Chapter 301: Offering of Flowers

“You...” Morris trailed off, his face twisted.

He glared at the blazing Ashen Flames. Soon after, the quiet sound of footsteps echoed.

“Dale...”

I stared at the branch that had pierced through Yurina’s abdomen and the blood pouring down in thick streams. Suddenly, a faded memory brushed past my mind, words Yuren had spoken as he died in my previous life.

“I’m sorry, Dale. For leaving you... all alone.”

I placed a hand on Yurina’s shoulder, letting the power of the Blessing of Resurrection flow into her. The flickering Ashen Flames wrapped around her wound. It was my first time attempting something like this, even across the thousands of years of my past life, but for some reason, I was certain that I could do it.

A faint gasp escaped Yurina’s lips. The branch lodged in her abdomen slid out smoothly, and the wound healed at a rapid pace. At a glance, it resembled how the ancient heroes’ wounds regenerated under Morris’s power.

Yurina touched the gray ash drifting down around her now-healed wound. When the ancient heroes regenerated, there had been no such ash. This was the same ash that had appeared when I myself returned from death.

“T-this is...? Dale, you could do this too?” she asked.

“It’s my first time trying it.” With a faint smile, I checked her fully healed wound.

Even though both resulted in healing, my blessing’s effect felt fundamentally different from that of Morris’s blessing. It was probably not the best comparison, but if Morris’s method was like stitching torn clay back together, mine felt like discarding the broken clay entirely and replacing it with something new. It was almost like the difference between regeneration and resurrection. In any case, the outcome was the same with both powers.

Yurina picked herself up. “Alright! Since you’re healed, let’s—”

I cut her off and said, “No, Yurina. Stay here.”

“Stay... here?”

“I’ll handle him.”

I turned toward Morris as Ashen Flames flared up around me. Unlike before, when I healed Yurina, this heat was feral, like it could devour the entire world.

Morris shook his head with a tired expression. “So, you really plan to interfere with us until the very end?”

He let out a deep sigh. “Well, can’t be helped.”

A crooked grin spread across his lips. “I told you before, didn’t I? I’d help you reach the point where you’d want to end this world.”

He turned to the Apostles of Eternity and spoke quietly. “Kill them. All of them.”

The apostles nodded mechanically and kicked off the ground, charging toward the fallen Iris. Starting at them, I raised my hand to unleash Ashen Flames at them, but Yurina stepped forward, gripping the hilt of her broken sword.

“It’s okay, Dale,” she said. Silver aura flowed from her soul stigmata, forming a beautiful blade of moonlight above the hilt. “I’ll protect Iris. No matter what.”

I looked at her. “Yurina...”

“You said it before, remember? That you could exist because I was there.”

With a faint smile, Yurina cut down the first apostle rushing at her. As she cut through the ones charging toward Iris, she continued, “It’s the same for me. Because you were there, I could become who I am now... No, we could.”

She glanced back briefly at Elisha and Laneige, who were rushing toward them, and smiled softly. “So, trust me, Dale.”

As I stood there, speechless, staring at her, Berald, Sophia, and Camilla finally arrived and joined the fight.

“Hyah! Brother! I made it too!” Berald beamed.

“Shut up, Berald. Lower your voice,” Senior Sophia said in a serious tone.

“I-Iris! Are you okay?” Camilla asked.

A chuckle escaped me as I nodded. “Then I’m counting on you, Yurina.”

“Yeah!”

Leaving her behind, I stepped forward toward Morris.

He twisted his lips into a grin and tightened his grip on the wooden sword made of branches. “Looks like you’ve got some pretty reliable companions.”

“What? Jealous?” I said.

“Not really. I’ve got reliable allies too. And besides...” White petals scattered through the air. “The more precious something is, the greater the despair when you lose it.”

Morris stomped, and his petal-wrapped wooden sword swung forward at terrifying speed. Tree roots burst up from all directions. As the Ashen Flames and petals collided, a violent shockwave rippled outward, cracking the floor of the hall.

I exhaled, ash-laced breath escaping my lips as I swung my sword. Gray flames raged around me, and a dizzying sense of omnipotence spread along my spine. Then, tree roots erupted from the fractured ground. They were dozens of meters long, thick enough that a grown man couldn’t wrap his arms around them. Each root, imbued with the power of the Tree of Creation, held enough force to take down even a Master-level hero in a single blow.

“Ignite,” I chanted.

