Gardenia’s Heart

His dedication to anything lasted only as long as it held his interest.

When he first arrived in Lampides, the seal forged by the dwarven hero and the fairy with the power to unlock any locks had caught his attention. Yet, once the path to Nerine was opened, the warrior no longer cared in the slightest—he even let them escape without sparing so much as a second glance.

Creating the monster-fairy had been nothing more than a fleeting curiosity, an interest that vanished as quickly as it came. Returning the sword that belonged to his Lord back to Finis—that was the only thing he intended to do from that moment on. Nothing else was worthy of his attention.

Planting his foot on a platform of black smoke, the towering two-meter man clad in dark armor launched himself into the air. His torso twisted like a whirlwind, and his heel, wrapped in vertical bands of cloth, struck against a blackened surface.

The impact detonated with a force strong enough to scatter the surrounding mist. Azure mana clashed violently against black, yet even as the target of that devastation, the purple-haired girl’s smile only widened ever so slightly.

Completely unharmed.

“Are you finished?”

Her voice was calm as she extended her hand, the black sphere around her dissolving into transparency as a volley of ice crystals surged forward.

With the faintest raise of a disapproving brow, Drelkos planted his feet against the sphere and leapt back. High kicks were powerful, but they left him open to counters. Each gloved hand clenched with a force that seemed to tear the very air, metallic fingers wrapping in black smoke quickly enough to shatter every incoming shard mid-flight.

His crimson eyes scanned the battlefield with sharp precision. It didn’t matter that his enemy stood before him—dozens of small portals had already formed all around his position. The attacks would come from every direction.

“Irritating.” The complaint slipped out between Drelkos’s breaths.

Driving his elbow forward, he crushed a cluster of blackened crystals, his white hair whipping in the air as his body was forced into another spin. The encirclement was growing thicker than before. He needed distance, but carving a path by brute force would only leave wounds.

So, Drelkos waited.

Amidst the relentless storm of attacks, he shifted between platforms of black smoke, searching for the path that would carry him beyond the blizzard. He waited for it—the almost invisible trickle of water in the desert that pointed the way to an oasis. The strikes came like killing blades, each blow a grain of sand in the storm. Drelkos wasn’t seeking shelter. He was waiting for the hidden pattern within the chaos. The sequence of coincidences that could be woven into an escape.

And then, at the very heart of the storm, he saw it. It wasn’t an opening, not even a clear path, but a flow of movements—a rhythm within madness—that only the strongest could seize and turn into a way out.

Diving into it, Drelkos advanced. His steps carried him faster than the eye could follow, and in a single second, he had already cut through the pattern woven in insanity, reaching the other side.

“–!?”

But the oasis he longed for did not bring salvation.

With not even the right to move his head, Drelkos slowly lowered his gaze to his arms and legs. In the midst of a sky shrouded in dark mist and raging lightning storms, slender jet-black threads glimmered with a faint reddish-purple sheen. Each one—among the hundreds that existed—coiled tightly around one of his tendons with overwhelming strength.

He didn’t miss the detail. A liquid trickled along the threads. His skin—thicker and tougher than the black wires could ever cut—kept the venom from seeping in. But the moment it touched the surface, a creeping numbness began to spread through his body.

“Has anyone ever called you a viper, Veilbreaker?”

Drelkos spoke in a low voice, his gaze following the threads to the small portals that carried them back to their caster.

“And why would you say that?” The purple-haired girl’s voice came with a faint hiss.

With a subtle twist of the violet tentacles sprouting from her back, the countless threads anchored upon them tightened even further.

“To weave a trap out of what seemed like sheer coincidence… that could only be done if every ‘accident’ I believed in was deliberate.” Drelkos narrowed his crimson eyes, locking them with the equally red gaze of the girl.

She, pressing her fingertips lightly against her chest, did not answer immediately. The faint blush upon her face deepened, her smile stretching wider. Seeing that expression, so utterly distinct, Drelkos could not help but frown.

“Most mages—especially those whose lifespans are nothing but a fleeting fraction in this world—learn only a single style of magic. That is why the weaker a race is, the more they tend to move in large groups, to compensate for their individual shortcomings. Four... no, you’re managing at least five entirely different spells at the same time, if not more. And as if that weren’t enough, one of them is teleportation, which demands constant calculations.”

He exhaled, but a dry chuckle slipped past his lips.

