Campione: Strongest# 473: Stepping Through the Root

Within the blooming azure radiance, a blade slowly took shape.

A broad sword, entirely blue.

Its body was the deep ink-blue of the ocean’s abyss, its wooden hilt carved in a tight spiral—like a vortex frozen in motion.

“...THAT IS—!!!”

The Dark Six’s startled voice cracked through the hall.

It wasn’t the unusual shape that rattled him.

It was what wrapped around the sword—the dense weave of faith and prayer.

The songs of the people.

Legends given form.

Proof of a Hero’s deeds, sung and sanctified by humanity.

His pupils shrank.

“If I’m not mistaken...” he said, unable to hide the awe in his voice, “that’s the mark of a Heroic Spirit—one of those Noble Phantasms, isn’t it?”

Haru didn’t bother answering.

He simply raised his right hand and closed his fingers around the spiral hilt.

The four Graelms’ attacks had already closed in—titanic bodies howling through the air from all directions.

For one suspended instant, Haru stood at the center of a raging vortex, as if he’d been dropped into a typhoon’s eye. The storm winds sharpened into blades, force enough to tear steel, screaming toward his face—

Then, the moment they brushed his divine body, those murderous winds folded like tamed birds and softened into a gentle breeze, ruffling his silver hair.

A God-king born from faith—his very nature granted him dominion over the sky.

Before that exalted authority, stormwinds, thunder, lightning—any of it—belonged to him.

The gale was never the real threat anyway.

The true danger lay in the Graelms themselves: each one weighing tens of thousands of tons, each one like a condensed battleship from the Age of Gods. The sheer mass behind their charge was why they’d once been revered as the gods of war.

Space stretched.

What should have landed on Haru in under a second—what still moved with brutal speed, still tore sonic booms from the air—

Never arrived.

Seconds passed.

The four colossal Graelms screamed through the air, sonic detonations rolling one after another—yet to the naked eye, they’d crawled no more than a single meter closer.

“Spatial manipulation—??”

The Sixfold Authority-holder’s composure shattered.

He stared at Haru, surrounded by the stalled Graelms, in open shock.

Noble Phantasms—proofs of Heroic Spirits—were rare, sure, but worldwide there were nearly a hundred extant. Most were low-tier, -rank trinkets. Their mystique had already been diluted.

So Haru casually wielding one was surprising, but not unthinkable.

Spatial control, though—that was different.

Inside this Reality Marble, Araya Souren held administrative rights over space itself.

By abandoning all other concepts and pushing his provisional “Creator” authority to its limit, Araya had monopolized spatial governance here.

Within this domain, you could almost call him a Magician of the Second Magic.

And now—

That authority, that Creator’s privilege, had been stripped away.

There was only one kind of being capable of that—one who had grasped a portion of the four fundamental Rules of the Moonlit World.

Magicians.

“Impossible,” the Dark Six blurted. “You’re a god—how could you defy the will of the Counter Force and reach the vortex of the Root??”

It wasn’t as if he’d never heard the rumors—this so-called “Jehovah” labeled a Magician. But those rumors claimed he commanded three of the Five Magics and ruled over “God” besides.

To someone standing near the top of the Moonlit World, it sounded like a bad joke.

The Fourth Dead Apostle Ancestor, Zelretch, had spent millennia wrestling with the Second Magic.

The Einzberns had burned through two thousand years and still failed to restore the Third.

The First’s Magician and the old hag of the Fifth had both paid with the chains of lifespan and constraint to reach theirs.

And that was without counting the countless magi who had pursued the Root for thousands of years, only to die at its doorstep.

One Magic was already nearly impossible.

Three? Ridiculous.

And when he first laid eyes on Haru, he’d rejected the idea even harder. That suffocating density of faith, almost tangible around him, screamed “god” more loudly than any title.

Gods born from human belief—agents under the watch of Alaya, the collective human unconscious—were the last things that should be capable of defying the Counter Force and touching that highest privilege.

Yet now, this walking neon sign for “I’m God, worship me already”—

Had just casually invoked what should have been impossible.

This was the most grotesque joke in history.

“Too damn noisy,” Haru muttered, brow twitching at the shrill outrage. “It’s only one Magic. You just step through the Root and back, that’s all.”

“Gaa—??” The strangled sound that tore from the Dark Six’s throat sounded like someone had throttled a duck.

“Just step through the Root,” he says. Easy as a coffee run.

In his compiled intel, more than a hundred individuals had successfully reached the Root.

Every single one of them, in terms of magecraft, eclipsed almost all of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors.

Of those, only five had ever returned to the world’s inner side.

Two of them had paid with severe constraints on their lifespan.

The rest had been swallowed by the Root—wiped out so thoroughly that even their names on paper were erased.

Even their children forgot them. Mage families that had lasted for millennia vanished overnight.

The Root was not a place you “stepped through.”

It was annihilation made metaphysical.

The idea that there was a safe commute route was absurd.

Then a thought crashed through him.

His eyes flew wide.

“That woman—it’s that woman, isn’t it? Her body can bypass the Counter Force’s barrier and go straight to the Root!!!”

Of course.

It had to be.

Why else would a god-king who’d ruled for millennia babysit a human girl named Ryougi Shiki?

A guaranteed, safe line to and from the Root—a loophole to escape the Counter Force’s grip—only that kind of decisive factor could make a god stand guard beside a mortal.

Even if he himself didn’t obsess over the Root, faced with a guaranteed chance to seize the highest Rules, to peel away the Counter Force’s shackles—

He’d be insane to let it pass.

And gaining such Rules, even partially, would be a game-changer for his own plans.

Predatory greed flashed through his eyes.

Hearing his sudden delight, Haru didn’t fully get the misunderstanding—but he understood this much:

The Dark Six had just set his sights on Shiki.

On his future wife.

What should a man do?

Obviously—kill him.

Haru tightened his grip on the sword.

His dark gray eyes locked onto the massive tortoise-Graelm, gaze cold, as if he could see straight through its stone gut to the ecstatic parasite hiding inside.

His voice came low, with that strange, compelling timbre.

“True Name Release—Móralltach!!!”