**220. The Grand Expedition Was Not a Failure**
—
Raiga looked around.
Pitch-black darkness.
A place so still it felt as if every motion in the world had halted—without even a single breeze.
“A Spatial Displacement Realm.”
The Abyss changes its nature depending on the master who occupies it.
This one possessed the **Realm of Spatial Displacement**, scattering the intruders upon entry.
And the owners of such Abysses were usually—
*‘A 5th-grade Abyss. Pathetic for a fragment bearer.’*
Having conquered countless Abysses and slaughtered their masters, Raiga had come to classify Abysses by his own standards.
Among them, **5th-grade was among the lowest**.
The act of scattering those who entered signified a weak master.
However—cases where a monster that possessed a *Ruin Fragment* was only 5th-grade were almost unheard of.
*‘Just because something holds a Fragment doesn’t guarantee strength…’*
In that case, the creature must have obtained the Fragment not long ago.
It might have embedded this displacement trait to more fully absorb the Fragment’s power.
But what a disappointment.
At this rate, the hunt wouldn’t even be enjoyable.
*‘I expected at least a 3rd-grade Abyss.’*
Starting from 3rd-grade, they became significantly strong.
Creatures that surpassed human limits generally fell into that tier.
For example, **Baal**—the one that appeared at the Mountain of Trainees.
Upon forming an Abyss, it immediately gathered hundreds of thousands of humans.
Even though it was only a shell and incomplete, it gathered them in one place to absorb their life.
The shell of Baal would easily have been assessed as **3rd-grade or higher**.
Guh-euk.
Gurrrg-euk.
That was when it happened.
A strange groan echoed from somewhere not far away.
Raiga turned his head—and there stood a massive being on two legs, shaped like a single colossal **eye**.
“A Hybrid?”
He hadn’t sensed its presence.
It had no scent.
Natural, considering this was the interior of an Abyss.
But the presence of a **Hybrid** inside the Abyss was highly unusual.
“So a stray monster actually managed to dominate an Abyss.”
The monsters that wander inside the Abyss.
Hybrids were one of them.
Creatures who had entered the Abyss and became corrupted by its poison were what came to be known as Hybrids.
That enormous single eye was a mutation formed during its adaptation to the Abyss.
With intelligence degenerated and power feeble, all it could do was roam aimlessly—one of the most common kinds of monsters.
Seeing a horde of Hybrids implied that the Abyss’s master was also a Hybrid.
He had wondered whether he would finally get a proper hunt—only for the enemy to turn out to be mere Hybrids.
Tch.
Raiga clicked his tongue.
“Let’s see if you can break through my ‘Benediction.’”
**Benediction.**
A guardian god-like protection that shields Raiga.
It was the reason even the contamination of a Fragment could not touch him.
Trifling Hybrids could never pierce the solid wall of his Benediction.
*‘I couldn’t use it in the palace, but here there’s no reason not to.’*
—Kuuuuung.
Raiga’s body trembled violently.
A blue radiance began spreading from him.
The power he could not use when dueling the *Goat* within the Fang training palace—
Activating it there could have caused the entire palace to collapse.
And beyond that, he had sworn he would use this power only to hunt *Ruin Fragments*.
Here, he had no restrictions.
Had he used this power against the Goat, the outcome would have been different.
And so Raiga released the power that had been sealed away.
The five sealed **Gates**, passed down through five generations.
East Gate, West Gate, South Gate, North Gate, and Central Gate—
And now, the first of them: **the East Gate!**
“…Let’s finish this as quickly as possible.”
—
—
Swaak!
Kakak!
A hail of throwing blades.
Boom!
Hidden poison sacs burst, and strikes like flashes of light sought to sever the opponent—
*‘…None of it works?’*
Nothing worked.
Shalla—
for the first time in her life, felt **flustered**.
From childhood she had roamed battlefields, slaughtering humans beyond measure.
There had never been a human she wanted dead whom she could not kill.
By the time she reached adulthood, she had already been known across battlefields as **the Wolf of Death**.
“Ah…”
Even after pouring everything she had, Serengeti stood untouched.
The moment their gazes locked, Shalla could not hold it and looked away.
…Strong.
Not simply in physical power.
**Upright.**
Those eyes were unbearably upright.
A woman who had lived a life utterly different from hers—a being of pure white.
She had assumed her to be a sheltered flower from a greenhouse.
She was wrong.
That woman had roamed the battlefield nearly—
no, perhaps even **more** than Shalla herself.
*‘But even so!’*
Knights.
They were fools.
In battles where life and death hung by a thread, they considered honor important.
Just as the strongest knight of the Valan Kingdom, Abdula, never expected poison—
they were foolishly naïve.
Shalla had met and killed many knights, and they were all similar.
Many of them had died after underestimating her for being a woman.
But…
The woman before her was different.
*‘There’s not the slightest opening.’*
This was not overwhelming the opponent with brute strength.
She simply **gave no openings**.
It was as if she read every move and countered all of them.
But Knights—weren’t they the ones who swing swords earnestly in training halls like naïve fools?
“All your moves are shallow.”
“…What?”
“The emotion in your blade. It is nothing more than shallow hatred. Do you think you alone have walked through hell?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean—what you call hell is not hell at all.”
Serengeti spoke.
The reason she was not like other knights.
The reason she **could not** be like them.
