The Archangel of Death - Chapter 365

365: Getting Ready 365: Getting Ready Chapter 365 “What’s mercy, you ask?” A man asked the boy who had asked the question from the man.

The man, as if the answer was too deep, was lost in thought.

Although the answer to the question should have been simple, the man was taking a lot of time to answer.

“No, not that.

I’m asking what mercy if I were to ever show it to my enemies?” The boy clarified.

However, even when the question was clarified, the answer didn’t come.

The man was still lost in deep thought as he mulled over how to answer the boy.

After all, whether to the masses or his enemies, the meaning of mercy was entirely different for the boy.

The answer too, had to be different.

Something the boy could live with.

Something the boy could understand.

“To understand that, I think I must first explain the meaning of cruelty to you.” The man finally said after a long while.

“Do you know what cruelty is?” “For me?” The boy was intelligent enough to know what the man was talking about and answered, “Making my enemies suffer beyond common sense.” “Then there’s your answer,” The man said.

However, the boy couldn’t understand.

Was it mercy if he was cruel to his enemies?

No, surely that wasn’t what the man meant so he waited for the man to clarify his answer.

The man could also see that despite his intelligence, the boy couldn’t fully grasp the answer.

“Death.

Grant them death.

That,” The man said as his expression turned serious, “is the ultimate form of mercy you could show to your enemies.” ~~ ‘Death is the ultimate form of mercy,’ I thought, the words I had learned a long, long while ago rang in my mind as I cleaned my hands with a handkerchief.

On the floor, three headless bodies lay lifeless, their heads next to them, the expression of horror still etched onto them.  I was angry, a little too much even.

It was hard to hold myself back from ripping out their intestines and strangling them with it.

Rip their organs while keeping them alive and make them eat them.

Unleash my cruelty upon them.

What they had certainly did warrant such a punishment.

But… “Are you done?” Rose asked.

I looked at Rose, the dried blood on her from a while ago was still the same as it was.

Her figure was still dyed in blood and she hadn’t moved from her spot since the beginning.

From the beginning to the end, she had witnessed it all.

I didn’t know why but I didn’t want to show her what my cruelty was.

So, for her, I decided to show some mercy.

Of course, for me, mercy held an entirely different meaning.

I pulled a clean handkerchief from my inventory and splashed some water on it.

Then I approached Rose and began to clean the blood on her face.

She didn’t move while I did so but her lips didn’t do so.

“Others demand a lot of things from you.

Love, destruction, peace, loyalty, and more.” Rose said, her pink irises gazing into mine.

I didn’t break the contact and let her continue.

She looked at me deeply still and said, “However, I want only one thing from you, Adrian.” “And that is?” I asked.

“Kindness.” She said.

She then looked at the three headless bodies.

It was safe to say she wasn’t talking about general kindness because there was no kindness to be found where she was looking.

Her kindness held an entirely different meaning.

Whatever it was.

“You are kind to me and your people.” She said, “That is why I never left you.

And that is why,” she closed the distance and cleaned the blood on my face as well, her hand imbued in lightning that burned off the unnecessary matter on my face, “I will never leave you.” Seriously.

I had never felt like this before.

No, I had.

Three times before.

Huh?

Three times?

No, I must be mistaken.

Two times only.

Yeah, two times.

[…] ‘What?’ I asked.

I didn’t know why but her silence was annoying.

Far beyond annoying actually.

[I finally found something you’re bad at] ‘And that is?’  [Lying to yourself] ‘…’ I didn’t know what she meant by that there was nothing I was bad at.

Even lying to myself.

[There it is again] ‘Shut up.’ I didn’t want to continue this debate any longer.

I called for some guards for the cleanup and left the room with Rose.

The information I required was obtained.

It was them, the Regia family.

They were a count family from the empire and the girl was a good friend of Alicia given they used to pray together.

However, Regia family used to pray a little too devotedly.

