Chapter 700: Bonus -

Chapter 700: Bonus Chapter

The archer poured everything into its last attack. It drew its bow with both hands and loosed a single arrow that carried all of it at once, a crimson star screaming across the battlefield toward its rival, the strongest shot it had left in a dying body.

The southern commander answered.

It brought both blades together and unleashed its own strongest technique, the killing art it had spent a lifetime refining, the one it had never quite been able to land on the archer while the archer held the upper hand.

Two crimson blades met the crimson arrow in the space between them, and the collision detonated in a burst of light and force that threw the snow within 20 meter radius high into the ash-gray sky.

And through that light, Moon’s Raiju struck home.

It had failed against the archer once before, but not this time.

The Raiju slammed into the northern commander’s body, and lightning crackled across its entire body, seizing every muscle, locking it in place, the soul-damaging current tearing through a spiritual foundation Moon had spent the last few minutes eroding.

For one frozen heartbeat, the archer stood paralyzed, wrapped in purple lightning, unable to move.

The Beast Soul took advantage of that window to step into the opening, driving both blades through the archer’s chest in a brutal, crossing strike. The blades tore through, and the archer’s body folded around them, its own blood spraying across the snow.

The northern commander stood there with its fatal injuries staring at its rival with its bloodshot eyes, moments away from death.

The lightning faded and the wasteland fell quiet.

Moon lowered his hand, his breath ragged, blood dripping from a dozen wounds, and looked at the two elves frozen in that final tableau. The rival that had won, and the rival that had lost, reversed one last time.

"One of you was always going to end up here. The two of you, circling each other in this frozen wasteland for however many years, guarding your hearts, hating each other, waiting for the day one of you finally won." He shook his head slowly. "You ate the heart to become a True Elf. It just made you a bigger target. And the one you humiliated and killed was the one holding the blade at the end. That’s how it goes, sometimes. The thing you step over is the thing that comes back to step over you."

The archer’s eyes landed on Moon for a moment, before its dimming eyes returned to find its rival’s. The swordsman it had killed and mocked and thought it had left behind forever.

There was no rage, triumph or hatred was left in that look. Two creatures who had spent their whole existence measuring themselves against each other, and who were, in this final moment, the only ones who understood what the other had been.

The archer’s lips moved, a single word escaping its mouth, meant for the southern commander.

Then the light left its eyes.

Moon approached the fallen body and knelt beside it. He carved a small wound in its chest, then slid his hand inside, gently cupping the organ he found there, and drew it out.

He activated Eye of Truth, and a smile formed on his face.

[True Elf’s Heart]

When he’d fed the first heart to the Beast Soul, he hadn’t done it expecting to find a second one waiting inside the northern elf. He’d assumed the archer had already consumed its own. Instead, its heart had transformed rather than vanished, and now a second true elf’s heart sat in his palm. Everything had worked out in his favor, more than he’d had any right to hope, and he certainly wasn’t going to complain.

The southern commander’s eyes shone for a moment, and it relayed a thought to Moon through the summon bond.

It wants to do something.

"Go ahead," Moon said, storing the heart carefully in his ring. "Do as you please. I’ve already taken what I wanted."

The Beast Soul walked to the dead archer’s body. Then it raised its blades and swung, several times.

Moon watched with widened eyes but didn’t intervene.

The snow around the archer’s corpse shifted and parted under the blade-strokes, and a grave took shape in the frozen ground.

He’s burying him as a sign of respect.

Moon couldn’t help his surprise at the humility in the act. It was an admirable thing to do, and stranger still for the target of it, the rival that had humiliated the swordsman, and had ultimately been the cause of its death. And yet the southern commander laid its enemy to rest.

Moon watched the archer’s body disappear beneath the snow, and said nothing.

Some rivalries, it seemed, ran deeper than hatred.

The notifications flickered across his vision.

[You have killed a Level 64 A-Rank True Elf]

[You have gained 31,200 Lives]

[You have leveled up!]

Moon stared at the display, and a massive smile spread across his face.

The kill hadn’t just handed him a fortune in Lives and enough experience to level up. It had poured a massive influx of spiritual energy into his body, and that energy had flooded his twelfth acupoint, raising its concentration in a single surge, pushing him meaningfully closer to filling it.

I’ll use Ice-Assimilation as the foundation for this acupoint, Moon thought, already planning how to build the twelfth around the new skill.

His planning broke off as a sudden explosion of energy erupted around him.

The gate materialized directly at his side, announcing the end of the gate. The wasteland’s ruler was dead, both commanders gone, and the gate had opened to let its clearers home.

Moments later, his team came rushing across the snow toward him.

They didn’t need to be told what had happened. The gate’s appearance said everything.

Their faces were lit with pure, unguarded joy, exhaustion and injuries forgotten, running toward him through the falling snow. They entered a battle none of them expected to survive and they were, impossibly, going to walk out.

They’d won and they were going home.