Philip lowered his gaze to the two fires that still burned quietly in the room. Though the flames were already dying down, the fury and disgust on his face had not faded in the slightest.
"Sir Karl, the corpse—" he began, his voice tight.
Karl let out a short chuckle and reached out to pat Philip's shoulder, signaling him to calm down.
"From the moment I arrived," Karl said casually, "I isolated every sound inside this room. The outside world won't hear anything unusual, and no one will discover what happened here."
Philip stiffened slightly, then listened as Karl continued.
"What you need to do now is go out and find Dalton," Karl said. "After that, comfort Tamara properly. She's still young—try not to let today's events leave too deep a shadow on her heart. Leave the rest of this mess to me."
Hearing that Karl had already considered these details—and that he was personally taking responsibility for cleaning everything up—Philip's eyes instantly reddened.
Emotion surged in his chest. He stepped back, straightened his posture, and bowed deeply toward Karl. His voice trembled, thick with sincerity.
"Thank you… my lord. Truly—thank you."
With that, Philip wiped his face forcefully, as if scrubbing away the last remnants of weakness, then turned and strode away from the room that had become the source of both his rage and sorrow.
Not long afterward, Karl, Dalton, and Philip—having finished comforting his daughter—rode out of the village together.
As for Anna and her lover's remains, Karl's solution was direct and merciless.
He gathered the ashes and scattered them evenly into the depths of the village's public cesspit, where the stench was thickest and most unbearable.
To Karl, such treacherous and vicious people did not even deserve to touch clean soil.
They were filth—and filth belonged among filth.
At dawn the following day, Karl rose high into the sky as he did every morning.
Suspended above the land, he opened himself to the newborn sunlight, greedily absorbing the sun's gift. Warm golden radiance poured into every cell of his body, replenishing his strength and filling his internal reserves.
When every cell once again signaled fullness and his energy storage reached saturation, Karl prepared to descend and deal with the day's affairs, just as he always did.
Then, without warning, a thought struck his mind like a bolt of lightning.
"Divinity… I possess it, even if it's only a sliver."
"I've also come into contact with the Power of Faith. I understand how it works—and its limitations."
"But what about Divine Power?"
His movements halted in midair.
Karl recalled the overwhelming presence he had once sensed in the Temple of Melitele. He remembered the pure, lake-born force dwelling within Nymph, a power that felt ancient, pristine, and fundamentally different from anything he himself wielded.
That power was clearly not the same as the Solar Energy he absorbed and refined through his cells.
It felt… higher.
Closer to the laws that governed the world itself.
"How does one obtain Divine Power?" Karl murmured.
"Or rather…" His eyes narrowed slightly. "Is it possible for me to create something similar on my own?"
Once the idea took root, it spread rapidly, like wild grass after a fire. Karl found himself unable to ignore it.
He decided to try.
Hovering motionless in the air, Karl closed his eyes and sank his consciousness deep into the Solar Energy circulating throughout his body.
This time, he did not attempt to strengthen his flesh, nor did he release simple blasts of energy.
Instead, he sought control.
Finer. Deeper.
He guided the vast golden currents inward, forcing them to converge toward a single point. Compression followed—layer upon layer of pressure applied with ruthless precision.
He attempted to strip away what he perceived as "impurities," refining the energy again and again, condensing only its most essential, potent core.
The process was brutal.
Unstable surges erupted repeatedly as his control faltered. Each mistake resulted in a violent backlash of power.
This impulsive experiment lasted an entire day and night.
From the faint light of dawn, through the blazing heat of noon, until the sun dipped beneath the horizon.
Night fell. Stars filled the sky. And still Karl continued.
As the next dawn approached, a low, unceasing rumble echoed across the skies of Terra.
It sounded like endless thunder, rolling without pause.
Dalton, Philip, and every villager heard it.
They all looked up in confusion, but the sky was clear. Not a single cloud could be seen.
"The weather's perfect," an old farmer muttered as he leaned on his hoe. "So why does it sound like thunder won't stop?"
"It's probably some atmospheric phenomenon we don't understand," Dalton said, calming his subordinates—even as unease stirred in his own heart.
None of them realized that the ceaseless thunder was being caused by Karl himself.
High above, repeated small-scale energy explosions were detonating around him as he struggled to refine something far beyond ordinary power.
Each blast was the result of imperfect control and extreme instability.
At that moment, Karl looked… miserable.
His expensive clothes had long since vanished, vaporized by successive bursts of energy. Only a few charred scraps clung to his body, barely covering him as he floated nearly naked in the air.
Under the starlight and the first pale glow of dawn, his fair skin shimmered with a healthy sheen.
One particularly violent blast had even pierced through his maintained Bio-Force Field and struck his steel-like body directly.
It caused no real damage—but the impact still sent a faint, sharp pain through him.
Yet despite the mess, the exhaustion, and the lingering ache, Karl's face wore an uncontrollable, triumphant smile.
At the tip of his right index finger, a wisp of energy slowly coiled.
It was so faint it was almost imperceptible.
That energy glowed a deep, warm orange—like sunlight captured at sunset.
And within that orange core, barely visible even to Karl's enhanced perception, was an even purer trace: a thin strand of faint gold, carrying a solemn, sacred quality.
"It worked…" Karl breathed. "Even if it's only this much."
Excitement surged through him.
He still could not be absolutely certain that this was true Divine Power.
But one thing was clear—this force was of a higher tier, born from extreme condensation and purification of his Solar Energy.
To condense this insignificant wisp of orange-gold energy, Karl had drained his vast reserves again and again, pushing himself to the brink multiple times.
The difficulty and danger of the process far exceeded anything he had faced in previous research or battle.
To understand its true effect, Karl decided to test it.
First, he mobilized ordinary Solar Energy, gathering it into a blazing fireball roughly the size of a clenched fist.
Keeping the power input stable, he casually tossed the fireball toward an uninhabited stretch of wilderness below.
Boom!
The fireball struck the ground, erupting into flame and dust. A scorched crater several meters wide and nearly a meter deep was left behind.
Decent power—roughly equivalent to a spell cast by a proficient mage.
Next, Karl carefully split off a fragment from the orange-gold wisp at his fingertip.
The fragment was thinner than a hair.
He infused it into the same amount of Solar Energy, forming another fireball that looked nearly identical to the first.
Then he hurled it toward a nearby patch of wasteland.
RUMBLE—!!!
The explosion was on an entirely different level.
A deafening roar tore through the air as violent flames and shockwaves erupted outward, instantly ravaging a far greater area than before.
Karl's eyes gleamed.
There was no doubt anymore.
This power—however small its quantity—stood on a completely different plane.
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