From the Church's stories, only Solomon was known as the one partnerless and descandtless among the seven apostles, while the other six were well known for their pairing.

Djeem the Accursed was, by the Church's teachings, married to Kine the Flamboyant. Djeem is said to have had a magic that allowed him to transform solids into water, which he could control thanks to his second magic, water elemental. Kine, on the other hand, was said to be gifted with a powerful fire magic ability. Despite the fact that their magic is diametrically opposed, and most likely because of it, their couple is said to represent marital complicity and stability.

Sora, Daughter of the Mountains, was married to Huye, the First Pontiff. Their couple were known for the consummation of their marriage, which resulted in the birth of seven of daughters and one son, son who would later be known as Huye the Second Pontiff, the founder of the Church as it is known nowadays. That impressive number of children born and raised by her earned the apostle Sora, the Church's symbol of fertility.

Aurora, Child of Storm, and Kiady the Eternal were the last apostolic couple. It is said that they had four children together, but three of them are particularly known for their deeds and were sung about by the Church. They were known as the founders of what is known as the Paladin order. While their parents were regarded as god-sent entities, they were regarded as knights entitled to protect their parents and fellow apostles. Another thing their couple was known for was the fact that their bloodline was thought to be flowing and associated with those born into the Altaira royal family.

In the first generation of royalty, and I would even go as far as to say that it is still the case, those of the Royal family still firmly believe that those born from them have the divine right to rule.

After realizing that we had slain an apostle, I, thanks to Nia’s stories about her past, managed to put all the pieces together.

I was surprised to learn that the man that impaled me that day was none other than the apostle Kiady the Eternal himself. I, in fact, didn't even want to believe it, but what happened today confirmed it.

This meant that the woman we fought that day was most likely Aurora, Child of Storm, who wielded or was heavily associated with wind and lightning magic, as her title implied.

To think that this man panting right in front of me utterly defeated was no other than the famous Kiady the Eternal, whom I've heard so much about, I couldn’t help but feel a strange feeling that I couldn’t put into words.

I remember the strange feeling I felt when I realized that we had defeated Solomon himself, but here things were different, and so were the circumstances. This one was beaten, defeated, while Solomon wasn’t ...

Done being bothered by this pathetic display, I raised my sword to the man and asked, "Is this really all you have, mister, Or maybe I should call you Kiady, ... Kiady the Eternal… I see… I got it that you have nothing to say to me. Then I suppose it is time for me to stop this. " I swung my blade onto him, or maybe, I should say I swung it onto the spear he suddenly summoned in a last attempt to kill me off with the last bit of mana he had.

I had no complications whatsoever to deflect or nullify his attack. His spear was sent flying several meters away from here.

"Any attempts are futile. You are beaten. There is no point in this anymore… Sigh… That being said, it’s not like I have anything else to say to you, but someone else does."

I conjured lightning onto the blade of my sword, then bolted it toward the sky, causing along with it a pillar of lightning to ascend.

The purpose of that action was to serve as a signal for a certain person to come over, something that happened almost immediately after I sent the signal.

I removed the upper part of my clothes to cover Kiady’s body, which was limply lying on the ground, for the signal was for no one other than Nia.

She must’ve disobeyed my order to remain away given how fast she reached this place along with Heon.

She descended from Heon’s back and approached the man.

The man, having also noticed her arrival, muttered with a voice full of shock and disbelief , "You! … Nia?"

As she ran past me, I felt her cold stare.

"It has been a while, my Uncle."

She kneeled at his side.

In Nia’s story, there were only two people she ever interacted with besides her father, the first being a person she referred to as "Aunt" and the second being the one she just called "Uncle."

"You said you wouldn’t hurt him! Why is he so hurt?!"

From here, needless to say, she was well aware of what I was doing.

Kiady, as one of the few people she was close to, would never allow this, but she also knew, since I told her from the moment we first really spoke to each other about how our first meeting with that man went, how things weren't settled between this man and us, and that it had to be settled. Naturally, even with these arguments, I wasn't able to convince her to let me literally fight her uncle. Our Hanti-magic was the only reason I was able to reason with this fight.

That’s it. I promised to restrain him with our Hanti-magic. That is, of course, after having tested my new perk on him. After all, that was the reason I was here to test my current competence. He was the guinea pig Han was referring to a year ago. With his healing magic, there was no one better than him. Added to that, with the history between us, this fight was bound to happen.

She did accuse me of gravely injuring her uncle, but if you think about it, he still had enough mana to launch a sneak attack on me, when he could've used it to heal himself with his healing magic.

"You have survived?! What about your illnesses? …Did he manage to heal you? "

"Yes, Uncle, Papa got rid of it. I’m completely healthy now."

From her voice, I heard something I would assume was relief.

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I suppose this is understandable after all. It must not be easy to find a fellow human from four millennia ago in this day and age.

Besides, this man is the only other human she has met since she woke up, and one that she was familiar with on top of that.

Her relief was more than understandable.

"How come you still look like this… ?"

"Aaah this… I just woke up one year ago, Papa has been taking care of me since -"

"Your father! Where is he? "

I felt the man's glare darting aggressively at me.

"He’s no longer with us. He left one year ago, but I’m sure he went on without regret. He even-"

"Wait- Are you telling me, he was still alive and conscious all this time."

I felt a strange tone change in his voice.

"... Not really, but he got to part happily, I’m certain he would've loved to talk to you one last time, Uncle. After all, you were his best friend.

So was the relationship between the two apostles. From what was described in Nia’s story, though she herself doesn’t seem to find it weird, her father wasn’t the type to have many friends, he mostly deserved the sad title he was given. Among the very few people he had as friends was this man, Kiady, whom Solomon could call a friend among the seven.