“That doesn’t even qualify as ‘genius’ anymore. To manage all that while still studying your opponent is unreal. You corner them, force them to reveal more, dissect how they react. You test their endurance, their abilities—all just to feed your curiosity. The way you perceive battle… it’s twisted to its very core, from beginning to end.”

And then, after hearing all of it in silence, Nia raised her left hand.

Slowly, a single black crystal, the size of a house, formed beside her. Like a rock being crushed within its own core, the massive block of ice compressed. The grinding of its mass echoed with a deep, thunderous roar, louder than the black lightning tearing the skies, as the frozen monolith shrank.

Within moments, the crystal no larger than a fist had grown so dense, so impossibly heavy, that its blackened surface gleamed as though incandescent. Spinning on its axis, it gathered momentum, accelerating until it blurred into a streak of darkness at her side.

“There’s no reason to end things quickly when there’s so much to learn.” Her left hand moved casually in sync with the whirling crystal as Nia fixed her glowing eyes on the Twilight. “Besides, it’s not as though this alone could defeat you… after all, you haven’t gone all out either.”

The crystal shot forth into the storm.

With a devastating shockwave, every remaining shard in the air was obliterated. In the space of a single heartbeat, like a black line tearing the world, it raced straight for Drelkos’s forehead.

The impact came—inevitable. Silence fell once again.

Nia knew full well how devastating the strike she had just unleashed was. And because she knew, she was not surprised by what she saw next.

The black threads rained down from the sky, every one of the tentacles that held them torn and mangled by the overwhelming torque they had been forced to endure.

“I thought I didn’t have time to entertain your curiosity, but you really are someone worth taking an interest in.”

At the center of the impact, a fascinated voice echoed.

The air was warped, the sound muffled, and yet the man’s voice rang clear.

There was no wound upon his body from the blow, for something had taken the strike in his place.

The black smoke seeping from his form began to shift, like a darkness gaining weight. The thickened haze writhed in waves until, within the shadow, a crimson fissure split open.

It was an eye. Nia could call it nothing else.

Glowing with a deep red, like the ember of a forge, the malformed mass of shadow throbbed. Blue veins stretched outward, stitching the distorted thing into the world itself. The iris—shifting, fluid, burning as it moved—at last locked onto her.

“[Void’s Breath]”

The whisper slipped from Drelkos’s lips.

There was no time to think. With a powerful thrust, Nia hurled herself backward. The portal—like a fragment of starry sky—formed, and in the blink of an eye she was carried dozens of meters away.

A single bead of cold sweat slid down her cheek as she watched the gaping hole torn into the black sphere around her, fragments of obsidian falling slowly like shards of shattered glass.

Her black wings held her aloft, crimson eyes fixed on the demon who stood unmoving, the shadow-born eye drifting back to his side.

That eye had lunged toward her so suddenly that she hadn’t even had time to reason.

She knew with certainty—had she not separated a sector of her consciousness, devoted solely to detecting threats through mana-location, she never would have been fast enough to escape through the portal.

With calm precision, Nia wiped the sweat from her cheek with a stroke of her thumb, eyes still locked upon her foe as she began forming the barrier anew.

Nia knew the fear of death.

As someone who had survived by her own strength alone, she was well acquainted with the feeling of something reaching to reap her life. She had endured bloodlust and hatred so thick and thunderous it weighed upon the air itself, an invisible pressure bearing down on her entire body. That was a constant she understood.

And it was precisely because she understood it that she recognized this was different.

She had assumed Drelkos’s black smoke could be given mass—he had already been using it for movement—but the eye had not merely sought to strike her down.

It had tried to devour her.

“I see you’re unsettled.” Drelkos finally lowered his head ever so slightly, as if savoring the expression on her face.

When another thunderclap roared, he surged forward without a moment’s pause.

A blur across the storming skies, Drelkos sprinted upon a path of black smoke. As before, countless ice-crystals sought to bar his way. Yet this time, he did not even attempt to evade them.

Impact after impact shattered into dust, every frozen volley crumbling upon contact. Circling the demon’s form, the eye of living smoke lashed out in all directions, not a single shard breaking through to him.

In the blink of an eye, the distance vanished.

Drelkos leapt.

His body spun in the air as azure mana gathered in such density it became visible, his shoulder drawn back to the limit like a coiled spring on the verge of release. Every vein of his black carapace bulged. His gloved fist clenched, and the living smoke surged to meet it, the crimson eye dissolving into his arm, wrapping it in an aura of pure ruin.

Nia immediately abandoned any thought of counterattack. Extending both hands to focus entirely on her barrier, dark mana surged in great quantities to reinforce her defense.

