Lord of the Truth

Whoooooooosh!

"Psssst—just come here! I only want to tell you something!!" Robin's voice tore through the air, booming with such force it might have startled a lesser prey into stopping. But the truth was, his words were chasing after him from behind—because Robin himself was already moving faster than the speed of sound.

Whoooooooosh!

"…" The specter risked a fleeting glance over its shoulder, its movements betraying a rare flicker of suspicion and disbelief. It was a strange look to come from a creature without eyes, but the intent was clear—this was something it had not experienced in ages. In fact, the last time it had been hunted like this was millions of years ago.

Yet it didn't falter, didn't slow to see what this mortal was trying to pull. It simply faced forward again, legs pounding the ground with the rhythm of inevitability, maintaining a perfectly even, almost arrogant pace.

It was a sight to freeze the blood—a seven-meter-tall giant of spectral bone and shadow, its robe flaring behind it as it thundered across the land. Every being who caught sight of it—whether specter or one of the unlucky visitors to this cursed planet—reacted the same: they froze, then bolted to the nearest hiding place. To them, it wasn't a chase—they saw only a rampaging monster, unhinged and searching for prey to tear apart.

And that, at least, had its benefits: no one saw who, exactly, was daring to chase it.

"Damn you!!" Robin snarled, his patience snapping. With a flick of will, he tore open a small soul gate at his side. From within, a small dagger leapt into existence—its blade shimmering with compressed energy—before shooting forward with a sharp swish, streaking straight toward the specter's back.

Puff.

The blade vanished the instant it made contact. No clash, no resistance—just gone.

"…" Robin froze for a fraction of a heartbeat, eyes narrowing. The scene was uncanny—like tossing a single droplet of water into the depths of an endless, black ocean, only for it to disappear without leaving even a ripple.

That dagger had been no ordinary strike. It held three thousand units of soul essence—enough to drop most academy students where they stood, or at least force them to burn an irreplaceable life-saving treasure to survive. For it to vanish like that… the specter should have reacted—should have dodged, flinched, or at the very least, acknowledged the impact with some visible sign of pain.

"Rrrgh, you're forcing me to do this!!" Robin's voice was a low growl that built into another bellow. With visible strain, he wrenched open a second gate—this one wider—and from it emerged a massive, gleaming sword, pulsing with the raw might of thirty thousand essence units.

The difficulty wasn't in aiming the attack, nor in channeling the power—it was in the act of pulling that much force out of his domain at all. Every unit he spent now was a wound against his true goal.

Robin's situation was far more delicate than an outsider would guess. The structure of his soul domain still demanded one hundred ninety thousand essence units to exist in its perfected form, but that was only the skeleton. To begin the true ascent—to compress the first star—he needed it filled with a million essence units. And for Robin, who had stripped his domain clean of all basic, unrefined soul force, every essence unit had to be earned.

He didn't want to waste anything.

The loss of those three thousand units from the vanished dagger meant hard labor ahead—either hunting specters and absorbing them directly, or collecting thirty thousand ordinary soul units, then spending months grinding them down into three thousand units of essence.

Yes, his domain brimmed with free soul force—eight hundred and ten thousand free essence units at present. Or rather… eight hundred and seven thousand now, thanks to that cursed dagger. And that number could not drop. It had to rise… or at the very least, remain untouched for the full six days he had left to gather every last specter he needed.

"Damn…" He knew there was no way to bring down a specter of this magnitude without bleeding for it.

With a sharp inhale, Robin hurled the great sword forward—swoooosh!

BANG!

The giant specter stopped in its tracks, pivoting smoothly as if insulted that something dared strike it. In one swift motion, it raised a massive blade-like limb and met Robin's sword in a violent clash. The impact shattered the weapon into glittering shards of energy. Without hesitation, the specter swept its right hand through the remnants, siphoning every fragment of soul force into its own body in a single, greedy pull—leaving nothing for Robin to reclaim—before whirling back around and resuming its relentless flight.

"Aaaaaaaah! I'm going to milk you dry when I catch you!!" Robin's roar was half promise, half curse, the words so fierce they seemed to heat the air. His speed kicked up another notch, his wheelchair slicing through the terrain like a streak of vengeance given form.

And then, abruptly… something changed.

The ground beneath them seemed to hum. The air thickened. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, the chase shifted from a simple hunt to something altogether stranger…

"Hmm?" Robin's brows drew together, a faint crease forming as instinct warned him of a shift. He had been locked into the rhythm of the chase for so long that the sudden change was jarring—the specter's pace, once relentless, began to slow. Not just a little, but rapidly, as though some unseen force had reached out and dragged at its towering form.

