Yaksha and the Priestess was extremely heretical even within both the Alliance and the Cult.
For, while belonging to the leadership of the Alliance and the Cult, they fundamentally did not adhere to the organizations’ values.
That’s why they might have been able to intervene at an unexpected moment and twist the situation.
However, the existence of the Grand General himself was even more anomalous than all those plans.
“Grand General… he wasn’t wielding his power to clear out the cult’s forces from the Mausoleum.”
Aileen said, looking at the lake with a complex expression.
“If he intended to deal with the cult, there was no need to use such immense power. Rather, it seems he was trying to directly destroy the Mausoleum’s facilities themselves…”
“…”
“What on earth is he trying to do in this Demonic Realm…?”
“…I wonder.”
Lennok slowly rose from his seat.
“It’s clear that the Grand General, loyal to the Emperor, is fundamentally not on our side. Yet, despite that, he seems to want something from me.”
“…”
“Whether he thought there was a reason to help me despite deeming me an enemy of the Imperial Palace, or if he believed such distinctions were meaningless to begin with… I don’t know.”
Lennok turned his gaze to the Grand General, who was walking out from the polluted lake.
“It seems he’s finally ready too.”
His massive physique emerged from the water onto the land, his wet black hair hanging loose, as if nothing had happened.
The Grand General, water dripping from his armor, stood before Lennok and looked down at him with an empty gaze.
“The lake’s water quality seems incredibly terrible; you truly managed to immerse yourself in it.”
Lennok looked at the Grand General’s physical body with an expressionless face.
“Is it because you’re already a dead corpse, unaffected by the Demonic Realm’s corruption or pollution?”
“It was not a purification ritual performed due to a special ceremony or procedure.”
The Grand General said calmly.
“This General had to move personally to manipulate the sealing device located beneath the lake.”
“…A sealing device?”
Clank!!
At that moment, the sound of an enormous gear rotating echoed from beneath the stagnant, putrid lake.
A tearing sound, as if the ground and machinery beneath the Demonic Realm were intricately rotating, interlocking, and then dismantling.
Simultaneously, the ground slowly began to shake, and the water accumulated in the lake started to drain away.
Rumble!!!
The lake water rotated counter-clockwise, like water draining through a plughole, and its level began to drop.
As a result, the ground around the lakeside heaved, and the earth beneath their feet instantly became muddy.
But the Grand General, without looking back at the churning lake, immediately continued walking.
“Each facility of the Central Mausoleum is designed to be organically connected and circulate. It was His Majesty’s will, arranged so that the souls of the dead could perish without wandering.”
“…”
“This means that if a few core components that circulate throughout the Mausoleum are tampered with, it can easily be broken.”
The Grand General, striding ahead through the polluted forest, said calmly.
“It can be said that this is a necessary procedure to completely bring down this colossal Imperial National Mausoleum.”
“…That.”
At that moment, Lennok unconsciously exchanged glances with Aileen, who was walking beside him.
The utterly brutal massacre that the Grand General of Brilliance had unleashed immediately upon awakening.
It was because they had vaguely suspected that his actions against the cult’s forces were, in fact, aimed at destroying the Mausoleum buried underground.
If so, then, as expected—
“Grand General. Were you planning to destroy the Four Archangel Demonic Mirrors yourself from the very beginning?”
“In life, this General could have done far more with ease, but this General’s causality seems to forbid any greater miracles.”
The Grand General said calmly, without looking back.
“A vessel that has served its purpose. A tool that has lost its utility. For a defeated general who could not even witness the Empire’s end, that is all the meaning that remains.”
“…”
“However, even if this fate is merely that of a broken toy… there is still something this General can do.”
Having said that, the Grand General slowly stepped further into the Demonic Realm.
“It seems I can spare enough time to assist my lord one last time.”
As he stepped into the polluted jungle, it felt as though the entire Demonic Realm was splitting in two.
Even as it died in real-time, the corrupted forest sensed the Grand General’s presence and bowed its head.
Whoosh!!!!
Shriveled black petals settled along the horizon. Trees and vines, from which corpses hung, withered and died.
The polluted thicket turned into gray ash and scattered, revealing the human corpses buried beneath.
The hell that had grown by feeding on the death buried around the tomb gradually lost its power.
Each time, the entire Demonic Realm shook and vibrated as if it would collapse at any moment.
RUUUUMBLE!!!!!
“…”
“Ah…”
An immense sensation, as if the entire jungle stretching to the horizon was heaving and collapsing.
Would this be the final landscape of a world where everything was ending, as it approached its demise?
Beyond the hazy sky, shrouded in a mist of blossoms, a faint twilight shimmered.
CRACKLE…!!!!
The river that had once flowed through and overflowed the entire Demonic Realm now dried up, revealing its bottom.
At the uppermost reaches, white powder and fragments, presumed to be human remains, were piled in abundance.
At the end of that dried riverbed, a magnificent temple, comparable in size to the Mausoleum, stood erected.
“That’s…”
A colossal black temple, its form completely hidden beneath tens of meters of river depth.
