“I’ve wondered for a long time. Just how much of a monster is a Highmaster of the Nightwalker Family?”
“Do you want to know?”
Sien answered the man’s question with a cold voice.
“Then I’ll show you.”
Highmaster.
The highest actual power of the continent’s number one assassin family, the Nightwalker Family. Of course, in a strict sense, Sien was not yet a Highmaster since he had not undergone the Confirmation Sacrament. Nevertheless, he was certain.
‘I can win.’
It wasn’t simple confidence or self-suggestion. It was the truth, spoken after a cold assessment of his own capabilities.
‘Assuming I use everything I have.’
The conversation was not long. Neither of them was in a position to indulge in leisurely small talk.
*Dash!*
They simply moved.
In an instant, the karambit knife hidden within Sien’s sleeve, Night’s Claw, lunged forward.
*Clang!*
A sharp sound rang out with the strike. The weapon that deflected Sien’s blade was a parrying dagger, true to its name.
Simultaneously, as he parried Sien’s blow, the man lunged forward with a rapier — a slender stabbing sword — held in his other hand.
“Dual wielding a parrying dagger and a rapier.”
A traditional fencer who blocked the opponent’s attacks with a parrying dagger and sought an opening to pierce a vital point with a rapier.
However, Sien quickly hooked his pinky finger through the ring on the knife’s handle. He spun it into a reverse grip, bringing the deflected blade back to the center.
*Clang!*
Narrowly deflecting the rapier’s blade, Sien lunged back. The man also took a stance to counter the blow.
He moved to deflect Sien’s Night’s Claw with his parrying dagger and aim for a counterattack, just as before.
However, as soon as the two blades clashed, the karambit in Sien’s hand slid around the parrying dagger and slashed toward the man’s wrist.
*Slash!*
Blood sprayed along the man’s wrist as the parrying dagger was pushed aside.
A hawkbill or recurve-style knife, with a blade curved like a bird of prey’s talon, was not suitable for stabbing. Instead, by utilizing a cutting power far deeper and sharper than a straight sword, a single proper slash could deeply tear through an artery and inflict a fatal wound.
Just like now.
He had slashed him. However, Sien had not used his sword of hatred, Nevermore. He couldn’t.
‘It’s still difficult to activate instantly in actual combat.’
Furthermore, Nevermore required an absurd amount of mana just to activate. Attempting to use Nevermore in a situation like this would likely result in his movements being read, allowing the opponent to counterattack.
Above all, the opponent before him… didn’t inspire that much hatred.
He was merely a small fry.
“I cut both the radial and ulnar arteries.”
However, instead of retreating with a scream, the man thrust his rapier toward Sien without even blinking, despite the tattered wounds on his wrist where major arteries had been severed.
*Clang!*
A mutual destruction move, disregarding his own body. A counterattack intended to take a bone in exchange for giving one up.
But that strike never reached Sien.
*Clang!*
Sien’s hand, which should have been empty, expertly parried the attack just as the man had done moments ago.
There was nothing in Sien’s hand. At least, that’s how it appeared. Nevertheless, the man could see it.
A parrying dagger, identical to the one he had been using, was held in Sien’s hand.
Second Rank Telekinesis magic, Sae-ik Knife.
It had been replicated with perfect precision in both shape and form.
“Impressive. To copy my parrying dagger on the spot with Sae-ik Knife.”
The man laughed as he stepped back from the wound.
“As expected, it seems I simply cannot match the assassination arts of those who walk the night.”
“You seem to still have something up your sleeve.”
“Something up my sleeve, you say?”
The man sneered coldly at Sien’s words.
“There is only one thing we believe in.”
Giving an opponent an opening by dragging out a useless conversation was the act of a third-rate hack.
But that wasn’t the case here.
Leaving the man’s long-winded speech behind, Sien flicked his head to the side.
The corpse of the veteran lay fallen by the hands of a cowardly assassin who knew neither honor nor taboo. His mithril armor appeared perfectly clean, without a single scratch on the surface.
‘Steel-like sword techniques could not break through the Stance of the Deep-Rooted Tree.’
Indeed, there were no flaws in the armor itself. This meant something had bypassed it to strike within.
It didn’t take long to grasp the situation.
A wine glass sat on the side table next to the bed.
It was an incredibly pathetic end for the reputation of a knight who would not die.
“One must be careful about what they eat and drink.”
The man smiled as if he had read Sien’s inner thoughts. Sien glanced down at the amount of blood pooled at the man’s feet.
The blood loss was significant. It wouldn’t be long before he lost consciousness and died. At the same time, Sien knew his opponent wasn’t someone who would go down so easily.
The previous bout was merely a probing fight to gauge the opponent. For that purpose, giving up a wrist or a few arteries couldn’t even be called damage.
