“In the war’s early days, yes. Powerhouses answered the Empire’s call, fighting the demon invasion. Near-legend and legends joined—only…”

Irene let out a soft sigh. She’d sought Adrian partly because of the current storm. Inside the Empire, undercurrents surged. Even beneath demon legions, people still chose infighting.

The situation wasn’t bad enough to keep Imperial Capital nobles from scheming.

“But?”

Adrian heard the hint and stiffened. Frost spread through his gaze. Someone could make Irene, captain of the Royal Knights, hesitate. Who else could it be?

Adrian knew His Majesty Loren too well. He’d been burned by that man more than once. He never expected perfect unity. But when the leader cracks, how do you wage war? Adrian wasn’t a saint aching for all lives. A plane invasion is a race war; no one dodges that duty.

Demons are infamous in the old books. They feed war with war. They hit a plane and strip it like locusts. They plunder, wreck, and chew the plane’s origin, then leave.

Their breeding is what chills blood. To modern scholars, demon spawn spread like cockroaches; it’s despair. Yet no one finds the source. Some demons once strayed to the Ankanduin Continent. Experiments showed pureblood demons don’t breed like humans. Even with a partner right there, those muscle brutes think only of looting.

Another theory says it’s born of Chaos. It rests on divine-age records; Adrian can’t judge its truth. When every test fails, he doesn’t mind believing.

“If you mean His Majesty Loren, then the man I met at the front, from House Charlemagne, wasn’t him.”

Saki nodded slightly. She recalled the warrior like a god she fought not long ago. He used the Charlemagne family’s power. Its purity matched Adrian in his prime. From that alone, identity was hard to judge.

But when Saki went all out, he still showed no craft. Saki kept a thorn in her heart. After several clashes, she was sure: under that gold armor, he wasn’t seasoned. He wasn’t even experienced.

As for Lancelot, saved along the way, Saki had let him slip from mind.

“Wait, you’re saying there’s another who can wield Charlemagne power on the field, and close to me? That’s impossible. Unless my dead old man left a bastard, no one’s blood is as pure as mine.”

Adrian laughed and shook his head, utterly certain.

To explain, you need to know how Charlemagne blood passes down. Shaky records trace their line to the divine age. Several human titans were tied to gods and rebelled with the first Pope. They ended the age of gods.

That wasn’t the dawn for humans. Without divine shelter, humans faced wild races across the continent. Mighty races ruled humans and kept them as blood food in reserve. History calls it the Dark Age. The Church recorded it in the Holy Canon to warn descendants against the other races.

“The old books I found through Master Nameless say this. After the divine war, our forebears were wounded to different degrees. The strongest even bore vicious curses from gods. Under the High Elven Empire’s pressure, they sought a way to shift their power.”

Adrian pictured the pages he’d turned at Nameless’s place, and spoke to the three. Charlemagne began as a clan of standout humans. They shared blood, but the tie wasn’t enough.

The ancestors were strong, fierce as storm and iron. They raised a banner under divine pressure and lived. But humans then barely knew how to train power. Use was an even dimmer lantern. Our ancestors feared this: if they failed to topple the elves, the next generation might lose power. Then what?

It wasn’t bluster. In that savage time, folks didn’t grasp inheritance. Most strong were born gifted, the tribe’s lucky few. They couldn’t make their children lucky too. So the ancestors made a dangerous choice.

“What? Turning a god’s curse into bloodline power, and making your heirs digest it? Are you kidding me? Master, your forebears were as mad as you.”

Lilith spoke first. The deep violet shadow had fed her taboo lore, and she knew a god’s curse bites. A curse is malice with teeth. Who’s crazier than ancestors who poured all power into a curse?

Without strong power, elders couldn’t resist divine malice. They were lucky to leave heirs in time. So the curse marched with the bloodline. It sounds foolish: who straps a ticking bomb to their waist for power? Isn’t that backward?

“There was no choice. If humans wanted strong bloodlines to endure, that was the path. No seekers of mystery existed then. By our eyes, our ancestors look like barbarians.”

Adrian spread his hands. He has many ways now to pass bloodline power. His elders didn’t. Today’s knowledge was bought with their blood and lives.

“Look, I’ve got the problem too. By my generation, the divine curse is weak; it’s turned into a buff. Our ancestors were real geniuses.”

