Chapter 142: Death Is Not the End of Everything

True war has no glamorous light or shadow, much less heroic romance.

It holds only cold steel, spilled crimson blood, and flesh that slowly loses its warmth.

War never harbors tenderness.

Cruel death is its eternal theme.

In this battle against overwhelming odds, enemies surrounded them on all sides. There was no support to be found, and wherever the eye fell, it met only the traces of a brutal slaughter.

Life and death—

The boundary had never been so clear, yet never so blurred.

The living stand, the fallen die; the slayer lives, the slain perish—it should have been so distinct, so self-evident. And yet, on this cruel battlefield, the fallen might rise again, the slain might crawl back up, and those who stood, those who killed, even as the clock's hand moved only a trivial distance, might in the next moment become the losers, the dead.

Amidst this chaotic war, Amy could not afford to let his guard down.

He was not fighting alone.

Behind him was a squad—though they had not known each other long and could not even name one another, they were, at the very least, comrades who had lain in ambush for the Deep Ones beside the blood-magic circle.

After completing their assigned mission, they discovered that the number of Deep Ones far exceeded their estimates.

The main force had not only failed to achieve its plan of crushing the monster army head-on, but had instead become bogged down in the enemy's formation. Countless Deep Ones swarmed from all directions, and the small team of only a few was submerged in an instant.

If it weren't for the mental network, their morale would likely have collapsed before such a rare and massive formation.

After all, not everyone could summon the courage to face an overwhelming sea of enemies.

Yet, even so, the situation remained overwhelmingly unfavorable.

The accumulation of fatigue was not the primary cause; the true reason was the presence of Joshua Onions. The weakness induced by excessive blood loss had nothing to do with personal willpower. No matter how unwilling or indignant the silver-haired, crimson-eyed Glorified One might be, he could not change the fact of his own frailty in a short time, and he would remain a burden to the squad.

But whether as the squad leader or as his friend, Amy Ulysses could not view this "hero" who had single-handedly annihilated the reinforcements of the Deep Ones as a true burden.

Both by emotion and by reason, the boy had to offer a helping hand.

In fact, that was exactly what Amy did. As the only master of melee combat in the squad capable of maneuvering with ease amidst the tidal wave of monsters, he had included Joshua in his defensive perimeter from the very beginning. Although he could not cover every angle while facing the aggressive Deep Ones, the Glorified One—despite his physical frailty and lack of strength from blood loss—was not entirely without the power to fight.

However, under the wave after wave of attacks, it was barely enough to survive.

But as time passed, as fatigue accumulated, and as the Deep Ones who had been scattered by the main force reorganized their ranks, their already shaky formation began to show signs of collapse.

As the leader and the strongest point of the squad, Amy naturally took the front, acting as the tip of the blade to break the Deep Ones' momentum, minimizing the pressure on those behind him.

Naturally, his exhaustion of strength was the greatest.

The boy's breathing, under continuous, high-intensity combat, had grown ragged and lost its rhythm.

This was the harbinger of imminent collapse.

Yet, he had no choice but to grit his teeth and persist.

The squad's formation was similar to that of flying wild geese. The role Amy played was much like the lead goose, bearing responsibilities, tasks, and pressures far heavier than anyone else. But he could not take shifts to rest like the geese—first, because the pressure from the Deep Ones was too great to allow any such gap, and second, because no one else could shoulder this heavy responsibility.

Few Glorified Ones who awakened Elemental abilities spent much effort training their melee skills.

At least, none in his squad did.

So, he could only grit his teeth, and grit them again.

It was just... there was no hope in sight. The number of enemies seemed infinite. Through eyes blurred by sweat, he could no longer find a trace of the main force; all he could see were layers upon layers of Deep Ones.

He was truly... tired.

Breathe—breathe—breathe—

The increasingly heavy panting made the boy realize his limits.

He foresaw the end of his squad.

But he refused to believe it. He refused to believe in such a future.

There must be, there must be some way!

—But there was not.

Amy Ulysses pressed his lips tightly together.

