Chapter 1832: The One Around Whom All Things Turn: Part-3

The crucifix tore through the ruined tea shop.

BOOOOM!!

The entire structure was obliterated.

Wood, stone, metal, and dust were hurled outward as the crucifix continued forward, shredding everything in its path.

Prophetess had moved only because instinct had screamed at her before her mind could understand what was happening.

If she had bent forward even slightly less...

Her head would have been crushed.

Clang~

Something wrapped around her neck.

The silver chain tightened.

Before she could even reach for it, the chain yanked her backwards.

"Ghk—!"

Her body flew through the air.

Then the world became a blur.

She was dragged through the ruined city at tremendous speed, her body striking walls, pillars, shattered vehicles, and fragments of buildings as the chain pulled her relentlessly through the streets.

BAM!

Her shoulder struck a wall.

CRACK!

Her back slammed against another.

Her body bounced across the ground before the chain dragged her onward.

She couldn’t even control her own movements.

She was no longer fighting.

She was being pulled.

Thrown around like an object that had lost the right to decide where it would fall.

"Stop..."

Her fingers clawed at the chain around her throat.

She tried to breathe, but the pressure around her neck made every breath shallow and ragged.

"S-Stop!"

The chain dragged her another dozen meters.

Then she drove her staff into the ground.

BOOM!!

The staff pierced through the fractured street.

Prophetess’s body jerked violently as the sudden resistance nearly tore her arms from their sockets.

CLANG!!

The chain tightened around her neck.

For a moment, the entire street seemed frozen between two opposing forces.

The chain pulled from one direction.

Prophetess pulled from the other.

Her foot carved deep grooves into the ground as she fought against the force dragging her away.

"Arhh!"

Her teeth clenched.

Every muscle in her body trembled.

The pressure around her throat became unbearable.

Her vision darkened at the edges.

She knew she could not overpower him.

That wasn’t the point.

She only needed to resist.

Because time was the only thing she still possessed.

Suddenly, the chain loosened.

Prophetess stumbled forward.

"What—?"

Her body pitched toward the ground.

Then the chain snapped tight again.

YANK!!

Her eyes widened.

"No!"

TRRRR!!

She was ripped backwards once more.

Her body flew through the air and slammed into another building.

The structure rotated sideways the instant she struck it.

She bounced from the wall and was immediately dragged toward another.

She couldn’t tell which way was up anymore.

She could only feel the chain.

Pull.

Impact.

Pull.

Impact.

Pull.

Her body was dragged around the twisted city like a Yo-Yo.

"Arh!"

Another impact sent blood spraying from her mouth.

One moment, her face slammed against a metal rod. The next, her back crashed into a concrete wall hard enough to fracture it. Before she could even recover, the chain violently changed direction and drove the back of her head into a thick metal plate.

BANG!!

Pain exploded through her skull.

She barely had time to gasp before the chains yanked her left, then right, repeatedly slamming her into whatever happened to stand in their path. Her body became little more than a rag doll caught in the hands of something vastly stronger, each impact sending another wave of pain through her battered frame.

Then the chain suddenly pulled upward.

Prophetess shot into the sky.

She was dragged higher and higher until the ruined city spread beneath her like a shattered painting. Her robes fluttered violently around her bloodied body as the chain pulled her directly above him.

And he remained there.

Calmly standing in the exact same place where he had been standing from the beginning.

The black-armored figure didn’t move an inch.

He merely raised his head and looked up at her.

There was no urgency in his posture.

That expression infuriated her more than the pain ever could.

Her fingers tightened around her staff.

Instead of allowing the chain to continue dragging her upward, she forced herself downward.

Her body began to glow with furious white light, and the staff in her hands pulsed with violent energy. The light gathered around its tip, compressing into a blinding force that threatened to tear through everything in its path.

She was almost there.

The staff was already aimed at his face.

"By the order of th—" THUCK!! "—KYYAAAAA!!!"

The enormous crucifix came flying back.

It struck her before she could react.

The prophetess was sent flying like a bug struck by a swat.

Yup, the same crucifix that send flying by him came back like a boomerang.

"..."

The black armour stared silently at the empty space where she had disappeared.

Then he casually yanked his hand.

The chain was still attached to her neck.

YANK!!

Prophetess, who had been flying away, suddenly jerked backwards.

Her body twisted violently in midair.

She rolled around.

The chain wrapped around her momentum, pulling her back toward him until she began rolling along it like a Yo-Yo being reeled back toward its owner.