And ultimately, all prayers went through the church.

So it wasn’t wrong to say they were devout followers of the church.

The culprit this time was them as well.

“Bring everyone to Caligula.

We will begin the training in earnestly.” I said as I arrived at the teleportation circle.

Rose nodded and left to gather everyone while I had some important matters to attend to before heading out.

[Where to?] ‘To war.’ ~~ “All the materials you asked for are here,” Sophien said.

She worked fast and had everything ready by the time I was done ‘interrogating’ the Regia family.

I nodded and said, “Don’t let anyone in.” “Are you going to do it by yourself?” Sophien asked.

I simply nodded and assigned another task to her, “Rose will be here soon with the others.

Start preparing the army.

We leave in two days.” She didn’t ask me where and for what.

She simply nodded and left.

As for me, I guess my END was enough for me to create the weapons that were truly magnificent.

I was putting it off for quite some time now because the black sword turned out to be very good.

However, it had a mind of its own.

It wouldn’t even come out of the inventory sometimes.

I needed a weapon that I could use when I couldn’t use it.

Of course, making a weapon like that with my current stats would be impossible and I wouldn’t have the ingredients to do so as well.

However, making weapons and armor at the par of at least divine ranked was something I could do as long as there was enough time.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t.

So, I decided to equip only those at the forefront to have divine ranked armor and weapons while for the rest, they’d have to do with SSS rank armor and weapons.

With that, the flame ready, I began.

However, when it came to crafting and smelting, every little thing mattered.

The material used, the crafting material used to make the desired product and most importantly, the flame.

Simple materials won’t do so I asked Sophien to gather some truly expensive and rare ones.

Since the Vermillion family was basically a merchant family, she was able to get the materials without a hitch.

Then came the problem of the crafting materials such as an anvil, the hammer and the whole shebang.

But I didn’t have to worry about those as well since the system shop was equipped with top notch things like that.

Why didn’t I just buy weapons from the shop?

Well, they might be as good as the ones I would make but the quantity would be lower and I could make them much more easily.

I wouldn’t expend much wealth as well, and since the gold of the shop was much more precious than real time money, it was better to just use the latter.

With all of that done, the only problem that remained was the issue of the flame.

A flame could do a lot of things and make a very big difference when making something.

Especially when it came to blacksmithing, flame had a significant effect on the crafted product.

There were three types of flames as well.

One that generally existed in the world.

The one that could be extinguished.

The second one was the flame of existence.

Creatures like dragons or phoenixes were made of such flames.

Well, dragons weren’t made of it but a small part of it was incorporated into them whereas phoenixes were the true heralds of flame.

Then finally came the hell flame.

A flame that couldn’t be extinguished no matter what.

The power of this flame could simply be understood by the fact that even I could never control such a flame.

While I learned it, I could never master it.

Hence, I could never control it.

The ‘Sword of the Archangel’, the one in Eric’s possession was made from a hell flame.

A weapon I made over thirty-seven centuries.

That was how difficult to make a single weapon with a flame like that.

Obviously, I didn’t have such time so the hell flame was out of the question.

The first type of flame was not enough as well.

That only left me with one option.

[Flame stone] [Rank: SSS+] [Description: A magical artifact that people of the phoenix tower used to gather the blessing of the divine phoenixes] [Effect: Can store flame into it and the stored flame can be emitted by the user’s will] [Number of uses 03] [Cost: 10,000,000,000] Ten billion gold.

My gold reserves were running thin but it was still better than buying a lot of weapons and armor of the same rank.  Well, let’s begin.

Time was running out, after all.

Fear was slowly, but surely, ending.

Greed was slowly, but surely, returning.

So was ambition.

The plot will continue.

But this time, I will have a head start.

This time… “I will be ready.” [Dragon’s Breath] CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Bad_Wolf_7811 Creation is hard, cheer me up!

Your gift is the motivation for my creation.

Give me more motivation!