Untarnished by time or the river’s flow, its appearance was pristine, utterly devoid of any decoration.
“It’s a tomb where the Mausoleum’s burial items are interred.”
Aileen muttered with a stiff expression.
“Where the armaments and heritage of the meritorious subjects loyal to the Empire are kept… I never imagined it would still be here, how…”
“…”
WHOOOOSH!!!!
The moment they entered the blackened temple, mountains of treasures, gold, silver, and armaments unfolded before them in every direction.
Beneath walls adorned with magnificent banners and flags, armaments and cold weapons, imbued with mysterious light, hung in rows.
On shelves set up in various places, vials and test tubes filled with blue True Blood were meticulously stored.
Imperial gold coins and relics, emitting dazzling light, were piled like mountains, kicking at their feet with every step.
Top-grade spiritual herbs and catalysts, still vibrant even within the corrupted Mausoleum.
Ceremonial robes crafted from the processed fur or hide of True Bloodline beings. Beautiful ornaments made from horns or feathers.
All sorts of treasures and divine objects that had not lost any of their prestige or power despite the corruption of the Four Archangel Demonic Mirrors.
The Empire’s legacy, which all explorers attempting to conquer the Demonic Realm had so desperately sought, was gathered here.
“There was another reason no one found this place during their expeditions.”
Lennok walked deeper into the magnificent temple, turning his gaze.
“Even further back than the Mausoleum in the Demonic Realm… a temple this enormous was built beneath the river’s upstream?”
Lennok’s gaze, idly scanning the surroundings, stopped on a banner hanging on one of the walls.
Beneath the splendid banners, Imperial armaments, radiating auspicious glow, were displayed in rows.
Among them, a red-glowing vambrace emanated a particularly unusual aura.
The moment Lennok unthinkingly stopped his gaze before it, the Grand General turned without hesitation.
Clank!!
“Approach, my lord.”
The Grand General, lifting the vambrace from the wall, said quietly.
“Before everything here vanishes, I wish to leave you with what you desire.”
“…”
The Grand General, raising a pale, bloodless hand, slowly placed it beneath Lennok’s left arm.
Clank!!
Simultaneously removing the Array Device with its broken pipe from Lennok’s left arm, he placed the vambrace there.
At the same time, the red vambrace emitted a dazzling light, coiling around Lennok’s arm and beginning to change its form.
Fwoosh!!!
A peculiar sensation, as if overflowing flames were coiling around his arm, constantly shifting their form.
“When this General carried out the Unification War by His Majesty’s command, I defeated many Ascendants across the continent and seized their armaments.”
The Grand General said calmly, fastening the vambrace onto Lennok’s left arm.
“This vambrace is the armament of an Ascendant known as the Flame Emperor of the West, and he was the most formidable opponent this General ever faced.”
“…”
“He was a Primitive Magic user who wielded the flames of the mythical era… a being who gained primeval mysteries and deviated from the laws of thermodynamics.”
The Grand General’s empty eyes, looking at the overflowing flames, regained their focus as if recalling an old memory.
“If my lord wishes to wield flames, this may be of assistance.”
“This is…”
WHOOOOSH!!
Overflowing flames surged up his forearm like an exhaust vent, constantly breathing.
Simultaneously, the flames transformed along Lennok’s forearm into the shape of a sleek wrist guard.
Immediately after, the intense heat raging within Lennok’s body began to stabilize as if by magic.
The existence of an artifact that, in place of the Array Device, managed the rising body temperature caused by excessive use of Flame-Heat Magic.
At that moment, Lennok looked up at the Ascendant with a complex expression, overwhelmed by the ineffable sensation.
“The Flame Emperor was the chancellor of the Nation of Heat, which this General last conquered during the Unification War.”
The Grand General said calmly, observing his appearance.
“This General succumbed to death due to injuries sustained in that decisive battle, yet left no regrets. That was because…”
The Grand General of Brilliance, his eyes closed amidst his disheveled black hair, spoke in a low voice.
“…Because I knew that only fighting for what one believes in this world could hold meaning.”
“Grand General.”
“My lord, at some point, you taught this General that from the side of the Imperial Palace.”
The Grand General murmured.
“At some point, my lord abandoned the Imperial Palace, leaving that behind.”
“…”
“In the end, His Majesty could not achieve his will, and ultimately, everything went wrong… but—”
THUD!!!
As the Grand General staggered to his feet, the entire temple shook violently.
As if, with the handing over of the Mausoleum’s burial items to Lennok as its final act, the entire Demonic Realm was collapsing.
The Grand General, looking down at his physical body that continuously swayed and flickered precariously along with the Four Archangel Demonic Mirrors, spoke.
“Nevertheless, I am glad that I could convey this, even in such a way.”
“Convey…?”
“Now that you have reached the very end of the Four Archangel Demonic Mirrors, there should still be time.”
The Grand General, turning to look at the shaking temple walls with an empty expression, gripped the Satellite Shredder.
“From this very spot, I shall open the path to Ars Nova for my lord.”