Lord of the Truth

Chapter 1443: Satisfying surprise

RoarRoar

The Student War Arena shook with unfiltered chaos—cheers, chants, and howls of laughter rolled like thunder from every corner of the stands. The long-awaited tradition, one that ignited every ten years, had finally begun again. And the crowd was hungry for blood, drama, and failure.

”Hmph!” Valand stepped forward with a sneer, his voice dripping disdain.

”Get off my battlefield. Just your presence here is an embarrassment. I trained for decades to be taken seriously, and now—everyone’s just waiting for a comedy show. What a joke!”

He surged ahead, soul force crackling around his limbs like coiled lightning. His body was wrapped in a glowing shell of refined soul force, and his hands—flattened like blades—extended into gleaming energy swords, each one vibrating with lethal precision.

High above in the stands, the girl’s mother gasped in horror.

”Oh no! He’s not going to give our daughter even a second to summon her slime beast!”

Her voice trembled, her hands flying to her mouth as if trying to hold her heart from falling out.

But just as Valand charged forward to end the match quickly, something strange occurred.

Something... unexpected.

ShoooShooo!

Merina moved.

But not with steps. Not with leaps. Not like anyone else.

She glided.

Her feet didn’t stomp or push. Instead, they slid across the floor like skates on polished glass. No bending of knees, no shifting of weight—just an effortless, unnatural drift forward, gaining speed with alarming fluidity.

”Huh?!”

Valand faltered, visibly confused. He quickly regained focus, and thrust forward with his glowing blades, aiming to end the match cleanly.

”...What is that?”

The father’s brows furrowed. There was no small amount of shock in his voice.

He had come to watch this event every decade like clockwork. He’d seen thousands of students fight, rise, and fall.

But this?

This movement technique—he had never seen it before.

WhooshWhoosh

Valand’s energy blades began firing arcs of compressed soul force into the air, shaped like crescent moons. These spiritual crescents spun rapidly toward Merina—intended not just to hit, but to intercept, slow down, and disorient.

But Merina—

She danced.

Her movements, although minimal and sliding, were unpredictable. Efficient. She tilted her shoulders, shifted her weight, ducked and wove—not by bouncing around, but by gliding like water between rocks.

In a blur, she evaded every incoming blade, then launched herself forward and aimed a sharp, compact kick at Valand’s knee.

”You think that’ll help you?!”

Valand barked with arrogance. He jumped backward, avoiding the strike. Then, with a roar, he lifted both hands and began condensing his spiritual force into two gigantic fists glowing with power.

He was preparing a finishing blow—one strong enough to level the entire quadrant of the stage the moment he landed.

But—

SLIP!

The instant his boots touched the ground, his balance betrayed him. His feet skidded across a layer of translucent slime spread invisibly across the arena floor.

”What the—?!”

With cat-like reflexes, Valand aborted his attack mid-air, twisting his body to avoid slamming his own spiritual energy into himself.

Still spinning, he scanned the battlefield.

Where was she?!

Where did she—

Whoosh.

He felt it.

A cool, slimy sensation pressed against his neck.

He froze.

There, gently resting beneath his chin, was a dagger-shaped construct made of gel, filled with hundreds of microscopic needles, each one vibrating softly.

Deadly. Silent. Perfectly placed.

”Hmm?”

The referee, who had been observing closely, now floated forward. His eyes flashed with clarity.

He raised his hand, and declared with conviction:

”Winner: Merina, student of Instructor Robin Burton.”

Silence.

The arena, which had been roaring a moment ago, now plunged into a deathly, stunned quiet.

And then—

”HUUUUH?!?!”

”WHAT IN THE ACTUAL VOID JUST HAPPENED?!”

”MY BET!! MY GOLDEN BET!!! NOOOOO!!”

Up in the crowd, her parents sat frozen.

Their hands were still clamped over their mouths—but now their eyes were wide with disbelief, and a strange, rising warmth in their chests.

Down in the arena, Merina let out a soft breath, her body unwinding from tension.

She silently dissolved the gel-blade with a flick of her wrist and muttered under her breath:

”Heh~ Sorry, teacher. I’m still nowhere close to mastering the Law like you. I can only pull off those little tricks you mentioned in passing...”

Her eyes shimmered, but her voice was steady.

”But one day—I’ll get there. I promise you... I will.”

Without another word, she turned her back on Valand—who was still screaming about ”illegal techniques” and ”hidden sabotage”—and walked calmly toward a corner of the arena.

There stood seventy individuals—silent, still, but proud. Their presence felt like a tide held back by a dam.

Each of them bore an aura completely transformed from what they were ten years ago.

They were no longer ”Clown students.”

They were something else entirely.

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60 years later — Deep beneath the academy — Inside the Secret Archive

Over 400 years had passed since the coronation...

In a chamber older than memory, lit only by ancient runes, sat a man slouched over a book as thick as a stone coffin.

