Single for Eternity
Chapter 101: A Bold Idea

Chapter 101: A Bold Idea

Since he clearly wasn’t interested in my help, I decided to return the favor—I ignored his existence entirely.

Let him sulk, bleed, or glare. I didn’t care.

Instead, I focused on what truly mattered: slaughtering the undead.

Dissonance sang in my hand, its melody resonant and pure. Each note it released rippled through the air, its voice so melodic and crisp that it altered the very environment.

The temperature dropped.

The battlefield grew colder with every swing of my blade, a thin layer of frost spreading like a storm of ice-kissed death.

The skeletons—bound by the Undead Lord’s will—shuddered, their bones rattling violently as the chill took hold. And then, a moment later, they shattered in unison.

——[ +300 Points ]——

——[ +400 Points ]——

The notifications chimed with satisfying rhythm, like applause after a song.

But death here never came cheaply.

The skeletons, even in their final moments, didn’t go quietly. With unwavering discipline, they raised their bows in one last act of defiance.

Thousands of arrows filled the sky, a pitch-black storm of sharpened death aimed squarely at me.

I didn’t flinch.

With a subtle flick of my fingers, the air shimmered. Aether pulsed through my veins like wildfire. It radiated outward, catching the volley mid-air.

In a heartbeat, the arrows froze.

Suspended in place like icy shards of glass, and then—

Shatter.

They collapsed to the ground in glittering fragments, broken like brittle ice beneath a boot.

Before the sound of their fall had even echoed, I kicked off from the ground, leapt into the sky, and drew my blade once more.

A horizontal slash tore through the air—clean, precise, devastating. The aether imbued in Dissonance blazed with white-cold energy.

A gleaming arc of frost carved across the battlefield. Dozens—no, hundreds—of skeletons were frozen solid in an instant.

Then came the sound.

Crack... cr-crack... shatter.

And they were gone.

Still, more emerged from the prison’s depths, endlessly spawned by the cursed will of Undead Lord Malthorn.

"Tch." I clicked my tongue in irritation.

They were excellent fodder for points—but this wasn’t combat.

This was a chore.

Repetitive, predictable, mechanical. It lacked all the finesse and intensity that made battle worthwhile. Still, as much as it grated against my pride as a warrior, I wasn’t above doing what needed to be done.

If this method won the trial, then I would see it through to the end.

Even if it dulled the edge of my spirit.

Hours passed.

The tide didn’t change.

Skeleton after skeleton fell beneath my blade. I had become a moving blizzard, a symphony of icy death. My mind, however, felt like it was running through the same verse of a song on loop—monotonous and draining.

Slash.

Freeze.

Shatter.

Repeat.

Each volley from the skeletal archers was met with an elegant arc of my blade. Each time, their arrows became nothing more than frozen dust. And still, they came.

I glanced briefly to my side.

Einar’s crimson and black skeletons fought with unrelenting savagery. They didn’t act like mere summons or puppets—there was a dark will in them, a hunger.

With every kill, they reached out, absorbing something invisible—undead aether, I suspected.

And slowly, incrementally, they grew stronger.

That wasn’t normal.

That wasn’t necromancy.

I didn’t know what kind of ability he wielded through that creature clinging to him like armor, but I could tell one thing—it was dangerous. Unnatural. Even now, lying broken and bleeding on the ground, he was feeding the battlefield with fuel.

And the enemy was bleeding for it.

Lord Malthorn’s strategy was painfully clear: quantity over quality. He was leveraging a spawning technique, flooding the battlefield with an endless tide of death. And we were the dam holding the river back.

Me, and the infuriating man who refused to acknowledge my help.

I spared another glance at the sovereign trial.

——[ Sovereign Trial: Seren Album ]——

[ Points: 8030 ]

[ Rank: 1 ]

———————————————

Rank One.

Of course I was.

And I had no doubt who Rank Two was.

He lay beside me, bleeding, stubborn as hell.

I turned my gaze toward Einar Sanguis—expecting to see the same crumpled, battered form as before. But what I saw stopped me cold.

