Guinevere braced her boots in the dirt. Even with millennia of divine energy to draw from, holding back a newly awakened Champion was like trying to wrestle a hurricane. His aura pushed outward, a physical force actively trying to peel her off him.
The heat of it began to blister her skin, but she locked her arms around him. She could have knocked him unconscious with a single blow, but she needed him awake. A new Champion had to find his equilibrium—if he let his grief divide his mind and body right now, his powers would never stabilize or it would be greatly impacted in the future.
"I know it's hard to lose someone you love," Guinevere said, her voice steady over the roar of his energy. "I lost many of my loved ones in wars. We waged war with powerful demigod clans. We had our victories, and we had our losses. Over thousands of years, I've had to learn to stop staring into the empty spaces they left behind. I focus only on the present, because living in the past will kill you."
Luke's head snapped up. "What?" his voice cracked. "You want me to forget… after what they did to Norn!?"
His rage spiked. The divine aura flared violently, forcing Guinevere's arms back an inch. The holy heat seared her flesh, but she clamped her hands together, using her raw physical strength to hold on.
"Ugh! No, I'm not saying you erase her from your mind!" she grunted, straining against the pressure. "I'm saying you can't let her death be the only thing you see! Hope can only exist in the present, Luke. If you spend your life looking back at the graves of those you lost, you won't see the people still standing beside you!"
She dug her heels in harder as his aura thrashed. "If you let this guilt and resentment consume you, it will blind you. All you will see is what was taken, and you'll end up destroying the very things you're trying to protect!"
There was fluctuation in his energy.
"I'm not asking you to forgive them for what they did. But there are things more important than your anger. Look at what is at stake! You are the Gods' Champion. Your responsibility is to the living. To your home. You can't abandon them for the sake of revenge."
His aura fluctuated, the intense pressure pushing against her finally wavering.
Sensing the breakthrough, she gave a final push. "You don't have to carry this alone. Trust in the people around you to be your pillars. Freya and Arnold have a plan to eliminate the Demon King once and for all. If you aren't there beside them, how can they hope to succeed!?"
It was a cold necessity. The Demon King Arsnoria was no longer an infant; her dark powers had reached their full, terrifying potential. With Prime All-Father Zephyros a thing of the past now that he's millions of years old, the realm desperately needed someone strong enough to match him.
They needed Luke.
"…Big brother said to bring them alive?"
Hearing Arnold's name, Luke's energy hesitated. The burning storm of his aura retreated, shrinking back into his body as his shoulders slumped.
"Yes," Guinevere said, letting out a breath as she slowly released him, ignoring the burns on her arms.
"B-But what worth do their lives have to us?" Luke asked, looking exhausted after letting out so much divine aura. "They're dangerous!"
"I don't know what Arnold and Freya are planning," Guinevere admitted. She looked over at the captive demons. "But I'll guard them. If Ekterina wakes up and tries anything violent, I will stop her again."
From the dirt nearby, Lilith bared her fangs. "You… you think we'll just let ourselves be taken prisoner!?" she hissed.
Guinevere ignored the demoness entirely. She placed a steadying hand on Luke's shoulder, then turned her attention toward the jagged silhouette of the castle ruin in the distance.
"Now," Guinevere said firmly. "We should go check on the artifact."
And see exactly what Arthur was up to.
**
Carrying Ekterina, who was still sleeping, on her shoulder, Guinevere and the other two headed down.
They saw many bodies of the cultists who were wiped out by Arthur when he came inside. The rest that were outside, ran when they saw Guinevere approach the castle ruin. Arnold's city guard should've already made it to the empire and are scouring the land for cultists so they won't make it far.
"What's the situation like in the capital?" descending the long basement stairs, she spoke to Luke.
"Ms. Freya was able to handle the stronger monsters and I wiped out most of the big monsters that were roaming around which left only the regular mutants that the soldiers could handle."
"…I hope they exorcised the victims. Their souls were taken from them so the least they deserve is a proper burial."
That was something Guinevere couldn't even give her children. There were no bodies to mourn. But exorcising a human being controlled by a demon leaves behind ashes that can be collected.
"The priests coordinated across the city to cast mass exorcism spells so I think their souls can rest…"
An awkward silence settled over them. Guinevere could feel the tension radiating off the boy. His fists were clamped so tight his knuckles were white, his jaw grinding as he forced his feet forward. Only willpower was keeping him together.
Suddenly, Luke stopped on the steps.
Guinevere halted, turning her head slightly. In the dim, flickering torchlight, she couldn't see his face, but the bleeding aura of his grief was palpable. Behind her, Lilith shrank back into the shadows, keeping Guinevere's towering form between herself and the Champion.
"Is there a way to save someone who turned into a demon, Ms. Guinevere?" Luke asked. His voice was barely a whisper, yet heavy with desperation.
