“Cease this meaningless struggle.”

Shed raised his sword and gave a warning. The darkness obscured everything, yet he could feel every presence keenly.

“…And if I do, it’s not as if you’d spare my life, is it?”

The heretic gave a low, sardonic laugh.

“This is a battle you cannot win.”

Shed remembered that day—the fight where the heretic had lost, even while holding Liana as a hostage. The man’s power felt stronger now, sharper than before, but Shed was determined to win.

There were things he still had to return to.

“Don’t get cocky, Swordmaster. Did you think I was sitting idle, napping all this time?”

“Neither was I.”

The words had barely left his mouth before the heretic lunged, a torrent of black energy surging with him.

Shed met it head-on, his blade clashing against the storm of corrupted force. The man’s movements were swifter, his strikes heavier—but not enough to overwhelm him.

Kwaang!

Shed’s sword swept through the cavern, the thunderous impact reverberating endlessly through stone. The tremor shook the walls until earth and gravel began to fall.

If he wasn’t careful, the cave itself would become his deadliest enemy. He would need precision.

In the suffocating dark, Shed closed his eyes and traced his opponent with aura alone.

The heretic slipped like a rat into cracks of shadow, dodging blow after blow. For a space so narrow, his evasion was skilled—but still, it was only desperate defense.

When pressed harder, the heretic leapt back, widening the gap between them.

‘Is he trying to flee?’

Shed refused to let him slip away again. He moved to pursue, but the moment his foot left the ground, a smile spread across the heretic’s lips.

“I told you—I haven’t been sleeping.”

Suddenly, Shed faltered in his stride, his boot fixed to the ground as though seized.

His gaze dropped. A pale, rotted hand had burst from the dirt, clamping around his ankle.

“You did study a bit of black magic before coming here, didn’t you?”

With a single sweep of her arm, the heretic caused the soil piled around them to heave and the rotting corpses within it to begin crawling out.

“This…!”

The things clawing their way up from the ground were grotesque, with flesh sloughing off and bone exposed in sickening patches.

“Necromancy…!”

One of the forbidden rites of black magic: the art of raising the dead to serve as one’s puppets.

But what rose again through that power was not the same person. With their vacant, hollow eyes and warped movements, they were mere marionettes devoid of thought, will and memory.

And worse—

Shrrk!

Shed severed the wrist of the corpse that had clamped onto his ankle. It made no cry of pain, only an animalistic snarl as it dragged itself closer.

The dead feel no pain, no pleasure, no sorrow and no joy. They could hardly be called human.

“I am no longer alone.”

The heretic’s laugh echoed from beneath his dark robe.

Then Shed heard it—the strange sound swelling from the depths of the cavern.

Behind the heretic, the tunnel was now teeming with corpses, stretched out and writhing.

Dozens… no, perhaps hundreds.

‘So this is what he planned…’

She was forced to admit that the man was no fool. The precise location and timing of the barrier’s activation had been chosen for this moment. It was a trap within a trap.

But so what?

Whether trap or not, it made no difference. Shed wasted no thought on failure. His mind searched only for a way to claim victory. He had never been the type to plan for defeat.

“Go, my friends. Tear him apart.”

Arms spread wide, the heretic laughed as the distorted dead surged forward.

They crashed into each other, trampling and clawing heedlessly, surging towards him like a black tide.

The cavern echoed with grotesque noises: bones cracking, sinew snapping and the rasping sound of rotten lungs.

“To call the dead your friends… what meaning could such a life possibly hold?”

Shed’s blade swept wide as he spoke, cutting through the tide.

The corpses fell in droves.

Yet even split in half, even torn of limb, they still dragged themselves across the dirt, snarling.

“Kaaargh!”

Weaponless, they lunged with teeth and nails, gnashing and clawing at him.

“So this is why heresy is forbidden… a lesson made revoltingly clear.”

Not even Dietrich had warned that this heretic had the power to command the dead. There had been no indication of this before.

‘He must have been hoarding them here in the dark all along.’

Everything Shed knew of necromancy was only what Dietrich had explained when describing the branches of black magic in theory.

Black magic required incantations, just as priests needed prayers or wards to wield divine power. Whether etched, branded, or spoken aloud—there always had to be a formula. Which meant there had to be a way to break it.

Shed cut through the corpses in the dark, watching them closely.

And at last, the gleam of his aura revealed the traces of ancient script.

“So I just need to smash their skulls?”

