LTTH C57

Chapter 57

The voice, small yet deliberate, reverberated through the air, its resonance spreading slowly until it thrummed at the very edge of the village. Before Hansol could even think, the system’s notification appeared: 10 Divinity consumed. Along with it came the sudden draining of his strength.

“Ugh.”

For a moment, his legs buckled, and he thought he might collapse. Yet, unexpectedly, his body held firm. No—he was not merely standing. As his gaze lowered, he saw his feet hovering, inches above the ground, the distance widening as though he were being lifted further skyward.

“Hansol!”

“Healer!!”

Isaac and Kassie rushed forward, hands outstretched to grasp him. But their arms passed straight through his body, as though he were some phantom.

“…!”

A startled jolt ran through him. Was he truly becoming a ghost?

Fear flickered at the sight of their hands slipping harmlessly through him. Yet the golden radiance enveloping him did not feel dangerous. It was the same serene glow he had once felt when proclaiming Sanctuary. It wrapped around him quietly, gently.

What… has changed?

For all his fear before casting it, what came was strangely peaceful. Save for the hovering body and the lightness filling him, nothing felt different. At least, not to Hansol himself. Outwardly, however, everything had changed.

His signature black hair and dark eyes had been transfigured, replaced by a brilliance of golden light. His form was shrouded in a shimmering haze of gold, swirling like wings of an angel as it filled the air around him.

“…Hansol?”

Thus it was no wonder Kassie’s voice shook as if beholding a stranger for the first time, eyes wide with awe.

“Saint…?”

Nor was it strange that Isaac and Kassie were not the only ones struck dumb. The uproar surrounding Hansol ebbed into silence, swallowed by the awe inspired by his altered form. Outside the village, monsters still clawed and raged, the situation no less dire—but none could look away.

Saint? No, such a word was insufficient.

“Oh, Lord Almighty…”

A whispered prayer fell from someone’s lips, and the word pierced into every heart. God. Yes—that was the only word that could encompass the figure draped in golden light, hovering above them with wings of radiance.

This was a world accustomed to gates and monsters, where abilities beyond common reason abounded. And yet, faced with what could only be called a god, even these hardened souls were reduced to mere mortals, trembling.

“…Ah.”

It began with the clatter of a basket. A woman dropped it to the ground, scattering its contents, yet she did not stoop to gather them. She simply collapsed to her knees.

It was as though she had fired the signal flare. All around, the sound of bodies thudding to the earth resounded. Tools, weapons, whatever they held—dropped as they fell prostrate. And then, one after another, they pressed their hands together and prayed. What was remarkable was not that they prayed, but that not a single soul sought to stop them.

Wait—no.

This was the battlefield. Even if only the hunters fought on the front lines, every person here carried their share of the burden. For them to suddenly abandon their posts—worse still, for Hansol himself to be the cause… damn it.

Panicked, he tried to move, but though his limbs were free, he could not approach them. It was as if he were locked within the air itself. Powerless, he could do nothing to break their self-imposed strike.

“Damn this system!”

Shouldn’t you be throwing warnings now, raising alerts? You wretched system!

He had boldly invoked the skill, but what had it brought him? Nothing more than a glowing body, a little levitation. By all appearances, something tremendous had occurred, and yet the system remained infuriatingly silent. At any other time, it would have been plastering screens before his eyes.

[Hmph. So this is what you schemed? This paltry trick?]

It was Berthel, not the system, who broke the silence.

[Did you truly think that a whelp, freshly clad in godhood, could oppose me?]

Godhood…?

[At this meager rank, it will be you who perishes.]

Was he offering hints in place of the system? Perhaps. Regardless, Berthel’s words were more useful than the system’s muteness.

…Advent. A god. Godhood.

Hansol’s mind spun furiously. A skill to summon a god. Berthel’s mention of godhood. If the pieces aligned, then…

Did I… become a god?

Five years as a hunter—whether by choice or circumstance, he had learned to read between the lines. He did not know if this “god” meant the divine of religion or the deities of myth. But gods were said to be omnipotent. If so—

Was it not that their will alone shaped reality?

If that were the case, then Berthel should already be dead. Hansol was thinking of nothing else but how to kill him. Clearly, mere thought was not enough. A path of reasoning opened before him, but before he could follow it, Berthel struck.

[Let us see how long those insects you so treasure can endure.]

Berthel’s form grew darker still as he raised one arm and slammed it down upon the void.

Boom.

The ground quaked with each blow.

No… don’t tell me—

Hansol’s head whipped around.

Boom—!

“Ugh…!”

The monsters still swarmed outside the Sanctuary, but this was not their doing. It was Berthel, pounding again and again as though venting fury.

That brute…!

The Sanctuary shielded the village in a great dome. And Berthel, with brutish, senseless blows, sought to shatter it. Of course, the barrier did not break. If it could, it would never have withstood the endless tide of monsters.

Boom—!

Hansol cursed him, but did nothing. His faith in the Sanctuary’s strength was unshaken.

Crash—!

Yet as the unrelenting strikes continued, his certainty faltered. At last, the sound came—the sound of something splintering.

“My God…”

The invisible dome, believed unassailable, now cracked under the weight of Berthel’s fists.

“…No.”

The sight was seared into his eyes like a slow-motion tragedy. Desperately, Hansol pounded against the air confining him. He could not kill Berthel, not from here. But neither could he sit and watch as people perished.

“Damn it!”

He slammed his fists until they reddened, but the invisible wall yielded not at all.

Riiip—!

“No—no!”

Again and again, the Sanctuary quaked. Again and again, Hansol cried out. And at last, the barrier split, scattering light as it fell away. Hope was gone.

“…No… please…”

His voice, trembling with tears, fell hollow upon the silent air.

The only small mercy was that the outer barrier at the village’s border still stood. The curse was that Berthel had entered the inner space, stepping unchallenged into the once-sacred ground.

“Damn it… You call this godhood?! If I’m a god, then shouldn’t I be able to strike him down in an instant?! Isn’t that what this means?!”

Someone shouted, and though Hansol let it pass, he could not deny the truth of it. It was what he himself wanted to say. Yet, confronted with this nightmare, denial was all they had left.

Strangely, Berthel looked no different within the Sanctuary than without. A body of black smoke, flickering shadows. Only the oppressive force of his presence was greater now, suffocating them all.

[Yes… I should have done this from the start. Enough of this charade.]

His voice, eerie and cold, carried words Hansol could not decipher. But their meaning came clear soon enough.

For Berthel, stepping through the broken veil was not enough. He scattered fragments of darkness like snow, letting them fall over the Sanctuary.

“…Snow?”

It looked like flakes of winter, drifting softly down. But the moment they touched the ground, they melted instantly. Except for those that did not. Those grew, swelling, spreading their territory.

The first to succumb was an ordinary man.

Sitting on the ground, he staggered up in shock at Berthel’s presence, unaware that the flakes had already settled in his hair. He turned, ready to flee like the others.

“…Huh?”

He had not taken a full step before the black snow engulfed him from head to toe.

No one could have stopped it.

Like ink spilling across white parchment, his body was swallowed whole, until there was nothing left but a snowman of purest black.

And thus began the chaos.