——Grip the Starfire——

It could already carve wounds that wouldn’t knit, like cracks in winter ice, but still it couldn’t land a killing stroke.

A Saint stands close to a Divine Being come down to earth; they’re flesh and blood, yet forged from pure “concept,” like statues chiseled out of belief.

Steel and flame can harm them—but not deep; they’re near-immortal, like reefs in a storm, crushed, drowned, ground to dust, and still they rise and mend.

Why?

——A Promise That Weighs a Thousand Gold——

Because—they’re humanity’s dream, the prayer of the multitude, lanterns afloat on a night sea.

Beautiful things like that don’t fall easily, like stars that refuse to drop.

——Resolve, Carried Through——

“I need a reason to kill you.”

“Like godslaying. You need a reason that stays hard to the end, a will that overrules right and wrong, to murder a Divine Being.”

“If it’s only ‘killing a man who came here to die,’ isn’t that too farcical to accept? Mm. That’s right, but it’s not all.”

“I need something deeper, more inward, a fire under the iron.”

——A Heart Cast in Steel, Lone and Frost-cold——

“Explain.”

“Your fighting isn’t much to watch. In pure skill you’re first-rate, but you haven’t surpassed. You’re a blade without a sheen.”

“You just fall, stand, and rush in swinging, like waves breaking, again and again.”

“We’ve fought this long. Have you even brushed my clothes? What’s the point? What wind do you think you’re stirring?”

“Foolish.”

“Foolish…”

“Utterly foolish…”

“This kind of foolishness isn’t funny. It makes you want to cry, like rain over a parched field.”

“For some goal, simple, blunt, pure, you repeat and repeat. Face full of tears, ground full of blood, you still straighten your back, step forward, throw your fist, like a drum against thunder.”

That’s mankind’s oldest shape, a cave-fire on a cold night.

Struggling in the wild, living in mud and wind.

Fall and rise, again and again. You cry and you despair, yet in the end you clench your fists and lift steel at storm and demon, like a spark against the gale. The flame of civilization spread that way—lit by human stubbornness, passed by blood and soul, a torchline across ages.

You claw out of despair. You don’t know what it means or what to guard, yet you’re mule-stubborn and press on, and you put your fist in the enemy’s face as if that’s how the sun rises.

The Savior Saint is human history walking, thread through eras, witness to crisis after crisis, and handed down to future hands—

Hope.

Wishes.

Resolve.

The embodied essence of those beautiful things, like blossoms on bare rock.

——Don’t Look Back, Never Look Back——

Godlike, yet not a god. Some Divine Beings share domains with Saints, their shadows overlapping like two moons. Douglas Academy even says Saints are gods’ avatars on earth.

In truth, they aren’t related at all. They’re two rivers that never meet.

They even cut ties. Divine Beings whose domains overlap step aside and avoid the Saints, like stags giving way to a storm.

Because Saints belong to humanity. They’re where humans place their hearts. They’re humanity’s resolve made flesh.

A Saint’s will can stand for humanity’s will. A Divine Being can’t. The great ones love humankind, yet know they’re too great and must not meddle, like mountains that won’t walk into the village. The gods’ Time Administration Bureau handles the world’s balance, keeps the worldline steady, but if any task touches a Saint, the Bureau yields at once, and their yielding has no ceiling.

Because “fate” was the gods’ final gift before they left. But if the Saint—the collective will of humanity—opposes, then—

Humanity—the Saint—chooses its own future, like sailors choosing a star.

——Don’t cry, because if you cry, everyone will cry with you——

A drop of blood fell from the Savior Saint’s nose. It turned to steam midair, like mist burned off by dawn.

He snapped his head up. He felt his body. His muscles were full and taut, his heart thundering like a drum, pumping a brimming river of blood everywhere.

“Of course. You’ve fought on the life-and-death edge for humanity for so many years, a hero on the cliff’s lip. How could humanity betray its own hero?”

Light flared off him, a furnace-bright blaze. It smoothed his jagged wounds like a hot hand. He looked like a god among men.

In my eyes that light was harsh as noon on snow. It was sacrifice, prayers, awakenings—beautiful things, and the opposite of my essence, like water to my fire.

