Chapter: 235
At the moment when Kraush collided with Glen,
In front of Sigrid,
A girl with dark blue hair appeared.
The name of the Sword Saint, Charlotte Balheim, is a symbol of fear for those who have encountered her.
Countless geniuses have doubted their talents and crumbled before her.
Among them, there was also Sigrid from the past.
Born with praises, Sigrid Ephania believed she was the center of the world and carried herself with confidence.
And during her glorious life, she met Arthur Gramalte—the hero king protecting the world, the center of the Arcane Generations.
As Sigrid became his partner, she realized once again,
“Oh, I’m a special person!”
But there was one person who would shatter her sense of specialness.
The pinnacle of talent.
Even Arthur himself was hesitant to clash with this person.
Charlotte Balheim.
It was her.
KABOOM!
An explosion resonated violently.
The floor tiles laid by the Rahern Academy had shattered, sending dust soaring, and the surrounding gardens were left with nothing but dirt.
Amidst the rising dust...
KABOOM!
Another thunderous noise echoed.
Amidst the chaos, two women appeared.
One was the Sword Saint Charlotte Balheim, her dark blue hair fluttering.
The other was Sigrid Ephania, the Empire’s third princess, with sea-colored hair flowing behind her.
Their battle was so fierce that even onlookers couldn’t help but feel a chill.
Charlotte’s azure aura pushed against the atmosphere like the heavens’ wrath.
Sigrid’s white aura roared like a white dragon, dominating the terrain.
As their swords clashed, waves of energy erupted, devastating everything around them.
Charlotte frowned; Sigrid’s strength made her arms tingle.
“Looks like I’m getting close to my limit, huh?”
In contrast, Sigrid simply smiled.
With a relaxed demeanor, she emitted an even stronger force.
Her natural physique and aura, known as the bloodline of the White Dragon.
Combined with the White Sword, one of the ten great heavenly swords.
And the Former Sword King’s Hidden Technique, Sword Light, made her unreasonably strong.
If the fourth princess, Sizelry Ephania, had peaked in mental talent,
then the third princess, Sigrid Ephania, had peaked in physical prowess.
KABOOM!
Once again, their swords collided, creating another explosion.
CRACK!
The cracks on Charlotte’s sword deepened.
It was evidence that her sword was nearing its breaking point.
In front of her, Sigrid’s eyes turned crescent-shaped.
Before her reincarnation,
the first day she met Charlotte had shocked Sigrid.
A prodigy born loved by the world,
that had always been her identity.
But standing before Charlotte shattered that identity with a harsh crack.
“Is this the sword of the royal family?”
Sigrid, who was always revered, encountered for the first time a gaze that looked down on her.
Unable to tolerate it, she first raised her sword against Charlotte.
“It’s this level, huh?”
She faced the pathetic self who had been scraping the ground.
Even back then, Sigrid was at the pinnacle of talent—so exceptional that no one could easily look up to her aside from Arthur.
She believed herself to be at the center of the world, but that day, she grasped who the world truly favored.
Thus, she hated Charlotte.
Whenever she was compared to someone born in the same generation, her own talents felt trivial.
She hated it, and hated it, and hated it again.
However, that pinnacle of talent, Charlotte, eventually fell.
Yet even that glorious death became a legend.
The current strongest, known as the Swordmaster,
had single-handedly shattered the Arcane Generations.
Charlotte faced the Swordmaster with her sword,
And after ultimately defeating him, she reached her limit and finally took her last breath.
Every soul in the Arcane Generations quaked at that sight, overwhelmed.
So powerful was Charlotte that even Arthur himself remarked,
“If Charlotte were alive, the outcome might have changed a bit.”
Facing the end of destruction, Arthur said this nonchalantly,
regretting he could never employ Charlotte to her full potential.
Thus, Charlotte became a legend.
The world’s top prodigy, defeating the current strongest, slipped into eternal sleep, forever unreachable to anyone else.
Sigrid despised that reality.
The figure of Charlotte felt as if it consistently overshadowed her.
But now,
the world where Charlotte remained a legend no longer existed.
Because she had returned with Arthur.
“Even someone as special as you...”
Having been granted the special right of reincarnation, Charlotte had been wiped from this world.
As dazzling as Charlotte’s talent still seemed, full of memories of the past, it was nothing more than a role to Sigrid now.
Charlotte possessed only that radiant talent.
For Sigrid, reincarnation had added a layer of uniqueness.
And now, that uniqueness allowed her to overwhelm Charlotte.
Sigrid had considered the possibility that Charlotte might have reincarnated as well.
Often entertaining the worry that she too might be a reincarnator, Sigrid had fought Charlotte to confirm this.
But now, by clashing directly, Sigrid understood.
“This woman hasn’t reincarnated.”
Despite the suspicions surrounding Charlotte’s changes,
Sigrid knew from their combat today that Charlotte hadn’t returned.
Only she had.
If that was the case, then the changes stemming from Charlotte were merely coincidences.
Unfortunately, that was not the case.
However, at this moment, Sigrid didn’t care.
Charlotte hadn’t returned.
And she had come back.
This indicated that an unbridgeable wall stood between her and Charlotte.
“I’m the one who returned from the world’s end!”
CRACK!
Another fissure appeared on Charlotte’s sword.
“You couldn’t return!”
CRACK!
The cracks worsened, eventually enveloping the sword entirely.
“Charlotte, all the fame and accolades you built? They’re mine now!”
Finally,
CLANG!
The sword could no longer withstand Sigrid’s power and shattered into pieces.
Shards of broken blade sparkled white and blue as they scattered amidst the clash of their auras.
Sigrid caught a glimpse of the most annoying face she had ever seen from Charlotte.