“I think I understand a bit about you now.”
*Thwack!*
The man suddenly slammed his rapier down onto his mangled wrist.
*Plop.*
The severed wrist and the parrying dagger it held fell to the floor.
“Is that so?”
Sien’s identity was hidden by the darkness beneath his deep hood, masked by First Rank magic, Shadow Face. His voice was the same.
“That I cannot defeat you.”
Sien let out an involuntary chuckle at those words.
“You’re being too humble.”
“No, this is simply the truth that you people love so much.”
The man spoke, unbothered by the massive amount of blood pouring from his wrist.
“Right. So, are you planning to commit suicide to make it easy?”
“As I said, it means ‘I’ cannot defeat you.”
The bleeding from his severed wrist suddenly stopped.
“However, the one I believe in and serve is different—”
There was no reason to leisurely wait for the opponent to finish speaking.
*Dash!*
But the opponent was faster.
A brilliant golden light enveloped the man, and a golden vortex swirled, repelling Sien.
“Martyr Stance—”
The man whispered from within the glowing radiance.
Just as the Stance of the Wraith symbolized the assassins of the Nightwalker Family, this stance symbolized the High Inquisitors of the Empire.
“Sixth Rank of the Second Sphere, Dominion Descent.”
A stance was not the exclusive property of knights. Just as knights and mages had their own unique stances, a stance was ultimately nothing more than an ideology.
Therefore, it was the same for the clergy who served God and handled divine power.
“I pray that You dwell within the flesh, blood, and bone of this lamb, and grant me the power to smite evil.”
The man spoke.
*Crunch!*
Soon, the man’s body twisted grotesquely. Within the divinely shining radiance, wing bones burst through his back, and flesh endlessly regenerated from his severed wrist to form a single shape.
“Second Sphere Angel Descent…”
The sixth rank of the Second Sphere, also known as Dominions.
The angels of the ninth, eighth, and seventh ranks were referred to as the Third Sphere.
The sixth, fifth, and fourth ranks above them were the Second Sphere.
Finally, the highest-ranking angels of the third, second, and first ranks, including the Seraphim, were called the First Sphere.
Only a tiny handful of individuals known as Apostles could descend a First Sphere angel.
Therefore, an opponent at the level capable of descending a Second Sphere angel was practically the strongest enemy force one would most frequently encounter.
The body contorted, bones protruded, and flesh twisted.
At a glance, it was similar to the baptism of the Nightwalker Family.
But at the end of that distortion, any human appearance could no longer be found in the man standing before Sien.
There was only an angel.
“Well, whether that can actually be called an angel is another matter.”
Above his severed wrist, a hand with golden blades as sharp as a pitchfork had sprouted. The wings bursting from his back were also far from the common image of an angel’s wings.
There were no feathers. They weren’t white. There was no obvious holiness or light.
They were wings made of bone — no, they were closer to the skeletal structure of a bird’s wings.
“I wonder what people would think if they saw that an angel looks like a monster.”
With a cold sneer, Sien adjusted his grip on Night’s Claw.
“There is nothing as foolish as trying to understand something that cannot be understood by human standards.”
“Right. Usually, we call that a monster.”
Sien answered calmly, and the angel, grotesquely and weirdly distorted like a monster, lunged forward.
The hand with metal talons as sharp as a pitchfork swung out.
‘No matter if it’s a messenger of God, anything up to a Fourth Rank angel of the Second Sphere cannot escape physical constraints.’
No, was that thing even truly a messenger of God? Did the angels or the God they called upon even exist? It was impossible to know. Honestly, he didn’t even want to know.
He simply recalled the countless angels and martyrs he had struck down in the past and reviewed the methods to deal with them.
*Clang!*
The swinging pitchfork clashed with Sien’s Night’s Claw, and instead of a sound, an unidentified golden wave erupted.
[Aria of Praise]
Contrary to its name, a high-pitched sound loud enough to burst eardrums and shake the brain echoed out.
It was neither praise nor an aria. It was merely the scream of an angel, echoing mercilessly and piercing the ears.
It was a sonic attack, a medium that induced the brain to interpret it as pain upon reaching Sien’s hearing.
Blood flowed from his ears.
However, without even the leisure to worry about the pain of his eardrums tearing, the rapier held in the other hand lunged.
Along with Night’s Claw, another blade Sien had hidden deflected the angel’s rapier.
He realized it after the deflection.
Unlike when he deflected the angel’s golden talons, the Aria of Praise did not echo. That part was still human flesh.
“It’s not a complete descent.”
He adjusted his grip on the hilt while deflecting the rapier.
Hirschfanger — a hunting knife known as the deer-catcher in the Imperial tongue. However, that knife had another name.
The Angel-catcher.