But then...

Just as she was about to take the demon’s blow, Drelkos’s voice reached her ears—a low, grave whisper.

“If you try to block this strike...”

It was as if everything around her slowed down, leaving only those words, piercing the core of her very existence, to move forward.

“You will die.”

It happened in an instant.

A metallic impact echoed through the skies, something being torn apart.

It wasn’t like wood splitting or stone shattering. It was wet and heavy—like countless ripe fruits bursting under the weight of something greater.

It was organic.

“...”

Now, once again dozens of meters from her opponent, Nia lowered her gaze to her body.

Purple blood streamed from her nearly severed right arm. Her hand, pale and twisted at an unnatural angle, each finger broken and bleeding profusely, stained her torn dress.

Slowly, the gelatinous mass, which had grown over the past few hours after her long-awaited meal, spread through the shredded tendons and flesh of her arm until no wound remained. The black dress stitched itself back into shape as if nothing had happened.

And yet, Nia stared at the trembling tips of her fingers.

There was a strange tingling.

The sensation resembled Elarielle’s putrid aura—the inversion of cellular healing, the forced death of living tissue. But that wasn’t what made her mind freeze.

She could no longer move her right hand.

“...”

A faint headache sent chills crawling down her spine. Different from the effects of ivory herb or the strain of spending too long outside Lily’s body. No matter what command she gave her fingers, nothing responded.

Opening her palm, closing it, even the pain of clenching—it was gone. No sign that limb was hers anymore. Her nerves and muscles remained intact. It wasn’t paralysis, nor numbness. It felt as if something deeper—far beyond her very cells—had been struck.

“...”

Nia stayed silent, her eyes fixed on the demon, who made no move to approach despite how long she had stood still.

Her barrier had been shattered, but what surfaced on her face was not anger, nor frustration, nor even pain.

It was genuine doubt.

By waiting until the very last instant to evade, at the cost of letting one of her arms be torn apart just to test it, she understood something fundamental. It wasn’t that her defense was too weak. It wasn’t that she hadn’t poured enough dark mana into her barrier.

It was far simpler—and that made it far stranger.

None of the traits she had imbued into her barrier had activated to block that strike in the first place.

Drelkos’s fist had never even touched her arm.

It had been something else. Something different that struck her.

Something in that attack had shattered her barrier and left her body in such a state. And when the realization came, the metamorph understood that her earlier assumption about that magic had been wrong.

“That eye can exert tangible force... yet it has no physical form, no mass.” Nia finally spoke, murmuring into the night, where the only sound was the beating of her wings.

Straightening her posture, she fixed her gaze on the crimson eye veiled in black smoke, skepticism written across her expression.

When the fist had approached in the previous strike, it was the smoke of the crimson eye that had first touched her hand, tearing through her barrier. Her fingers had met no resistance, her palm passing straight through as though dispersing it, waiting for the blow that would follow. Yet that was precisely why she couldn’t hide her surprise when the impact came. It was as if she had been struck by a void.

Drelkos had not given mass to the black smoke, and yet something utterly intangible had delivered a devastating impact to her arm. Nia couldn’t comprehend how such a thing was possible.

“Given the level of strength you’ve shown me, I was certain a single strike wouldn’t be enough to pull everything out. And yet... this is the first time it’s ever happened.”

Tightening the white bandages around his waist and cracking his neck with a few sharp motions, Drelkos spoke through a sigh.

“Pull out... what?” The man’s words only deepened her confusion, and before she realized it, Nia had voiced the question aloud.

A low laugh followed.

Grave, nearly imperceptible, yet resonant even amidst the thunder—seeping into every crevice of the warped air. Drelkos’s face remained indifferent, his expression unshaken, but behind that unbreakable mask, a spark had lit, smoldering into a thin smile. It was not anger. It was not arrogance. It was pure amusement.

“Tell me, Veilbreaker... have you ever seen your own soul?”

His words seemed to drift, lost in the darkened sky.

“Soul...?” Nia echoed, uncertain of the meaning behind the phrase.

And then… she saw it.

Inside the black smoke, at the very center of the crimson eye, a faint wisp of violet flickered like the flame of a candle.

“Your tolerance for pain is admirable. The agony of losing part of your soul is hundreds of times worse than having a limb severed.”

Soul.

Nia froze as comprehension struck her.

She had heard the word before, even used it as an expression—but never had she imagined that such a thing would one day manifest before her eyes.