Curiously enough, though she called him "Uncle", the truth was that Kiady wasn’t her uncle but rather her Great-Great-Great Grandfather on her mother’s side. Nia’s mother apparently descended from the same family as Kiady. She was 17 when she first met the already 136-year-old, recluse, Godsent Solomon. It sounded weird, very weird at first, but once you think about it long enough, when you live longer than most humans without suffering the consequences of aging, something like that is bound to happen.

"... His best friend, huh?"

Once again, I felt his glare darting viciously at me, but something was different. Then I realized that he was mostly directed toward my sword rather than completely at me.

"Yes, Uncle, but don’t worry, I’m sure from now on, together we can- Uncle?"

In mid-sentence, her words were interrupted by a wave of laughter from Kiady.

A laugh full of cynicism and mockery.

"Together huh…Best friend, Heh?" The man sneered. "… Tell me, child, what kind of best friend would attack his friend when they simply came to seek help?" Tell me?"

"That…"

"What? You didn’t know? He didn’t tell you? He attacked us. We made this whole journey to find him. When I found him, I just needed him to do Aurora what he did to you. He could’ve saved her. He had the power to do so."

The man stood up despite his injuries, as if to look down on Nia,

"My Aurora died, because of him, and you think that he considered me his friend? He left us to die? Where is the friendship in that? "

Suddenly, I remembered the injuries on the rib side of his armor, and then it dawned on me, who could’ve inflicted them on him.

So that was it. I finally got the last piece of the puzzle.

I was expecting them to be looking for Solomon, but not even an instant did I assume they had found him, and got, let’s call it what it was, wrecked by him, just as we were one year ago.

"Uncle, Papa was …" Nia muttered, still at a loss for what to say, before being interrupted once again by Kiady.

"Aurora’s death, it was-This was all his fault!"

"No! Papa didn't. " She protested with a teary voice.

"Do you have any idea what you, father and daughter, have caused after abandoning humanity? "Countless people have died because of your father’s fault."

To be honest, when I first heard that story of hers, I immediately realized that something like that must have happened. Humanity had been sheltered by Solomon for more than a century, and with how the barrier was suddenly taken away from them, there was no way people wouldn't have suffered the immediate consequences of that.

"Papa didn’t... he didn’t want that." She muttered, trembling.

"He has always been like that, always condescending beyond comparison. Which is why he always ended up alone. "

"You said he didn’t want that, maybe, but once again, as always, he never really cared about anyone. He was cursed. Everything he touched surely died, his father first, then his mother, then that girl, your own mother, and finally you. At first, I thought you would be one of his victims, but now, I can feel it, I see it, you have become the same as him- no maybe I just failed to see it. If I knew it would’ve devolved so badly, I wouldn’t have ever allowed you-"

I have heard enough.

"Hon!"

"Yeah, I know."

Fully synchronized, we activated our Hanti-agic, and before he could finish his words, I closed the distance between us, then thrust my sword onto his chest.

It all happened faster than the blink of an eye. Neither him nor Nia saw that coming, yet with the turn this discussion has taken, they should have.

"I think you’ve said enough already. I do not know what kind of person you truly were before all of this, but from Nia’s story and the Church's, I expected better of you. It seems like both were exaggerations. One was an embellished memory of a little girl, the other an embellished story made to propagandize your inexistent grandeur. From the teaching I grew up with, you were depicted as a benevolent hero. One of my few friends was even baptized under your authority. Though I never believed in you people’s existence, despite all and all, I at least expected more than this from you if you ever existed. I put an end to two of your children's existence: Carmilla and Raphael was it? They must have journeyed here, in the pit of this hell, looking for the two of you, but ultimately failed. And now that I see what I see here, it makes me think that their failures were ultimately for the best. "

With these words vented out, I withdrew my sword from his chest, causing blood to gush out like water from a fountain.

Immediately after he fell on his knee, he proceeded to limbly fall on the ground, only to be received by Nia, who, after having come back to her senses, ran at him.

"Again! Again! …", holding him in her arms, she shouted angrily at me, "You! … what have you done? You promised …"

Her reaction was justified once more, because that man was most likely the last man alive, the last link she had to her old world, the forgotten age she came from, and I reminded her of that.

But I have no regrets about what I did.

"Why did I do what I did? It’s simple, he pissed me off. It’s because of people like him that everything is ruined." I ranted.

I even further added, this time to Kiady’s attention, "Do you hear me, piece of crap? You complained that it was Solomon who caused all of your misfortune, didn’t you? that he was the one who caused your "Aurora '' to die. But I have a question for you: where were you when that happened? Let me guess, "At her side, "What exactly did you do? Nothing, Let me guess once again, you couldn’t do anything, right? The problem was not Solomon, it was you. You’re the one blaming your uselessness on a little girl without even giving her the opportunity to explain herself. "

"Tell me, what did you do, after what we caused the demise of what was left of what you once called your wife? Nothing. You didn’t even have the balls to come to us for revenge. It was also the same for Solomon. So here you are whining as if it wasn’t the consequence of your own helplessness.

"Hôn! Please stop this!! … Uncle?!"

"You remained here doing nothing. You didn’t even try to fix your own messes, you didn’t even had the gut to face death like a man, you’re just a worthless-"

"Hon, that’s enough. It’s finished, he can’t hear you anymore. "

Masked by me voicing my rant, I didn’t even notice that the man had already succumbed to his injuries.

"Waaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Returning to my senses, I finally took notice of Nia letting out a sharp wail.

"Dammit!" I swore while kicking the ground in frustration.