“Well.”
Amidst the explosive pressures, Sigrid’s gaze turned chillingly cold.
“It must be taken away.”
And just as Sigrid attempted to swing her sword again,
A low rumble echoed!
With that sound, both Sigrid and Charlotte paused.
As they turned with disgruntled expressions, what did they see?
A colossal golem of tremendous size.
A golem so large it almost touched the clouds.
That golem had approached to the forefront of the White Ghosts’ Sanctuary and was raising its fists.
“Huh?”
The moment Sigrid expressed her disbelief,
without hesitation, the golem’s fists swung down towards the building.
KABOOM!
With a thunderous crash, the building was obliterated into rubble and chaos engulfed the area.
As both Sigrid and Charlotte were swept away in the aftermath, their forms vanished amidst the dust.
FLARE!
Sigrid’s aura erupted, effortlessly pushing through the smoke.
Her face contorted with malice as she witnessed the White Ghosts’ Sanctuary reduced to ruins.
“Who dares!”
And when she yelled, she quickly realized no one was around.
Charlotte had vanished without a trace.
That woman had run away.
The reason Charlotte took off was simple.
It wasn’t because she felt she would lose.
But rather, she didn’t want to tarnish the Holy Sword given by Kraush.
“This!”
Realizing this, Sigrid’s frustration flared up, and she felt the urge to chase after Charlotte.
However, the golem was still preparing to strike again.
As the head of the White Ghosts,
though battling Charlotte was crucial, she could not allow her Sanctuary to be destroyed.
What weighed even more heavily on Sigrid was her thoughts of Kraush Balheim.
Sigrid recalled the brother of Charlotte who had given her the Holy Sword.
“Had he become a hero of Freeman just to acquire that sword?”
Sigrid’s mind was clouded with confusion.
She had begun to suspect that Charlotte might not even be a reincarnator.
This was her motive for willingly participating in battle against Charlotte today, hoping to confirm it.
As a result, she was now convinced, after directly confronting her, that Charlotte was indeed not the reincarnator.
So if that was the case, who had been directing the events thus far?
Sigrid’s suspicions were gradually directing toward Kraush.
Because the incidents originating from Charlotte paled in comparison to the ones triggered by Kraush.
“...Could it be, that cursed being? Really?”
Yet despite her doubts, Sigrid could not accept that reality.
It was justified, for Kraush Balheim had perished before her eyes, screaming for Arthur, engulfed in the world’s downfall.
How could the dead person be here?
She couldn’t readily acknowledge that.
Her preconceived memories before reincarnation clouded her judgment.
And though all signs pointed towards Kraush, deep down she was rejecting it.
Kraush’s actions so far had been sensational.
Even Arthur, at this time, hadn’t made such moves.
Kraush seemed to be achieving feats surpassing even Arthur’s past actions.
In reality, due to Kraush’s actions, the world was changing dramatically.
However, to Sigrid, Kraush would eternally remain a cursed being.
A character with little talent except to snatch curses away, malicious and nasty.
That predisposition constantly dismissed Kraush’s changes, overlooking the narrative he was creating.
This was a defense mechanism for her.
To think that the man she had always looked down upon might actually change the world...
If he succeeded in preventing the apocalypse, it would mean that the self she had scorned all her days was now superior to her!
Unless Charlotte achieved it first.
If someone like Charlotte, who had always held a position below Sigrid, suddenly ended the doom...
Sigrid wouldn’t be able to bear such a fact.
So she unconsciously continued to dismiss any signs that pointed to the possibility that Kraush had reincarnated.
“That’s impossible!”
The center of the world is myself!
This notion had heavily permeated Sigrid’s consciousness for her entire life.
Even as cracks began to form in that belief, she ignored them, insisting she remained the center.
Kraush Balheim couldn’t have reincarnated, and he could not protect this world from devastation.
That was something she was unable to achieve.
“Arthur, where exactly are you?”
For some reason, Arthur had yet to reveal himself until now.
Her lover, the only one who could truly elevate Sigrid’s sense of self, Arthur.
That sword wielded by him was now grasped by the one she loathed most—Charlotte.
Moreover, it was gifted to Charlotte by Kraush.
That fact made Arthur and Sigrid seem unnecessary in this world.
Deep within, an ominous wave crested.
“Ugh.”
In that moment, Sigrid felt her consciousness wobble.
Something enormous was flowing outside her awareness.
As if, in this world, she were a mere onlooker with zero power to intervene.
She began feeling the sense of abandonment.
“No.”
Determination ran in Sigrid’s eyes.
The center of this world is herself.
That is an irrefutable fact that must remain unchanged......
Still, for some reason, that reality continued to drift further away.
“It’s not possible...”
Perhaps Sigrid had already been broken for a long time.
Seeing the destroyed world, powerless to do anything in the face of it,
she doubted her position as the center of the world, and additionally questioned Arthur.
The one she loved more than anyone had now become someone she no longer sought earnestly.
That thought perhaps became her way of replacing her doubts with certainty.
Kraush was a perceptive person.
The ability to seep through a person’s unspoken thoughts was one of his greatest talents.
And this intuition had accurately seen through Sigrid once again.
She was not okay.
For a long time, she had rotted from the inside.
“I’m the center of the world, so it’s fine!”
Though she tried to convince herself of this lie.
“No.... No!”
Even a Sigrid who couldn’t guard the world from destruction carried deep-seated trauma because of it.
The vision of everything she owned ablaze shocked even her.
Today’s battle had violently shaken her already fragile psyche.
And the one stirring that upheaval was none other than Kraush.
Trying to suppress her anxiety, she kept onward.
She needed to divert her mind in another direction quickly.
Slowly, Sigrid was crumbling.