Something that defied every concept she had ever known. Something that belonged to no law of the world.

“You can move the soul itself...?”

Nia whispered, and Drelkos, raising a single eyebrow, replied with amusement.

“My orders are only not to kill you. I’ll make sure to extract enough to leave you in a vegetative state—while still alive.” The warrior said. ”You should have backed off when you had the chance.”

Slowly, every wisp of violet smoke was consumed by the dense shroud of black. The crimson eye burned once more, glowing like a coal as it fixed itself upon her.

He didn’t need to prove its destructive might by shattering a mountain or vaporizing a lake. Nia already knew—it was dangerous.

Through all her earlier tests, she had quickly begun piecing together the gaps in her knowledge—the fragments that had come with absorbing the Third Book of Truth.

When creating a barrier, you established your absolute territory, within which you could assign effects and conditions. The Source Matrix, the central formula of the barrier, could be modified to impose such effects. By defining a primary purpose, any effect bearing similarities to it could be inscribed into the matrix in harmony. Because of this, Nia classified them in two ways: defensive barriers and offensive barriers.

The first, defensive barriers, were something she had used her whole life without even realizing it. By shaping her domain to protect what was inside, Nia could grant the barrier solid mass, blocking external attacks. By sealing the sound within so it would not escape—reducing it to zero—she could walk in silence. Likewise, just as she could alter light waves by modifying diffraction, she could disperse the thermal energy of a flame, destroying combustion at its root and snuffing out heat itself.

The second, offensive barriers, like Sylvan’s, allowed the creation of effects within the barrier intended to harm those inside it—whether allies or not. The crushing gravity of the Labyrinth that could press people against the ground, the sensory-coordinate disorder that had disrupted her use of portals countless times, or even the disorientation caused by the World Tree—these were all ways of affecting whatever existed within the domain.

The size of the barrier was inversely proportional to the effectiveness of its effect, so maintaining it only around one’s body was ideal.

Thanks to her mind becoming more efficient after her last meal, Nia could now inscribe even more effects into the barrier, writing and adapting the codes to the situation in milliseconds. But there were limits to what she could do. Attempting to fuse both types of barriers, for example, was ineffective—not only would it reduce their efficiency, but it would force the Source Matrix to perform opposing roles, which could easily lead to collapse.

Nia had no real experience with offensive barriers to employ them properly in combat, nor had she had enough time to study the one that now blanketed the forest’s Labyrinth she had claimed. Even if she wished to test them, her opponent was far too dangerous for her to allow herself such experiments. Since she was already sustaining two defensive barriers—her own and her wife’s—refining them for this battle was the best course of action.

Her current barrier functioned as a filtration system, classifying everything that tried to enter as harmful or harmless based on her knowledge. And that led to the problem of this situation.

Nia could defend herself against ordinary attacks, but not against that. None of her defenses could protect her from something that did not follow any of this world’s laws.

Simple ideas like blocking “everything” from entering didn’t work. What even was “everything” to begin with? Air, humidity, heat, mana, dark mana—would any of those be what prevented Drelkos’s attack from striking her? Among all these, what could possibly stop a soul from reaching her?

How could she block something that had no mass yet still pushed against her? How could she dissipate an energy that was neither thermal nor electrical?

She had lost the movement in one of her hands, and her barrier no longer functioned against the Twilight. All of her advantage had been overturned in a single instant.

”Why would I do that?”

Nia asked, tilting her head, doubt shimmering in her glowing eyes.

“What?” Caught off guard by the question, Drelkos replied without thinking.

The cold night wind seemed to grow heavy.

“A soul isn’t breaking any of the world’s laws—it’s simply following its own, right? If what you’re doing is shaping your soul, then it only means I need to adjust my calculations to account for it in the filtering process. This isn’t an innate ability, you’re using a spell, which means mana can exert an effect. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t follow any of the world’s laws—I just need to rework the world’s rules with that in mind.”

Nia spoke with the same ease one might use to guess whether a person preferred butter or jam on their bread.

It wasn’t the voice of someone driven by bloodlust or fear, but of someone simply stating a fact.

“You’re saying you believe you can measure my soul before you lose your own?”

It wasn’t written anywhere. No one had ever shown her even the first step of that path. None of the algorithms she knew applied, and if she didn’t solve it quickly enough, she would face an end worse than death.

But… so what?

“I don’t believe. I’m certain.”

It didn’t matter that it went against the laws of this world. If she didn’t understand something, then it was only a matter of learning.