The raging flames wrapped around the roots, instantly reducing them to ash. Morris clicked his tongue and hastily stepped back. I kicked off the ground lightly, closing the distance in the blink of an eye. My fist, wrapped in Ashen Flames, shot forward. There was no special technique or elaborate skill. None of that was necessary. The fist, imbued with overwhelming magic, held enough force to quite literally crush a mountain.

The earth twisted and buckled. Struck head-on, Morris was sent smashing through the auditorium wall, flying hundreds of meters away. A hole the size of a human head had been blown open through his solar plexus. Blood and organs spilled out from the torn flesh. However, the flesh around the wound writhed, then knit itself back together, regenerating in an instant.

“Impressive! Alright then, let’s kill each other properly!” With a twisted grin, Morris charged forward.

The clash continued relentlessly. The grounds of the Hero Academy, large enough to rival a small or mid-sized city, were reduced to chaos by the aftershocks of their battle. A body skewered by dozens of tree roots regenerated in an instant, and a body shredded by Ashen Flames restored itself in the blink of an eye.

Morris burst into manic laughter as he swung his wooden sword. “Hahaha! I can’t even remember the last time I experienced ‘death’ like this!”

White petals scattered through the air. The surroundings became blanketed in them, as though we were standing in the middle of a snowstorm across a frozen plain.

“Well? Can you handle it?” Morris asked.

“As long as it takes.” I nodded quietly, burning away the drifting petals with Ash Flames.

“Heh. Let’s see how long you can keep that up.” Morris curled his lips into a smirk and glanced toward the auditorium, now quite far away. “Hmm, looks like I don’t have the luxury of spreading my power over there anymore.”

As he extended his hand toward it, a green light burst out from within and was absorbed into his body. The green aura flowing from Morris grew noticeably denser.

“You’ve withdrawn the power you gave to the apostles?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s not like they’re much help in this situation anyway.”

“Then they won’t last long.”

Without the Blessing of Regeneration, the Apostles of Eternity wouldn’t stand a chance against Yurina, Elisha, and Laneige.

Morris shrugged indifferently. “Who cares if they die?”

That unsettling feeling crept back again. It felt like watching gears slip out of alignment; the feeling that something was deeply wrong was crawling down my spine.

Morris gripped a branch as dense green energy surged around him. “Well then, shall we go all out now?”

White chrysanthemum petals bloomed from the branch.

“Before that...” I said.

“Hm?”

“There’s something I want to ask.”

Morris smirked, idly flicking the branch in his hand. “Haha. What, buying time until your teammates get here?”

“Just answer me.” I looked straight at him and spoke quietly. “Why do you keep saying ‘we’?”

At first, I had thought his “we” referred to the Apostles of Eternity. But he used it even now, when none of them were here. It was as if someone else was standing right beside him.

“What are you...” He froze mid-sentence.

“There’s no one there but you,” I replied.

A dry laugh escaped Morris. “Hey, did you hear that?”

He turned toward empty air, shoulders shaking with laughter. “He says there’s only me here.

“Haha! Right? We’ve been fighting together this whole time. What’s he even talking about?

“Man, I told you guys to train harder, didn’t I? You slack off all the time, and now he’s acting like you don’t even exist.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Don’t get so pissed. I can’t even joke around with you anymore.

That vague unease I had felt earlier began to sharpen into clarity. “Ah! You.”

When Morris had said he wanted to return home, something bothered me. Why would he want to go back? Logically, it made sense since he had been thrown into a strange world five hundred years ago. The only issue was that too much time had passed. Five hundred years was an entire half-millennium. No matter how much attachment he had left behind, even if he returned, it wouldn’t be the same world he longed for. He was definitely well aware of that. Yet, he said he had to return even if it meant reducing this world to ashes.

Suddenly, a single white petal drifted past my eyes in the wind. Chrysanthemums, huh.

I remembered hearing as a child that, in the old Republic, chrysanthemums were flowers offered when mourning the dead.

Morris tightened his grip on the branch blooming with chrysanthemums. “Yeah. I know.”

He murmured unfamiliar names. “Yeong-Hun. Jae-Young. Jin-Ho. Yeon-Ju. Let’s make it back... together.”

The petals swirled like a blizzard.

Now I understood. Only now did it truly sink in. “Ah! So that’s it.”

Just like me, you, too, have been living there in that place that never ends and never fades. He had been living in a flower garden so bitterly cold, so painfully frigid that it gnawed at the soul.