The sound of debris from collapsed buildings and shattered pieces of wood crunched under her quiet, steady steps.
Wooden fences lay broken, having failed to serve their purpose.
Houses were riddled with gaping holes, as if something massive had violently collided with them.
The fresh blood splattered everywhere suggested that the horror had only recently revealed itself to the world.
Claire was currently walking through the center of such a village.
Though her footsteps were nearly silent, the village itself was so deathly quiet that even the faint sound seemed to echo loudly.
However, Claire knew all too well that this was a false silence.
If she focused, she could hear the breathing.
The raspy, heavy breathing of an Abyss Monster.
the microscopic trembling of a survivor holding their breath, covering their mouth with all their might.
A desperate attempt to suppress a sob.
Those sounds reached her ears so vividly that she came to a halt.
She was in the middle of a raided village — a nameless settlement within the territory of the Holy Kingdom of Hibernia.
It was a small village, the kind that reminded her of her own hometown.
If she hadn’t caught the thickening Abyssal Curse and the familiar presence of an Abyss Monster, she might not have even discovered this place.
Given its insignificance, the villagers likely never heard the evacuation order, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have been able to flee to a Great City where a High Priest resided.
This was the result.
Splattered blood, crumbled houses, and shredded clothing.
No bodies remained.
They had likely all been devoured.
‘ …Is it just one?’
She sensed only one presence.
There weren’t many Abyss Monsters that could restrain themselves and refrain from attacking, even when she purposefully let her magic power leak out in strands while walking to the center of the village.
It was a creature specialized in stealth and surprise attacks — one that knew how to be cautious and could suppress its instincts.
Perhaps its intelligence increased as it grew stronger on higher floors; it was a monster from Floor 66 that had relentlessly tormented the Expeditionary Force by hiding itself within the Abyssal Curse.
‘Meeting it outside makes it feel so obvious.’
In the continent, rather than inside the Abyssal Depths where the Abyssal Curse was thick, its presence was as clear as day despite its attempt to hide.
She knew what kind of creature it was, she had specified its location, and she knew there was only one.
There was no reason to delay.
Snap!
The moment she flicked her fingers, flames erupted in one of the collapsed houses.
The creature had been lurking in the cracks of the rubble, waiting for an opportunity.
It would have been ideal if that single strike had killed it cleanly, but the monster lived up to its reputation as a primary reason for the failure of the Floor 66 expedition.
It was fast, sharp, and cunning.
The instant Claire snapped her fingers, the creature’s awl-like snout was already lunging toward her slender neck.
However.
Boom!
From the start, Claire had created two fires.
The fire that appeared where the creature was hiding was merely a threat.
She knew it wouldn’t hit.
The real attack was the second fire.
A massive wall of flames surrounded Claire without a single gap.
The Abyss Monster, which had essentially jumped right into it, was incinerated into nothingness without leaving even a speck of bone ash behind — like an insect caught in a violent torrent.
Despite such intense heat, the temperature of the surroundings outside the wall of flames remained unchanged.
Her control over her fire was truly beyond the rumors.
Claire, the one who had performed the feat, simply extinguished the fire without any sense of accomplishment.
A village nearly decimated by a single monster.
The residents here must feel as though their world had collapsed overnight.
‘ …If only the raid had succeeded.’
If the raid had been successful, villages wouldn’t be collapsing like this, and blood wouldn’t be scattered everywhere.
At least there were survivors in this village because Claire happened to stop by, but there were likely countless villages across the continent being sacrificed in this manner.
She had heard that some small nations were already preparing for exile and abandoning their countries the moment they heard the Empire was giving up on the expedition.
It was certain that an immeasurable amount of blood was flowing at this very moment.
The continent was steadily losing the territory where people lived.
A failure caused by a lack of strength and capability had led to this catastrophe.
Claire had done her best, but there was nothing she could do about the outcome.
She was not a hero.
She was simply one of many who had admired a hero and made him her goal.
Survivors who had been hiding and trembling in various parts of the village began to appear one by one.
Even so, there were only about ten of them in total.
Judging by the size of the village, at least 100 residents must have died, leaving only these few behind.
