Chapter 38. NAIVE

【ש】The mark glowed. The black wolf stepped forward and pressed its muzzle to the rune. Heat surged through Levin’s arm as the symbol burned red. The wolf’s body dissolved, its essence flowing into him through the mark.

“Fyred,” Levin said, quiet and clear.

He lifted his right arm, fingers open, reaching forward to welcome something. Behind him, the Phoenix spread its wings. Flame curved outward in graceful arcs. A low cry rose through the air, and then the creature folded into itself, its entire form pulled toward Levin’s waiting hand. Fire and shadow twined together, drawn into a single point.

The Phoenix vanished.

What remained was something new. The energy coiled, lengthened, and solidified. A blade took shape—jagged and alive. Ash scattered with each movement. Heat pulsed beneath a blackened surface. The hilt curved downward, shaped like trailing feathers, and the crossguard bore the silhouette of a phoenix’s crest, wrapped in black.

The sword hovered just above his palm. After a few breaths, Levin reached out. His hand closed around the hilt. And with the blade in hand, Levin began his descent into the battlefield.

Each step left flame behind. His eyes never left the creature. The sword hung low, tracing the ground as he moved. The flames around him flowed in rhythm, slow and constant, as if breathing through him.

Despite its pain, the Mega Tusk adjusted again, shoulders tensing. It was preparing to defend itself. But it had misunderstood.

Levin wasn’t here to fight.

As Levin walked toward the Mega Tusk, the beast stepped back, one heavy stride for every small step he took. It didn’t make sense. Levin’s pace was slow, measured, almost lazy, yet the distance between them kept shrinking. The Tusk should have outpaced him easily.

But it didn’t.

He was getting nearer and nearer—maybe because the Mega Tusk was already pressured by Levin’s presence. This was what it felt like to stand before something far stronger than you; even their smallest movement outmatched your most desperate retreat. Slowly, the distance between them vanished, closing to attacking range.

Levin stood lazily in front of its tusk.

We moved with them. Far enough not to interfere, close enough for Kevin to step in if anything went wrong. He was carrying Lyra in his arms.

Levin raised his sword and lightly tapped the creature’s tusk. The Mega Tusk flinched, startled by the touch. At that moment, something began to rise from beneath it.

A second Levin slowly emerged from the creature’s shadow, head tilted back in laughter.

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

The Tusk jerked sideways, startled by the figure beneath it. But as soon as it moved, another Levin surfaced from its new shadow.

It turned to escape in the opposite direction, heaving its weight around to shift course. Again, a copy pulled itself free from its shadow.

The beast reeled, slamming its legs into the ground and dragging its body to the right—but the same thing happened. Its own shadow betrayed it, giving rise to another Levin with the same slow smile and sword in hand.

One after another, they surrounded it. Four Levins now stood in a square around the Mega Tusk. Each one moved slowly, not in sync, but with the same quiet confidence.

Four blades.
Four smiles.
Four laughs.
Four shadows closing in.

I didn’t know which one was the real Levin anymore. Maybe none of them were. All four of them bore the same pitch-black eyes. Whatever was inside those shadows wasn’t just copying his shape. It was wearing it.

The four Levins began to laugh again. Not all at once. One started, then another joined in. The sound spiraled, too slow to feel natural, too deliberate to be random. It wasn’t laughter at all. It was a ritual.

A signal. A promise that the game wasn’t over yet.

The Mega Tusk staggered, its frame lurching left, then right. It wasn’t trying to fight anymore. It was trying to flee. But every shadow betrayed it.

It stopped moving.

For a moment, everything went still. Then it let out a warbled, pitiful cry. The sound was no longer a roar—just a dry, broken noise, scraped from a body that had already given up.

Its legs collapsed all at once, slamming into the dirt in a burst of ash and breathless weight. The beast’s sides heaved, as if the air itself had turned against it. Its head bowed low. It lowered itself in surrender.

Its breathing came in short, uneven bursts, chest rising beneath layers of scorched muscle. The great tusks that once split trees and trampled stone now scraped against the dirt without purpose, drooping under a weight they could no longer bear.

It trembled.

Levin didn’t even raise his blade and still, the Tusk shrank further. The beast that once ruled the battlefield now looked small. Hunched, broken, and pitiful...