Robin, wary of surprises, eased off his own speed, keeping a deliberate gap between them. His posture tightened, ready to strike in a heartbeat if the chance presented itself. "What's this? Exhausted already? Ready to finally stop running and face me like prey should?"

The words were half-taunt, half-invitation, and Robin even let a dry chuckle slip past his lips. But the moment he allowed himself that flicker of confidence, reality corrected him.

"…"

The specter came to a complete halt. Yet it didn't whirl around to meet his gaze, didn't raise its massive arms to defend itself. It didn't even acknowledge him. Instead, its massive skeletal head turned—slowly, deliberately—toward the east.

"Hm?" The sheer disregard was enough to pique Robin's curiosity. He followed the direction of that gaze, scanning the barren expanse. At first, he saw nothing but rock, shadow, and the faint shimmer of heat off the ground. "Seeing something I can't, Mr. Specter?"

A faint light, barely perceptible, began to kindle in Robin's eyes. It was subtle, like the first glint of sunlight on a blade, but it was enough to pierce across unimaginable distances, the way only the Eye of Truth could. His sight lanced through the ridges, beyond the jagged silhouettes of mountains, through folds of space itself—until finally, it landed on…

An ocean.

Not of water. Of specters.

"This…?" The words were a breath, edged in disbelief. His brows drew tight, his jaw stiffening. This wasn't a roaming herd or even a sizable pack—it was a living tide, a congregation of no fewer than twenty thousand specters, their ghostly forms churning like a storm surge. And there, at the very tip of this vast tide, something moved—dark-colored, its shape difficult to pin down even with his sight.

Robin kept staring, his mind parsing every detail while holding himself back from letting the Eye of Truth exceed five percent of its capacity. He had no desire to burn himself out now. "…Mr. Specter, how in the world did you see them from here? The distance is nothing short of absurd…"

Whoosh.

The specter gave no answer. Without the slightest pause, it lunged forward again, its speed surging back to full force—but now its trajectory was locked on that ocean of its kin.

"Damn it!" Robin hissed, setting his own wheels in motion once more, pushing into pursuit. But this time his movements were laced with caution; the margin for error was razor-thin. At their velocity, the gap between them and the ghostly ocean was shrinking with dangerous speed.

And then—

"🎶🎶"

Robin's ears caught something. Faint. Unfamiliar. And yet compelling enough that his instincts reacted immediately. Without thinking, his pace eased again, his senses straining in every direction.

The sound was distant, almost lost in the wind, but it had the quality of music—or something like it. A thread of melody winding through the air.

Is that what drew the specter? Could it hear this from even farther away? The thought was sharp, suspicious. What is it—some kind of summoning hymn?

"🎶…I…🎶"

Whoosh.

By then, the specter had already vanished over the ridge, merging into the living current of the spectral sea.

Robin, however, remained where he was for a moment longer. The moment a human voice threaded through that sound, his decision was made—charging in blindly was out of the question. Whatever lay beyond that mountain was no ordinary gathering, and if he kept pace with the specter, he could easily end up rushing headlong into something far greater—and perhaps far worse—than he could handle unprepared.

Instead, he adjusted. His ascent up the dark slope was steady, deliberate—fast enough to crush scattered bones beneath his wheels, but restrained enough to remain invisible in presence. Layer after layer of defenses wrapped around him: spatial shielding, sound suppression, energy dampeners, and more—an overlapping web of techniques designed to make him nearly impossible to detect by conventional or supernatural means.

As the summit neared, he slowed even further. The wind here carried the faintest whisper of the strange melody, brushing against his ears like the fingers of something unseen. He kept low, scanning for cover, and soon spotted it—a boulder, weathered and dark, just high enough to break the line of sight.

He slipped behind it, pressing his body low to the stone. Slowly, carefully, he leaned just far enough to see past its edge.

And there… the scene revealed itself.

A girl.

She stood not in fear, nor as a prisoner, but as the center—no, the conductor—of the ghostly ocean before her. The mass of specters moved as though tethered to her will. Yet she held no talisman aloft, no grim book of incantations, no ritual circle burning at her feet.

She led them by… singing.

Her voice carried across the expanse, somehow soft and sharp all at once—delicate enough to be mistaken for sweetness, yet laced with the kind of power that could root even the dead in place.

"Ha-ha-haaaay! Once more? Once more!" she laughed, bright and almost childlike, before her tone shifted and she began again:

~🎶Who follows me? Who hears my call?

SPECTERS of the night were born for my thrall!

I am the queen, in darkness arrayed,

I summon the souls… and they come to my aid!~🎶