He wasn’t broken anymore.

His body stood tall, eerily still, radiating something different.

His wounds had vanished. Every gash that once tore into his flesh had sealed. His bones—previously shattered and twisted—were perfectly mended.

Even that grotesque armor, the living flesh that clung to him like a parasite, was back.

No—more than back.

It pulsed, as if awakened from a long, suffocating slumber. Dark veins writhed beneath the surface, glowing faintly with crimson light. There was strength in it now. Raw, unfiltered, and terrifying.

It was like watching a beast stretch after sleep, fully rested and now hungry.

Before I could fully process what was happening, his figure blurred.

And the next instant, he was in front of me.

Just like that.

Not beside me. Not behind me. But in front.

He didn’t look at me, not at first. His gaze was fixed firmly ahead, scanning the battlefield with surgical precision.

"Thanks for saving me..." he said, voice quiet but clear. "I’ll return the favor for sure."

His words were polite. But his tone? Cold.

There was no warmth behind the gratitude. If anything, it felt strained—almost like an obligation. His eyes still refused to meet mine. When they finally did, for the briefest of seconds, I saw it.

Hatred.

Resentment.

Pain.

And yet... something else. A flicker. Maybe respect?

Still, the fact remained: he meant what he said. He would repay me. Not out of kindness—never that. But perhaps out of principle.

"How long are you planning to stay here?" he asked, his voice cutting through the air as he surveyed the field. "You going to keep fighting till the trial ends?"

I raised an eyebrow and shrugged, keeping my tone casual. "Depends. These skeletons don’t seem to be running out anytime soon."

He sighed, as if exhausted by the thought, and then turned toward me. This time, really looked at me.

"What if we storm the tomb? Go straight for Malthorn? If we take him out, the event ends—right?"

I smiled inwardly.

Bold.

Suicidal, perhaps. But bold nonetheless.

Outwardly, I kept my expression neutral. "Yes. That’s the condition. But how do you plan on surviving that?" I tilted my head slightly. "You’re still not awakened."

He let out a low chuckle. "True. But you are." His scarlet eyes gleamed. "And you’re strong enough for both of us."

"That I am," I replied flatly, my voice without inflection.

His eyebrow twitched ever so slightly at my deadpan response. But he didn’t react beyond that. He just kept watching me with that unreadable expression of his.

Then, he coughed once. "I’ll carve us a path through. You go ahead. I’ll follow."

He was serious.

And stupidly confident.

I nodded slowly, hand already wrapping around the hilt of Dissonance. The blade hummed in my grip, eager, resonant.

With a single, elegant motion, I stepped forward and cleaved through the oncoming tide.

The skeletons shattered like glass. Bones turned to snowflakes under the force of my slash. A huge swath of the battlefield cleared instantly.

I could feel his gaze flicker for a moment—an almost imperceptible twitch in his jaw. But again, he said nothing.

This time, he surprised me.

Without hesitation, he sprinted past me, straight toward the entrance of the tomb.

His armor pulsed—no, throbbed—with life. The living mass swelled and extended, then burst outward like a wave of pitch-black fluid.

The substance surged forward, wrapping around the skeletons emerging from the tomb like a sentient tide.

The moment it touched them, they screamed.

A horrifying, soul-piercing shriek tore through the air as the black tendrils sank into their bones. Then, as if compelled by some unseen madness, the skeletons began clawing at their own skulls.

And they crushed them.

Their skeletal fingers bent backward at grotesque angles, gouging their own eye sockets before shattering their skulls completely. They collapsed in heaps of cursed bone and aether.

Even I felt my breath catch.

It wasn’t revulsion—I’ve seen worse. But there was something unnatural about it.

Watching undead creatures turn on themselves, willingly, in such agony... it went against every law of necromancy I knew.

I didn’t dwell on the thought. Not now.

I kicked off the ground and sprinted toward him, eyes fixed on the tomb’s mouth.

The true battle was ahead.

And suddenly, I wasn’t sure who I needed to keep a closer eye on—Malthorn...

Or him.