Robin Burton.

With trembling hands, he turned another page of the Second Tome—and every inch of movement looked like a war fought in silence.

DripDrop

His eyes—two vessels of blood—continued to bleed, steadily, endlessly. Like open wounds that no healer could close.

Each word he read tore something from him. Each sentence cost him blood.

If not for his rubbery soul domain, designed to absorb punishment and contain trauma, he would have collapsed long ago.

If not for the radiant spinal tattoo, pulsing with golden light, endlessly producing blood to replace what was lost, his organs would have failed on the very first page.

That was the cruelty of the Second Tome.

It didn’t just resist being read—it fought back.

And yet...

Robin’s face didn’t show agony.

It showed something stranger.

A quiet, knowing smile.

Hours passed. Maybe days. Time was meaningless in this place.

Eventually, he reached the final page. The cover.

Puff

He closed the book.

Blood still dripped from his jaw, but his hands were steady.

With slow reverence, he leaned back into his chair, eyes shut, spine resting against the seat like a man who had survived a plane crash and didn’t want to move for fear of tearing new wounds.

Whoooosh...

But the moment of silence—brief and precious—was shattered without mercy.

A presence materialized beside Robin with eerie stillness.

Voltar.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. His arrival was like a ripple across the air, a silent disruption in the flow of calm.

”...”

Robin lazily peeled open one bloodshot eye—not in alarm, but in weary recognition. His gaze scanned the intruder with the indifference of a man far too tired to care. He blinked once, then closed it again and let his mouth open instead, speaking through a thin breath:

”I’m in a good mood right now, Voltar. So I’ll skip the usual throat-ripping. Go outside, find a trash bin somewhere, and try reproducing with it. Who knows? You might finally create something more useful than your presence.”

Voltar blinked, visibly surprised—not at the insult, but at the tone.

Calm. Dry. Relaxed.

Almost... playful?

He crossed his arms, the expression on his face caught somewhere between amusement and curiosity.

”You look far better than I expected. I was honestly expecting a corpse.”

Robin, still slouched like a man recovering from a ritual gone wrong, let a small, crooked smile play across his lips.

”That’s because the book had a surprise waiting for me.”

He tapped the thick tome now closed on the table beside him.

”A pleasant one. A very pleasant one.”

His voice was faint, but the undertone held real satisfaction. Around his eyes, the bleeding had slowed. The black rings of fatigue were still there, but they no longer screamed of collapse.

Voltar narrowed his eyes, stepping closer.

”It should have. That tome is the condensed legacy of a Seven-Star Royal Soul Master—every line is a blade, every paragraph a battlefield.”

He waved dismissively.

”Anyway, I only dropped by to see what kind of cursed monstrosity you’ll be giving to the Archive this time. You got lucky last time, remember?”

Robin slowly opened both eyes this time. They were still webbed with veins—red like cracks in glass—but their glow had steadied.

He tilted his head slightly, then spoke with a voice that was almost... disappointed.

”To be honest... I’m not exactly thrilled about handing you people more of my creation.”

He paused, eyes narrowing.

”One day, someone might actually manage to read them.”

A beat passed.

”Still...” Robin continued, almost to himself, ”I think I’ve got something that might do the trick.”

From a side compartment in his chair, Robin drew a smaller book—mid-sized, neither thick nor thin, its cover dull and unremarkable. It looked like a storybook. A novella. Something a child might read before sleep.

He opened it halfway, letting the center pages face up.

Then he raised both hands above it.

At first—nothing.

But then—

A rain of symbols began to fall.

Strange glyphs, writhing runes, shimmering lines of ancient code—they dripped like ink from the air above and sank into the open book.

Each character slithered across the pages as if alive, etching itself into the fibers before vanishing into the core of the parchment.

The book accepted the curse.

Embraced it.

Voltar chuckled.

Then he outright laughed.

”You’re wasting your energy, Professor Robin. Do you really believe a trivial little curse like that could affect someone like A Guardian? Or even someone in the most basic of Nexus states?”

He shook his head as if humoring a child’s attempt at rebellion.

”It’s charming. Really.”

A spell or curse is simply a technique that is designed to regenerate automatically.

Most techniques, no matter how powerful, were temporary. Cast once. Used once. They did their job and vanished into the ether.

If you wanted something that stayed on the battlefield—attacking, defending, healing—you needed a construct. A talisman. A scroll. An array.

But what if—

What if someone could forge a technique that lived within itself?

A spell that didn’t end until it was broken?

A force that remembered how to cast itself over and over, forever, like an immortal virus?

That was a Curse.

It didn’t matter what element it was based on.

Blood, soul, energy, body, laws, or whatever—it made no difference.

As long as the technique could sustain itself, reapply itself, renew itself endlessly without the user’s involvement—it qualified.

And Robin knows how to do just that.