Children burst into tears, an old man wandered in search of his children, and a woman sat on the spot where her husband had been eaten, chanting the name of a callous God while slumped over the bloodstains.
Even though they were alive, they weren’t truly living.
In fact, all of them would likely die before long.
Abyss Monsters carried the Abyssal Curse with them.
‘Wasn’t the dark energy already filling the entire village?’
Even at this moment, with every breath they took, the curse was seeping in and destroying their bodies.
Despite knowing this, there was nothing Claire could do.
She could only summon her flames again to try and burn away the remaining energy.
Even then, it wouldn’t be perfect, and plenty of invisible residue would remain.
Several people tried to offer their thanks to Claire, but they couldn’t finish their sentences.
‘How could they truly feel gratitude?’
Their world had collapsed without warning, and their lives had been thoroughly destroyed.
The bonds they had maintained throughout their lives were all severed, leaving them alone.
‘How could they feel thankful just because they survived?’
Before gratitude could even bloom, it would be swept away by the crushing despair.
” …If you wish, I can take you to the nearest city.”
In a Great City, there were High Priests who used Holy Power, so those who had inhaled the Abyssal Curse could receive purification.
If she dropped them off and headed quickly to the Kingdom’s Capital, she could just barely make it in time.
However, Claire also knew how futile that hope was.
Since they had directly faced a powerful Abyss Monster, the concentration of the Abyssal Curse was high, and the amount accumulated in their bodies would be just as great.
It was obvious they wouldn’t last until they reached a Great City, and even if they arrived by some miracle, a High Priest — who would be busier than anyone right now — would never spare precious time for them.
‘Did the survivors know this as well?’
‘Or had they simply lost their minds?;
No answer came.
The old man just stared blankly at the sky, the woman lay prostrate on her family’s bloodstains wailing, and the children were busy crying in front of their respective homes.
And even at this moment, the Abyssal Curse was steadily piling up within them, destroying their bodies.
In a place that could only be described as hell, a world different from this one.
In that flower field where the yellow canola flowers had been in full bloom on that day, her hero had told her the truth about the world.
In his words, it was the damn Abyss, the damn Abyssal Depths.
That description was exactly right.
The only saving grace was that the Abyss wasn’t gathering together to swallow human bodies like in the memories of the distant past she had seen that day.
Though these people would die, they wouldn’t have their souls stained and their bodies twisted to live on as horrific beings.
The current Abyssal Curse was definitely different from the Abyss she had seen back then.
The Abyss in the memories she saw on the Floor of Breakthrough back then was… how should she put it?
It was like a shape that had been clumped together haphazardly because it didn’t know how it was supposed to look.
On the other hand, the Abyssal Curse spreading now was much thinner and dispersed in the air.
It was fitting to call it an energy.
The problem was that it was a cursed energy.
‘ …Should I leave?’
Putting her thoughts aside, Claire looked away from the miserable village scenery and turned around.
There was nothing she could do.
She could kill monsters, but she couldn’t save people.
She wasn’t a hero.
As Claire turned, she saw a small crown of a head in her lower field of vision.
Looking down a bit further, she saw clear, bright eyes.
Firmly pressed lips.
And a small head bowing toward her.
“Thank you for saving me!”
Claire looked down with hollow eyes at the child offering his thanks in front of her.
She had clearly seen him crying in front of his house like the other children, but he must have stopped crying and approached her while she was lost in thought.
As if to prove it, the boy’s eyes were brimming with tears, and his tightly shut lips looked as though he was struggling to hold back a sob.
Despite that, he had stood before her to offer his thanks, knowing she was about to leave.
“Miss, you’re our village’s hero!”
The boy suddenly jerked his head up and looked up at Claire.
Afraid to meet those eyes directly, Claire found herself averting her gaze.
Untainted, clear, and intuitive eyes.
The pure eyes of a child for whom this small village was the entire world.
But the child’s small world had collapsed, and he had seen through Claire that there was an even larger world beyond it.
“Could I… also become an amazing person like you when I grow up…?”
It was hot.
She had lived with fire for a long time, but the boy’s eyes were hotter than any flame.
That was why she couldn’t look him in the eye.
Unlike the child, her own eyes had already become shabby.
She was afraid he would notice.
It was passion.
