Vol 1 Chapter 31 – Nightmare【Vol 1: The Beastkin Hero Arc】

The pale blue flames engulfing the houses cast a ghostly glow across the village, illuminating the full extent of its devastation.

The villagers had been herded into the plaza, bearing wounds of every size and severity. Nearby, three figures with stark white hair stood in a line — a description that matched Acht, the one who had tried to destroy the city of Foxbeak.

Those must be the artificial heroes.

The village was ringed by dozens of three-headed Cerberi.

The magical beasts were creatures native to the Demon Continent — a separate landmass where the demonkin made their home. Monsters that had no business being on the Human Continent, yet here they were under someone’s command — an ability belonging to one of the three, perhaps?

“They’re not attacking. Are they waiting for us?”

The three artificial heroes had clearly noticed Allen and his companions descending on Raizel, yet they simply watched with an unhurried, almost leisurely gaze.

“…To be precise, they’re waiting for me. I’m the one they’re after. Because of me… these villagers nearly died.”

Leonhardt’s eyes fell on a cat-beastkin man crumpled on the ground in a pool of blood — the beast ears that marked him as beastkin had been torn right off.

She stood on Raizel’s back as they continued their descent and released the power within her as a hero.

“—Don’t you dare think I’ll give you a fair fight, you worthless scum! Brave Skill — 〈Stellar Force Release〉!”

In an instant, the dozens of Cerberi surrounding the village were crushed into lumps of meat without even a moment to cry out.

All in the span of a single heartbeat.

With Leonhardt at the center, a golden barrier enveloped the entire village, and the earth cracked and began to sink. The artificial heroes each dropped to one knee, then all the way to the ground, visibly struggling to so much as move.

Leonhardt’s Brave Core — its true name: the Star Knight Core.

A knight who commands the star-born forces of gravity and attraction, freely and absolutely — that was the power of the beastkin hero known as the 【Knight of the Falling Star】.

However —

“—Hey there, Leonhardt. Long time no see!”

Even as dozens of magical beasts were reduced to red smears in an instant, not a trace of alarm crossed the young man’s face — only cheerful amusement, one hand raised in a casual wave.

Raizel touched down at the heart of a swirling vortex of pale blue flames. Allen and Leonhardt dismounted and each squared off against one of the artificial heroes.

For the record, Leonhardt, Allen, and the villagers could move without any difficulty. Everyone else — everyone Leonhardt had not given permission to move — was being crushed under dozens of times the normal force of gravity.

“Oh, have you already forgotten the face of your own childhood friend? It’s me, it’s me. I’m Nul — holder of the Summon Master Core, from the First Artificial Hero Creation Project. Don’t you remember?”

“…I don’t. And I have no desire to.”

“How cruel. We were born because of you, you know? Isn’t that right, Eins?”

The hulking man fixed Leonhardt with a glare, his face flushed scarlet. Was he truly that furious?

“Eight years ago, I never understood why you — a lion-beastkin — were sold as a slave to the Doctor. But one thing is certain: using your Brave Core as a model, the Doctor went on to successfully produce artificial Brave Cores, one after another.”

Allen’s thoughts drifted back. The Dawnbelt Massacre.

A mad incident carried out by a certain magical scholar. Orphans gathered under the pretense of artificially creating heroes — hundreds of them, killed in the process of experimentation. The young man who stood before him now, who called himself Nul, was one of that project’s so-called “successes.”

“Every day was suffering. All because of you. If you had never existed, none of us would have been born.”

“…”

“Day after day, drug trials. Of course a common person can’t withstand a Brave Core — even an artificial one. And when the drugs boosted our physical abilities, what came next was something they called ‘endurance testing’ — our limbs, severed over and over again. To build a tolerance to pain, they said. Over and over and over and over and over!”

Nul laughed with empty eyes, something inside him long since shattered.

Allen already knew that Leonhardt carried the same suffering Nul described. Leonhardt — still nothing but a young girl at the time — had been cut open for observation: the placement of her muscles, the positions and shapes of her organs, all of it examined with a scalpel. Because she was a Brave Core holder, every part of her had been used as reference material.

Those surgical scars were the reason Leonhardt wore full-body armor at all times.

“Allen Norsh is celebrated now, but he wasn’t there for us back then. He hadn’t become the World Knight yet — but still. Everyone praises him, don’t they? The hero who saved the world. It makes me sick. My brothers and sisters all died in those experiments. Every last one of them. He was useless. No matter how many times we screamed for help, they died in tears in the dark of an underground laboratory. Not a single hero ever came.”

“Shut up! Don’t you dare speak ill of him! He saved me! Even the most incredible person alive can’t rescue every person who suffers!”

Before Allen could get a word in, Leonhardt had already screamed it.

Leonhardt said he had saved her — but as far as Allen was concerned, it had all come too late. He thought back to the state Leonhardt had been in when he found her. Surely, she had been made to endure horrors worse than death.

Allen stood beside the beastkin hero and glanced sideways at her. The image overlapped: a young girl, trembling inside a cage, looking up at him with eyes full of terror and hatred.

Nul tilted his gaze toward the sky.

“…Well, none of that matters now. I think we’ve talked long enough. It’s time we got on with it. We have to bring you down, Leonhardt.”

Whether they had grown accustomed to the gravity or not, the three artificial heroes rose to their feet with apparent ease.

“Fiera, I’ll leave the masked swordsman to you. Eins and I will take care of killing Leonhardt.”

“Understood.”

Allen’s opponent, it seemed, was a sleepy-eyed beauty with half her face hidden behind her hair.

(He would have preferred the muscle-bound man — at least hitting him wouldn’t stir up any guilt.)

“It doesn’t matter who you are or what abilities you might have. None of that means anything in front of me.”

“…Miss, what exactly do you mean by —”

“My Brave Core is the Arc Conjurer Core.”

She swept her hair aside, exposing her right eye. The golden iris, engraved with a magic circle, was strikingly beautiful — but the words that followed sent a chill straight down his spine.

“I can forcibly send anyone who meets my gaze into the realm of dreams.”

No way. A first-encounter insta-kill ability? That’s just cheating.

Their eyes had already met perfectly. He scrambled to look away — but it was already too late. His vision swam, and darkness began bleeding into the edges of his consciousness.

Bad.

Before he lost consciousness entirely, acting on pure reflex, Allen drew the Black Metal longsword at his hip — the one he wore in place of Asmodeus — and drove it straight through the back of his own hand —

“Pointless. This power is absolute. Sweet dreams. I’ll show you your most painful memory on an endless loop until your mind shatters.”

The golden eye gleamed with an eerie light.

Her whisper was the last thing he heard.

Allen’s consciousness sank into the darkness and vanished.