On their rotting brows, on their cracked skulls, the runes glimmered faintly.

The creature finally found true rest when the blade was driven into its head and shattered it.

‘With the answer found, the battle became easier.

But victory was still far. The dead multiplied endlessly, and the fight stretched on without end.

‘In the end, I’ll have to kill the heretic himself.’

It was his black magic that moved them. If he died, so would they.

Shed risked the cavern’s collapse, sweeping his sword in a great arc. Corpses flew like reeds torn away by a storm. And through the gap, the heretic came into view.

Shed charged, boots splashing through bone and rotted flesh.

The heretic’s command raised the corpses again, swarming like a school of piranhas. But against his blade, they were as fragile as autumn leaves.

Watching him surge forward, the heretic shook his head.

“That can’t be. Lucifer said I was close to perfection!”

He bared his teeth and unleashed the black power flooding his body.

It roared like a storm and shoved Shed back.

“Kh—!”

Shed planted his sword in the ground to brace himself against the force. The stone shrieked as it scraped away beneath the pressure.

‘Lucifer… who is that?’

The unfamiliar name echoed in his mind. Was someone else behind this heretic?

He wanted to think about it, but there wasn’t time.

The man charged at him, driving his corpses forward and flinging sharp blades of power that split the air.

Shed leapt, using the back of a corpse as a springboard. He then kicked off the cavern wall, his body soaring through the void.

As he fell, his blade blazed azure. He struck down with all his might.

The blue aura streaked straight towards the heretic, carving its path through the darkness.

KWOOM!

The cavern shook as the earth split open with a thunderous crash, causing the ceiling above the heretic to cave in.

Shed stared into the blackness, where the avalanche of stone had buried him alive.

Echoes rumbled on, dust sifting down in trembling showers.

Then silence.

And one by one, the corpses collapsed, lifeless puppets with their strings cut.

The heretic’s power had vanished.

‘Is he dead?’

Shed let his aura spread, searching for the heretic’s presence.

No. That bastard wouldn’t die so easily. He was still—

‘Alive.’

From beneath the pile of stone, the man’s energy pulsed.

In an instant, the rocks cracked apart and slid down in fragments.

“—!”

A black steel blade came slicing out through the gaps in the falling rubble.

Shed twisted aside, narrowly avoiding the blow, but the sword pursued him relentlessly through the darkness.

CLANG!

The clash of metal rang sharp and jarring through the cavern.

The heretic staggered back, bones snapping back into place with a sickening crunch as his eyes glowed.

“If I die here, will all those poor souls who died for me become even more resentful?”

He twirled his blade carelessly, tilting his head as blood dripped from his face. The grotesque smile curling across his lips was chilling.

The corpses he thought had fallen were no longer motionless.

One by one, the undead rose again — relentless and unstoppable. Their persistence was more maddening than death itself.

They charged at him with the brute strength of men who had forgotten the meaning of pain, hitting him with more force than any trained knight would, and surrounding him.

But Shed had no intention of dragging this fight out. Not anymore.

This battle had to end. For the sake of peace in Faradel.

In the dark, his violet eyes burned with resolve.

The heretic realized in that moment—the sword would reach him.

The azure light drew nearer, inevitable. He saw it coming, and still he could not move.

Shed’s blade pierced straight through his heart.

“—Kghk!”

The man convulsed, collapsing to the ground in the shadows.

Shed stomped on him, pinning him to the ground with his boot, and drove the sword in deeper.

“Ghhhk!”

Blood sprayed upwards and splattered across the glowing edge of Shed’s aura.

At last, he saw the man’s face clearly for the first time.

What had been hidden in darkness was revealed in the light.

And Shed’s grip faltered.

The face was pale, with dark veins visible beneath the skin. In the hollows of that face, the unmistakable violet eyes of a lupus gleamed.

Gaunt and worn down, yet too familiar to mistake. The bold, sharp features; the thick brows. And the scar slashing across them, earned long ago when he shielded a boy named Shed in battle.

“…Brother Pamen?”

He had never forgotten.

From the age of ten, when he was first sold into mercenary slavery and thrown into the jaws of death, Pamen had been his pillar.

Pamen had been the backbone of every Lupus.

He believed that Pamen had been killed by the Ideana.

The source of his rage and the root of his vengeance.

“How… how are you alive…?”

The brother he had thought lost forever, Pamen Lupus, stood before him now as a heretic.