The chains continued winding around her body, binding her arms and legs as she struggled desperately against them.

Within seconds, she crashed directly into his waiting hand.

Her once-pristine white robes were now stained crimson.

Large portions had been torn away, leaving the fabric hanging from her body in ragged strips.

She wriggled helplessly within the chains.

Like a worm caught beneath a blade.

The black-armored figure looked down at her coldly.

"Is that all you’ve got, old hag?"

His voice remained almost disappointingly calm.

"And don’t go telling me you’ve reached your limit before we even begin. I already told you. I fought you with the same limit."

He tightened his fingers around the chain.

"I haven’t moved."

His gaze remained fixed on her.

"I haven’t used anything other than this chain and the hand holding it."

There was no exaggeration in his words.

He was, in fact, being fair.

The foot he had planted on the ground was still in the exact same place where he had stood when the fight began.

He had not taken a single step.

Not even a millimeter!

And the hand holding her was his left.

The same left hand that was nothing more than a manifestation of darkness, a false imitation of his true hand. Whatever power it possessed was nowhere near the strength of the original.

So, by his own standards, he truly had been fighting her fairly.

Prophetess’s eyes widened.

For the first time, she stopped struggling.

She looked around.

Her breathing gradually slowed as she took in the world surrounding them.

Buildings had been destroyed.

Streets had twisted into impossible shapes.

Entire sections of the landscape had been obliterated.

Everything had changed.

Everything except him.

He was still standing in the exact same position.

The same posture.

The same stillness.

Not even his feet had shifted.

Prophetess slowly turned her eyes toward him.

Then she looked at the world again.

Everything had moved.

Everything had changed.

Everything had been destroyed.

Yet he had not.

It was as though the entire world had been revolving around him.

As though reality itself was the thing being dragged through the battlefield while he remained fixed at its center.

He was the only constant.

The one thing that had not changed.

Prophetess clenched her teeth.

Her body began glowing again.

White light gathered beneath her torn robes as she prepared to force her power through the chains.

The black armour glanced at her.

"Old hag, I’m not interested in watching you flash."

SLAP!!

His palm struck her across the face.

The light instantly vanished.

Prophetess’s head snapped sideways.

"..."

A vein visibly throbbed against her forehead... Never in her life had anyone treated her like this!

As if she were worth nothing!

This fucking asshole!

Her body trembled.

Not from fear this time.

Pure, incandescent fury!!

She twisted within the chains and glared at him.

"Y-You will pay for this!"

The black armour simply looked at her.

"No, old hag. Everyone pays for me."

Prophetess’s expression froze.

His fingers tightened slightly around the chain.

"You were abandoned by your Master."

Her pupils contracted.

"You betrayed your own kind."

Her breathing stopped for a moment.

"You watched your kin die before me."

Her eyes trembled.

"You watched your world fall before me."

The words struck deeper than the chains ever had.

"And after all of that..."

He leaned slightly closer.

"You kept running."

His voice remained eerily calm.

"Running and running..."

A faint, humourless laugh escaped him.

"To find what? Me?"

He laughed again, quietly.

"Again and again and again..."

"Hahaha..."

As his hand slowly moved toward her hood, Prophetess’s entire body stiffened.

Her breathing became frantic.

"N-No... No, NO!"

She began wriggling violently within the chains, twisting her head from side to side as far as the restraints allowed. Her movements were desperate and almost frantic, nothing like the composed Prophetess who had been manipulating the battlefield only moments earlier.

"D-Don’t."

Her voice cracked.

"Don’t you dare."

He ignored her.

His armoured fingers reached toward the edge of her hood.

"I’ve always been curious about what you’re hiding behind this veil..."

His fingers closed around the fabric.

"And finally..."

RIP!!

The hood tore away.

For a moment, the black armour said nothing.

"Oh?"

His voice carried genuine surprise.

"I... genuinely didn’t expect that."

He had seen things that should never have existed.

He had witnessed corpses that still screamed after death, creatures that wore human faces, worlds collapsing into oceans of blood and civilisations rotting from within.

Yet even he seemed genuinely caught off guard.

A slow, crooked grin appeared beneath the darkness of his helmet.

"You really didn’t lie when you said you were ugly..."

A quiet laugh escaped him.

"Haha..."

What he saw beneath the hood was not simply an old or disfigured face.

Her skin was mottled with sickly brown patches, some dry and cracked while others appeared swollen and wet. Ruptured flesh spread across her cheeks and forehead, with festering wounds leaking thick, dark pus that slowly crawled down the sides of her face.