After baiting Sien’s movement with the rapier, the angel’s talons swung out once again. He intended to restrict Sien’s movements with the first strike and then swing the talons to finish him off with the Aria of Praise.
*Clang!*
As expected, the blades clashed, and a golden wave rippled out.
The Aria of Praise.
A shriek that pierced the eardrums and echoed horribly inside the skull.
The Aria mentioned in the Empire’s State Church was the voice of an angel. A voice that possessed holy and powerful strength, acting as the divine will and word.
But its true nature was not the voice of an angel or anything of the sort. It was merely a resonance of sound.
*Clang!*
Nothing would change. The angel’s talons and Sien’s Night’s Claw clashed. An absurdly large golden wave, incomparable to anything before, surged from the fingertips.
It was not a scale that would end with just torn eardrums and a ringing head. It was an intense wave powerful enough to surely destroy the opponent’s brain and mind. That wave swirled toward Sien.
“It’s over!” the angel thought.
No matter how fast a human of the Nightwalker Family was, they wouldn’t be able to escape faster than the speed of sound echoing at this distance and in this situation.
It was the end. Without a doubt, the Aria of Praise would shatter Sien’s mind into pieces.
“Eternal Night—”
Right then, a voice rang out.
‘Wh—?’
That was impossible.
How could a voice be heard speaking so leisurely amidst this? Furthermore, even after the pronunciation of those two words echoed clearly in the angel’s ears, the golden Aria resonating from their clashing blades remained frozen in that spot.
No, upon realization, it wasn’t even the veteran knight’s bedroom where they had been moments ago.
It was a world filled with endless darkness in every direction.
“!”
It wasn’t the end. Nothing was ending.
There was only a night that would not end, just like its name.
‘Could it be…’
Just as a dream breaks, an illusion shatters, a bubble pops, and a shadow disappears, nothing in the world was absolute and fixed.
Time was the same.
Just as time flowed quickly for some and slowly for others, the absoluteness of time was ultimately nothing but an illusion.
Nothing in this world was fixed. Nothing was absolute.
A ghostly world, an unending night.
It shattered the concept that the flow of time was equal and absolute for everyone, revealing the truth that time was like a dream, an illusion, and a bubble.
The ultimate technique of the first form, capable of relatively accelerating or slowing the flow of time within a specific area.
Time manipulation.
At the time of the Confirmation Sacrament, from the moment Laila cast Eternal Night on Sien until Sien broke that Eternal Night using White Night, not a single grain of sand had fallen in the testing hall’s hourglass. Even so, the two had clashed swords, exchanged words, and shared a conversation.
The members of the family likely wouldn’t even know what had happened.
Because the flow of time they felt was not the same as the time of the mother and son, Sien and Laila.
Just as the wave that should have spread at the speed of sound when the angel’s talons and Sien’s blade clashed was now frozen, and the angel’s movements were stopped, yet the sense of time flowing within the angel’s head was not.
“A thirsty person is the one who digs the well.”
Sien, the only one free within the frozen time, spoke. Of course, there was no way an answer would come back in the stopped time.
In the first place, these weren’t words spoken in expectation of an answer.
“You bastards who preach humility are the ones who speak as if you are the most exalted in the world.”
As he spoke, Sien reached his hand toward his face.
He placed his hand toward the darkness cast beneath his hood and peeled away the overlaid shadows as if removing a mask.
The moment he saw the face hidden behind the Shadow Face, the angel’s eyes were filled with an all-too-human terror. Even closing his eyes or moving his pupils was impossible.
Only his thoughts, which Sien had allowed the flow of time to reach, were dyed in supreme horror.
‘Sien Nightwalker…’
Only then did he realize what a colossal sin he had committed.
“I inform everyone below the four siblings capable of descending the Fourth Rank of the Second Sphere — Zadkiel, Hasmal, Yahriel, and Muriel.”
“Should you happen to encounter the eldest son of the Nightwalker Family, Sien Nightwalker, run away unless it is a fight you are 100% certain to win.”
“Do not challenge him with a half-baked mindset that you might win. When you cannot run away, commit suicide instead.”
“Do not nurture that child. Do not willingly offer yourself as his nourishment. Just die quietly.”
“Never martyr yourselves before him. That is not martyrdom.”
“It is a mortal sin.”
He recalled the warning of the only being who could whisper to the rats of the Empire, the Rat Cardinal.
“Always be humble.”
“And do not commit an irreversible sin.”
He had failed to keep that promise. His martyrdom, which should have been holy and beautiful, was not martyrdom.
It was an irreversible mortal sin of nurturing the enemy and offering himself as nourishment.
“A-Aaaah…”
No matter how much he regretted it, it was too late. There was nothing he could take back.
In that state, the blade in Sien’s hand swung.
It was the blade with the alias ‘Angel-catcher.’