(Chapter 26)
The battlefield was drenched in smoke and fire. Gigaleon's laughter split the night like a mad hymn, but beneath his grin was something else—frustration. He staggered, threads whipping wildly around him, sparking against cobblestones.
"How DARE you! A filthy pirate dares to mock ME?!"
His voice cracked with rage.
"I am your nightmare—a terror that kingdoms whisper of in dread. I will NOT lose to a greedy, sea-ridden rat!"
Brooke spun her revolvers in her hands, her smirk as sharp as her bullets.
"Guess you've been whispering to the wrong kingdom, clown."
Behind her, Zeer loomed like a fortress. He hadn't moved an inch since he had appeared. His black armor shimmered faintly in the moonlight, his shield planted before Bruce and Bob. He said nothing—he only observed. Watching Brooke. Trusting her to finish this.
Gigaleon seethed. His pride, his persona, everything he boasted—threatened by a pirate's grin. Desperation crawled into his mind, driving him to his last gambit.
"You leave me no choice!"
His body began to warp grotesquely,
threads unspooling and stitching into his flesh. His veins glowed red like molten wires, his chest swelling unnaturally.
The air turned suffocating. Each breath came heavy with death.
Rowan and Azre, who had just arrived with Enix and Thalia, froze in horror. They could see it—the sheer pressure of what was forming. Gigaleon wasn't summoning clones this time.
He was becoming a living bomb.
"Hahaha! Watch closely, worms!"
Gigaleon's arms stretched wide, his body trembling violently.
"In the name of Daath, I will take this city with me into hell! Your screams will be my tribute!"
Shadows spiraled around him like a cocoon ready to burst. His grin widened as madness consumed his face.
And then—his prideful arrogance slipped. His mouth betrayed him.
"Not that it matters," he sneered, his voice cracking with mania. "The tome you so desperately seek… has already been delivered to Daath's Apostle! It is too late, you FOOLS! Daath stirs even now!"
The Purge Knights froze at his words. Enix's fists clenched. Azre's breath caught. Rowan's jaw tightened.
Zeer simply tilted his head, unreadable.
But Brooke—Brooke didn't even flinch. She stood still, her revolvers at her side, eyes shadowed beneath her hat. The laughter around her died into silence.
Inside her, the world went dark.
---
She opened her eyes into a vast blank space. Empty, endless. And before her floated two swirling lights—one red, one blue.
"Issyl…" she whispered.
"…and Friddert."
The lights pulsed gently, speaking without words, voices brushing against her soul.
Do not fear.
We are with you, as we always have been.
Brooke's lips trembled. "You mean… you're more than just guns?"
The red light spun faster, almost mocking. Foolish captain. We are your companions. Your bonds. Your strength given form.
The blue light twinkled calmly. You carry us, because you've carried them. Your crew. Your family. Their voices will never leave you.
Brooke lowered her head, shadows falling across her face. And then—she smiled. The kind of smile that carved through despair itself.
Her laughter rose, wild and fierce.
"Pathetic! So pathetic!" she howled in the void. "You think I'm afraid of your little fireworks show, Gigaleon? You think you've got me cornered? You have NO IDEA what I'm carrying!"
The lights spun faster, fusing into her hands.
Her revolvers reappeared—transformed. Their barrels glowed with intricate runes, and their chambers pulsed with infinite light. No longer mere weapons—they were a testament.
---
"Captain!" Bruce and Bob cried weakly, watching her renewed form.
The Purge Knights—Rowan, Azre, Enix, Thalia—felt it too. Hope. Something indomitable surged from Brooke.
Even Zeer, silent sentinel, allowed himself a faint grin behind his helm. As though he had been waiting for this moment all along.
Brooke leveled Issyl and Friddert at Gigaleon, whose body now swelled dangerously close to detonation.
He froze, just for a moment, staring into her eyes.
And in that instant… he knew.
The bullet she was about to fire wasn't an ordinary shot. It was judgment.
Time slowed.
Brooke's smile curved sharper. "You talk too much, clown."
Her finger pulled the trigger.
BANG.
---
And in that fraction of a heartbeat, as the bullet surged forward, Gigaleon's mind shattered into a storm of flashbacks—
—his first kill as Daath's apostle praised him.
—the streets he burned for laughter's sake.
—the day he swore none would laugh at him again.
—the tome in his hands, the promise of power.
—and now, the end.
His grin finally cracked.
The bullet tore through the air, but in his mind time broke apart.
Gigaleon saw himself—not as he was now, but as a frail, trembling boy.
---
He remembered the cold stone alleys of Eidralock, a city that fed on cruelty. Children without names scavenged in the gutters, and he was one of them. The others called him Threadrat because his mother had died sewing cloth, and the only thing she left him was her basket of needles and spools.
He remembered holding her hand as it grew cold, whispering promises a boy could never keep.
"I'll make you proud, Ma… I'll stitch us a home one day."