It was an ancient blessing from human history. Not a perfect answer, perhaps. Even the Savior Saint thinks this time he’s acting unlike a Saint. Yet the mortal world, as ever, gives a Saint its ward and strength, like a river feeding a mill.

——Forward, keep forward. No matter how the gale howls, no matter how the sun sears, keep forward——

Humanity’s Hymn, Part One—

Its name is “Grit Your Teeth, Clench Your Fists.”

The Saint’s power system is unique, drawn from the blessings of the many, like rain gathered into a sea. For the Savior Saint, who’s walked the world for countless years, that power rose with human will and became a human hymn.

The Savior Saint—he has only his fists.

The Savior Saint—he fights with only his fists!

Wrapped in grand light, he charged with mountain-conquering strides. He once shattered the sky’s black curtain, slew gods from beyond the world, and crushed endless demons, like a hammer through glass.

Overheated gusts cut through the air churned by my Long Halberd. They slapped my face like a kiln’s breath. His fist slammed the halberd’s shaft head-on.

For the first time, his fist met my halberd and didn’t twist, warp, or break, like iron answering iron.

The shockwave sank the ground for kilometers around by a layer, like a tide dragging sand away. My cloak pasted to me and tore in places where the air ripped like claws.

The balance reset to even. The real duel began now, like thunder after the flash.

“Right. That’s the right answer. There will always be someone moved by you, a solitary traveler, who’ll cheer for you.”

“Your posture is ugly. You crawl through mud. You try anything that might win, like a fox in a snare.”

“Even if it’s ugly, even if it’s strange, even if you’re caked in dust and mud, even if your fingers dig earth until they bleed—you stand again.”

“You refuse to fall, refuse despair, refuse death. With a mouth full of blood, you swallow it, then you grit your teeth and clench your fists, like biting a bit against the storm.”

“Humans like this. A civilization like this. It’s not only children who are moved. It’s the adults who already threw away dignity and longing for petty profit who cry hardest. And being moved is the hottest, plainest human fire.”

“Savior Saint, you’re their dream. Their first dream.”

“They dream of becoming a hero like you. No matter the hardship, even in failure, they want to go all out once—hysterical, reckless, generous, almost foolish—charge forward once, even if only once, like a comet burning itself out.”

“Since you’re their dream, and you accept that dream, then bear it well. Carry it like a banner in rain.”

You’ll shoulder humanity’s prayers.

I’ll kill you.

That’s it. That’s the story, like a blade with only one edge.

The Long Halberd thrust through, like a fall of stars smashing into earth.

Step in. Meet it. Stop it with your fists, with your bones. Build a wall of bone and will.

No more room for jokes. The halberd’s cross-blade wedged into his ribs. Blood surged from his lungs to his throat. It sprayed through his teeth, a crimson curtain, and the Savior Saint’s clenched fist punched through it and hammered my cloak.

I was hurt. In the body I modeled after humans, the bloodflow stalled for a blink, like a river caught by frost. My self-repair stitched the torn vessels in an instant, like needles of light.

A light wound, but a wound all the same, a thorn under the skin.

I looked at the blood spattered on me—Saint’s blood—blades of bright, resolute red like petals on snow.

“A beautiful punch. Truly. Did that punch carry your will through?”

As for the answer—this should only be the beginning, like the first bell before war.

His steel fists were unmatched, like a rebel standard propping up the sky.

I couldn’t bat aside every fist with the Long Halberd—and besides, I’m destruction and savagery, Demon King among demons, king of kings. You want me to defend? To guard?

Don’t make me laugh. That’s rain asking fire to be gentle.

I was getting hurt, no doubt. In this body as the Demon King, I bled. Each time I’m hurt, he suffers dozens, hundreds of times worse, deeper and heavier, like a cliff taking the waves.

“I’m hurt. I’m bleeding. So you think I can be killed—is that your certainty?”

These words—and the ones after—aren’t for the Savior Saint. They’re for the world listening like a field in wind.

“You think you can end this forever?”

“You think these beautiful things can stop the Final Calamity, like flowers stopping a flood?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“I am—”

“—Endless Demon King Andreas!”

“I’m the place where all hope, defiance, and prayers go to die, and where every stand, resolve, and pride is empty before absolute strength, the doom that proclaims the end.”

“You can’t beat me. Those beautiful things don’t work here. This was written long ago, carved into stone, an inevitability.”