Claire’s flames had planted a dream in the child and created a goal.
Just as Claire, once a country girl, had realized the vastness of the world and burned her life away toward that goal.
” …I am.”
But that wasn’t it.
The person and the situation were different.
“I’m not a hero.”
She could never be a hero.
A hero she knew would have saved a small village like this long ago.
No, they would have prevented this situation from ever happening.
Even if they were placed in the same situation, they would have healed all the survivors and breathed hope into their hearts.
‘But what about her?’
Knowing that the survivors who had inhaled the Abyssal Curse would soon die in agony, she could do nothing.
Far from instilling hope, she didn’t even know how to pull them out of despair.
Therefore, she was not a hero.
“That can’t be true. I’ve never seen anyone as beautiful and strong as you, Miss!”
Nevertheless, the boy didn’t seem convinced at all.
Instead, with an even more intense gaze — with a burning passion that seemed ready to evaporate the tears in his eyes — he looked at Claire as a person who had finally found a dream.
“So… could you please take me with you?”
Those words finally escaped the child’s mouth.
Like Claire on that day when she stood before Hio as he tried to leave.
Like herself on that day, clinging to him and weeping sorrowfully.
” …Do you even know where I’m going?”
“It doesn’t matter where! I’ve been alone since I was 9.”
Looking around the village, it seemed those words were true.
No one had looked this way, which was likely why the child’s time to emerge from despair was short.
“I’m going to the battlefield.”
“Yes! It’s okay! I can follow you!”
The child likely couldn’t hear anything else right now.
Burning with a fire-like passion, he wouldn’t be able to think of anything else.
‘I want to reach that place. I want to be like her.’
Such thoughts must have taken over his body.
She knew because she had been the same.
“It’s a place where hundreds or thousands of monsters like that one swarm, and even famous, powerful people die easily. A young child like you would die in the blink of an eye.”
” …I’m prepared.”
The boy clenched his fists and stepped toward Claire, lowering his voice so only she could hear.
“I’m going to die anyway if I stay here.”
At those words, Claire’s hollow eyes widened slightly in surprise.
She didn’t think the child would know about the existence of the Abyssal Curse.
‘If so, why did he say everyone would die?’
The answer was quickly apparent.
This situation where the village had collapsed and the adults had lost their will to live in despair.
Having grasped that, he predicted that everyone would eventually die.
He had judged that there was no future.
The boy hadn’t emerged from despair quickly simply because he had no family.
He had forced himself out in order to survive.
“So, please, can’t you take me with you? I won’t get in the way, and I’ll do everything you tell me to!”
In truth, Claire could save this one child before her.
She was currently on a mission to support Hibernia anyway.
She would definitely stop by a Great City, and since they were moving as just the two of them, she was confident they would arrive before the child died.
If she showed the Imperial Golden Lion token she possessed, the High Priests would surely appear, even if they had to make time out of thin air.
After a moment of contemplation, Claire looked down and asked the boy.
“Do you have good stamina?”
Even to save just one child, she had to think this and that, weighing all sorts of concerns.
No matter how she looked at it, she was far, far removed from the hero she knew.
Always relaxed.
Saving everyone with the hope that it could be done, no matter the crisis — that was the hero Claire knew.
” …Yes! I was the fastest runner in our village!”
Upon hearing the answer, Claire began to walk.
The boy followed her with a brightened expression.
Feeling that small presence trailing behind her, the last words she had heard in the Huang Palace before leaving were echoing in her mind like an internal monologue.
— “You are Hio Pavlenko’s last arrangement.”
“…No, that’s wrong.”
— “You are his hope.”
“Hio, you were wrong this time.”
— “So please, treasure your life.”
“I am not hope, an arrangement, a hero, or anything.”
“I’m just an ordinary person who can barely save a single child.”
“You should have survived instead of saving me.”
Instead of saving a useless Expeditionary Force, you should have survived and remained in the world.
The world would have needed you more than someone as unnecessary as me.
Claire’s gaze turned empty once again.
As the two of them walked away, the ruins of the collapsed village were left behind in loneliness.
The hollow cries of the survivors would not continue for long.
Though they were alive, they were as good as dead.
There was no miracle.
There was only opportunity.