Chapter 257: Proof of Heroic Spirit, Gluttony, pierce through the thunder!
Every sword Rowe forged corresponded to one layer of calamity.
Seven swords, seven answers.
Seven sins, seven enemies.
Wrath naturally belonged to the giant of molten ruin.
Surtr.
"ROAR!"
Surtr's bellow shook the Sea of Stars that clung to the planet like a second skin. The heavy sword in his hands, a blade that had incinerated worlds, scraped across the endless brilliance and crashed down toward Rowe.
It looked like the earth itself wearing a crown of lava.
It looked even more like a hanging hell, supported by flame.
But when sword met sword, lava collapsed.
Flame went out.
The giant who had destroyed worlds saw a fire more violent than his own, and within that fire, he saw a presence that burned with even greater explosiveness.
Humanity's wrath rose.
From the moment humans crawled out of wilderness and learned to stand, from the moment they crossed the shadow of gods and dared to lift their gaze, they had already sworn defiance to the sky.
Those were things the Primordial Human had personally lived through.
All Rowe.
Witnessed.
Engraved.
The giant of molten ruin finally faced the human, tiny as dust, and the sword in his hands that blocked his path.
Rowe's blade had become a huge war knife, nearly two meters long in human scale, wrapped in dazzling flame. Surtr saw countless silhouettes raising weapons to the heavens. He saw ten thousand surges of anger, each one sharp enough to cut.
The demon god of a dead Lostbelt felt sting.
And threat.
From the blade.
And even more, from the one who swung it.
"Come. Again."
Rowe brought his sword down and advanced, meeting Surtr's flaming great sword as it rose once more under pressure.
The lava giant's blade was the world ending demonic sword, Laevateinn, rivaling the sun's heat. Each swing birthed a howling sea of flame, like the primal molten face of a planet.
And yet, as blades collided again, as destruction met unrestrained wrath, the giant halted.
Then retreated.
Wrath was always a brutal fire.
The power Rowe displayed, acting through the seven deadly sins, was violence distilled.
Surtr had learned, though. Thwarted once already, he did not panic. Even as his sword was repelled, Laevateinn in his grasp flared brighter at the moment of impact.
A Noble Phantasm.
A Noble Phantasm could speak its own name.
A true name released power.
"Shine brighter than the sun, Sword of Flame, Loptr Laegjarn!"
Surtr's roar rolled through the Sea of Stars. In that instant, the sky looked like a fallen sun. Red gold afterglow poured across countless worlds.
Earth felt as if it had been shoved into a furnace.
Countless people endured a heat that should not exist.
Streets. Homes. Rivers. Oceans.
Water vaporized in moments.
Air became a scorching whip, lashing bodies and stripping moisture with merciless speed.
This sword was not aimed at one person.
It was a sword aimed at the world.
A sword that led the world to destruction through absolute heat.
A sword that baked everything into ash.
Across the Tokyo venue, Heroic Spirits frowned, but none rushed forward.
Not because they were calm.
Because it was not needed.
Rowe slowly raised the Sword of Wrath in his hand, bracing it against Surtr's blazing great sword, now swelling with even greater output above his head.
Linked to the planet and to human order, Rowe could see everything below.
He could see suffering.
"So hot…"
"So thirsty…"
"Are we going to die?"
"The end is really here…"
"Die. Die. Die…"
The shadow of death coiled in the deepest layer of human instinct. Heat and dryness lashed not only flesh, but the heart.
Law collapsed.
Order trembled.
And yet, beneath the scorching wind, even those who wanted to exploit chaos found themselves powerless.
Their bodies could not support it.
Good and evil became meaningless under world scale annihilation.
Everyone was an ant.
Everyone could be erased.
Surtr's flames attacked the mind through the body.
But flame against flame did only one thing.
It raised the wrath in people's hearts to another level.
Rowe struck.
But not at Surtr.
His blade swept downward toward the ground, toward every person.
With that sword, he asked the world.
Are you afraid?
No one could deny fear.
Fear was natural.
The enemy was a calamity that could grind them into dust.
But Rowe's will flowed like a voice inside their ribs.
Are you despairing?
From crawling to standing, from freeing the hands to shaping tools, from discovering fire to forging steel, from stepping out of the wilderness to crossing the shadow of gods.