Something in its eyes had faded. The life there had already vanished. And neither did Levin’s eyes hold life. But both of their eyes spoke different truths.

One pair had surrendered it.
The other had come to claim it.

It started with one of Levin’s shadows. He leisurely raised the sword and slid it into the Tusk's flesh.

Another shadow followed.

Then another.

The beast’s pupil dilated, but its body remained slumped beneath them. Each blade stabbed down, withdrew, then descended again. The cycle was never-ending.

Their sword movement lacked precision—carried no weight. Just enough to push forward, each strike fell in a slow, casual rhythm. It was boring and effortless. Each blade moved with the ease of a man knocking on a door already open, piercing flesh without resistance.

The Mega Tusk shuddered with every blow. But it didn’t move. As if the will to flee, to resist, had faded long before the first wound. It had surrendered its life.

The swords kept rising.

The swords kept falling.

Each sword drifted forward, smooth and indifferent, like brushing dust from a table.

“Levin, STOP! Enough! It’s already dying!”

The swords halted.

All four shadows froze mid-motion. The laughter cut off, as if someone had shut the world’s sound off with a switch. Silence followed.

Thick. Heavy. Unnatural.

Then, from beneath the Tusk, another figure began to rise.

A fifth Levin pulled himself out of the creature’s shadow. Slowly, he climbed onto the beast’s slumped body. Using his sword, he anchored himself up its massive body, climbing slowly. One foot braced against scorched hide, the other dragging forward with eerie calm. His movements were gentle, as if this was never a battle at all.

He stood at the center.
Above them all. Above the Tusk. Above us.

And then he spoke.

Not in a sentence.

From left to right, one at a time, the five of them turned to look at me.
Each Levin spoke just one letter:

【N】
【A】
【I】
【V】
【E】

Five voices. One word.

“Crazy bastard,” I muttered.

Their eyes held pity. Scorn. Ridicule.
Like I was something small, a joke, something beneath them.

I stepped back. My voice barely came out.

“Kevin...”

He looked over. Tense. Waiting for me to say it.

“This isn’t Levin anymore.”
My eyes stayed locked on the fifth one.

“I think the Phoenix is controlling him.”

Kevin nodded grimly. “I know.”

“We need to wake him up.”

“Knock some sense into him.”

A voice snarled from above. “No, you won’t!”

The Black Phoenix let out a wild distorted laugh.

“HA. HA. HA. HA.”

Then it began.

The two Levins on the far left started to dissolve, their outlines breaking into smoke. The pair on the right followed, shadows trailing across the ground before slipping into Levin’s back. Their forms melted together in perfect silence, until only one figure remained.

Behind him, rising over each shoulder, wings began to take shape. A shape terrible in its grace. The wings stretched wide, feathered in black flame, arching over Levin’s body.

Then he ascended.

His wings flared once, and his body rose to the sky, carried by the shadow that had claimed him. His sword tilted downward. It pointed straight at the creature below. The crossguard, molded in the shape of the phoenix’s crest, began to glow. Black energy coiled from the beak’s edge, spiraling through the air as it gathered momentum.

A narrow pulse shimmered along the blade’s edge, heavy with pressure and fire, radiating something worse than destruction. A beam had begun to form, one moment away from becoming calamity. The darkness that had blanketed the sky earlier was likely the Black Phoenix’s doing.

Now, the beam was reclaiming every ounce of it. It drew in the shadows, swallowing them whole. The sky grew brighter with every second, and the beam kept growing larger, denser, and darker.

The sky cleared for only one reason: to witness the moment calamity fell.

Levin hovered above us, cloaked in shadow and flame. I didn’t know if Levin could still hear us. Maybe I was talking to ashes. But I still tried it anyway.

“Levin... come back, buddy. You’ve done enough.”

No reply. Just silence and rising flame.

“We’ll get him back. He’s still in there. I’ll drag him out if I have to.”

A voice behind me.
It was Kevin.
He had set Lyra down and mana was beginning to shimmer around him.

Levin’s sword remained locked on the Mega Tusk’s back, waiting for the moment to fall. Every thread of fate pulled taut, drawn tight toward a single moment.

The moment he chose to strike.

But just as the sky cleared for judgment—
Beneath it all the Fog began to move.