Adrian smiled. A blade of Arcane Power nicked his fingertip. Drops of blood, bright as liquid gold, pooled in his palm for them to see. That power is the curse woven into blood. After long dilution, it’s become a blessing.

His body had been shattered, then rebuilt. That purified the bloodline again. The curse thinned, and the converted blessing grew purer.

“Huh? Master, you weren’t a spirit? I thought you were keeping an astral form. You’re in a real body?”

Lilith stared at Adrian, surprised. She thought he left the barrier by astral embodiment. She’d planned to find materials to rebuild him. She didn’t expect he’d handled it already.

In this era, rebuilding a body isn’t easy. For warriors, it’s worse. Their strength lives in flesh and bone. From ancient methods, Western warriors hammer the body. They squeeze every function and chase the human limit. Battle aura comes second.

Western warriors prefer inherited battle aura. Great houses inherit power from legendary species. Every few generations, they hunt legends to keep the aura pure and strong. Those who study their own aura are often commoners without houses.

Even small houses and hamlets gift talents with beast aura taken by elders. It hardens the body and avoids wrong turns that end in death. It’s an unwritten rule of the West.

So self-cultivated aura users and great houses have a built-in gap. It doesn’t mean self-taught masters are rare. Across history, Empire and Church saw geniuses refine their own aura and succeed. They were valued.

Still, if a warrior’s body collapses, the inherited aura goes ownerless. It thins into the world and can bite the soul. If the soul survives, the body’s anchor—the aura—is gone. Reforging is nearly hopeless.

Mages have it simpler. Mages study spells, but they don’t ignore flesh. To avoid losing bodies, many embed arcane sigils in their flesh. If the body fails, the sigil preserves original tissues. It serves as a root for rebuilding.

The method isn’t popular. Mages don’t chase the body’s essence like warriors. Many sages, after decay, become magical beings, liches, or other legends. A body rebuilt from old flesh stays frail.

“Yeah. The Tianyan Barrier’s power exceeded me. When I probed its source, the force flowed along my remaining blood. It rebuilt my body and made me stronger. Good thing I kept the barrier’s spirit; it might help later…”

Adrian nodded and studied his reborn flesh. Wonder stirred like a breeze. He thought he’d live as astral form for a long time. Now the Tianyan Barrier restored him by accident. Who forged such a barrier?

“A spirit born of a barrier—interesting. We didn’t nurture it, yet it grew. It’s an Eastern secret art, older than our Western barrier theory.”

Saki’s smile held secrets. She supplied the method at the start. Lilith built the construct, but even she doesn’t know the source. Only Saki knows the origin.

Lilith frowned. For years, she watched the barrier and its slow changes, eyes like knives. She calculated when Adrian would return. A shift this big should have cut across her sight. How did it change so suddenly?

By logic, it felt wrong.

“So… can the barrier heal Miss Saki and Miss Lilith?”

Irene finally spoke. Her mood had eased. If it rebuilt Adrian’s flesh, shouldn’t it restore the bodies they sacrificed?

“No.”

The two women answered in the same breath.

Lilith and Saki exchanged a look. Saki’s eyes still lacked light. Lilith sighed, heavy as rain.

Both had poured away what mattered for Adrian, like incense burned to ash.

Saki lost the chance to look upon Adrian, a moon veiled behind storm-clouds.

Lilith lost the chance to be looked at by him, a mirror covered in frost.

“This isn’t a simple injury. It’s equal to a sacrifice; no holy salve can mend it.

Look at those offered to the Eldritch Gods—why can’t we bring them back?

Because what was offered gets inscribed by the world’s rules as something that should disappear.”

Lilith had learned this from that deep-violet specter, a night flower whispering forbidden truths.

It touches the world’s rules, a path few mages ever even glimpse.

Such knowledge is perilous; we know only the skin of that beast.

Conclusions drawn from scraps come riddled with holes, like moth-eaten silk in wind.

Yet even knowing they might stumble into those holes, the two walked that road without looking back.

“Rest easy. Whatever they lost, I’ll bring back, piece by piece, like pearls from deep water.

I left a Ward Spirit for this. To be blunt, I already have a way forward.”

Adrian smiled. A pitch-black orb bloomed in his palm, like a new moon cupped in ink.