Are you despairing?
Despair?
They should not.
From Nuwa mending the sky, to Yu the Great taming the floods, to Abraham building an ark, to Prometheus stealing fire, to Heracles holding up the heavens.
Humanity, from the first day it understood hunger, had faced disaster.
Again and again.
Resist or retreat, it did not matter.
Humanity never gave up on survival.
Never gave up on life.
Should they despair?
They should not.
In the dried world, heads lifted.
An old man clenched a cane as if it were a spear.
A woman staggered into the wind and tightened her fists.
A child cried, then bit down and stood.
In that moment, many people saw something they had never seen before.
The long trajectory of humanity.
They felt their ancestors in their bones.
They felt the stubborn refusal to die.
Under the furnace wind, a different fire ignited.
In the hearts of the people, fire rose.
World destruction?
To hell with world destruction.
If you destroy us, we destroy you.
"Hmph. Ha ha ha!"
"That's right. Just like that."
"Beasts who dare ruin this King's garden must suffer the bites of the hounds that guard it." Gilgamesh, as always, could not resist claiming the stage.
But the Heroic Spirits gathered in the venue still did not move.
They did not block the disaster directly.
They did not shelter people with their own hands.
Because what they had to do was simpler.
Far more essential.
"Go, my people. Under the guidance of the hounds raised by this King, fight!"
"This King acknowledges you."
"Your wrath. Your sin."
"This King is the King of Uruk, Gilgamesh."
"This King stands in the past, and acknowledges your future!"
Gilgamesh's laughter roared, and the radiance he carried linked past to future.
"Kuhahaha, Mongrel, this King will not lose to you!"
"This King is the Sun King of Egypt, King of Kings, Ramses II, Ozymandias."
"This King also acknowledges you, people of the present!"
"King of Camelot, Artoria, acknowledges you all!"
"Mhm mhm, my Rome, charge forward bravely!"
Voices layered.
Pride, prayer, command, vow.
Heroic Spirits were the past, engraved in human order.
And yet what they inherited was also the future.
To acknowledge the future from the perspective of the past.
To link infinite possibility with inherited will.
In apocalypse, this became the proof.
The proof of a Heroic Spirit.
A proof that signified unity of hearts.
A proof that meant more than unity.
It meant one heart.
Surtr's sword froze.
The lava giant stared at Laevateinn in his palm. That world ending blade, one with his existence, now stung him with a heat that did not belong to him.
The world ending sword was being burned by fire.
Rowe smiled.
"Giant of world destruction. Do you feel it?"
Of course Surtr felt it.
Through that sting, he felt infinite swords.
Swords that threatened him, like the one Rowe held.
"This is a world ending disaster."
"A disaster should be resisted by everyone."
Rowe lifted Wrath.
One person, and a thousand.
Ten thousand.
"Maybe I could repel you alone."
"But if I do it alone, it becomes meaningless."
Suffering could break people.
Or forge them.
Only hardship and trial could temper a peerless weapon.
Rowe's blade carried human order, yes.
But now human order became what it had to be.
Unified.
Only then could the sword's true output be released.
"Now tell me."
"What you face is me."
"It is us."
Rowe swept his blade with a roar.
Laevateinn cracked.
The lava giant stumbled backward.
Rowe bent his knees and leaped, Wrath in his hand surging into a torrent, striking forward.
At this moment, his sword gathered countless human wills, accumulating the future radiance of human order.
This strike was closer to human order than ever before.
Because everyone below also swung the Sword of Wrath inside their hearts.
Because the radiance of countless Heroic Spirits had condensed into tangible proof.
Infinite future.
Infinite possibility.
Disaster would become a step.
A barrier to be crushed underfoot.
"Humans."
"Do not go too far!"
Before Rowe's sword arrived, thunder erupted.
Ivan the Terrible struck at the same time.
The world ending calamities were not allies in their hearts, but Ivan would not watch Surtr fall. More than that, he too felt threatened by these tiny, impossible humans.
A roar rolled from the towering figure crowned like a cannon.
Colossal feet swept away layers of thunder.
Ivan was different from Surtr.
He would not be manipulated by wrath.
So Rowe twisted aside, avoiding the inevitable lightning.
Then, with his free hand, he called another sword.
