Volume 3, Chapter 72 – Dark and Hopeless World

Volume 3, Chapter 72 - Dark and Hopeless World

Translator: Aoi

Lily ran through the woods with towering old trees alone in the darkness of the night.

The vegetation around her flew backwards swiftly as she was running with all her strength right now, at a speed much faster than the average speed of a horse!

However, a few samurai were chasing her from behind on horseback at this moment!

Naturally, they weren’t human samurai and actually undead horsemen.

Lily didn’t plan to continue fighting zealously in the beginning, but these tall horsemen who rode undead horses chased her persistently and made her worry that she might run into some demon faction if she continued running forward like this!

Thus, Lily resolved herself to fight them!

The hoofs of the horses resounded from behind the moment Lily slowed down and two heavily armored samurai with glowing eyes who were 5th-stage Awakened horsemen lifted their tachi up silently while chasing after her.

Lily came to a sudden sliding stop and turned around to face the warhorse charging towards her. Lily side-stepped gently in response to imminent arrival of the horse and allowed the horse to finish executing its stamp before brandishing her Crescent Moon with precision.

The horseman on the other side slashed his katana at Lily as well, but Lily counterattacked with her katana at the same moment.

The two warhorses continued to charge forward, but the two samurai riding the horses fell down from the horses in succession.

“Master! These are a group of famous monsters, the Fifty Undead Horsemen. Each one of the horsemen harbors a powerful and intense grudge and they got their name from the fact that fifty of these horsemen operate together at all times. Proceed with caution, Master,” Kagura reminded Lily from within the mirror.

“Well, they’re the Forty-Eight Undead Horsemen now,” Lily stated calmly.

Still, Lily didn’t let her guard down and listened to the hoofs of the horses approaching her gradually from afar.

Lily rushed forward and cut a huge tree in front of her when she saw three more horsemen charge towards her, resulting in one of the horsemen prompting its horse to jump across the crashing tree trunk while the other two horsemen were blown off their horses from the momentum when their horses stopped suddenly.

The horseman who prompted his horse to jump across the tree trunk possessed a fearsome appearance and was donned in a dark, black-horned regal helmet stabbed his spear towards Lily.

Lily dodged the stab with swift, elegant and phantasmal movements and attacked back with her katana from the bottom-up.

However, the horseman actually shifted his body sideways and dodged Lily’s attack.

“What?!” Lily was astonished that the opponent, who was a mere 7th-stage Awakened, had actually managed to dodge her attack.

The horse charged forward while carrying the horseman.

In the meantime, the two horsemen who had fallen from their horses had gotten up and charged towards Lily with the intent to kill.

Lily had to reconsider the danger level of the Endless Demon Mountains after hearing Kagura’s explanation. She initially thought that these mountains might have powerhouses like the Furinkazan members, and that there would be a low number of them even though the number surpassed that of the human side... but it looked like there was a chance for her to get discovered by a Great Demon stronger than the Furinkazan members if she let her guard down, so she needed to proceed with utmost caution from now onwards.

Lily tried to slay the approaching undead horsemen instantly as much as possible and use only the necessary amount of spirit power, wasting no amount of it to deliver swift yet fatal attacks with her katana.

Lily began to gradually feel the effectiveness of this tactic of controlling her spirit power and strength and also felt her comprehension of sword arts experience some growth!

The Tsukuyomi Swordstyle wasn’t just a technique to exert power and was actually a way to increase the perception with regards to the sword and a process to gain realization and comprehension of sword intent.

Lily’s sword arts had become more refined at this moment.

An opponent similar to the horseman with excellent spear skills was no longer a match to the current Lily.

Lily charged forward towards the horseman sprinting towards her and the moonlight reflected in her eyes as she dodged her opponent’s blade agilely and sliced off his neck with a crimson flash of her dancing blade.

She then turned around and caused her long-sleeves to flutter up as she dodged the spear of another horseman and spun on the ground to strike him at the back, causing him to fall down from his horse from the slash.

However, Lily already knew that pursuing ingeniousness and agility wasn’t the perfect form of sword arts, so she didn’t allow her sword arts to suffer such restraints and used strength in her heavy strikes when needed!

“Splatter!” Although it looked as if Lily was standing still, she had actually executed a heavy all-out slash while leaning over suddenly and sliced through the horseman and the horse!

She then rolled past underneath the horse’s stomach and slashed across the ground to cut off the legs of another horseman’s horse, causing him to fall down.

Lily leaped up at times to flip over an undead horseman and deliver a medium-strength horizontal strike from the back to cut through the opponent’s armor and slash deeply!

Lily became more skilled in using different levels of strength and attack tempo to deal with different opponents.

“Twenty... Thirty...”

“Forty...”

“Forty-Eight!”

“Forty-Nine!”

She took her time to kill to her heart’s content!

Lily saw a very huge warhorse underneath the moonlight on the hillside whose rider was a regal samurai with a crescent-horned helmet that wielded an outrageous tachi in his hand.

This horseman exuded powerful eldritch energy on the level of middle Spirit Jade Stage.

“The Fifty Undead Horsemen. It seems like this final horseman is the leader of the horsemen!” Lily stood at the foot of the hillside with Crescent Moon in hand and gazed at her opponent coldly.