Journey to Become the Zenith

The Original Awakens Their Battle Lust

At the very edge of the world, a very beautiful woman looked up at the night sky and cried.

She smiled ever so weakly as she witnessed the moment one of the two moons was sliced in half, and the stars were destroyed.

Far beyond the lands where ordinary people lived, beyond kingdoms and oceans and even the territories claimed by the strongest races, there was a place where the world itself seemed to grow quiet.

The sky there was darker.

The wind moved slowly across the endless horizon, carrying the cold scent of distant seas. There were no cities nearby, no armies, no temples filled with frightened priests. Only an ancient silence that seemed to have existed since the beginning of the world.

And beneath that silence, she stood alone.

Her eyes remained fixed upon the heavens.

One of the twin moons had been divided.

The cut was so perfect that, from this unimaginable distance, it almost looked as though the moon had always been formed from two separate halves. There was no violent explosion. No great shower of fragments.

Just a line.

A terrible, impossibly straight line running through the celestial body.

Beyond it, the stars that had once decorated the heavens were missing.

Not dimmed.

Not hidden.

Gone.

The woman stared for a long time.

Tears slowly slipped down her cheeks.

Yet strangely, there was no fear in her expression.

There was something else.

Recognition.

Nostalgia.

Perhaps even relief.

Her lips curved upward into a faint smile, though the tears continued to fall.

Then, in a sleepy yet melodious voice, she murmured,

”Still the same as ever...”

Her voice was soft enough that the wind almost carried it away.

She closed her eyes.

The exhaustion in her body seemed to catch up with her all at once. Whatever strength had allowed her to remain awake vanished, leaving only that faint smile upon her beautiful face.

The woman slowly lowered her head.

”Still the same as ever...”

The words seemed to linger in the darkness.

Then she went back to sleep.

...

While everyone was rattled by the event that had transpired, the one responsible for it sighed.

Victor stood alone.

The night around him had already fallen strangely silent.

There should have been countless sounds.

The distant cry of beasts.

The rustling of leaves.

The movement of wind through the mountains.

Yet after that single sword strike, everything seemed subdued.

Even the air felt different.

Victor looked toward the distant heavens where the aftermath of his attack could still be seen.

His black hair moved gently in the night breeze. His golden eyes reflected the strange light of the damaged moon, making them appear almost otherworldly.

He was a very handsome man with sharp, defined features. He wore black leather pants and a black shirt beneath a golden jacket, the dark clothing contrasting sharply with the faint golden radiance surrounding him.

Yet despite the overwhelming power he had displayed moments earlier, there was no pride on his face.

No excitement.

No satisfaction.

Only a faint melancholy.

Victor simply stood there, unmoving.

His fingers loosened slightly.

His gaze lowered.

That was all.

For someone who had just performed an attack capable of reaching across unimaginable distances, his reaction was almost disappointingly ordinary.

A quiet sigh.

A distant look.

A man remembering something no one else could see.

Perhaps only Victor himself knew what had passed through his mind at that moment.

The destruction was enormous.

But to him, the destruction itself was not what mattered.

He had merely done what he needed to do.

And now that it was over, the emptiness returned.

...

Deep within the realm of his soul, Ren—now Victor’s incarnation—was still a little shocked.

Even though he had expected the original to be strong, witnessing that strength firsthand was something entirely different.

He had known from the beginning that the original was powerful.

He was the strongest incarnation.

That fact alone was enough to establish an almost unreachable standard.

Victor already knew how strong Azriel was.

And Azriel had once made it very clear that he wasn’t even within the top three in strength among the incarnations.

That statement had stayed in Ren’s mind for a long time.

If Azriel, who was already powerful enough to make ordinary beings despair, wasn’t among the strongest three...

Then what kind of monster was the original?

Victor had tried to imagine it.

He had tried to build a picture in his mind.

But imagination had failed him.

Now he finally understood why.

Seeing Victor’s power with his own eyes was simply something else.

Inside the soul realm, Victor remained silent for several moments.

Then his eyes slowly brightened.

Not with fear.

With excitement.

”Every time I get to witness his power, it just makes me excited!”

Azriel and the other incarnations standing beside Victor were trembling.

But none of them were trembling because they were afraid.

Their bodies shook from excitement.

Their eyes were bright.

Their expressions had changed completely.

They had just witnessed something that should have frightened them.

Instead, it awakened something much more primitive within their souls.

The desire to fight.

All of them were battle junkies.

It was an unavoidable part of who they were.

The foundation of their personalities came from the original.

Their experiences, their environments, and the people who raised them could change certain aspects of their personalities. Some became calmer. Others became more ruthless. Some were more patient, while others were more reckless.

But one thing could never be completely erased.

Their love for battle.

That instinct was carved too deeply into them.

And now, after seeing the strength of the original, every incarnation felt the same impulse.

They wanted to fight him.

Every single one of them.

The thought appeared almost simultaneously in their minds.

’I want to fight the original.’

It didn’t matter that they had no chance.

It didn’t matter that victory was impossible.

In fact, that impossibility only made their desire stronger.