With every step that carried me farther from the ground, the silver night drew closer.
Since ancient times, mountains had been roads connecting earth and sky. The climbing trail stretching from the barren wasteland, through the verdant mountainside, all the way to the summit formed of strangely shaped rocks was like a series of gates divided into layer after layer.
Perhaps that was why.
For thousands of years, the ‘Sword Circle’ had installed gates at various points along Heavenly Sword Mountain. I passed the first, then the second, and by the time I had finally crossed the last of those successive gates—
I suddenly realized that I was having difficulty breathing.
It was because of the extraordinarily dense Mana permeating the air.
It was something I had not noticed halfway up the mountain. I had never imagined that the substance which had looked like nothing more than ‘pure-white clouds’ would become a thick fog enveloping the area around the summit.
The devil wearing my little sister’s skin had told me.
This silver haze had been created when the ‘Hero’s Blood’ vaporized.
So even I, who had reached ‘Master,’…