The gap in strength between them and the enemy was vast, and the squad's composition was irrational. If he wanted to list reasons, he could easily name a dozen, but recognizing the problem did not mean he could solve it. The weight he held on his side of the scale was too small to gamble with fate; he could only watch helplessly as the scales of victory and defeat grew unbalanced.

Defeat and death were only a matter of time.

And the exact timing was in his hands.

As the tip of the blade cutting through the Deep Ones' army, he constantly bore the greatest pressure. In the formation modeled after the wild geese, he was both the strongest point and the weakest, the one most easily broken.

So—

Persist!

The boy gritted his teeth. His black trench coat was already stained red with blood, looking like bloody strips of cloth draped over him.

Swing the sword, swing the sword, swing the sword.

If once is not enough, do it twice; if twice is not enough, do it three times; if three times is not enough, do it again!

He carried out this simple, plain principle to the end. He swung his sword mechanically, killed enemies mechanically, using his remaining strength as perfectly as a miser.

How much longer could he persist?

He did not know, and there was no need to know.

Persist until he could no longer persist—

Just like that, his body grew numb, his consciousness blurred, and his hand gripping the sword lost its strength.

He was reaching his limit.

A limit that could not be crossed no matter how much he persisted, no matter how hard he gritted his teeth.

The limit called human.

Then... give up here, submit to the objective reality?

Sorry—he could not do that.

Gloomy, bitter, desperate... these negative emotions had never been part of Amy. Even though he was teetering, even though he might be pierced by the spears in the Deep Ones' hands at any moment, he never once entertained the thought of giving up.

No hope in sight?

Then persist until hope is seen.

Cannot persist that long?

Then persist until his own limit is reached.

Already at the limit?

No—as long as he was not yet dead, there was still room to squeeze out more!

He fought on in a drowsy, muddled state, like a man on the verge of death, until the sound of a horn echoed from afar.

That was...

The boy instinctively raised his head, his unfocused eyes suddenly gaining a spark of light.

Before him, several Deep Ones seized the rare opening and thrust their spears simultaneously.

Then the flower of death bloomed.

Then the flower of life withered.

Fine heads were tossed into the air, their hideous faces filled with disbelief.

They... were dead.

The Deep Ones fell in rows, toppled like autumn wheat under the icy frost of death.

Blades tore through flesh, scythes reaped heads; the torrent of death was unstoppable.

It was not as if they had not resisted, but the enemy was simply too many, and too strong.

An advantage in numbers?

No, that did not exist.

The Deep Ones, who continuously reinforced their ranks through transmission nodes scattered across Hermetica, might have possessed a terrifying, inexhaustible number, but that was only relative to the limited number of Glorified Ones.

To the reinforcements awakened by the sound of the horn, it was far from enough.

They were reapers in the night, walkers of death. Grotesque black formal wear draped elegantly over them; their pitch-black eyes reflected only emptiness. Their pale lips lacked a trace of blood, and there was no mercy in their stiff, mechanical movements.

They simply slaughtered.

No words, no roars, just cold, silent slaughter.

They... were not human.

Though they had human appearances, their essence was something else entirely—at a single glance, Amy Ulysses confirmed this fact.

But what did that have to do with him?

He sighed softly, the boy stretching his stiff muscles while adjusting the rhythm of his breathing.

Then he looked back.

"We won—" he said. Yet, he did not see the joy of survival in the eyes of the other team members; there was only the terror of seeing something that transcended their understanding.

So, looking into their eyes, he asked, "What happened?"

No one answered.

After a long silence, it was Joshua who answered the boy's question: "I think... they probably discovered the truth."

"The truth?" Amy raised an eyebrow.

"Also..." Joshua looked up at him, no smile on his still-weak face. "Amy, you seem to have never attended a funeral in Hermetica."

"What does this have to do with a funeral?"

"It has everything to do with it." Joshua shook his head, his tone low. "When the dead are buried, they wear the very clothes they have on now. You can even find the crest of their family on their collars."

"In other words..." The matter was now crystal clear.

"They are the dead." The silver-haired, crimson-eyed Glorified One paused. "But at the same time, they are our ancestors."

This was, in every sense of the word, a march of the dead.