Bailonz Street 13

The Black King’s mumblings still continued in his ear.

Which world was real didn’t matter to him. Even if this was part of someone’s creation, or acted as a passage to another world.

The only thing that mattered to the Black King was the fact that there existed a world where they didn’t exist.

It was no different from a child’s tantrum. Whether he wanted to reverse creator and creation, that being was insisting on mixing the worlds together. Even for a god, since passing through a needle’s eye was impossible, he was forcibly tearing it open.

Yes, that’s what it was.

As the sky shattered, it revealed an isolated space. Through it, something reached its arms toward this place. Transferring. No, one world was being absorbed. Towers of living sacrifices were being erected throughout London for this purpose.

Liam decided to start by destroying this one altar.

The crushed mass of flesh wailed, begging for death. He was Greenwich’s most noble guardian. Having sworn to sacrifice himself for humans, hesitation was a nonexistent word to Liam Moore. Just as that king couldn’t exist in Jane’s world.

Now he held a bluish transparent sword in his hand. Liam Moore lowered his body and stamped the ground with his boot. The preparations were already complete. The warning cries of monsters threatened to split his ears.

His mouth intoned strange rhythms as it always did. It wasn’t the language of this place, and never would be.

Liam Moore suddenly looked up at the sky. He wanted to see. Jane would see this too.

Now she too would decide to move. He desperately hoped she would be safe. Jane didn’t have medicine as potent as what Liam had drunk. She would feel the pain in full.

Even the strongest person loses their mind when pain continues repeatedly. This was something Liam Moore had learned deep in his bones while dying in the underground cavern beneath Devil’s Ground. The invisible force binding his limbs, the creature that pierced his forearm and scraped his vessels. Though he hadn’t told Jane, within half a day he had come to long for death. Abandoning hope that someone would come to save him, desperately wishing only for rest.

What about Jane Osmond? Could she be strong enough?

“Swallow and bury. Thus grant peace.”

But one thing was certain – his determination not to let anything happen to Jane.

Whoosh.

When the seemingly eternal rhythm ended, the altar was engulfed in flames. The scorching heat rose suddenly before his cheeks. The hybrids beat their wings to stop it.

Liam Moore cut them down without hesitation.

Screams, the sharp smell of blood. These monsters that seemed to mix humans, bats, and other unpleasant creatures fell helplessly to a single slash.

He jumped by stamping the ground, dove in, and even rammed monsters with his shoulder. He blocked the rushing claws with his blade and struck back. Though heavy vibrations transmitted to his hands, it wasn’t particularly painful.

‘The medicine works well.’

Should get a few more bottles next time. While thinking this absent-mindedly, he put strength into his sword.

Though a fighting style that imbued magical power led to rapid exhaustion of stamina, it was the most effective way to subdue enemies. It intimidated them and made them lose their fighting spirit.

Bisected creatures began piling in a circle around him. They all hesitated to charge in.

Wiping the splattered blood from his face, he bared his teeth and burst out laughing. It was such a violent laugh that anyone who didn’t know him might have thought he was the monster.

A faint madness could be felt. Liam Moore simply whispered quietly:

“Pay the price for your atrocities.”

But it seemed they too possessed something called fear.

The number of gathered hybrids could now be counted on fingers. They all gradually backed away while watching Liam’s movements, then immediately took to the sky. They seemed to judge that humans, being creatures that lived with feet on the ground, couldn’t chase them up there.

Though he could still attack them, Liam was somewhat satisfied with reducing their numbers and let them flee.

Only when they had completely disappeared did he finally catch his breath. The adrenaline was subsiding.

He knew himself. This battle had been quite reckless. He admitted that. Having lost his sense of pain, he seemed to have forgotten his sense of danger. Cuts were carved all over his body from fighting so recklessly. But the wounds only felt numb. Even pressing them produced little sensation.

Looking at the fallen monsters around him, Liam thought:

‘How long did it take to handle a sword like this.’n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

He had never formally learned swordsmanship. How much sword training would a London gentleman of this age have in the first place? At most, recreational fencing.

Let’s go back to when he first held this sword.

At eighteen, William Moore was just a youth who only knew how to grip and swing a sword.

But there was no one else to learn from.

If it had been the 5th century, a boy who pulled a sword from stone would have become king, but this was the 19th century of machines and industrial development. In other words, this was a world where a sword suddenly appearing from thin air would be dismissed as the hallucination of someone with delusions of grandeur.

No one else in Greenwich had ever wielded such a weapon. Wasn’t even its shape strange? A transparent sword with no distinction between handle and blade. It could be wielded with two hands or swung with one. The sword seemed to adjust its weight by itself. Even gripping the blade didn’t cut his hands. However, before monsters, the blade became sharper than anything.

When Liam drew his weapon, he remembered Herschel’s confused expression as he chose his words.

What had his godfather said then?

‘Liam, this is… truly something I’ve never seen before.’

Well. He had tried to find ways to help, but he was just a fencing instructor at best. Fencing wasn’t perfect. It helped develop the sense of striking and withdrawing and reaction speed, but the rest had to be learned through direct confrontation.

In other words, it was swordsmanship without foundation.

Since that injury in Cambridge, Liam Moore had faced hundreds of monsters. While injuries increased from facing creatures that threatened the world and hunted humans, his skill with the sword rose vertically in proportion.

This was a sword wielded to protect.

How should he interpret that an identical sword appeared in Jane’s hands?

When Jane drew the sword instead, Liam Moore was confused.

‘How do you have that?’

Had the sword chosen? But why? Why specifically him and Jane?

Lately, he often felt like all of this had been arranged from the start.

The voice in his ear had now stopped. It seemed to have noticed Liam Moore was listening. Though disappointing, that was all. He had completely understood the Black King’s plan.

He would incorporate this world into that world. Break it down completely and overlay it onto an existing past. Then the stories of this place would become truth. The monsters appearing in London, Liam Moore. They could live on as truth in Jane’s world. As a past that had existed.

“But what’s the use of all that?”

If it meant killing so many people for that purpose? Even if human lives were worth less than insects to him, he had no right to trample so many people. Even if he was a god.

The crack in the split world had grown larger, now allowing this side to peer into that side. Through it, Liam saw a bright blue sky.

Red, tall vehicles passing by, people smiling while holding rectangular panels, walking around with white ornaments in their ears, people in unique attire.

It was an alien world to Liam Moore. How could such a place exist? But what was shocking was seeing the old Big Ben in the background. This was the 21st century Jane had spoken of. The 21st century of England, at that.

‘How could such a world exist?’

The world the Black King coveted was so brilliant.

Just then, streams of light rose from various places. And covered the sky in a hemisphere. It was a tightly woven net of light. He could see with his naked eye how hybrids that touched it disappeared into ashes. Now they would no longer be able to build towers of humans.

“Greenwich.”

They were quick indeed.

Exactly one hour after anomalies began in London, Greenwich had moved their heavy bottom and arrived here. At that scale, they must have gathered all Greenwich personnel, even magicians who had gone abroad.

Liam calmly took out the gun from his breast pocket and fired into the sky. If they heard the gunshot, nearby Greenwich people would come.

And that judgment proved accurate.