A massive, heavy blade.
Gluttony.
The Sword of Gluttony, corresponding to the first Tsar of Russia.
It fell.
Human will gathered, and the blade cleaved the thunder apart.
Then, with Wrath like a charging horse, Rowe continued toward Surtr.
Surtr raged.
Humiliated.
Forced backward.
Then he hit an obstacle.
A brilliant Great Wall.
A band of light encircling Earth.
Blocking him from behind.
"You…"
"Hahahahaha, surprised? Surprised by Us?"
The First Emperor laughed, finally revealing the backstab he had been waiting to deliver.
Surtr was bound by the Great Wall.
Rowe's incoming blade severed the lava giant's head.
Defeated in one blow.
Rowe flicked his sleeve, swung his sword, and in falling molten fire, turned toward the last one standing.
Ivan.
Above, the First Emperor's immense main body intellect drifted within the Sea of Stars.
Below, his human form stood in wide robes, majesty overflowing.
A calamity that had turned traitor.
"Do you want to know why?"
"Because We are from this world."
The light band encircling Earth was never meant to seal Earth.
It was meant to seal Surtr and Ivan.
At the same time, it hindered the arrival of the other calamities.
A trap.
A jar.
Defeat them one by one.
That was the plan Rowe and the First Emperor had agreed upon.
Ivan stared as Surtr collapsed into shattered fragments, drifting like dead stars.
Those remnants were already being absorbed by Earth.
Becoming nourishment.
Accelerating Earth's growth.
This was another reason Rowe insisted on facing calamity with human order.
Only if it was defeated by human order could it be absorbed by human order.
Only then could the sword grow.
Boom. Boom boom.
Rowe's heart beat like thunder.
Wrath in one hand.
Gluttony in the other.
Crimson gold eyes burning.
Across from him, Ivan's monstrous body heaved.
Astonishment.
Panic.
Then fury.
"We hate traitors."
Ivan hated betrayal most of all.
In his collapsed world, the Tsar named Ivan failed at the last step to prolong existence because of betrayal, and became the beast drifting in the Sea of Stars.
So even if this moment exceeded his imagination, Ivan could not suppress his rage.
"This is the wrath of thunder."
"The wrath of a Western Emperor!"
"Hahahahaha, then let me see what sort of magnanimity you possess as an Emperor!"
Ying Zheng laughed.
The Great Wall encircling Earth connected to the Sea of Stars, guarding the suspended Epang Palace.
Great Wall and Epang Palace formed a celestial system of their own.
A scale no less impressive than Earth.
But Ying Zheng did not strike.
He was the arbiter.
The one who swung the sword was still Rowe.
Ivan raised his hands.
Thunder condensed in his palms, striking down with a deafening crash.
Rowe stepped onto Ivan's body as if it were a rugged continent.
He dashed forward, weaving left and right, dodging lightning and evading the sweep of Ivan's other hand, running across a heaving mass that swayed like mountains in an earthquake.
Wrath had already been sheathed.
Gluttony blazed.
Its afterimages fanned like wings.
Rowe drove through obstacles, aiming for Ivan's huge, flickering eyes.
But Ivan threw his head back and roared.
"Beast that accompanies my journey."
True name released.
Noble Phantasm.
Ivan himself was a Noble Phantasm. The mammoth body formed from ancient beast myth manifested fully, and a colossal mammoth silhouette rose behind him.
Its tusks bore scythe like blades.
At their points, thunder gathered and crashed down.
Rowe reversed his grip and turned thrust into slash, lifting Gluttony from below to meet the falling lightning.
Light exploded.
Energy expanded, disturbing the surrounding domain.
The Great Wall trembled.
The mammoth manifested, and Ivan's main body swung both palms, left and right, trying to crush Rowe between them.
Rowe carved an arc through the air.
The downward tusk was deflected.
The lightning's path twisted.
And the strike that should have killed Rowe slammed into Ivan himself.
The force sent the tyrant's body flying.
His Noble Phantasm collapsed and vanished.
Rowe hung in the air for a breath.
Then stomped forward like a cannonball, like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, pursuing Ivan through endless afterimages.
The heavy sword in his hand aimed for the eyes again.
Piercing upward.
Piercing through thunder.
Piercing through the calamity of the end.