Chapter 38: Killing Gilbertos

Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Killing Gilbertos

Serpent King Killed]**

**First Wave unlocked+**

The screen flashed across Morgan’s face, cold and lifeless.

Rudrick from afar slowly turned and looked at him. For a single heartbeat their eyes met. Then Rudrick closed his own, bracing for the end that had always been inevitable.

When suddenly out of no where a voice rang—

"Binding Calamity: Fourth Wave. Chained Resonance."

The ground itself shook and trembled.

Crimson chains, thick as a man’s arm and lined with barbed spikes the length of daggers, erupted from the shattered earth like living serpents. They didn’t merely wrap around Gilbertos—they * devoured and tied him. The first chain shot up between his legs and coiled around his waist with bone-crushing force. The second and third lashed around his arms, yanking them wide open until he felt like his joints screamed. More chains exploded from every direction after wards —wrapping his thighs, his chest, his throat—until the towering warrior was entombed in a cocoon of blood-red metal and living hatred.

Gilbertos’s fist, which had been an inch from Rudrick’s skull, froze mid-air. The sheer weight of the binding forced him down to one knee with a sound like a mountain cracking.

"Wha—"

Even Morgan’s breath caught. Almost every Calamity was already dead or dying. The only ones still standing were Rudrick, himself... and—

"Beare!"

She looked like a corpse that refused to die.

Her left arm hung at a grotesque angle, the bone clearly snapped. Blood sheeted down the side of her face from a gash that had nearly taken her eye. Her hair was a matted black curtain soaked completely through with her own blood. Every breath rattled wetly in her chest. Yet her eyes—those fierce, burning eyes—were brighter than ever.

She had forced her way through to the Fourth Wave on pure spite and will alone.

Gilbertos’s voice rumbled from inside the living cage of chains.

"I applaud your courage, little binding dog. But you don’t really expect this parlor trick to hold me, do you?"

The chains groaned. Metal spikes dug deeper into his flesh. Blood began to drip.

Beare’s reply was barely more than a wet rasp, but it carried the tension it should.

"I wasn’t aiming to hold you forever..."

She was buying time. Every second she kept him restrained was another second Morgan needed.

**[Power completely unlocked]**

**[Ability: Permanently copy any type of power]**

**[Which type of power do you wish to permanently copy?]**

Morgan’s heart slammed against his ribs. The system was offering him the key to everything. He could choose any technique in existence and make it his forever. Such a golden opportunity many would kill for. Someone might even say it’s a system gliche

"Which ability is the bes—"

The ground suddenly started shaking and trembling. .Gilbertos roared from with the binding cage

The chains around his right arm exploded outward in a shower of molten red links. One spear flashed free. Then the second. With a single violent twist of his entire body, Gilbertos shattered half the cocoon. The remaining chains still clung to him like desperate lovers, but they were no longer enough to restrain him.

Binding Calamities—and the rare Good Deeders who walked the same path—were among the most feared abilities in the capital. A true binding could permanently restrict movement, and the power itself was completely neutral. Binding could serve saints or monsters. That was why House Martell still stood so high. Martell himself was the greatest Binding Good Deeder the capital had ever produced.

But Beare was not Martell.

She was a dying girl who had decided the world would remember her name.

*I’ve never felt so alive,* she thought, even as blood poured from the corner of her mouth.

New chains erupted from her shattered body, thinner but far denser, weaving themselves into a second layer around Gilbertos’s torso. The dual spears in his hands became blurs of silver light as he slashed and stabbed, severing links as fast as they formed.

But that’s when Rudrick moved.

He leaped backward, boots skidding across broken stone, and his serpent armor ignited. The scales along his arms and chest flared with an emerald radiance so intense it painted the entire battlefield green. Power howled around him like a living storm.

**"Calamity Fifth Wave: Serpent Armor — Full Counter!"**

The air itself seemed to twist.

Every drop of residual power left in Rudrick’s body, every fragment of the Serpent King’s strength,every ounce of rage and desperation, funneled into his right fist. The gauntlet swelled with light until it looked less like armor and more like a miniature sun clenched in his hand. The ground beneath his feet cracked in a perfect circle.

Gilbertos also felt it.

The weight of that gathering strike was absolute. If it landed clean, even he would not walk away.

So he stopped trying to free himself carefully. He went berserk.

With a bellow that shook the cliffs, Gilbertos seized the remaining chains with both hands and ripped them off.a Beare’s body was yanked forward like a ragdoll on a leash. He swung her in a brutal arc and slammed her into the rock face hard enough to leave a crater of blood and powdered stone. The impact echoed like a cannon shot.

Still the chains did not release.

Beare’s spine was screaming. Something vital inside her chest had ruptured. Her vision was tunneling. Yet her fingers—broken, bloody, trembling—kept pouring more and more crimson links into the binding.

"Morgan!!" Rudrick’s voice cut through the chaos like a blade. Power still surged around his glowing fist, threatening to tear his arm off if he held it any longer. "Help Beare and hold him still! I’ll deliver the finishing blow!"

"On it."

Morgan’s decision crystallized in less than a heartbeat.

*I’ll take... Beare’s technique.*

A new screen bloomed before his eyes, calm and clinical even as the world was in such a panic.