But homes were for the rich. For nobles who jeered and spat.
Gigaleon learned to juggle scraps of thread, to twist them into little puppets. He tried to make the other children laugh, to ease the hunger in their bellies with a show. But instead of applause, they mocked him.
"Look! The little rat thinks he's a clown!"
"Dance, clown-boy, dance!"
He forced laughter then, painted smiles with ash, just to hide the shame burning in his chest. If they laughed with him, maybe it would hurt less than when they laughed at him.
But they never did.
---
Years passed. Hunger turned into desperation. He begged at taverns, performed tricks, spun thread animals for coins. Sometimes he went a whole week with nothing but rainwater to drink.
Until one night—he saw fire.
A mob of nobles' sons, drunk and laughing, set his thread puppets aflame. They stomped on the ash, laughing at his tears.
"Dance now, clown-boy! Dance for your puppets!"
Something inside him snapped.
The laughter he once sought became a blade. He picked up the burning spools, wrapped the thread around his hand, and when they jeered—he pulled.
He pulled until their laughter turned to screams.
That night, blood soaked the cobblestones. And Gigaleon… laughed.
But it wasn't joy. It was hollow, broken. A laugh to drown the silence in his chest.
---
When the Cult of Daath found him, he was kneeling in the ashes of that alley, stitching corpses with blackened thread. They asked him his name. He had none.
They called him Gigaleon—the puppet clown.
And he embraced it.
Because if the world would only see him as a clown, then he would become the cruelest jester it had ever known. He would make their laughter his stage—until the day no one dared laugh at him again.
---
His power reflected his soul:
Threads that bind—because he had been bound to misery.
Clones that mock—because he was mocked his whole life.
Explosions of mad joy—because he no longer knew the difference between laughter and grief.
Every curse he cast upon others was what the world had once cursed him with.
---
And as Brooke's enchanted bullet neared his heart, Gigaleon's broken smile trembled.
For the first time in decades—he wasn't laughing.
He was just… tired.
"…Ma… I stitched us a home… after all…"
Tears rolled down his cheeks.
Then the bullet struck.
The air burned with tension as Brooke's enchanted shot cut through the night.
It wasn't just steel and fire—this was resolve made manifest, twin spirits bound to her revolvers guiding her hand.
The bullet sank deep into Gigaleon's chest. His eyes widened—not in pain, but in shock.
There was no explosion. No catastrophic firestorm.
Instead, the bullet drank. It devoured every drop of mana swirling inside him, bleeding him of the unholy reservoir he had prepared. His threads unraveled, his cursed phantoms collapsed into ash, and his clones dissolved like shadows at dawn.
The living bomb of destruction became nothing but a frail, trembling man.
And in that moment—Brooke staggered.
Not from exhaustion. Not from recoil.
But from the torrent of memories that weren't hers.
---
She saw a boy with threadbare clothes, juggling scraps of yarn to make children laugh. She saw nobles sneering, spitting on him, stomping on the little puppets he'd stitched with hope.
She felt the fire. The hunger. The desperate laughter that was meant to mask sorrow.
The thread tightening around cruel throats.
The blood-soaked alley where a boy had finally snapped.
All of it crashed into her like a wave.
Brooke's body shook, and for the first time since she raised her pistols that night—she lowered them.
"…You poor bastard," she whispered, her voice breaking.
The clown before her wasn't just a monster. He was a boy who had once wanted to make people smile. A boy whose only crime was being broken by a world too cruel to let him live gently.
Gigaleon coughed, scarlet staining his lips. Yet, even as death's shadow loomed, he chuckled faintly, voice hoarse and raw.
"Finally… someone… didn't laugh."
Brooke's chest tightened. Her smirk—her shield of sarcasm—wavered into something softer.
She shed a tear, not for victory, but for a clown who had lost his smile long before this battle.
As his body slumped, the last of his threads scattered into the night like dust caught in the wind.
The square fell eerily silent.
Zeer, standing like a black titan, narrowed his eyes but said nothing—his shield lowering as he bore witness.
The Purge Knights, weapons still in hand, froze in awe at what the pirate queen had done.
Bruce and Bob, battered but alive, stared at their captain. They'd never seen her like this—shaken not by danger, but by compassion.
Brooke finally turned, wiping the corner of her eyes roughly as if to erase the weakness.
"Don't… don't any of you dare say a word," she snapped, forcing her usual grin.
But deep down, the memory of Gigaleon's tragedy burned within her like a scar she could never erase.
The battle in Seiran's heart had ended, though its echoes still lingered like smoke clinging to the wind. Brooke holstered her revolvers, the glow of Issyl and Friddert fading into silence. The Purge Knights steadied themselves, Bob and Bruce breathed shallow but alive, and Zeer—the black-shield titan—stood watchful, as though waiting for storms yet unseen.
But far above the city, where the forests met the jagged ridges of the Molroc Range, another story was already beginning.
There, beneath a vast blanket of stars, stood a lone figure.