“…You’re saying you’ve experienced real hell?”
Shalla scoffed.
She too had lived in hell.
For a young girl to survive on a battlefield—what greater hell was there?
King Friedrich was her savior.
He gave her life, power, and a name.
What did this woman know to speak like that?
Surrounded by Shalla’s murderous intent, Serengeti continued to speak.
“Yes. Being beside the Knight King means exactly that. We, the ‘Seven Knights of the Round,’ survived hell with the Knight King.”
…The Seven Knights of the Round.
Not the official name.
That was merely what they called themselves.
Seven knights who served only the Knight King—his closest aides.
Serengeti was one of them.
She was not the strongest among them.
But her faith and loyalty were fiercer than anyone’s.
And so—she alone served the Knight King, Wilhelm, **to his final breath.**
“The countless feats the Knight King achieved—every one of them was a hell beyond words. But the **Grand Expedition**… that alone deserved to be called hell itself.”
“What nonsense are you saying?”
Out-of-place words.
Shalla frowned.
Calling the Grand Expedition hell? What was she trying to say?
But Serengeti did not care.
For she was not talking **to** Shalla.
“Listen well. Our enemies were not only humans. We fought monsters that attacked us in different forms every day—plunged into a rift of betrayal where trust changed by the hour. Not even blinking was permitted in that torturous time.”
Enemies on all sides.
Anyone could betray them.
Monsters disguised themselves as the dead and attacked.
If one slept, Nightmares tormented them.
And when one awoke, the comrade sleeping beside them might be dead.
Time flowed unnaturally.
Thought flowed unnaturally.
**The Demon Realm.**
Its eight hells were hell in every sense of the word.
“Do you truly think the Grand Expedition failed?”
Serengeti looked around.
At the soldiers and knights, at the nobles, at Duke Sian, at the king.
All of them claimed the Grand Expedition had failed.
Not just them. The whole world believed it so.
But—
“Do you truly think the Knight King accomplished nothing?”
No.
Wrong.
Now was the time to correct the lie that had spread.
“The Knight King—!”
Serengeti roared to the world.
“—killed the King of Hell, the Demon King!”
“…!!!”
In an instant, everyone flinched.
The Knight King Wilhelm killed the Demon King?!
It was the complete opposite of the widely accepted story.
It was said that the Grand Expedition had failed.
But Serengeti was a knight who had fought in the Demon Realm herself.
And she was the closest aide to the Knight King.
There was no reason for her to lie.
Yet no one could speak.
They were overwhelmed by Serengeti’s spirit.
“Even amid the betrayal of the Sages of the Arcane Tower and the so-called ‘Eight Heroes,’ even as countless mercenaries and soldiers deserted, the Knight King pressed on through all eight hells and drove his blade into the Demon King’s heart.”
The Sages of the Arcane Tower.
And the Eight Heroes.
They were the ones who joined the Grand Expedition and later inflated their influence.
They were also the ones who made the world believe the Grand Expedition had failed.
But—was that all a lie?
Were they, in truth—traitors?
Confusion spread in every eye.
Serengeti then turned to Duke Sian.
“Failed? Squandered? And thus the Valan Kingdom weakened, you said?”
“…”
Flinch.
Duke Sian reflexively lowered his gaze.
He felt like he was standing before a colossal beast.
And he had been the one who most loudly declared the Grand Expedition had failed—in front of the king, no less.
No one had refuted him back then.
Because deep inside, they had all thought the same.
Serengeti raised her voice further.
“No! Not at all. Our valiant knights of the Valan Kingdom served the Knight King loyally to the very end. Not a single sacrifice was in vain. Their will still protects the Valan Kingdom even now. Therefore—!”
Her gaze now shifted to the **Demon of Pride, King Friedrich**.
“And so from this moment on, I will show you—how the Knight King and we carved through hell itself and slew the Demon King.”
She raised her sword.
—
—
*Interesting.*
For the first time since arriving in the Valan Kingdom, King Friedrich felt **excitement**.
Because Serengeti crushed Shalla?
No. Not that.
It was her **soul** that thrilled him.
*‘It shines… like the soul of a god.’*
He wanted it.
That soul.
He now understood why she was called the **White Knight**.
Finding someone that upright, that pure, was nearly impossible.
But that only deepened his curiosity.
*‘…The Knight King, Wilhelm.’*
A knight of her caliber followed him.
Who was he?
How brilliant must his soul have been?
Regret.
He had mistaken him for Greed and avoided him.
Had he known otherwise, he would have sought him himself to claim his soul.
“Guhh!”
Another knight fell with a final scream.
Unstoppable.
His knights couldn’t stop Serengeti.
“It seems you must intervene.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
King Friedrich turned to the one next to him.
There was only one knight capable of stopping her.
A monster completed by his own hands.
Already the strongest, then strengthened further by feeding him the bodies of numerous gods—
**The Kingslayer, Yazam.**
If anyone could make Serengeti kneel, it was him.
*‘…But.’*
Suddenly, King Friedrich tilted his head.
Something continued to bother him.
*‘Something strange is mixed among them.’*
What was it?
Not human.
Not monster.
Something peculiar had blended into the crowd.
Something that should not exist.
Even the Demon of Pride, who had lived for ages, had never seen such a thing.
No one had noticed.
Even he had nearly missed it.
*‘What are those brats…?’*
—
Knight king 🔥