**[Do you wish to copy Binding Technique from Binding Calamity?]**

**[NOTE: Once copied, the technique cannot be changed or altered.]**

**[Do you wish to accept?]**

Morgan didn’t even bother speaking. He simply thought *yes*.

The screen flickered.

Then he felt the power hit him.

It was like swallowing a thunderstorm. Chains of pure crimson light erupted from the palms of his hands, from his wrists, from the very pores of his skin. They were thinner than Beare’s, sharper, deadlier—like the difference between a warhammer and a scalpel.

"So... this is how it works..."

"Little shit!! Less talking, more action!!" Beare screamed, her voice cracking under the strain. Her grip was failing. Gilbertos had nearly torn free again.

Morgan didn’t answer.

He simply moved.

Both arms snapped forward. Dozens of chains shot out like a volley of blood-red arrows, each one shooting through the air. They didn’t wrap randomly. They targeted every weak point Beare’s binding had already created—wrapping around Gilbertos’s elbows, his knees, his throat, the base of his spears. Layer upon layer of living metal crashed into the existing prison until Gilbertos looked less like a man and more like a statue being swallowed by a red tidal wave.

For one perfect second, the monster was completely immobile.

"No!! I will not be defeated by you maggots!!"

Gilbertos’s body detonated with raw power. Veins of black-and-crimson energy spiderwebbed across his skin. The dual spears in his hands flared with killing light. The combined binding of two Calamities—Beare’s desperate Fourth Wave and Morgan’s brand-new technique—groaned under the pressure. Links began to snap one by one with sounds like gunshots.

*How—?* Morgan thought, teeth clenched as he poured everything he had into the chains. Even with the two of them together, Gilbertos was still winning.

Inside the psychic realm, Raymond’s consciousness reeled.

"Gilbertos... what are you doing—"

"They’ll kill us," Gilbertos answered, voice calm even as his body strained against the bindings with enough force to crack the mountain. "I have to protect you."

"But you cannot die!" Raymond’s voice was raw with something that sounded almost like love. "You are my only family... my only true family."

Gilbertos smiled. The expression looked strange on a face half-covered in blood and glowing chains.

"I will always be with you. But now... you have to break the duality between us. It’s my final request."

"Gil—"

Gilbertos did not hesitate.

He shattered the Duality Technique with a single, deliberate act of will.

A single point of pure red light shot out from the center of his forehead—Raymond’s consciousness, forcibly ejected. The light hovered in the air for a heartbeat, trembling.

"Nooo!!" Raymond’s voice echoed from the floating spark, thin and terrified.

Gilbertos’s smile never faded.

"Take care... my master."

**[Do you wish to Self-Destruct?]**

Gilbertos accepted without a second thought.

In that instant, the man who had been both monster and guardian detonated with the deafening sound

**BOOM!!!!**

The explosion was not merely loud—it was absolute.

A sphere of pure white annihilation expanded outward, vaporizing stone, melting metal, and erasing the very air. The dual bindings of Beare and Morgan were consumed in the first fraction of a second. The cliff face simply ceased to exist. A shockwave of heat and force slammed into the three remaining fighters like the fist of an angry fighters.

Morgan, Beare, and Rudrick were hurled through the air like broken dolls, spinning end over end through smoke and flying debris. The world became a blur of fire, blood, and the distant sound of collapsing mountains.

---

Hours later.

"What happened?"

Drakell’s voice was colder than usual. Even his expression had changed—the usual mask of aristocratic boredom replaced by something far angrier.

Raymond floated into the room as a trembling red point of light. When the light finally resolved into a human form, he collapsed to his knees. His body was a map of bruises, burns, and deep lacerations. He looked less like a warrior and more like something that had been dragged through hell and only half-returned.

Drakell’s mood turned black the moment he saw the state of his son.

"It was this... this boy—"

"You let a *boy* beat you?"

"That boy has unlocked his Fifth Wave!"

"A mere boy has unlocked his Fifth Wave... and yet you... you have failed!!"

Drakell’s shout cracked through the chamber like a whip. The entire room fell into grave silence. Minerva stood motionless beside her father, as still and lifeless as a marble statue. But deep behind her cold eyes, a small, warm ember of satisfaction quietly grew.

Raymond’s voice cracked when he finally spoke again.

"Father... Gilbert died today."

Tears welled in his eyes and began to fall. Gilbert had always been more than a servant. He had been Raymond’s only true friend. His only real family.

"And all you care about... is your damn name."

The words landed harder than any physical blow.

Drakell’s face softened for the briefest of moments. He stepped forward, lowered his voice, and spoke almost gently.

"True men do not lament a warrior’s death. They avenge them. So tell me, Raymond Drakell... what will you do to the person who killed your servant?"

Raymond did not answer.

He simply stood frozen, tears sliding silently down his bloodied face.

Drakell turned and walked out of the room without another word. Minerva followed a few paces behind. At the doorway she paused, glanced back one final time at the broken figure of her brother, and clicked her tongue in open disdain.

Then she was gone.

Leaving Raymond completely alone with the ghost of the only person who had ever truly cared for him.

As they walked, Drakell’s voice drifted back to Minerva, quiet and absolute.

"Find me this boy. Wherever he is."

—