There wasn’t a single strand of hair on her head.

The skin around her scalp was uneven and discolored, with several places appearing almost translucent beneath the dim light.

Her eyes remained hidden behind the white ribbon wrapped tightly across her face.

The ribbon itself had once been pristine.

Now it was stained.

Blood had soaked into the fabric in places, while darker fluids had spread outward from beneath it.

It was less a face than a swollen, grotesque sphere of diseased flesh, desperately bound beneath strips of white ribbon.

A face so revolting that the mere sight of it made the stomach churn, as though the body itself instinctively wanted to reject what the eyes had seen.

Prophetess trembled.

The trembling slowly spread through her entire body.

She lowered her face.

For someone who had faced destruction without surrendering, this was the first time she looked as though she wanted to disappear.

Her lips quivered.

"Don’t..."

There was no anger in that voice anymore.

Only shame.

A shame so deep that even asking him not to look felt humiliating.

She had spent centuries hiding that face.

Not because she feared death.

She feared being seen.

She feared someone looking directly at what she had become and confirming the thought she had carried inside herself for so long.

That perhaps there had never been anything beautiful left beneath the veil.

The black armour watched her.

Then something caught his ice-blue eyes.

A tiny bulge appeared beneath the brown, corrupted skin of her cheek.

It moved slowly.

Something beneath her flesh crawled upward.

Prophetess froze.

The black armour leaned closer.

The bulge disappeared.

Then another appeared near her jaw.

This one moved faster.

His expression changed.

"What..."

Another shape wriggled beneath her skin.

Then another.

And another.

Soon, the movement was impossible to miss.

Small shapes crawled beneath the surface of her face, disappearing into the darkness beneath her skin before emerging somewhere else.

One travelled across her cheek.

Another moved beneath her temple.

Something else writhed beneath her neck.

They were small, almost the size of a pinky finger.

But there weren’t one or two.

There were dozens.

Hundreds.

Perhaps thousands?

They moved beneath her skin with no discernible pattern, creating tiny ripples across her flesh.

The black armour stared.

"Hmm... What are those?"

Prophetess’s body suddenly went rigid.

"No."

He glanced at her.

"No?"

Her breathing became uneven.

"No, no, no..."

She shook her head violently.

"Don’t do that, 27."

For the first time, there was genuine fear in her voice.

He looked at her for another moment.

Then his fingers moved toward one of the brown patches.

Prophetess recoiled instinctively.

"Don’t touch me."

Yet he completely ignored her plea. His armoured fingers pressed into one of the brown patches on her face.

His finger slowly sank into her flesh as though he were pressing into soft mould, disappearing beneath the surface without the slightest resistance.

Prophetess’s breath caught in her throat.

"Wait..."

He pushed deeper.

"27..."

Deeper.

Her voice broke.

"Don’t..."

When his finger went deep inside her!

"ARRHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Her scream tore across the ruined world.

Her entire body convulsed.

The chains around her rattled violently as she instinctively tried to escape, her back arching while her hands clawed desperately against the restraints.

A horrible pressure spread beneath her skin, followed by the sensation of something being disturbed inside a place that had never been meant to be touched.

Her scream became hoarse.

"STOP!"

He didn’t.

His expression remained almost clinical.

His fingertip moved beneath the flesh.

Something brushed against it.

He stopped.

"There you are."

Prophetess went completely still.

"No..."

His fingers shifted.

He caught whatever had moved beneath her skin.

Prophetess understood what he was about to do.

Her voice became barely audible.

"D-Don’t pull it out..."

He looked at her.

For a brief moment, there was something almost strange in her expression.

Not the pride of the Prophetess.

Not the arrogance.

Not even the fear of death.

It was the desperation of someone begging another person not to expose the last thing she had managed to hide.

"Plea—"

Slucckk~

He pulled.

"ARRRGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

Her body jerked violently as something was dragged from beneath her flesh.

The sensation seemed to tear through her entire nervous system.

Something small emerged between his fingers.

The tiny creature twisted and wriggled around his armoured fingertip.

The black armour stared at the creature in silence.

His ice-blue eyes followed every tiny movement.

The thing squirmed around his finger, its soft body contracting and stretching as though desperately trying to return to the place from which it had been pulled.

His expression slowly changed.

"Oh?"

He lifted it closer.

"Ohhhhhhh~"

A sly grin returned.

"What a naughty girl you are. You’ve been hiding this all this time~"

"Hehehehe~"