Guinevere looked at him, remembering her own long history. "There was a time my soul was corrupted," she said quietly. "I was close to death after centuries of fighting for those who couldn't fight for themselves. One mistake and regret led to me to punish myself for being impulsive in my youth. I wanted to die."
"I collapsed against a dry, withered tree, waiting to die. But in my final moment, the tree sprang to life. It drove its vines into my subconscious and blessed me, cleansing the corruption from my soul. When I came back to life, I forgot all about my past and looked only forward."
She glanced back down the stairs toward the dark basement floor below.
"My point, Luke, is that fortune finds those who suffer—if they survive long enough to receive it. I don't know how to cure your friend. But you cannot abandon hope. Look at me: when that tree's blessing finally faded, I was meant to die again. But then I met Arnold."
Luke looked up, his dark eyes catching the dim firelight. "…What do you mean? Big Brother Arnold was your fortune?"
"Yes," Guinevere said plainly. "Even though we began as enemies, he used a priceless artifact to pull me back from death itself. Perhaps there is good in his heart, or perhaps he simply saw me as a powerful tool to use for the next century. It doesn't matter as I am grateful to him. When I was nothing more than corpse dust, he gave me mercy and a reason to keep living."
She thought speaking any further was unnecessary as it felt that something changed in Luke. His signature wasn't so chaotic anymore and the trembling had stopped.
"If it's him… I'm sure he knows something…" as if sure of himself, Luke spoke to him with sparkling eyes and a smile on his face.
**
Luke stared at Guinevere's back as she resumed her walk down the stairs. Her words echoed in his mind, echoing louder than the sound of their footsteps.
He pulled a demigod back from death.
A sudden clarity washed through Luke's chest, shattering his grief and replacing it with else—something positive.
He had always admired Arnold—looked up to him as a master, a brother, a savior of the realm. But he had fundamentally misunderstood what Arnold truly was even after knowing him for a year.
Arnold was a force above nature itself. He was an existence that could rewrite fate, command death to give back its victims, and forge miracles out of utter hopelessness.
If Arnold could restore a dead demigod from dust, then saving Norn wasn't an impossible dream. It was simple. It was just a matter of Arnold's will.
A sudden devotion flared in Luke's mind.
He knows Arnold almost never does anything out of kindness but that was okay. Luke doesn't need anyone else in the world to be kind. A transactional relationship garners more trust.
Arnold is the hero who fought Valtraak—what more does he really need to do to win everyone's trust?
A tear-stricken face and grabbing his shoes and pleading to him to save Norn won't produce any results. Rather, he'll become annoyed and probably berate Luke for not facing challenges in his life on his own.
If he became Arnold's most loyal tool—if he proved his absolute worth to him—Arnold would bend reality for him, just as he had for Guinevere.
He doesn't know why or how Arnold became such an amazing person but he's glad to have a brother like that.
'Norn, wait for me… I'll work hard to bring you back…'
He promised in his heart, believing that girl is still alive in that malformed monster's body.
**
They reached the bottom of the staircase, stepping into a massive, vaulted stone chamber beneath the castle.
In the dead center of the chamber hovered the Perdition Core.
It was a jagged, asymmetrical crystal the size of a carriage, suspended above a shattered altar. It didn't glow with light, but rather seemed to consume it. Its surface resembled polished obsidian, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic heartbeat that sent veins of sickly violet energy crawling across the stone floor. It was a condensed mass of pure malice, acting as an anchor point that tore the fabric of their reality to shreds.
And it was working.
Surrounding the Core were several dark, demonic portals. They weren't elegant doorways; they were jagged tears in the air itself. Miasma bled from the edges like smoke off dry ice, and the swirling vortexes within them whispered with the faint screeches of the underworld. The concentration of demonic energy was enough to make the stone walls of the basement crack and weep black sludge.
Guinevere dropped Ekterina from her shoulder, her red eyes darting across the room. Her grip tightened instinctively.
The cultists were dead, their bodies strewn around the altar. The Core was fully active. The portals were open.
But Arthur was nowhere to be seen.
Guinevere ran to the portal where the most demonic energy was leaking.
"I sense Arthur's aura fade away in front of this portal." She said with a gulp, "…Did that boy head into the demon world by himself…?"
Did that boy really just go into the demon world without any backup or plan?
"Arthur? You mean this arrogant human?" a voice came from the portal, as a figure stepped out.
It had the voice of a gentleman but its eloquent voice was very deceiving.
It was a pale white creature, stood as tall as Guinevere, had a bald head without eyes or a nose except for a smirking mouth with sharp fangs.
It wore a white suit, untouched by any dirt despite coming from the world of demons.
Its tail swished behind it as it walked, holding someone's hair in its closed fist, dragging his unconscious body with him.
"…"
Guinevere felt this signature before.
She encountered them when she visited Yorm and was the whole reason she came to this world to investigate leads that they might be here—
The Faceless.